I made a pile to throw away, a pile to keep, and a pile for charity. The trash pile grew quickly （why did I keep all those running shoes worn too thin for running?）， as did the charity pile （maybe somebody would enjoy learning tennis on my old racket?）。 I tried to get rid of as much as I could. Knowing Ashley and I were going our separate ways made me feel a lot less nostalgic about keeping all those scribbled-on yearbooks and dumb foam fingers from my high school glory days.
I was just about to stop for the night when I spotted a box of baseballs at the back of the closet. Of all my sports memorabilia, those balls were probably the only things that meant anything to me—first home run, first strikeout, first save, one hundredth hit. I had exactly twenty-one such “milestones”—one for every year I’d been on earth when I quit the sport. It’s kind of ridiculous that I’d lugged all those balls to LA with me—that box was heavy! But, as much as I knew I should part with them, I was still attached, so into the “keep” pile they went.
I looked up at the TV. Billy Beane had just hurled a keg of Gatorade against the locker room wall. A moment later, Ashley’s door opened and she poked her head out.
“Shoot, sorry, did I wake you?” I asked, hopping over that box of baseballs to grab the remote and mute the TV.
“No,” she said, stepping into the living room, Brando on her heels. “I couldn’t sleep.” She bit down on her lower lip, but not before I saw it quivering.
“What’s going on, Ash?”
“You promise not to say I told you so?”
“Have I ever said I told you so?”
“No, but this time I deserve it.”
Brando jumped up into her lap as she slumped down into a chair. She was fighting back tears. I hated to see her upset, but I resisted the urge to get up and hug her.
“Remember that audition I told you about?” she asked, and I nodded. How could I forget? She had told me about it in the same breath that she’d announced she was gaga for another man. So yeah, I remembered.
“What about it?” I was ready for her to say what she always said—that she didn’t get the job—so what she did say threw me for a loop.
“It was fake.”
The statement was so absurd I thought I’d misheard. “What do you mean, ‘fake’？”
Her voice shook with anger as she told me about how the old woman had tricked her into disguising her voice, then promised to make introductions that would change her life. “She called it a club,” Ashley said. “She told me I was in it now. But it was all a lie.”
“What kind of person would do that?” I asked, even though the answer was obvious.
“A cruel-ass bitch.” She balled her fingers into an angry fist. “I feel like such an idiot,” she said through clenched teeth, and I felt myself get angry, too. Ashley was a dreamer, but that didn’t give people the right to take advantage of her. And just because she didn’t want to marry me didn’t mean I didn’t still care.
I looked up at the TV. Billy Beane was on a tear. It was the turning point in the movie, where Beane transforms his losing team into the winningest one in baseball history, and himself from zero to hero.
“I’m so mad I want to punch something,” she said. And of course I knew how she felt.
Anger is a powerful drug. It spurs people to do things they never thought possible—return the kickoff for a ninety-yard touchdown, throw the runner out at home, hit that half-court shot at the buzzer. Every great comeback in sports starts with a stinging loss. That’s what makes it a comeback. I could feel a hero’s moment in the making here. But not everyone is meant to be a hero. And you can’t have winners without losers; they always—by definition—come as a pair.
“Where is she now?” I asked. Brando’s ears flicked up, like he was curious, too.
“That’s the most despicable part of this whole story,” she said.
“More despicable than a fake audition?”
“Oh yeah,” she said. And I turned off the movie.
CHAPTER 54
* * *
WINNIE
“Where the fuck is she?” Charlie said, peering into Mom’s casket, which was inexplicably empty. It was so cold I could see my breath, and my fingers were getting numb inside my jean jacket pockets. I hadn’t brought clothes for a spontaneous archaeological dig, certainly not one in the dead of night—my bad.
Nathan was looking at the unoccupied coffin and nodding knowingly. So I had to ask: “Why are you nodding?”