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The only reason Linh Song was watching the baseball team was because Tam was here.
It had nothing to do with the fact that there was a very pretty girl with golden hair and a short stature absolutely kicking ass on the field, even though it was a boys’ team.
Just that Tam was here.
Being a new kid was hard enough, and being an outsider was harder. Thankfully Linh had Tam to help.
But nonetheless, as she sighed and felt her back brush against the wooden backboards of the hated bleachers (tetanus, anyone?), watching her brother fail to catch a ball in the outfield while the other team had the bases loaded, she couldn’t help it if her eyes wandered to the only girl on Tam’s team: Marella Redek.
Marella was a fiery girl, with her curly blond hair always in a lumpy ponytail, telling off the umpire any chance she got. From what Tam had told Linh, Marella only joined the baseball team as a bet from one of her other friends (that Sophie Foster girl, maybe), because Marella was always challenging the rules.
(Which made it more fun to watch.)
Linh watched Marella snap at her brother for not catching a ball, and the two glared at each other for a solid 83 seconds. Yes, Linh counted.
She wasn’t particularly fazed when the short girl told him off—Tam could have caught the ball, he just didn’t want to. Tam had been forced to join the team after failing P.E, and so far, hated it.
“Just a bunch of sweaty boys hitting bats and throwing balls,” Tam had lamented yesterday.
“Throw me a good one, will ya!”
Linh’s head snapped back to the game, where the team had switched and Tam’s team was batting. She found the eyes of a particularly blue-eyed girl at bat, yelling at the pitcher enthusiastically.
***
The pitcher threw a fast one, and Marella stepped back just as it was about to hit her.
“Strike!” the umpire yelled. This was the second strike.
She grumbled, “Fuck!” and the pitcher—a bigger, nasty-looking boy—chuckled.
“Go back to the mall, sweetheart!” the pitcher shouted, smirking.
She barely contained her anger, and just visibly tightened her fingers on her bat.
The catcher threw the ball back to the pitcher, and when she looked back, he shot her a sympathetic glance.
“He’s an idiot,” he whispered.
But she only shook her head. “I gathered.”
She turned back to the front, wondering if she could sneak a middle finger to the “idiotic” pitcher before completely blanking when she realized the pitcher was warming up again.
She focused, shifting her feet and lifting her elbow only slightly as she stared at the pitcher, giving him the look that her mother used to give stupid men before she . . . before her BPD worsened.
The pitcher let the ball fly, and Marella Redek watched, almost in slow motion, as the ball came near her.
She swung her bat, the old wooden thing (a hand-me-down from her older brother Dmitry) making a sickening crack as Marella pushed out all of the frustration and anger and utter relief flooding her body out soaring into the skies and hitting someone in the head in the outfield.
Shocked, she dropped her bat and ran as fast as she could, plowing through first base, then second, and sliding into third with a zoom from the baseman overhead, catching the ball and tagging her a smidge too late.
“Safe!” the umpire roared.
Marella jumped up, looking at the pitcher with a shit-eating grin.
“Go, Marella!”
Surprised, Marella turned her head to a girl on the bleachers, who was absolutely beautiful and smiling at her like Marella had just won the Superbowl . . . for baseball. (She still didn’t know a lot about baseball.)
Marella, still not thinking clearly (or she just didn’t care at this point), cocked her head and smiled again—but only this time, it was genuine and positive. She blew the girl—Linh Song, she now recognized—a quick kiss and saluted her.
“Just doing my job, Song!” Marella shouted.
She thought she imagined the red quality Linh’s face took on.
She didn’t.