“Yeah, right.”

  “He does, believe me. Like, for instance, he was always there for me, growing up.”

  “Oh, please — bring out the violins,” Kelly said sarcastically.

  “Okay, make fun of me,” Ryan said, “but it’s true. For instance, he’s never, ever missed one of my ball games.”

  That got Kelly where she lived. She felt a pang in her gut as she thought of all the times her dad hadn’t shown up for one of her games, even though he’d promised to be there.

  “And he taught me everything I know about the game,” Ryan went on. “He’s the best coach ever.”

  “Huh,” Kelly said noncommittally.

  “You know, it wouldn’t kill you to let him work with you on your swing. I know he asked if you wanted help.”

  “I don’t need any help, from him or anybody else, thank you.”

  “Whatever.” Now it was Ryan’s turn to be sarcastic. “But think about it. Like I said, he’s not all bad. Not even half bad, really. If you gave him a chance, you might find out I’m right.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks,” Kelly said, not even looking at him as she walked away. “See you around sometime.”

  “Sorry if I upset you,” he called after her.

  “You didn’t,” she assured him. The tears were forcing their way out of her eyes, but luckily she had her back turned to him, so he couldn’t see how hurt she was.

  12

  All day long, Ryan’s words burned into Kelly’s consciousness. She wondered if perhaps she’d judged Ken too harshly. After all, Ryan was his son. He’d lived with Ken for years before the breakup, and if he thought Ken was a good guy, then maybe he was.

  Several things about her conversation with Ryan were eating at Kelly. Worst of all, of course, was that he was asking Allie to the May dance instead of her. That was a slap in the face, especially since he said that he’d wanted to ask Kelly in the first place, but didn’t because of their parents going out.

  Kelly wondered if that was true. She thought that perhaps the real reason Ryan was asking Allie instead of her was that Allie was a better ballplayer than she was. Ouch. It hurt just to think that, but Kelly couldn’t escape the truth. Sure, she was as good a fielder as Allie, and she used to be as good a hitter. But she wasn’t anymore. These days, she was a total loss at the plate.

  Kelly thought again of what Ryan had said about his dad being a great coach. “He taught me everything I know about the game,” he’d said.

  Maybe she was just being stubborn. For the first time, humiliating as it would be, Kelly considered asking Ken to help her with her swing.

  No, she couldn’t. She just couldn’t! Not after the way she’d treated him. He’d just tell her to get lost, and he’d be right, too. If anyone had talked to Kelly like that, she certainly wouldn’t give her the time of day if she asked for help.

  But after all, he was supposedly in love with her mom. Maybe, for the sake of family harmony, he’d be willing to forgive and forget …if she could get up the courage to ask.

  That night, she got her chance. After dinner, her mom had to leave for a meeting of her women’s group, a bunch of professional moms who got together every month for encouragement and dessert. Kelly had always thought of it as just an excuse for her mom to socialize. But it usually meant a night when she could watch TV all evening without her mom complaining, so it was fine with Kelly.

  Tonight, though, her mom had left Ken in charge. For a moment, Kelly felt the automatic impulse to act nasty about it, but she restrained herself. It gave her a weird kind of satisfaction to see the surprised looks on their faces when she didn’t act up.

  A few minutes after her mom had left, while Ken was busy doing the dishes, Kelly came into the kitchen. “Need any help with those?” she asked pleasantly.

  Ken gave her a startled look. “Er, thanks!” he said. “That’s nice of you to offer, but I’m almost done here.”

  “Oh.” She opened the fridge. “Want me to cut up some fruit for dessert?”

  “Yeah, that’d be great.” Ken stood there watching her, a dish in one hand and a towel in the other, not moving.

  “Um, remember the other day, when you offered to give me some pointers on my swing?” she asked, fishing out some apples.

  “Sure,” he said, beginning to wipe off the dish.

  “Could you — I mean, would you mind? I know my swing’s kind of a mess….”

