Plunked (8 page)

We pull into the driveway. It sort of catches me by surprise that we're home already. I'm thinking about one of things Dr. Redick said: “No structural damage.” That just seems so funny to me because the “structure” he's talking about is my head!

By now, Mom and Dad have figured out that it's mostly good news and are in a much better mood.

“It never really worked right in the first place,” Dad says to Mom in the front seat, still talking about my head.

“Nothing to be done at this point,” Mom says. “Maybe we should think about boarding school.”

Yeah, ha-ha-ha. Everyone is having fun now. I want to say, Hey! I got hit in the head here. But they're just relieved. I can hear it in their voices. They'd been insanely tense, like seriously crazy, on the drive to the hospital.

“Home again, home again,” Dad says as the car comes to a stop.

Jiggedy jog, I think, because that's the rest of it.

I get out and start up the walkway. I look at our yellow house, not big but not little. I look up at my bedroom window on the second floor. It feels like I've been away for a long time because so much has happened since I left.

I try to remember what games are on TV today and what snacks we have in the kitchen. Chips definitely, but I don't know if we have any dip left. Then Nax appears in the window of the front door, barking and going crazy.

“Someone needs to be walked,” Mom says behind me. Normally, that would be my cue, but today she says, “I'll take him.”

“Nah,” I say. “I'm fine.”

The TV can wait.

“Do you want to eat before or after?” Mom says once we're inside.

“After,” I say, because I already have the leash out, and Nax goes into hyperdrive when that happens.

He bursts through the front door like a horse busts out of the gate at the Kentucky Derby. He doesn't really settle down until we get to the Rail Trail behind our house. Then he comes up and rubs the gunk in the corner of his eye off against my pant leg and licks my hand.

“Hey, boy,” I say.

A bicyclist comes whizzing by, and I have to hold Nax back so he won't cause an accident. Then it's just the two of us for a while. The day still isn't that warm, so I grabbed my favorite sweatshirt before I left. It was so big for me when I got it on vacation a few years ago, but now it fits perfectly and has been softened up by a hundred washes.

“Little chilly, huh?” I say, because, yeah, sometimes I talk to my dog. It's not that I think he can understand all the words, but he can understand some words, like
walk
. And he can definitely tell when I'm happy or upset or whatever.

He looks back at me and then lets out one small bark, almost like a whoop. See? It's like he agrees. His eyes are all over the trail, looking for squirrels.

“I got hit in the head, boy,” I say. “It hurt.”

It would be funny if he said
ruff
. He really does say that sometimes, but he doesn't say anything now. He just looks back at me again. His eyes are big and wet and blank, so I go on.

“I guess it was dumb. I mean, the pitcher had zero control, and I didn't even really think about that….”

But Nax isn't listening anymore. He hasn't seen a squirrel yet, and he's getting antsy, pulling harder on the leash.

“Until I got hit,” I say, wrapping it up.

I touch the side of my head. It's a little sore and a little swollen, just in that one spot.
Tender
, that's the word. It feels a little tender.

Thank God for batting helmets. What if I hadn't been wearing one? I picture the ball bearing in on me. No, not picture: I remember. I remember the ball coming straight for me, and I have to shake the thought out of my tender, stupid head. I need to forget about that.

Nax jerks on his leash, and I snap back to reality. “All right,” I say. “Let's find you a squirrel.”

Nax jumps at the end of his leash.
Squirrel
is another word he knows.

“A fat gray squirrel,” I say, and he spins around in excitement.

Then he squats and takes a dump, so he can move faster, I guess. He doesn't move off the paved part of the Rail Trail this time, so I reach into my pocket for the Baggie.

It's Saturday night: time to start my homework. I'm up in my room, pushing around the pile of books and notebooks I dumped out onto my bed.

Then I make individual piles. I put my notebook for English on the bottom of one pile, put the textbook on top, and then the little paperback copy of
The Island of Dr. Moreau
on top of that. The whole thing forms a little pyramid. Doing this does not help me get my homework done at all, in any way.

I'm just putting it off. What's the word,
procrastinating
? And see, right there, I think I should get credit for that, like vocabulary credit. And maybe something for the pyramid. Isn't there a class called geometry, in high school, maybe? I should get advanced placement credit!

And then I have another thought: Maybe I won't have to do homework this weekend. After all, I got hit in the
head. Apart from the batting helmet and my skull, I got
hit in the brain
. How could they ask a kid who had practically been hit in the brain to do homework so soon?

Maybe I can't even read right now, I think. But then I realize I've been reading the sports ticker at the bottom of the screen on ESPN all day. And right after that I realize it's still only Saturday. People might cut me some slack for my “maybe a minor concussion” today, but that still leaves all of Sunday and Sunday night.

