Chapter Two
Reed
“I do what I’ve trained my whole life to do. I watch the ball. I keep my eye on the ball.”
—Barry Lyga, Boy Toy
Damn. That crown had cost me the earnings from half a yard’s mowing.
Ben appeared in front of me and laughed. “Well, that’s one way to make an entrance.”
I bent down to pick up the crown and cursed.
“Don’t worry.” He snatched it from me and held it up to the light. “That’s nothing a little duct tape can’t fix.”
I followed him through the swarm of people, several of whom snickered and bowed the way Eliza did as I passed, before we made it to the massive kitchen. Even with all the trash and open pizza boxes, the marble counters gleamed under the fancy pendant lights.
What Nana wouldn’t give to be able to afford a kitchen like this. Meanwhile, these people probably have enough money to pay someone else to clean it.
“You know, if we used last year’s Halloween costumes, this wouldn’t have happened,” he said, rummaging through some drawers.
“Ben.” I rubbed my face. “I was not about to come to this thing dressed up as Dusty—”
“But you would’ve had your trusty Steve the Babysitter with you, man.”
Ben and I started watching Stranger Things after Dad’s first deployment a few years ago. At first, it was a distraction, but after round three of Dad going overseas, it became tradition—something familiar to hold on to.
Eliza breezed into the room and grabbed a can of Coke from the fridge, oblivious to me scowling at her. Her arms flew around her wildly while she talked with someone dressed as a bunny…or maybe a cat. They all looked the same at these things.
Bunny-Cat Girl nodded in my direction, and then Eliza turned to me and flipped me off before grabbing Bunny Cat’s hand and whisking her out of the room.
Right back at ya, darlin’.
“So that’s the Crowley I’ve heard so much about?” Ben asked.
I nodded. In the flesh. Or in her case, feathers.
She should’ve come as a Dementor.
“She doesn’t look like an annoying, evil rich girl with big ears.” Ben ripped off a piece of tape using his teeth. “Hold that arch there for me.”
I did as he said. “That girl ruined my Transformers collection when I was eight years old.”
“How’d she do that?” He rotated the crown around to the other broken piece and motioned for me to hold it still again as he got another strip of tape.
I tugged at the cuffs of my sleeves. “She stole them from me when I played at the library.”
He stopped taping. “You used to go to the library?”
“Yeah, I used to go to the lib— That’s not the point. The point is…” Jesus, my head hurt from this shit music. “The point—”
“The point is that she’s hot.” He craned his neck and stared at her. “Can’t see her face with that mask on, but I’m kinda feelin’ that whole dark and twisty vibe she’s got goin’ on.”
I laughed. “Don’t let the black feathers fool you. Her family’s a bunch of rich snobs who act like they own the town. ‘Dark and twisty’ to them is a week without Starbucks.”
Ben made a face and fell into the chair closest to me. “So what is it with you guys? Your families?”
“It’s a long story.” One I definitely didn’t want to talk about right now. “We used to be friends, but then her family stole the stadium right out from under mine. Money talks here.” And they’re the loudest people in Fairfield.
“Well, for a rich girl, she’s got a good arm.” He held up my crown and smiled before pressing it onto my head. “There. Good as new.”
Good as it’ll ever get is more like it.
“You wanna get out of here?” I asked. My hand itched to hold a baseball.
Dad always said I had the imprints of baseball laces in my fingers the same way most kids had grooves on theirs from climbing monkey bars. I was born to pitch.
Or at least I thought I was, before last summer.
“Nah. This party is just now getting interesting.” He smirked and pulled his mask back onto his face. “I think I’ll go dance with Eliza’s bunny friend again. Or cat…Whatever.”
“Hey, now.” I grabbed his shoulder. “Don’t forget our pact. All baseball—”
“No girls, yeah, I know.” He scratched his jaw. A long pink scar with faint stitch marks rested just above it. “I was the one to come up with it, remember?”
“I remember.” When Ben’s long-term girlfriend dumped him for a college guy days before our junior prom, he hit rock bottom and stayed there for a while. Lots of drinking. Lots of fighting. I hadn’t seen him down that bad since his dad left a couple of years ago.
“But just one dance. What could go wrong?” Ben winked and grabbed a slice of pizza before walking away.
About a million and two things, actually. Not that me listing them would’ve stopped him.
I wove in and out of the crowd, making my way toward the back deck, and a few of my teammates gave me high fives with slurred comments.
“Fulton!”
“Ace, ace, baby!”
“It’s your year, man!”