  He put down the dish and the towel. “Right now?” he asked.

  “Well, I don’t know…. It’s kind of dark out.”

  “That’s nothing. We can turn on the porch light. Come on.”

  “Cool. I’ve got a bat in the garage.” Kelly ran to get it, while Ken dried his hands off on the towel. Moments later, they met on the porch.

  “Come on down here, in the light,” he told her. “Now, take a swing for me. Right, like that.”

  She swung hard, visualizing the ball arcing into the night sky.

  “See, you’ve got a great natural power swing,” Ken told her.

  “Yeah, right. That’s why I can’t hit for beans.”

  “You hit fine, until you started seeing windmill pitching,” he pointed out. “Isn’t that true?”

  “Well, yeah. So? I can’t catch up with it, is all. So that’s that.”

  “Not necessarily,” Ken corrected her. “That’s why I wanted to work with you on it. See, windmill pitching’s a lot faster, so you have to cut down your swing a little.”

  “Uh-uh,” Kelly balked. “That’s what they told me at that softball camp. It messed up my swing even worse.”

  “Well, there’s nothing wrong with the swing that I can see,” Ken insisted. “Let me see how it looks when you cut it down.”

  She showed him. “Aha!” he said. “See, you’re not shifting your weight when you take the shorter swing. You’ve still got to make the shift if you want to hit with any power.”

  “How can I do that?”

  “Well, you’ve got to start it earlier, and cut out the hitch.”

  “Hitch?”

  “Yeah, you know how you drop the bat a little when you start the swing? It’s kind of a timing mechanism for you — but if you lift your front foot instead, you’ll still be able to time the swing without making it take longer.”

  She tried it a few times, and he made small adjustments until he was satisfied she had it down. “There,” he said. “Now, the other thing is, you’re not picking up the pitcher’s release point.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re following all that motion, and you’re not seeing the ball as it leaves the pitcher’s hand. You’ve got to stare at the point where you know the release will be, and ignore all the motion around it.”

  “Okay…,” she said doubtfully.

  “Look, when’s your next game?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to check.”

  They went inside, and she consulted her schedule. “Oh, great,” she moaned. “We’re playing the Devil Rays again. Day after tomorrow.”

  “Well, that gives us a day, at least. Can you come with me to the ball field after school?”

  “The other teams’ll be playing there.”

  “Okay, how about someplace else?”

  “Um, I guess the school yard would be okay.”

  “Fine. I’ll meet you there after school with your bat and a bag of balls. I can throw you some windmill pitches, so you can get used to the idea.”

  “Cool!”

  Her enthusiastic response came as a complete surprise to her — and to him, too, she could see by the look on his face. Maybe Ryan was right about him and maybe her mom wasn’t so stupid after all. Maybe Kelly had made up her mind too soon about Ken.

  She went to bed that night full of confusing thoughts and didn’t sleep much at all. When she did, she had nightmares about the upcoming game against the Devil Rays.

  By the end of their practice session the following day, Kelly had begun to get her old confidence back. She was walloping pitch after pitch, sending balls rocketing off the wall of the school, way at the other end of the school yard. If she hit anything like this against the Devil Rays, she was going to surprise a lot of people.

  And though it took something to admit it, she was having a good time with Ken. It was weird, she thought in one of her more contemplative moments. She would never have believed he could be this much fun.

  Maybe he’d been as uncomfortable around her as she’d been around him. It couldn’t have been easy for him, she reflected, coming into their house and trying to act like a part of their family, especially when Kelly had made his every move that much more difficult. She felt sorry now that she’d been so mean to him, especially since he was being so nice to her.

  When the time for the Devil Rays game rolled around, Ken and her mom were both there in the stands, cheering her on. Kelly sort of wished they weren’t there, since it was really distracting knowing she had to perform or they would see her fall flat on her face again.

