Throwing Like A Girl

“Throckmorton!” Coach yelled at practice the next day. “You’re up to bat!”

I came in from third, where I was playing while the guys hit off the pitching machine, then slipped on my batting gloves and extracted my bat from my bag. I hustled out to the plate and got myself situated as Brent Harmon, a benchwarmer who was manning the pitching machine for now, held up a ball. He slipped it into the machine and it flew by before I could even get into my stance.

“What the hell,” I muttered under my breath.

Jordan, who was catching the machine’s balls to get some catching practice, stood up to throw the ball back at Brent. “That was cheap, Bree. Don’t worry, you’ll get the next one.”
But Jordan was wrong. I swung slightly under the next pitch, and hit a foul off the one after that.

“Holy cow, that was foul, mooove it over,” I said in a low singsong out of habit. I could hear Jordan chuckle as the next ball was fed into the machine.

This one I managed to hit straight into Damien’s glove. But it was a start.

The next few went toward third and short, sometimes dipping into the outfield. With three balls to go, I bunted. It was a great bunt, far enough forward that the catcher would have to do more than lean forward, but close enough that the pitcher would need to take more than a few steps to get to it.

“Damn, Bree,” Jordan said as I moved out of the way so he could get to the ball.

“Nice bunt, Throckmorton!” Coach yelled from the dugout.

“Two more,” Brent called.

I missed the next one—a baseball is way harder to hit than a softball—and let the last one fly into shallow center field. Then I left the plate and went to put my gloves away.

“Really nice, Bridgette,” Evan said as he passed me for the plate.

“Thanks,” I said, pulling off my helmet. My hair felt frizzy. Attractive.

I took it down and redid it, then slid my glove back on and reclaimed my spot at third.

I didn’t get much action, though, because every ball that Evan hit flew deep into the outfield. The guys were still running around collecting the balls after he’d gone back to the dugout.

Evan was the last to hit, so we circled up and listened to Coach talk about how the game was the next day and if we tried hard and worked together, we’d win.

Blah, blah, blah. Same speech, different team. I put my hand into the middle of the circle and tried to make my voice audible in the deep-voiced yell of “Knights!”

It was still weird not saying “Coyotes” and howling. The guys at Florin just said their team’s name and that was it.

I’d taken off my cleats and was stuffing my bat back into my bag when I heard my name.

“Bree.”

I turned quickly, trained to respond like lightning at my name. “Yeah?”

It was Jordan. “Wanna eat dinner with me and some of the guys tonight?” He looked hopeful, like he did every single time he asked me to eat with him and the guys.

I smiled. “I’d love to, Jordan, but I have some stuff to take care of tonight. Homework, you know.”

“Come on, Bree,” he pleaded. “I’ve never seen you in the caf at dinnertime. Come eat with us. We want you to. Don’t we, guys?”

After a pointed look, Mark, Carter, Shawn, and Jesse nodded and mumbled how it’d be cool.

I hoisted my bag over my arm, debating. I supposed I should probably skip that evening’s practice session and rest up for the game the next day, and dinner wouldn’t kill me.

“Sure,” I said finally. “What time?”

“Half an hour?” he said, a bit of a question in his voice. “That’s when we usually meet, but if you need more time…”

“That’ll be fine,” I said quickly. Just barely enough time, actually, if I was planning on showering. “I’ll see you in the caf in half an hour.” I tried to hurry off the field without making it look like I was hurrying.

I made it to my room in record time and hurried off to the showers. After the quickest shower in history, I returned to my room. Allie was nowhere to be found, so I quickly changed into my favorite “boyfriend” jeans and a soft gray tank top, slipped on my flip flops, and threw my dripping hair up into something resembling a bun. Then I wiped under my eyes to catch any running makeup, stuffed my phone and ID card in my pocket, and headed to the caf with five minutes to spare.

“Hey, Bree!” Jordan called. Jesus, they were already there, and Jordan was waving me to their spot in line to get food.

I joined them in line, feeling my face heat up at the protests from people in line behind them. Jordan rolled his eyes toward the end of the line and smiled at me. “Hope you had enough time?” he asked.

I nodded automatically. “Of course,” I said nonchalantly, mentally cringing as the water in my hair dripped onto my back. “Hi, guys,” I said to Mark, Carter, Shawn, and Jesse.

“Hey, Bree,” Mark said, and the other guys mumbled their greeting. Mark was cordial with me because I always gave him nice throws that didn’t require him to stretch too much.

“Okay, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m starving,” Jordan said, grabbing a tray as we came up to the food counters.

Carter and Jesse nodded eagerly and Mark and Shawn just laughed. I smiled and picked up a tray of my own, looking over the food choices: spaghetti and meatballs with green beans, macaroni and cheese with broccoli, fried chicken and mashed potatoes, orange chicken and fried rice, salad bar, dessert bar. I’d only eaten dinner in the caf once, on my first night at Florin, and it happened to be pizza night. The salad and dessert bars had been there, of course, but the only thing they’d served besides that was drinks and pizza. I’d never seen these sorts of entrees because they served completely different things at lunch.

Jordan, at the front of our little group, picked up a plate of chicken and mashed potatoes from under the heat lamps.

“Gonna get a salad, Little Miss Softball?” Shawn asked in a taunting tone.

