Screaming at the Ump (4 page)

“Not to worry, Baby,” Mrs. G. said, pulling out a credit card (from her wallet, not her hair). “I know where you live.”

I thanked Mrs. G. as the cashier put all my stuff into plastic bags.

When we pulled up in front of my house, Mrs. G. helped me get the bags from her trunk and then put her hand up like a traffic cop's. “Do NOT thank me again, Baby. I was happy to do it.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

***

I sat at the kitchen table, trying to force my giant science textbook into a green book sock. When Dad and Pop walked in, Pop said, “Oh, that's right, Casey. How was today? How was school?”

“School?” Dad said. He looked at me, at all the school supplies I was labeling and wrestling and organizing, as though he hadn't seen them in front of him until then. “Right. First day of middle school. So where'd all this come from?”

“Mrs. G. took me to the store. I needed some stuff.”

He got this look. It was kind of complicated.

Most years we had this really awkward talk right about now. It was basically him saying that he was sorry in advance for not being around the way he usually was, for how Academy took nearly all his time. Last year I begged him to stop having that talk, told him I was old enough and I understood. But still, there was something in his look tonight that was maybe a little different, had something to do with my mother, and that got me thinking about how she used to sit at this table with me and cover my books for me and neatly label the dividers I put in my binders. I didn't know if Dad was thinking I should have a mother here to help me with things like that or if he was feeling bad that he hadn't talked to me at all, really, about this sort of important thing—me starting middle school—or if it was more him missing my mother, and that was one of those things I didn't like to think about. It was like I turned into Sly or something: I just started talking.

“I needed these book covers for all my books, and a different binder for each subject, but I don't know how you're supposed to fit four binders and a notebook and everything else into your backpack, because I have to bring them all to school tomorrow, and I have no idea how I should do that. And also what I bought in the cafeteria today was disgusting, and I'm not even sure that was really ham, and Mrs. G. paid for everything at Paper Depot, so we have to pay her—”

“Did you ever call your mother?” Dad said.

Foul! That's a foul! That ball is way out of bounds!

Why didn't he know that bringing her up was outside the lines of fair play?

“I didn't have time,” I said, no longer interested in talking.

“Don't you think your mother might want to hear how your first day of middle school went? I'm sure there are two or three messages from her.”

I just didn't get the why of this. Why now? We could go months without talking, but when I started a new school, it suddenly became the most important thing in her life?

“Casey, I know you're hurt, or angry, or both. I really do get that.” I looked at him then and could tell that, no, he really didn't get it.

“You don't need to talk long, but she needs to hear from you.”

I still didn't say anything.

My dad shook his head. His look said he was disgusted with me. Or maybe ashamed of me. “And you need a haircut, Casey,” he said.

“So do you, Dad.” Somehow, that took the mad right out of him. When he took off his baseball cap at the end of the day, he had horrible hat hair, squished down, and it made him look . . . sad.

Like groceries, scheduling haircuts was something we couldn't really get the hang of. Sometimes it wasn't only my name that got me mistaken for a girl—my hair really was too long. So was Dad's. If Pop had had hair, I bet his would have been too long, too.

Dad was still shaking his too-long-haired head when he went upstairs to bed.

***

A long time ago, I fell on my knee when I was climbing the fence behind the rear field's first-base dugout. I probably needed stitches, but I didn't want to tell my dad, because I'm not supposed to climb on school property. As any self-respecting kid could tell you, if you break the rules and nobody finds out, you don't get in trouble. It was kind of hard to admit I'd done something wrong when I knew I might be able to get away with it. So I just took care of it myself with one of the first-aid kits. I never told anyone.

But the stupid cut kept opening. And each time, it hurt like a whole new injury.

That's what I was reminded of every time Dad talked about Mrs. Bob the Baker. The way that even when you think something has healed, it can keep opening, all raw and red, and hurt you over and over again.