  On the other hand, the tips she’d gotten from Ken in the past two days had made her feel much calmer about her skills. She felt sure she could at least make contact with Laurie’s pitches.

  And on the other side, the Devil Rays were in for a surprise when she stepped onto the mound. “Windmill Wizard,” Coach Beigelman had called her. Well, today she was going to show her old team some of her new magic.

  There they all were — Sue Jeffers, Karen Haynes, Laurie Solomon, Beth Parks, Nina Montone — all her old friends and teammates in their blue-and-green uniforms. And here she was, in her yellow-and-black Diamondbacks jersey, ready to do battle with them.

  The D’backs were the visiting team, so they batted first. Laurie hit the mound and started to warm up, her windmill pitches popping in the mitt of Danielle Lauritsen, the Rays’ catcher. “Attababy!” Danielle shouted encouragingly, even as she shook the pain out of her glove hand.

  Dorien Day walked slowly to the plate. As she did, Coach Beigelman yelled, “Let’s go, D’backs! Let’s show ’em what we’re made of!”

  They were made of pretty good stuff, Kelly had come to see. A 5–2 record going in, while it wasn’t a perfect 7–0 like the Devil Rays’, was not exactly chopped liver, either.

  Dorien had never been a great hitter for them, but she somehow usually found a way to get on base. Today was no different. After taking two called strikes, Dorien kept fouling off pitch after pitch. Finally, on the tenth pitch of the at bat, she worked out a walk.

  Kyla Sutton was not so patient, nor so good a contact hitter. She struck out on three pitches. Allie Warheit was up next. “Come on, Allie!” Kelly found herself yelling. As much as the sixth-grade phenom irritated her, they were teammates now, and this was war.

  But Laurie Solomon had no intention of letting Allie beat the Rays. She pitched carefully to her — so carefully that Allie walked on four pitches.

  Oh, so that’s how it is, Kelly thought bitterly. They’d rather pitch to pathetic old me, huh? Well, fine. Bring it on, Laurie. She strode angrily to the plate, going over in her head all the things Ken had taught her.

  She paid no attention as Laurie went into her herky-jerky windup. Instead she focused only on the spot where the ball would be released. At the same time, she raised her front foot, timing her swing. The ball whizzed toward her, looking to Kelly more like a basketball than the pea it had resembled of late. She swung hard, then heard the sweet ping of aluminum smashing cowhide.

  A roar went up from the crowd as the ball soared skyward. “Look at that!” Kelly heard Coach Beigelman raving. “Wow!”

  Kelly ran toward first base, but she might as well have walked. The ball was way gone, and it wasn’t coming back. Kelly reached home plate and was mobbed by her jubilant teammates well before the left fielder had retrieved the ball from beyond field number three.

  “Whoo-hooo!” Allie Warheit roared, double high fiving Kelly. “Oh, baby! What a shot!”

  The Conroy Comet, her old teammates used to call those moon shots of hers. Well, it had been a long time since she’d hit one, and never off windmill pitching. Kelly looked up into the stands and found Ken, standing with her mom and applauding. She gave him a smile and the thumbs-up sign before heading back to the dugout.

  Laurie soon settled down and retired the side. Now it was time for Kelly to do a little windmilling of her own. She headed to the mound, full of confidence and enthusiasm. Suddenly, she wanted more than anything to beat her old team, to ruin their perfect record. It hit her that until today, she’d still seen herself as part of the Devil Rays.

  Now, for the first time all season, she felt herself a true Diamondback. She wasn’t on the wrong team after all, any more than she was in the wrong family.

  She mowed down the Devil Rays in the first, and again in the second and third. Three innings, nine strikeouts. A large crowd gathered around field number four, where they were playing. They had heard what was going on and came to witness her performance.

  In the fourth inning, Kelly came to bat again. Ahead of her, Allie had just hit a home run to make the score 4–0. This time, Kelly did not go after the first pitch, knowing that Laurie wasn’t about to give her anything fat to hit. Instead, she let the count go to 3–1 before smacking a sharp double to center field.