My year.
God, I hoped so.
I slid open the door to the deck and quickly closed it shut, falling against it hard enough to knock my crown to the fancy Trex flooring.
“Prince loses his crown a second time in one night,” Eliza called from the railing across from me. She let out a low whistle. “Some prince you are, Fulton.”
“Goth Bird comes to a party but sneaks away to play on her phone.” I scooped up my crown and shoved it back on my head. “Pretty pathetic, Crowley.”
“Bite me.”
“No, thanks.” I crossed the deck and leaned in toward her. “I don’t wanna get fleas.”
“God, you’re annoying.”
“You’ve missed it.”
“Ha. ’Bout as much as I’d miss an ETC console.” She bumped my arm as she walked down the steps and into the yard.
An ETC console?
When the hell did Eliza become a techie?
“Hey.” A guy dressed in a cop uniform three sizes too small called to me from the opposite side of the deck near a bunch of people smoking pot. “Is it true your granddad made his own team this summer?”
“Yeah. It’s true.” I texted Ben to ask if we could head home yet.
“How the hell did a Fulton get the money to start up a team?” The guy snickered as he took a hit.
“Sponsors.” And favors. Lots of favors I wasn’t supposed to know about, but old farmhouses had thin walls. “What’s it matter to you?”
He shrugged. “Just think it’s funny that a farmer put together a team. What’s he know about baseball, anyway?”
“A hell of a lot more than you. He and his brother helped build Crowley Park.”
“Yeah?” He smacked his friend’s shoulder to get his attention. “Then why’s it not called Fulton Park?”
I didn’t have time for this kind of shit.
I moved toward the sliding door, and he quickly hurried to block my path.
“Oh shit. I knew I recognized you. Weren’t you the kid who blew it at the UNC showcase last year?”
I clenched my fists. A low ringing hissed through my ears.
Caveman, Cop Guy’s friend, joined in. “I heard he didn’t make it past the first round.”
“You guys play?” I asked.
“Left field.” Caveman straightened up and pointed to Cop Guy. “He plays first.”
“Reed!” Ben yelled, throwing open the door. “What’s good?”
I kept staring at the idiots in front of me.
“New friends?” Ben asked, getting in between us before he slapped the cop’s gut. “You lost a few buttons there, officer.”
Oil, meet my friend Fire. “These guys play for the Crowley team, Ben.”
“No shit?” Ben lifted up his mask. At five-foot-ten, he stood a couple of inches shorter than me, but he towered over both of them. “You two can actually run the bases?”
“Better than you.” Caveman took a step closer.
Ha. Ben had the fastest time in the sixty-yard dash last season back home.
“Bet.” Ben smiled and grabbed Caveman’s drink before he slowly poured the beer onto the deck.
Caveman grabbed Ben’s collar.
Cop Guy and I stepped closer, fists out, but then a couple of girls called out to the Crowley crew. One of them hurried over and started to drag them both away. “You’ll regret that,” Caveman said.
“Nah, I won’t.” Ben waved at both of them before turning to me. “I’m gonna go grab one more drink and then we’ll head out. You good?”
I watched Eliza ease into one of the swings, then said, “Yeah, I’m good. Thanks.”
After Ben went inside, I shoved my hands into my pockets and strolled across the yard toward the swing set.
Eliza looked up from her phone and sighed. “Are you following me?”
“Nope. Just needed some air.” I sat on the swing next to hers.
“Was the air not good enough on the deck?”
“Actually, no. I hate the smell of pot.”
“Same.” She went back to reading on her phone.
I twisted my swing back and forth. “If you’re so bored, why not leave?”
“Can’t.”
“Why?”
She huffed. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”
Of course I did. The ball field. The farm. Hell, I’d take Saturday detentions with Mr. Lederman again over this, and yet…irritating her was second nature. “Nope. My whole night is free just to bother you.”
She kept her eyes down. “If I leave Lauryn alone at a party, she goes full on Lin-Manuel. Turns the party into her own performance.”
Lauryn.
I thought Bunny-Cat Girl looked familiar.
“Isn’t that more your angle?” I asked. A Crowley would never pass up the opportunity to take center stage.
“No. I don’t like the spotlight,” she said almost too softly for me to hear.
Ha. Sure. “I seem to remember you twirling your way up and down Main Street in a tutu. You used to say you’d be a principal in Swan Lake someday.”
“I was seven.”
“And?”
“That was also the year I said I wanted to be a professional ice cream scooper.”