A
S
I was leaving the next morning, I took a quick look around.

By the time the school day was over, my quiet home would have again been invaded. There would be eighty guys here I'd never seen before. They would have met all the instructors, toured the campus, learning which field was which and where the lecture hall, cafeteria, and classrooms were, the batting cages, all of it. They'd have gotten set up in their rooms with their roommates—except, of course, for June Sponato and Jorge Washington.

I tried to memorize how clean it all looked, because the ground would soon be littered with spit-out sunflower seeds, ground-out cigarettes, and random pieces of trash. This used to be Mrs. Bob the Baker's least favorite day—she said it was a form of torture watching her quiet home turn into a college campus for dumb athletes overnight. She never really got it.

Dad and Pop did more classroom teaching and less fieldwork the first two days as they waited for all the staff to arrive. Some instructors straggled in late because the minor league baseball season had just ended. The ones who'd been umping road games had to get home to pull their stuff together before heading to Clay Coves.

Umpire Academy was the first step toward becoming a major league umpire. Three of Dad's graduates had made it to the majors already. In a way, that seemed like something to be really proud of. But BTP was one of only three umpire schools in the country. And most people would agree it was considered the third best. Still, it was the only place I ever wanted to be.

***

Middle school was supposed to be this big-deal change from elementary school, but it was pretty much the way I'd imagined it. Subject classes were just as boring as everything had been in fifth grade, except now we got to move from room to room instead of just being bored in the same classroom all day. I had lunch the same period as Zeke, which was good. And it was great to hang out with some of the guys I hadn't seen much over the summer—Charley Haddon, Franco Spinelli, Andrew deFausto.

Day two of school was going fine until I ran into this older kid, Chris Sykes, in the hall. “Snowden,” he said, with something that was probably pure hatred sticking in his voice.

“How you doing, Chris?” I said. I put my Sly-Avoidance Technique into place and continued down the hall to the auditorium, where there was some assembly for new students.

I didn't see Chris Sykes often, but when I did, he always pointed me out to his friends and whispered something. He was a great athlete, and he had one of those fathers—there were a lot in our town—who thought they knew everything about every sport.

The reason Chris Sykes hated me had to do with a call my dad made. It wasn't even a call on the field. Dad used to volunteer as an ump for Little League in our town, until the parents, like Chris's dad, made him so crazy he stopped. It was the same year I stopped playing. But this one year, Dad was overseeing the umps in a big statewide baseball tournament. I guess Chris had always played with older kids—he was that good—but the tournament rules very clearly said that you had to be a certain age to play. Chris's coach pretended he hadn't known that, wouldn't show Dad Chris's birth certificate, and everyone was furious with Dad when he said Chris couldn't play.

Chris had been a jerk to me ever since.

Did Chris Sykes think I had something to do with my dad enforcing rules? We were on the same bus route then, going to Clay Coves Elementary. And he told everyone that my dad ran a vampire school. He got all his friends to open their mouths really wide and hiss whenever I walked down the aisle of the bus.

It didn't last long, though. Maybe because I thought it was pretty funny. Or funny for something that was supposed to be mean, at least. Right? Tell me you can't picture a vampire school! There would be classes like How to Avoid Mirrors, and Perfecting Neck Angle, and Fang Care. I loved picturing the fieldwork (at night, of course)—all those guys out there on the same field we used, except instead of wearing their umpire shirt and pants, they'd all be in black capes, learning how to swirl them in a sort of villainy vampire way in the dark of night. For a mean kid who was trying to annoy me, he had come up with a pretty funny idea.

At the assembly, I couldn't find Zeke, so I sat with this kid I sort of knew, Juan. He took notes about everything. Even things like when the girls' soccer tryouts were. I wondered if he thought there were tests on assemblies. I wondered if maybe there were.

When someone walked onstage to read a list of all the different nonsport school activities and clubs, I almost let out a loud WOO HOOO! at the mention of the school newspaper.