I'm stuck. I look at the piles. I'll have to do all of it. Not tonight, though. I can give myself a break on that, even if it means more for tomorrow. I reach over with both hands and mess up all of the little piles.

Then I get a phone call.

“Yuh?” I say.

“Do you have a big bandage around your head?” says Tim, instead of hello. “Did they give you a brain transplant? Do you look like Frankenstein?”

“No, no,” I say. “They said my brain was already too damaged to operate on. Even before the game.”

“I could've told 'em that,” he says. “But how are you, like, really?”

“I'm OK,” I say. “Except I don't want to do my homework.”

“I must've been hit in the head, too,” he says. “Because I don't want to either.”

Then he tells me about the game. Even though I already know about it from Andy, it's still cool, because Tim has different details. It's amazing how different the view can be from second base and third. Plus, Tim hit a triple. Triples are pretty rare on our team, more rare than home runs, even.

I get a few more e-mails than normal over the next day or so, and a bunch of my teammates call, which is even more unusual.

“I wanted to knock that big gorilla out cold,” says Jackson.

I know he means it, because I remember him bumping into Tebow when they were all standing around me at the game. It seems like a good sign that I can remember that. No brain transplant for me.

Even J.P. calls. He doesn't say much, but it's still J.P. Coach calls an hour later, and I feel kind of like a rock star myself. Or at least like the bassist or drummer or something.

We all have each other's numbers from the team contact list. Most of my teammates don't call, of course. A lot of them probably hear I'm OK secondhand.

One of the people who doesn't call is Katie. On Sunday night, I open the drawer on my computer desk and take out the team contact list. It seems funny that her name is right there: Bowe, Kathryn. I sort of wonder why it says
Kathryn and not Katie. Did she give Coach that name to use for the list, or was it her parents? Does she prefer Kathryn, and just no one calls her that, or is it just because this is like an official team document?

I think that's something I could ask her. But I can't call her. It's not like she was hit in the head. And even if I ask her in school, what would I say: “I was just staring at your name on the team contact list”?

I could just pick up the phone right now and call Andy, but calling Katie — Kathryn? — would be this big thing. It would be this Big Thing, and everyone would be talking about it.

I put the list back in the drawer and go back to my homework. Man, I think. I should've done some of this yesterday.

I sort of know I'm dreaming, or I half know, anyway. Dreams can be so weird that way. I sort of know it's a dream, and I sort of already know what's going to happen, but I can't stop it, and I can't help freaking out about it.

I'm standing in the batter's box at Culbreath Field, our practice field. I'm looking out at the mound, and there's a pitcher going into his windup. He's big, but I can't see his face so I don't know if it's that kid Tebow or someone else. I don't recognize his uniform, either, but his arm is coming up, and now I've got bigger problems.

I go to pick up my front foot, just a little to start timing my swing, but
my foot won't budge
. I try harder to pick it up, and nothing happens. It's like it's glued there. I try to step back out of the box, but now my other foot won't move, either. I'm completely stuck!

The pitcher's arm is coming forward. His arm is big and powerful, and I just know he's going to launch the ball like a rocket. I'm jerking both legs now, trying to move my feet even an inch. Nothing happens. I'm stuck in place. It's like I'm waist-deep in mud.

As the huge figure on the mound delivers the pitch, I can finally see his face. It's blank. I don't mean his expression, I mean his face! There is nothing there: no mouth, no nose, no eyes. I want to scream out, but I can't. I want to move, but I can't do that, either. The ball is coming straight for me, straight for my head. Of course it is. I knew all along it would. All I can do is take it.

I wake up sweating and jittery. For a long time I just lie there, staring straight up at the ceiling. It's blank, too. Every once in a while, I move my feet under the covers.

I'm waiting for the bus on Monday morning, looking down Main Street for something big and yellow. It's a little warmer today, even though it's still so-so-so early. Why does school have to start so early? Right on cue, the bus pulls up, and its door opens. Shut up and get in, it says.

My stop is kind of late on the route, so I almost always have to sit with someone. It isn't always someone I want to sit with, either. There are other guys from the team on the bus, but they're usually already two to a seat by then. Andy would save a seat for me, but he takes a different bus.

Today I sit with Zeb Chamberlain. Zeb is short for Zebediah. I didn't even think that was a real name before I met him. I mean, I knew there was Zachariah and I knew there was Jedediah, but Zebediah? What, did Zachariah and Jedediah have a kid?

Anyway, he's OK. He plays for another Tall Pines team, the Rockies. I'm glad I don't play for the Rockies. That name just seems geographically stupid around here. We were much better than the Rockies last year, too. I should know: We played them often enough.

We'll find out pretty soon who's better this year. We're playing them next. Sitting with Zeb isn't a big deal, though, not like if I was caught hanging out with someone from the Haven Yankees. The Rockies are from the same town, go to the same school, and ride the same buses. It would be impossible to avoid them, so we don't really try.