  She didn’t score that inning, but in the sixth, when she came up for the third time, she drove in Allie, who had doubled ahead of her, with another Conroy Comet. The score was now 6–0, D’backs, and an upset was in the making.

  The Devil Rays finally broke up her no-hitter in the seventh and last inning, with two infield dribblers that went for singles. Then Kelly struck out Sue Jeffers for her twelfth K, to end the game with a shutout. Kelly leaped into the air, throwing her mitt skyward as she danced on the mound with Allie and her other D’back teammates.

  The stunned Devil Rays hung their heads, unable to believe they’d just been obliterated. It was their first loss of the season, and their aura of invincibility would never be the same.

  Who knew how the season would work out? Kelly didn’t, but she didn’t even care. The important thing was, she was a Diamondback now. Ken, her mom’s new boyfriend, had helped her get there, by making her a whole player again, someone who could hit as well as pitch and play defense.

  So what if he wasn’t perfect? At least he wasn’t a total idiot, like she’d thought he was. If her mom liked him, Kelly would accept him, even if he was a semi-jerk some of the time. After all, she wasn’t exactly perfect herself. She’d welcome him into their home, especially if he kept on coaching her to be a better ballplayer.

  “Hey, Kelly!”

  Kelly turned around and saw Ryan standing there, smiling broadly at her.

  “Hi!” she said, feeling her cheeks flush red. “Were you watching the game?”

  “Uh-huh! I caught those home runs of yours. You were awesome!”

  “Um, thanks,” she said, kicking a little dirt up with her cleats. “Your dad really helped.”

  “He did?” Ryan asked, sounding genuinely surprised.

  “Yeah. Didn’t he tell you?”

  “Uh-uh. I guess he didn’t want anyone to know.”

  “Oh. Well, that was nice of him, huh?”

  “I told you he wasn’t a bad guy.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess you were right,” Kelly admitted. Then she saw Allie smiling and waving to Ryan, who waved back. “So, did you ask Allie to the May dance?” she asked.

  “Um, no. I kind of changed my mind about that,” he said. “I thought I’d just show up solo and dance with whoever.”

  “Oh,” Kelly said, secretly pleased. She had been planning to do the same thing.

  “So, um, I was wondering, maybe you and I could, like, go to a movie or something sometime…,” he said. Looking up, Kelly saw that his cheeks had a bit of red in them, too.

  “I thought you said…,” she began.

  “I know,” he said. “But, well, we could go to a movie over in Canterville. Nobody knows us there.”

  “Cool!” Kelly said, allowing herself a secret smile. “Hey, I can keep a secret if you can!”

  “Excellent!” Ryan said. “Well, see you around, then.”

  “Right. Bye.” She waved as he wandered off, feeling a rush of happiness wash over her.

  “He’s so cute, isn’t he?” Allie’s voice came from over her shoulder.

  “Oh, he’s okay, I guess,” Kelly answered offhandedly.

  “Come on, D’backs,” Coach Beigelman said, smiling broadly. “Let’s line up and shake hands!”

  They lined up, a winning team, to shake the hands of the team they’d beaten. Kelly stuck her hand out to slap her old buddies five. When she got to Sue Jeffers, she stopped to give her a hug. “Hey,” she said, “don’t worry, you guys are still the team to beat.”

  “Yeah,” Sue said glumly. “Well, you were awesome, girl.”

  “Thanks.”

  “See you in the playoffs, huh?”

  “Yeah. See you there.”

  Kelly walked toward her mom and Ken, feeling like she was on top of the world. What had she been so worried about, anyway? Life was change, and nothing ever stood still forever. She had a new team and a new member of the family — and maybe even a new secret boyfriend.

  Life was good, and as long as she stayed loose and went with the flow, it was only going to get better.

  Matt Christopher

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