I had big stacks of filled-up notebooks on the shelves in my room. When I watched games on TV, I wrote down the great plays. I tried to write them in as interesting a way as I could, not just describing what happened, but also using words that let the reader feel the same excitement I did, or any fan did, watching the play actually take place. I didn't know if the middle-school newspaper had a sports section. If it didn't, maybe I could start one, reporting on the different school teams. Or maybe I could write
and
be the sports editor.

So okay, then, maybe I
should
have written down when the girls' soccer tryouts were too. Maybe Juan was a little sharper than I thought.

O
N
the bus home, Zeke talked about last night's episode of
So You Think You're the Biggest Idiot?
“There was this one guy, right? He was jumping on a trampoline, but of course he didn't know anyone was filming him? So he started taking off his clothes. I mean, they couldn't show anything, they had this blurry thing going on the screen, so you couldn't see, but there were people—his neighbors, I think—who came out and were watching him? And they were describing what they saw, and he didn't know they were there. And it was, like, one of the funniest things I ever saw in my entire life. It was sick!”

“Sounds like it,” I said. I never saw the point of wanting the title of Biggest Idiot.

“Are you going to watch tonight?”

Zeke still couldn't accept that I just wasn't into those shows. There was one time when he swore I would love this new show, and from the title, I thought he might be right, so I decided to give it a try. I watched the first-ever season of
Reporter Standoff
. Contestants had eighteen hours to find, research, and write a different kind of story each week. Sometimes it was for a newspaper, sometimes radio, or broadcast TV. I loved it! There was this guy, Feury—I had wanted him to win so bad. (Tell me that isn't the greatest name ever!) I had cheered for him. I loved how his cool little brother held up signs for him:
RAGING FEURY
! But then, poof, Feury was voted off. You got all attached, you counted on seeing this guy week after week, and then he was off the show. Gone.

Big surprise—all I really watched was sports and ESPN. You could count on sports. No matter what happened in a game, you would start at the same point next time. A clean court, a newly chalked field, a Zambonied rink. A new story every time.

***

After school, we got off the bus and turned the corner, and as we walked through the gate and down the long driveway, we could see that the parking lot was almost full. There were license plates from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, Maryland, D.C. There was no one outside, so we must have missed afternoon break.

We dropped our backpacks in the house and headed over to the main building. Mrs. G. looked a little frazzled. The first day was always hard.

“How's it going, Mrs. G.?” I asked.

“Do you know where your father keeps the liquor?” she said. Then she barked her hard, loud laugh.

Zeke cracked up, but I always worried that maybe Mrs. G. was stepping a little bit over the line onto the crazy side. And I preferred normalcy and peace in my life. I loved peace.

“Aspirin, maybe?” I offered.

“I'm just kidding you, Baby. It hasn't been too bad. We're managing. Chet was late with lunch, but they got it served, so your father didn't kill me or anything. Oh, Chet left your lunch for tomorrow here,” she said, pointing to a brown bag. That was the best part of Umpire Academy—my lunches were made for me by Chet. The rest of the year, I just bought lunch at school, but after the gross not-sure-that-was-really-ham sandwich and not-quite-chicken nuggets I'd had so far, I was extra happy to have Chet around for the next five weeks.

Zeke, the ever-hungry, started to reach for the bag, and I swatted his hand away.

“Chet should really make me lunch too. Could he do that?” Zeke asked.

“So I could carry two lunches to school?” I said. “Anyway, it would remove the comedy from my life. Your lunches are always one of the highlights of my day.”

Zeke's parents stopped making his lunches when Zeke was in third grade, when they found that he kept trading away what they gave him for fruit roll-ups. He would trade anything—sometimes his whole lunch—for fruit roll-ups. Which he wasn't supposed to eat. Because of his braces. Ever since then, he had just . . . had a very creative approach to what belonged in a lunch bag.