“She’s gonna need it,” Kelly muttered softly.

  “What’s that?” Dorien asked her.

  “Um, nothing,” Kelly said.

  “Okay. Here goes…” Dorien picked up a bat that was much too heavy for her, in Kelly’s opinion, and headed for home plate.

  “Play ball!” the umpire shouted, and put on his mask.

  Laurie Solomon was on the mound for the Devil Rays. Kelly watched her warm up. Wow! Where had she learned to windmill pitch like that?

  Kelly had never known Laurie to have such a great arm. Obviously, she’d been getting good coaching somewhere. The ball zipped in toward the plate like a blur, making a sharp, buzzing sound. Kelly felt her muscles tightening and her nerves jangling. She’d never had to hit fast pitching like that before. Would she be able to now?

  “Okay, here we go, Diamondbacks!” Coach Beigelman said in his typical enthusiastic tone. “Put your hands in here!” The sixth-graders really got into the spirit, but Kelly and some of the other older girls laid back when he tried to get them excited. It seemed so …well, dumb.

  Kelly took a seat on the bench as the ump called, “Play ball!” and the Diamondbacks came up to bat.

  Dorien went down on strikes, swinging wildly at pitches she couldn’t even see, half of which were over her head. Kelly snorted to herself and shook her head. This new team of hers was hopeless. How she wished she was back on her old team, where she belonged!

  Kyla Sutton was next. She had two strikes on her before a wild pitch from Laurie nailed her right in the helmet. Kyla screamed, more in fright than in pain, as Coach Beigelman and the ump checked to see if she was all right. She got up, wiped the tears from her eyes, and was escorted to first base.

  Kelly blew out a long breath. That was a close one, she realized. Kyla had been lucky not to get hurt. Laurie was pitching fireballs, and she was just a little bit wild, too. A scary combination.

  Now, as Kelly grabbed a helmet and a bat and stood in the on-deck circle, Allie Warheit stepped up to the plate. Allie watched the first three pitches go by without swinging, letting the count go to two balls and a strike. A hitter’s count. Then she swung at the fourth pitch and sent the ball rocketing over the center fielder’s head.

  Allie took off like a shot, and by the time she rounded third base, she had caught up to Kyla, who was still recovering from being hit in the head by the pitch.

  “Go! Go!” Allie shouted, pushing Kyla along in front of her. The two girls crossed the plate ahead of the relay throw, and the Diamondbacks mobbed them, yelling happily as they took a 2–0 lead.

  Kelly walked slowly to the plate, a mix of emotions surging inside her. She’d hoped to be the one to knock the runner in, but Allie Warheit had stolen her thunder. Now there was no way Kelly could top her feat. Not in this at bat, anyway.

  Laurie Solomon wound up and fired a pitch. Kelly tried to get the bat moving through the zone, but the ball was in the catcher’s mitt before she even swung. “Strike one!” the umpire called. Kelly tensed, gripping the bat handle tighter. She knew she’d have to hurry her swing to catch up with the ball.

  Laurie fired another one, and Kelly swung fast — but the pitch was outside and high, and she wound up lunging at it, hitting only air. “Strike two!” the umpire called.

  Kelly could hear the murmuring from both benches. Everyone knew her reputation from last season — the big home-run hitter, best in the league. But that had been against regular, slow pitching, not windmill. Kelly tensed even harder, determined not to let the next pitch get by her.

  Laurie went into her windup and let fly. Kelly could see that the pitch was in the dirt, but she’d had to start her swing so early that now she couldn’t stop it in time. On a check swing, the umpire yelled, “Stee-rike three! Yer out!”

  Kelly slammed her bat on the ground and headed back to the bench, blinking back sudden tears. She glared at everyone who told her, “That’s okay, Kelly,” or “Next time, Kel.” She didn’t want to hear it. She’d been humiliated. That stupid Allie Warheit had hit a home run like it was nothing, and she, the great Kelly Conroy, had whiffed like a total loser.

  In the bottom of the first, things started to get really bad. Still thinking about her strikeout, Kelly got a late jump on a grounder, and it got through her for a base hit. It could even have been considered an error.