The same year I wanted to be Batman. Still mourning that one. “I heard someone say something about Rocky Road in the freezer a few minutes ago.” I waved her on toward the house. “Don’t let someone like me get in the way of your dreams, Crowley.”
She started to laugh and then turned it into a cough. “News flash: I’m allowed to change my mind about what I want. Anyone is.”
Fair enough. “I figured it was wired into your Crowley DNA or something. Craving attention—”
“Just because I’m a Crowley…ugh. Never mind.” She twisted her swing away from me.
I could’ve gone inside then. Could’ve kept arguing with some dude dressed as Frodo about how much the Red Sox sucked, but annoying Eliza Crowley when I was in town was tradition.
Who was I to break with tradition?
Plus, this was a different side than I had seen before. Ms. Goody-Goody was now a puzzle. And I hated puzzles with missing pieces.
“What game are you playing on your phone that’s so interesting?” I stood and leaned over her, but she pressed her phone against her chest.
“I’m reading a lighting manual.”
“A lighting manual?” I dropped back into my swing.
Who was this girl?
She pinched her lips together before saying quickly, “For Romeo and Juliet at the Lyric.”
“Seriously?” I laughed. “Of all the plays to pick, they picked that one? For this summer?”
“Meaning?” She twisted her swing to face me.
“It’s pretty ironic. Our families facing off…‘Two households, both alike,’ blah blah blah.”
She rolled her eyes and went back to reading on her phone.
I dug my feet into the freshly cut grass. A few fireflies blinked nearby. “So…you’re really in the booth and not on the stage?”
She kept her head down. “Is it really that surprising?”
This was the same girl who used to wear huge, fake pearls twenty-four seven, who pranced around in heels and oversized dresses when we were kids.
Uh, yeah. It was surprising.
“What would a pitcher know about stage lighting?” she mumbled.
“Gel changes. Tightening a frame. Follow spots. Underexposure?” I kicked a clump of dirt.
“Where did you—”
“I know movies.”
The sound of glass shattering followed by cheers came from the house. Christ, I hope Ben didn’t break anything.
“Movies?” she asked.
“Movies.” I could’ve told her about my favorite directors, some of the classes I took online, the indie festivals I snuck into with Ben, but I stayed quiet. If she was allowed to be cryptic, so was I.
“Huh.” She went back to reading on her phone.
There were a bunch of letters and numbers written on the back of her hand. Without thinking, I reached for it. “What’s all that mean?”
She jumped when I touched her. “Nothing.”
“Doesn’t look like nothing.”
“It’d take too long to explain.”
Translation: I was too dense to understand.
“Cops!” voices yelled as everyone inside poured through the back door and over the deck.
“We gotta go, E!” Lauryn ran across the yard and nearly tripped over herself when she saw me standing next to her best friend. Her gaze darted back and forth between us. “Oh. Hi, Reed. Uh…here for the weekend?”
I stood. “For the summer, actually.”
The tie on Eliza’s mask snapped, causing the whole thing to fall to the ground. Both of us crouched for it and bumped heads.
“Ow. Dammit, Fulton,” she hissed.
I stared at the girl I had known since I was a kid. Same dark hair that flipped out to the side when it was humid out. Same small line of freckles on her cheeks. Same tiny scar in the shape of a fingernail near her right eyebrow. Same irritated look she always saved just for me.
Or was it?
Something was…different.
“Come on, E,” Lauryn whined. “Byeeee, Reed.” She pulled Eliza to her feet, and the two disappeared into the mob.
“Did you catch that cat’s name?” Ben appeared at my side.
I picked up the forgotten mask by my feet and raised an eyebrow. “Lauryn. Why?”
He held up his hands. “Just curious.”
We ran toward my truck as the sounds of more police sirens drew nearer.
Ben opened the passenger door and pointed to my hand. “What’s that?”
I still had Eliza’s mask. Crap. Why did I take it with me?
Ben jumped in and closed his door. “You good?”
“Yeah, why?” I pulled away from the house.
“Dunno. You seem distracted.”
Distracted? More like stressed the fuck out.
He would be too, if his granddad recruited him and most of his friends to win back a stadium from the family who practically owned the entire town.
“I’m good.” I pulled off the main road onto a dirt one that would take me toward the creek, a good shortcut for home.
“Okay.” Ben put his window down and propped his arm on the door. “Because we both know you need a better showing this season. Can’t afford to repeat last June.”
I gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I know.”
“We’re all baseball this summer.”
I tucked Eliza’s mask into my door. “All baseball.”