“No.”
All the chatter in the gym died. Both in our half and the girls’ volleyball half. Everyone was watching. Randy put his glove over his mouth, maybe to hide a smile.
Coach put his hands on his meaty hips. “What did you just say to me?”
I didn’t drop the bat because I wasn’t mad. I just held it out to him, and in his amazement he took it.
“I said no. I’m done.” I started for the door that led to the lockers.
“Get back here, Reade!”
I didn’t even shake my head, just kept going.
“You come back now, not when you cool down! Because then it’ll be too late!”
But I was cool. Cool and calm. Happy, even, like when you see the solution to a troubling math problem isn’t half as hard as it looked at first.
“Goddammit, Reade!” He sounded a little panicked now. Maybe because I was his best hitter, or maybe because this rebellion was happening in front of the rest of the team. “Get back here! Winners never quit and quitters never win!”
“Then call me a loser,” I said.
I went down the stairs to the locker room and changed up. That was the end of my baseball career at Hillview High, and did I regret it? No. Did I regret letting my teammates down? A little, but as Coach was fond of pointing out, there’s no i in team. They would have to get along without me. I had other business to take care of.
6
I got the mail out of Mr. Bowditch’s box—nothing personal, just the usual dandruff—and let myself in through the back door. Radar couldn’t quite jump up on me, I guess she was having a bad day, so I took her gently by the front paws, lifted her, and placed them on my waist so I could stroke her upturned head. I gave a few to her graying muzzle for good measure. She made her careful way down the porch steps, and did her business. Once again she gave that assessing look to the porch steps before climbing them. I told her she was a good girl and Coach Harkness would be proud.
I tossed the squeaky monkey for her a few times and took some pictures. There were other squeakies in her toy basket, but the monkey was clearly her go-to.
She followed me outside when I went to collect the fallen ladder. I carried it down to the shed, saw the heavy-duty padlock on the door, and just propped it under the eave. While I was doing it, Radar started to growl. She was crouched down twenty feet in front of the padlocked door, ears back and muzzle wrinkled.
“What is it, girl? If a skunk or a woodchuck got in there, I can’t do anything abou—”
From behind the door came a scratching, followed by a weird chittering noise that stood up the hair on the back of my neck. Not an animal sound. I’d never heard anything exactly like it. Radar barked, then whined, then backed away with her belly still on the ground. I felt like backing away myself, but instead I whammed on the door with the side of my fist and waited. There was nothing. I could have chalked those sounds up to my imagination if not for Radar’s reaction, but there was nothing I could do about it in any case. The door was locked and there were no windows.
I gave the door another wham, almost daring that weird sound to come again. It didn’t, so I walked back to the house. Radar struggled to her feet and followed me. I looked back once, and saw that she was looking back, too.
7
I played monkey with Radar for awhile. When she lay down on the linoleum and gave me a look that said all done, I called my dad and told him I’d quit baseball.
“I know,” he said. “Coach Harkness already called me. He said things got a little hot, but he was willing for you to come back on the condition that you apologize first to him and then to the whole team. Because you let them down, he said.”
That was irritating, but also funny. “Dad, it wasn’t the State Finals, just practice in the gym. And he was being a dick.” Although I was used to that; we all were. Coach H.’s picture could have been next to dick in the dictionary.
“So no apologizing, is that what I’m hearing?”
“I could apologize for not having my head on straight, because it wasn’t. I was thinking about Mr. Bowditch. And Radar. And this place. It’s not falling down, but it’s getting there. I could do a lot of stuff if I had time, and now I do.”
He took a few seconds to process that, then said, “I’m not sure I understand why that feels necessary to you. Taking care of the dog, that I get, it’s a mitzvah, but you don’t know Bowditch from Adam.”
And what was I going to say to that? Was I going to tell my father that I’d made a deal with God? Even if he was kind enough not to laugh （he probably would be）， he’d tell me that sort of thinking was best left to children, evangelicals, and cable-news-watching junkies who really believed some kind of magic pillow or diet would cure all their ills. Worst case scenario, he might think I was trying to lay claim to the sobriety he was working so hard to maintain.