  Her miscue opened the door for a seven-run Devil Ray avalanche against the lame pitching of Marie del Toro, the Diamondbacks’ starter. By the end of the inning, Marie had been replaced by Dorothy Barad, one of the sixth-graders, and the D’backs were in a hole that would only get deeper as the game went on.

  Kelly batted again in the third inning and once more in the fifth. Each time she whiffed badly, and the murmuring on both benches got louder. Now, when she tromped back to the bench, the other girls avoided her, seeing what an evil mood she was in. No one wanted to get her head bitten off by trying to console her.

  Kelly could feel the stares of her former teammates on the other bench. They must be wondering what’s happened to me, she realized. She was wondering the same thing herself.

  The final score was a humiliating 13–3, with the only other Diamondback run accounted for by another monster shot by Allie Warheit. The sixth-grader finished with two home runs and a double. The other Diamondbacks had amassed all of one hit between them, and that one was a dribbler by Dorien Day.

  After the game, Coach Beigelman gathered his battered troops for a pep talk. “We’ll get ’em next time,” he assured the downcast girls. “You all looked good out there. We just lost to a powerhouse team, that’s all.”

  Kelly doubted it. Sure, the Devil Rays were awesome. With Laurie Solomon throwing like a windmill whirlwind, none of the other teams in the league were likely to do much better against them. But the way the Diamondbacks had played, they weren’t likely to be a winning team, in this league or any other.

  Kelly trudged off the field, studiously avoiding her friends on the Devil Rays. She saw her mom’s station wagon parked on the street and made her way quickly toward it.

  “Hey! Kelly!” She turned around to see Allie trotting toward her. Kelly turned away again, but Allie kept coming.

  “Nice game,” Kelly managed to tell her.

  “Thanks!” Allie said, flashing a brilliant smile. “Um, you too….” Her voice faded, as she realized the hollowness of what she was saying.

  “Yeah, right,” Kelly said. “I stunk. Worse than anybody.”

  “Come on, anyone can have a bad game,” Allie said consolingly. “It must have been nerve-racking for you, facing your old team. I’d have played tight, too, if it was me.”

  Kelly looked up at her and managed a faint smile. “Thanks,” she said. “That’s nice of you to say.”

  “You’ll be your old self next game, you’ll see,” Allie assured her.

  “Yeah. Well, you keep up whatever you’re doing, okay?” Kelly told her. “You played awesome.” Clapping Allie on the arm, Kelly hoisted her bat and glove over her shoulder and made for her mom’s car.

  Ugh. She could see already that Ken was there, too, sitting in the front passenger seat. Why did he have to be there now, of all times? Wasn’t it bad enough that she was a total flop, and embarrassed in front of all her old friends? Why did her mom have to bring her dorky new boyfriend to witness her humiliation?

  Kelly opened the rear door, threw her stuff inside, and climbed in.

  “Hi there!” her mom said chirpily. “How’d it go?”

  “Crummy,” Kelly said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “That bad, huh?” her mom said pityingly. “Sorry, honey. It’ll get better next time.”

  “Can’t get much worse,” Kelly agreed, sinking into the seat.

  But she was wrong. Later that afternoon, her mom called her into the kitchen. “Listen, Kelly,” she said. “You know spring break is in ten days, and Ken and I were thinking — well, you’ve probably noticed that we’ve been getting pretty close….”

  Kelly rolled her eyes and sighed heavily to show how she felt about that.

  Her mom ignored her reaction. “And we thought we’d like to go away together and spend some quality time in a nice, quiet resort —”

  “Forget it,” Kelly quickly told her. “I’m not going anywhere with him.”

  “Well, that’s just it,” her mom went on. “We knew you probably wouldn’t want to go, so —”

  “Who said I didn’t want to go?” Kelly countered.

  “But you just said —”

  “I said I didn’t want to go with him!”

  “Nora?” Ken’s voice came from upstairs. “Everything okay down there?”

  “Fine, darling,” her mom called back. “Kelly and I are just discussing our plans for spring break.”

  “Oh, good!” came the reply.

  Kelly stared intently at her mom, waiting for what was to come next. “So you’re going away to Shangri-la with lover boy,” she said sarcastically. “And what am I supposed to do? Stay home by myself?”

