Chapter Text
It was the first mean day of summer, hot and sticky even if it was only part way through May, and Lupe had spent the entire school day tugging at the itchy collar on her dress and sweating through her socks.
Jess had skipped class that day, but Lupe wouldn’t be mad at her, as long as she showed up on time to walk Lupe home from school, even if she had needed to do arithmetic drills with Jo today, who was so good at multiplication it was almost scary. Lupe wasn’t too worried, because Jess almost always came to walk with her even on days that she ditched, and so she waited for her patiently between the flagpole and the sidewalk.
Her trust wasn’t misplaced, and before long, Jess was bounding up the street towards the school. She was barefoot, in overalls, and her face and arms were so scratched up it looked like she’d been in a fight with a racoon, which, if Lupe were being honest, was not strictly out of the realm of possibility. In her tightly clenched fist, she swung a burlap sack.
“Berry?” was the first thing Jess said to her, no greeting, just straight and to the point. She rolled down the top edge of her sack and opened it up, held it out so Lupe could look inside.
It was blackberries, so fresh there were still little bits of leaves clinging to the fruit, here and there. Jess must’ve walked all the way out to the thicket by the creek to pick them, which was a couple hours walk, easily. Lupe popped a couple of them into her mouth, where they burst instantly. Sweet, but not too sweet, just how she liked them.
“Is that where you were all day?” Lupe asked, and the two of them kicked off from the school and started making their way towards Lupe’s house.
Jess nodded. Her hands were occupied keeping the berry sack open, so Lupe could pick at it as they walked, and so she didn’t have any free to grab a snack for herself. She held her mouth open, so Lupe would know that she was hungry, too.
Lupe reached back in and very carefully picked out an especially large, nice looking berry. She tossed it into Jess’s mouth, and Jess caught it skillfully.
“Did I miss anything good?” she’d asked, when she was maybe halfway finished chewing. Blackberry skin clung to her teeth.
Lupe shook her head.
“Not really. Shirley got her braids tied to her chair, again.”
“Damn it,” Jess said, kicking at the sidewalk good-sportedly. She would’ve liked to see that.
Jess cussed all the time. Lupe found it very impressive. She thought some more.
“Oh, and we had mashed potatoes for lunch.”
“With butter?” Jess asked, hopefully.
“With butter,” Lupe confirmed.
“Damn it,” Jess said, again. Her stomach might have growled, just then, or Lupe may have imagined it. She wished she would’ve saved something from her lunch. Her apple, at least, which she could’ve put in her pocket.
She dug for another good handful of berries, which tinted her fingers purple, and she tossed them to Jess, one at a time. Jess started showing off, jumping wider and wider to catch them, and by the time they got to the end of Lupe’s street, she was laughing so hard that she’d accidentally crushed the blackberries between her fingers, juices running down her arm and staining the cuff of her dress.
Lupe was worried to see this, because she didn’t want to catch it from her mother, but she didn’t know what she could possibly do about it.
Jess spotted her worry, though, and she did have an idea of what to do. She sat the sack of what was left of the berries on the sidewalk between her feet, and reached for Lupe’s wrists. With grave concentration, she rolled the cuffs up just enough to hide the stain.
“There,” she announced, and then she leaned in close to Lupe’s ear, even though there was no one anywhere near close enough to overhear them.
“Meet me at the field tonight, okay? If you can,” Jess whispered.
Lupe nodded. She couldn’t promise she would, but she could promise she’d try.
Jess usually didn’t walk her further than the end of her street, because Lupe’s parents didn’t like Jess very much. Lupe didn’t think Jess liked them very much, either, but she was usually good mannered enough not to say anything.
“Tonight,” Lupe confirmed, because she wanted Jess to know that she really, really wanted to. She hurried down the street towards her house, and when she looked back, Jess was still at the corner, watching her all the way until she got to her front door.
