Eight Years Earlier Junior Year #3
All week, they took turns at shortstop. A grounder for Abby, a grounder for Kate.
They ate up every ball, diving, scooping slow rollers and bounces bare-handed, grunting to launch a throw to Jill at first base.
While Abby moved like an animal or dancer, fluid and lithe, Kate moved like a machine, rigid but consistent.
Her crouch, her steps, her glove always found the right angle, always adjusted to the bounce, her throw a laser to Jill.
Every so often, Abby nodded at Kate’s performance, a smile playing at her lips after a big dive or slide to make the play.
It made Kate want to scream. It was as if she didn’t realize they were competing, or worse, she didn’t consider her competition.
Kate punched the pocket of her glove and glared in return.
“What the hell is she doing here anyway?” T.K. asked after the third day.
Abby always vanished as soon as practice finished, and with the coaches gone, gossip stirred in the dugout.
“Looking for more playing time?” Jill tossed a ball to herself while she lay on the bench.
“She was all-conference. I doubt that was an issue,” Mick said. “I mean, who leaves the best program in the country for this shithole? She dropped a whole division coming here.”
“Exactly,” Courtney Seaborn, their senior captain, said. “I bet she got kicked off the team.”
“Why?”
“Who knows? Attitude issues?” Courtney shrugged. “But there’s something off. I heard she could only get in here because her mom or someone works for the school.”
Kate, who purposely eavesdropped but didn’t partake in the conversation, stiffened.
She’d been so fixated on beating Abby that she failed to put the pieces together.
She remembered Abby’s casual exchange with Professor Cruz.
She didn’t seem old enough to be her mom, but they had the same last name and, on further reflection, looked alike.
She kept the information to herself. No matter how much she begrudged Abby’s arrival, she didn’t want to fuel speculation. She’d beat her on merit alone.
By the end of the week, they were neck and neck.
She counted only one more error than Abby in the field, and while Abby made unbelievable tags, snags, and double plays, Kate held steady.
During conditioning and sprints, she outshined her.
In fact, while Kate finished the timed mile first, Abby struggled in the back, coughing as she finished nearly last. Kate almost snarked something about the cigarettes she caught her smoking but bit back the taunt.
Especially since the rumors grew more brutal by the day.
After Courtney’s charge that Abby must have been kicked off her last team, the theories on why turned cruel.
Some believed she was suspended for fighting with her coach.
Another rumor was that she had sex with her coach.
Yet another was that she’d slept with two of her teammates, causing so much drama that she was forced out.
Usually Kate, the squad’s unofficial moral compass, would put an end to the rumors, but couldn’t muster it this time.
Not as she tried to edge Abby out, though this side of her ambition, one without empathy, wasn’t something she was proud of either.
The best she could do was pray that Abby never caught wind of the gossip.
She wondered if that’s why she avoided the dugout and locker room, trudging off without a goodbye.
It wasn’t lost on Kate that her teammates only cheered for her during drills and scrimmages, never offering Abby a compliment.
“I got it.” Mick jogged to join Kate, Jill, and T.K. in the outfield, while Abby smacked line drives off the pitching machine. “I figured it out.”
“Figured what out?” Kate shagged a grounder that rolled into the grass.
“Abby,” Mick said, catching her breath. Kate and everyone within earshot fell quiet. “An old teammate of mine was a year ahead of her at UCLA. Apparently, she got kicked off the team.”
“No shit. Do we know why?” T.K. asked.
Mick’s throat bobbed as Abby launched a ball over the fence. She brought herself to a whisper, forcing them to creep closer. “I guess she had a breakdown. Her mom died and Abby lost it. Bitched out her coach, skipped classes, started showing up to practice wasted from the night before.”
Kate’s heart clenched, and a wave of nausea surged in her gut. The rumors, her jealousy, and Abby’s isolation no longer seemed a natural result of her unwelcome arrival but a shameful reflection of her own insecurity.
“And get this—her dad is Audie Cruz,” Mick said.
“Who?” Jill asked.
“You know.” Mick put on her best radio voice. “ ‘Adios, Audie Cruz! It’s outta here!’ ”
As if proving her lineage, Abby hit her deepest home run yet, the ball flying over their heads to the grass slope behind the fence. Kate, still processing the new information, stared in awe. She swore Abby scowled back as if she heard them.
“He’s a Hall of Famer,” Mick said. “The Padres retired his number last year.”
T.K. raised an eyebrow. “Maybe that’s why she got another chance here.”
Abby roped a ball straight at the foursome. T.K. shrieked before Kate caught the line drive.
“Ladies, this isn’t social hour! Break it up!” Coach Whitley shouted.
As they dispersed, Mick hit Kate’s thigh with her glove. “You can beat her out, Hutch. We’re all pulling for you.”
“Thanks,” Kate said, but she frowned once alone.
Abby stepped over home plate and lined up to hit lefty, because of course she was a switch-hitter.
Kate sighed as she crushed ball after ball.
She didn’t want her spot handed to her, planned on working for it, had worked for it endlessly, but this seemed unfair.
Even worse, now her resentment didn’t seem justified.
She no longer envied Abby but pitied her, no longer saw a competitor but someone fallen.
Only Kate, who often jumped in to help strangers with a kind word or a pat on the back, didn’t know if she could do it now.
It marked the first time, and certainly not the last, that Abby made her question everything she believed.