  “Well, that’s just it,” her mom said, trying to put a hand on Kelly’s shoulder. Kelly moved back, shaking off the hand. “We thought,” said her mom, “that maybe you’d like to spend the week at as softball camp, seeing how much you love the game and all….”

  “Softball camp? Are you nuts? I already know how to play softball!” Kelly felt like throwing something, but there was nothing handy except for kitchen knives. So she banged her fist on the fridge instead. Fridge magnets flew in all directions.

  “Kelly, honey —” her mom began.

  “I’m not going to any stupid camp!” Kelly screamed at the top of her lungs. “And you can’t make me! Forget it!”

  She could hear Ken clomping down the stairs. “What is going on down here?” he yelled as he came storming into the kitchen. “Nora, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, sweetheart,” her mom told him. “Kelly’s not happy about our plans, that’s all.”

  “I’m not going to any stupid softball camp!” Kelly repeated for his benefit.

  “You’ll go wherever your mother and I decide,” Ken was quick to reply. “Whether you like it or not.”

  “You don’t tell me what to do!” Kelly shouted in his face. “You’re not my father, okay? I don’t have to listen to you!”

  “Ken…,” her mom started to interrupt.

  “I can handle this!” Ken insisted. “Obviously, she hasn’t got enough respect to listen to her mother. But I’m not going to let her treat you like that!”

  “You can’t stop me, you jerk!” Kelly shrieked. He reached out to put a restraining hand on her arm, but she yanked it away. “Don’t you touch me! I wish you’d never met Mom. You’re a stupid twerp, and I hate you!” Turning to her mother, she added, “I hate both of you! And I’m not going anywhere! I’d rather die!”

  Now she’d gone and done it. She’d told Ken exactly what she thought of him, and there was no taking it back. She stormed up to her room and slammed the door behind her. Then she collapsed on her bed and let all the bitter heartache pour out of her.

  She was a loser, a total loser. She couldn’t hit anymore — her main claim to fame was gone. She was on a team full of fellow losers, and her mom had a loser for a boyfriend. And now she was going to have to go to a camp full of losers for a week, while her mom and lover boy smooched on some secluded beach!

  Well, forget it! She wasn’t sure how she could stop it, but somehow she was going to break up their relationship. At this point, what did she have to lose?

  8

  The next two days were agony for Kelly. At school, she avoided her old friends, who didn’t exactly go out of their way to seek her out. Kelly guessed they were as embarrassed about her performance as she was.

  At home, things were even worse. Her mom and Ken, instead of talking to her, left her a note, jointly signed, telling her that she was going to camp for spring break, whether she wanted to or not. After Kelly thrashed around for a way out of her dilemma, she finally broke down and called Sue Jeffers to ask if she could spend the break with her family.

  “Um, sorry, Kel, but we’re going to Florida,” Sue informed her.

  “I could come with you!” Kelly suggested boldly.

  “Hmm. Would your mom pay for your fare and stuff?” Sue asked.

  That stopped Kelly. Maybe her mom would have paid, if Kelly hadn’t blown up at her and Ken the other night. But as things stood, Kelly couldn’t imagine her mom being so generous. “I could ask,” she told Sue. But she never did. When she saw her mom next, Kelly couldn’t get up the nerve.

  Kelly realized by now that she would have to go along with the plan and get shipped off to this loser camp, wherever it was. Only one thought consoled her. However bad it was, being with her mom and Ken would be even worse.

  As for the Diamondbacks, their second game was on Thursday afternoon, against last year’s champs, the Giants. Kelly was dreading the encounter, but she needn’t have been so down about it.

  As it turned out, the Giants were a pale shadow of their former selves. The majority of their great players had gone on to the eighth-grade league, and the team was now made up mostly of sixth-graders. They had one pitcher who threw windmill-style, but the girl was so wild that she kept walking player after player. By the time the Giants’ coach signaled for a relief pitcher, she had walked in three runs — and it was still only the first inning!

  The Giants scored four runs in the first off Dorothy Barad. Dorothy couldn’t seem to master the art of windmill pitching, but stubbornly refused to throw slow-pitch. In the top of the second, the Diamondbacks loaded the bases with two walks and a lined single by Allie Warheit off the Giants’ slow-pitch reliever.