When Lupe got to the field, Jess was already there, laying on the grass just beyond second base, arms behind her head to prop it up.
The field was a little baseball diamond out behind the old paper mill, and it was pockmarked and overgrown enough that the serious baseball players in Rockford mostly left it alone, which meant it was the perfect place for a team of very dedicated sixth grade girls to hold their own team practices. Of those girls, Lupe and Jess were arguably the most dedicated, and so they felt they held a certain ownership over the field and were entitled to use it for whatever late night purposes they chose.
Jess sat up as soon as she heard Lupe approaching, even though Lupe thought she was being pretty quiet. A wide grin broke out on her face, like she was thrilled to see Lupe there, but she didn’t seem impatient. Lupe knew she would’ve waited there practically all night if Lupe hadn’t shown up, because she’d done it before, on nights when Lupe hadn’t been able to sneak out of her house after her parents and sisters had fallen asleep.
Lupe had stopped to make Jess a peanut butter sandwich on her way out of the house, and she held it out to her like an offering as she approached her friend, getting down to sit on the grass next to her.
If possible, Jess’s grin got even wider at the sight of the sandwich, and she took it from Lupe gladly, scarfing it down in a few quick bites. She tried speaking to Lupe before her food was even swallowed, and the words came out mumbled and sticky.
“ Ack ee Missles payen eh reepord .”
“You gotta chew, Jess,” Lupe told her, because she hadn’t been able to make heads or tails of a single word Jess had said. Jess nodded, and chewed. Lupe wished she’d thought to bring her some water.
“Jackie Mitchell’s playing in Freeport,” she tried again, once she could properly talk. “In an exhibition game on Saturday.”
Lupe was so excited to hear this that her breathing had almost stopped.
“In Freeport, Illinois ?” she confirmed carefully, because this sounded too good to be true. She wanted to squeal in excitement, if she was the sort of little baby kid that would do something like that.
“Thirty miles from here,” Jess confirmed. Jess had an excellent sense of direction. “We could walk there in a couple days, you know.”
Lupe was still having a hard time believing that something so exciting could possibly be happening anywhere near the same vicinity as her.
“Where’d you hear all this, anyways?” she asked. She believed Jess, but she had no idea where she would’ve gotten that kind of information.
“At the bar,” Jess answered. That was another reason Lupe felt baby-ish next to Jess. Lupe wasn’t even allowed to ride the bus by herself, but Jess was regularly sent into the bar, with all the adults, to buy a fifth of whiskey for her father.
Lupe hummed thoughtfully at that, to try and pretend like she had any idea whether barroom gossip could be counted as truthful.
“I wish we could see her,” Lupe bemoaned. She knew Jess would sympathize. She was just as crazy about Jackie Mitchell as Lupe was, poured over Lupe’s newspaper clippings with her and talked trash about how she was going to throw Babe Ruth out someday, too.
“So let’s do it,” Jess said, in the tone of voice she used when she was goading Lupe into doing something. “We could walk it, I said.”
Lupe did not agree that that was the only consideration, here.
“My parents would never let me,” she admitted, feeling immature even as she did, even if she had almost seven months on Jess.
“So don’t tell them,” Jess countered. Like it was that easy. For her, it would be, probably. Jess could spend days in the woods without anyone getting on her case about it. Lupe couldn’t even be a quarter of an hour late from school.
Lupe knew she ought to just tell Jess to go without her. There was no reason for them both to miss out on such a once-in-a-lifetime chance. She just couldn’t get herself to say the words.
She just shook her head, dejectedly.
“Okay,” Jess said, still making like she was going to figure out the answer. “What if you told them you were babysitting all week for some family because they were going out of town?”
Lupe thought about that. Lately, the Gonzálezes from church had been asking Lupe if she wanted to babysit their daughter. Lupe hadn’t particularly wanted to do it, so she hadn’t pressed her mother too hard on the subject. But her parents did like Mr. and Mrs. González, and so maybe it was worth a shot.