I was actually thinking about doing just that, but took his teasing as a challenge. “Nope,” I told him, taking a plate of spaghetti.

Jesse and Carter raised their eyebrows at each other and Jordan grinned, taking a can of soda. That was one thing I wasn’t gonna budge on, though; if I drank a soda now, I’d be up all night. Instead, I picked up a fruit punch VitaminWater and put it on the tray.

“Smart girl,” Mark observed, picking up an acai-berry-pomegranate VitaminWater of his own. “You guys are gonna be up all night,” he told Jordan, Jesse, Shawn, and Carter. They just scoffed at him.

We reached the dessert bar, just before the end of the line, and each guy picked up a cookie or a brownie. I glanced, but refused to give in and kept moving.

“Watching your figure?” Carter asked in the same taunting tone Shawn used.

I felt anger and embarrassment bubble up, but tried to keep my cool. “I’m not really used to eating this late. Don’t wanna overdo it,” I said, pushing up my bracelets.

Jordan nodded. “Probably a good idea.” He handed over his ID card to the lady manning the cash register. Our ID cards acted kind of like credit cards on campus, drawing from accounts our parents paid for on the monthly tuition bills.

We all hurried through the register and followed Jordan to a circular table near the middle of the caf, next to one full of the rest of the baseball guys and some of what I assumed to be their girlfriends.

“Hey, Avery,” Mark said as a pretty blonde girl sauntered up to the table, tray in hand. A salad was on her tray.

Dammit!

“Hey, Mark,” she smiled, sitting down next to him. She glanced over at me, doing the thing where a girl looks you up and down. “Who’s this?”

“Bridgette Throckmorton. She plays third on the team,” Mark told her.

“It’s Bree,” I said quickly. “Avery, right?”

She nodded. “Yeah, Avery Harmon. Brent’s my brother.”

“Oh, cool,” I said, seeing the resemblance. She and Brent had the same sandy blonde hair and lack of height.

“So, Ave, you coming to the game tomorrow?” Jordan asked, taking a bite of chicken.

She nodded, flashing a dazzling smile at Mark. “Of course. I’m gonna try to get outta art early so I can be there at the beginning of the game.”

“Sweet,” Mark nodded, casually resting an arm on the back of her chair.

“What time do we get out?” I asked, twirling my spaghetti.

“When the lunch bell rings, you grab the quickest lunch you’ve ever eaten in your life, go change, and get your ass out on the field to warm up,” Jesse said, leaning back in his chair. “Warm up for half an hour, beat the crap outta Drake.”

“Administration won’t let us out earlier,” Jordan said, “No matter how much we beg and tell them we’re pressed for time. The best they’ll do is let players go to the front of the lunch line.”

“Better than Rockwell,” I said. “We didn’t even get to go to the front of the line. We girls got in the habit of brown bagging on game days so we could get full warm-up time.”

“Damn,” Mark said. “That’s ridiculous.”

“You know what’s worse?” I twirled more spaghetti. “The guys would always cut the last class before lunch and sweet-talk the caf ladies into getting them food. And they never got in trouble.”

“That’s messed,” Shawn said incredulously.

I nodded and took a bite of green beans. “They get away with it because the guys’ coach is our principal’s son.”

Carter whistled. “That’s even more messed.”

“Yup.” I took a swig of my VitaminWater.

After a short pause, the conversation continued about people I didn’t know. Avery chattered about someone named Sasha and what had happened in bio with Miss Swain. I tuned out a little, twirling my spaghetti a little more than eating it.

Avery’s voice pulled me back to what was going on. “Bree?”

“Yeah?” I replied, looking up.

“What’re all those bracelets for?” she asked, gesturing at my arms.

I couldn’t help but smile. “The rubber ones are causes—pink for cancer, orange for animals, blue for kids. The leather one’s a—“

“Taylor Swift one,” Avery said, smiling.

I smiled back. “Yeah. These two rope ones are wish bracelets from my team when they found out I was leaving, and this one’s a friendship bracelet from my team. I never take them off.”

“You know, rules say you can’t have anything on your wrists during games,” Jesse told me.

I nodded. “I know. I take off the rubber ones and the leather one and tape my wrists so the others don’t dangle. It makes everyone think I have wrist problems, but it’s legal, and it works.”

“Nice,” Jordan said.

Avery nodded. “I did that during volleyball season when I wore a wish bracelet.”

“Really? I didn’t know that,” Mark said, looking at Avery.

“There are a few things you don’t know about me,” she said, smiling coyly. I’ve always hated girls who were good at flirting, since I never really was.

“Get a room, you two,” Shawn told them, rolling his eyes. Avery turned a little pink, but Mark just smirked and reached out to playfully smack Shawn.

“You just wish you had someone to get a room with, Mullen,” Mark told him.

It was Shawn’s turn to turn pink. “Shut up, Christiansen,” he mumbled, and the rest of us laughed.

I put down my plastic fork to get another bite of spaghetti, but realized it was all gone, including the green beans. All that was left was about half of my VitaminWater.

I started to stand up. “Thanks for letting me eat with you, guys.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa; where ya going, Bree?” Jordan asked.

“I have chemistry homework to finish up,” I said, picking up my tray.

Carter made an understanding noise. “I should probably be doing that too. Griffin’s brutal when it comes to homework.”

“I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Nice to meet you, Avery,” I said.

“Same,” she nodded.