Still, you don't necessarily want to sit next to them the week of a game. Of course you're going to talk about baseball — what else would you talk about? — and you don't want to give anything away. I don't have a choice, though.

“Heard you got plunked,” Zeb says, first thing.

“Yep,” I say. The side of my head is still sore enough that I'm not wearing my Braves cap like I usually do on the bus.

“It hurt?” says Zeb.

“I got my bell rung,” I say. “No biggie.”

I'm trying not to think about it, and that's as much as he needs to know, anyway.

I catch up with Andy at his locker. We're in sixth grade now, but we still have the little mini lockers that are “sized appropriately” for elementary school. I think the best
thing about junior high is going to be having lockers that don't look like they're from the Munchkin Land of Oz. Anyway, we go over our math homework super quick because it was kind of tricky.

He looks at the side of my head once or twice, but that's it. It's not like there's anything to see. But people keep doing that all day. About a dozen times I feel like saying, It's fine, all right?

Before lunch, a kid who's maybe in fourth grade walks up to me and just stands there. He clearly has something to say, so I go, “What?”

“I heard your brains were coming out of your ears,” he says.

I can't tell if he's joking. Maybe he really believes it. I don't remember our science lessons being all that great in fourth grade.

“Who said that?” I ask, even though I have a pretty good idea.

“Bye,” he says, and walks away.

Little punk.

Anyway, I figure all I have to do is get through this one day, then everybody will be over it. There will be something else to talk and gawk about tomorrow.

And that's what I do, just get through the school day. The second half goes better than the first. There's big news. Everyone is talking about how Benny Mills farted doing pull-ups in gym class.

It's kind of a funny story — funnier than getting hit in the head, anyway. It was that physical fitness test we have to take, so only three kids go at a time, and Ms. Cimino is right there counting. I mean, on sit-ups, the spotter counts, because some kids can really fly on that. I did forty-five in a minute, and that wasn't even the best. But on pull-ups, Cimino could be playing a video game and still count three of us. A lot of kids can't even do one. (I did three. It's not exactly a world record. But still, I did three.)

We hear the story from Dustin, who was there. “So Benny's really struggling, right?” he says. It's lunch, and he's got the whole table's full attention. “You know, he's cranking away on pull-up number one, maybe halfway there. His face is bright red and scrunched up.”

Dustin stops and scrunches up his face to demonstrate.

“Dude, you look constipated,” says Andy.

“I'm getting to that part!” says Dustin. “So anyways, the other kids've pretty much packed it in after cranking out as many pull-ups as they could. Not many. So everyone is just watching Benny and waiting for Cimino to click her stopwatch and put him out of his misery.”

Dustin stops and looks around the table. He's building up the suspense, so we know that whatever he's got to say is going to be good.

“Yeah?” says Tim.

“OK,” says Chester.

“And then:
Brrrriippp!
” says Dustin. “
BRRRRIIPPP!
He just lets one go! Lets. One. Go. I guess he was just so clenched up that he squeezed it out without even realizing. And what could he do? He's just hanging there, like, on display. It's not like he can pretend someone else did it.”

“No way!” Andy and I say at the same time.

“Wow,” says Tim, sitting back from the table like he's just witnessed some kind of tragedy.

“Yeah,” says Dustin, nodding solemnly. “Yeah. So Cimino just clicks the watch, either because time really was up or because she was standing right in the waft zone, and that's it. Game over. Benny just drops down from the bar, as good as dead.”

“And you saw this?” says Tim. “All of it?”

“Saw it?” says Dustin. “I
smelled
it!”

Dustin pops up, grabs his tray, and takes it over to the next table. He's like our Paul Revere, spreading the word far and wide. For the rest of the day, no one is talking about me getting beaned anymore. In the war movies, that's what they call covering fire. I should thank Benny, but I don't really know him. And everyone knows to steer clear of him today, anyway.

So things are going along fine. Then, at the end of the day, right before the buses, Tim says, “Bet you can't wait to get back to practice tomorrow.”

I hadn't really thought about it until then. I'd been thinking about everyone staring at me, and getting through classes, and then swapping stories about Benny. I mean, I knew practice was tomorrow, but I hadn't really been thinking about what that meant. It means putting a helmet on my bruised-up head and stepping into the box.

And you might think I'd say, “Heck, yeah,” or something like that, but I don't say anything. I just give Tim this blank look like he might as well be talking to a goldfish.

“Well,” says Tim, once he gets tired of waiting, “see ya tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” I say. “See ya in the a.m.”

But that's all I say. I have this weird feeling in my gut.

What is that? I think. It feels like … and then it comes to me: It feels like after that dream.