  Kelly came up to the plate, spat on her hands, and hoisted the bat over her shoulder. This was her meat and potatoes — slow-pitch batting-practice pitches, right over the plate. She turned on the first one, letting out all the anger she’d built up over the past two days, and smacked it way, way over the left fielder’s head!

  The crowd let out a whoop, and Kelly ran for all she was worth. As she rounded third, she saw Allie at the plate, yelling, “Slide! Slide!” Kelly slid, and the throw came seconds too late. She’d walloped a grand-slam home run!

  The Diamondbacks kept on scoring. In the fourth inning, Kelly hit another home run. This time it was a solo shot, because Allie had cleared the bases ahead of her with a two-run blast. Unfortunately, the Giants kept scoring off Dorothy Barad and Marie del Toro, who came on to replace her in the third.

  The final score was a hair-raising 13–12, but the D’backs had held on to notch their first victory. Kelly had six RBIs and Allie had two — but the main thing was, Kelly had come back from her miserable first-game performance. Sooner or later, word would get back to her old pals on the Devil Rays, and her reputation would be somewhat restored.

  It was a huge relief, and Kelly couldn’t help feeling generous. When Allie came over to congratulate her afterward, Kelly gave her a big hug and invited her to Sammy’s for an ice-cream sundae.

  “You mean it? Wow — sure!” Allie said, flashing that brilliant smile of hers. At the moment, Kelly didn’t care that she was a sixth-grader. Allie was an awesome player, and Kelly was mighty glad there was someone else on her team who could really play the game.

  As they sat at Sammy’s, wolfing down their sundaes, Kelly couldn’t help noticing that Allie didn’t look like a sixth-grader. She could easily have passed for an eighth-grader, in fact. Kelly didn’t even flinch when Karen Haynes came in and saw the two of them together. So what if she had a sixth-grader for a friend? Who cared?

  They talked about softball and school and finally, inevitably, about guys. Actually, it was Allie who brought it up, asking if there was anybody Kelly especially liked.

  There wasn’t, really. Kelly had gone out with a few guys over the past year, but she hadn’t had a good crush in months. Not since Larry Budnick, and he’d turned out to be a real dud, too.

  “So, what about you?” she asked Allie. And when the other girl flashed a small, sly grin, Kelly knew there was somebody Allie had set her sights on. Probably some skinny little sixth-grade kid, Kelly thought, amused.

  “Well, there is this guy. He goes to school with us, but he’s older than me….”

  “How much older?” Kelly asked.

  “Um …he’s in eighth grade….”

  “Really?”

  “Promise you won’t tell anybody? It’s so embarrassing. If he knew I liked him, it would be all over the school, and I’d have to dig myself a hole and jump into it.”

  “I won’t tell,” Kelly promised, really curious now. It amused her no end that Allie had a crush on an eighth-grader. That was so cute! “So, who is he?”

  “He’s this kid, Ryan Randall,” Allie confessed, blushing almost purple. “Do you know him?”

  Did she know him? Did she ever! Kelly almost spat out her ice cream, she was so stunned. She coughed, pretending to have swallowed down the wrong pipe.

  “Are you okay?” Allie asked, concerned.

  “Um, yeah,” Kelly lied. She could feel a cold sweat breaking out on her forehead.

  “So, do you know him?” Allie asked again.

  “Um …no, not really,” Kelly lied. “I mean, I’ve seen him around. I know who he is.”

  “Isn’t he a dream?” Allie said, sighing and narrowing her big, brown eyes.

  “Well …I guess he’s kind of cute,” Kelly admitted. He was more than cute, and she knew it, but she wasn’t going to give Allie the satisfaction of saying so.

  “Of course, I’ve got no chance of even meeting him. But I was thinking maybe I’d go to one of his baseball games and kind of, I don’t know, bump into him or something. Or do you think that’s too, like, forward?” Allie asked.

  “I don’t know, do what you want. But, I mean…”

  “Never mind. It was just a thought, that’s all. Forget I said anything.”

  “Okay, then,” Kelly said, happy to drop the subject. She pushed her sundae away. Suddenly, she’d lost her appetite entirely. She wasn’t sure exactly why, but she knew it had something to do with Ryan Randall.