“Maybe,” Lupe hedged. “I don’t know.”
“C’mon, Lu,” Jess pleaded, she was practically rocking forward now, in her excitement. “Jackie Mitchell. She’s a pitcher , Lu. Please .”
Lupe couldn’t hold off any longer.
“Okay,” she agreed. “I’ll try .”
Jess threw her arms around Lupe with so much excitement Lupe would think she’d signed her to the Yankees herself. Lupe couldn’t deny that she was excited, too.
Eventually, Jess pulled back, eyes still dancing.
“Right. Now we just have to figure out how we’re going to pay for tickets.”
It was decided, after much debate, that they would invite a few select Peaches to accompany them to the game, and in exchange for guiding their teammates to Freeport, Jess and Lupe would have their tickets paid for.
There was no way they would ever be able to pay for the tickets, a staggering twenty-five cents apiece, themselves. Lupe wasn’t old enough to be trusted with pocket money, according to her parents, and wouldn’t be until she was at least sixteen. The McCreadys didn’t have any money to speak of, let alone for the kids to spend.
Jo was the first obvious choice they’d settled on. She was a favorite of them both, and she’d just had a birthday and showed up to practice in a brand new set of cleats, so she was probably loaded. Not to mention, she was easily persuadable into rule breaking, when the situation called for it.
If Jo was to be invited, there would be no way they could get around inviting Greta. Jess liked Greta more than Lupe did, but Lupe supposed she wasn’t too terrible, all things considered, even if she had kind of a big mouth.
They’d intended to start with just those two, but when they’d approached Greta and Jo after school, Carson had also somehow snuck her way in. Carson was alright, Lupe guessed, but she was kind of a know-it-all, and Lupe also suspected a tattle tale. Which wasn’t exactly what they needed for this expedition to go off smoothly.
“How far away is it, again?” Carson asked, for probably the fourth time. Jess rolled her eyes.
“Thirty miles, give or take. We could walk it in three days, easy.” Yesterday, Jess had reiterated to Lupe that the two of them could walk it in less than two. She must have reservations about the other girls’ wilderness skills. Lupe tried not to smirk at that.
“Well I think it sounds like fun,” Greta put in, and apparently that was all that was needed to settle it.
“I’m in, too,” Jo agreed, immediately. Lupe smiled; she knew Jo would. They all stared at Carson.
“Okay, okay, I’ll do it,” she finally gave in. Jo whooped a little, and thumped her on the back. Greta grinned. Then she turned to Jess.
“I’ll buy you a ticket, Jess,” she offered, swaying side to side just a bit. Lupe tried not to scowl at that. She would’ve volunteered to buy Jess a ticket, too, first even, only she didn’t have the money.
“Thanks, Greta,” Jess said brightly.
They hadn’t addressed the ticket situation head on yet, but it was hardly a secret that Jess was broke. Greta had apparently figured out their game before they’d even had a chance to bring it up, which made Lupe feel a little caught out. Not to be outdone, apparently, Carson pitched in,
“I can buy you a ticket, Lupe. I have money left over from Christmas, still.” Lupe did scowl at that. Yeah, maybe she complained at practice sometimes about not having spending money, but that wasn’t meant for Carson to use against her.
“That’s great,” Jess answered for her, which was probably for the best.
“Well what about me, then?” Jo asked, evidently feeling left out. “What am I supposed to buy?”
Everyone thought about it for moment, until Greta finally popped up with,
“You can buy us souvenirs, Joey. I definitely want to get something autographed.” They all went off on a series of tangents, then, speculating about the kinds of goodies they’d be able to come home with. Snacks, too, Jess reminded them, she was sure there would be snacks for Jo to spring for at the ball game.
“It’s settled, then,” Jess proclaimed, with an air of authority. “We’ll meet at the field first thing Wednesday morning, and we’ll set off then.” The girls all nodded seriously. They couldn’t wait.