Screaming at the Ump (7 page)

After they demonstrated correct positioning and technique a bunch of times, they had students give it a try.

It was always hard to watch at the start of Academy. A lot of students had a tough time making their feet and arms and head do the right things out on the field, even though they had some experience. Still, it was kind of cool to see them all suited up. They had all the gear on—shin guards, chest protector, mask, cap, strike and ball indicator, the little brush in the back pocket for sweeping off home plate. Dad and Pop believed it was important for students to get used to the feel of all the equipment from the start.

Zeke and I watched the students on field one, but seeing all those feet in the wrong spot, and instructors getting impatient, and field umps being unable to get into the right position to make the call was kind of exhausting. We loved this place more than anything, but even for us, all that stumbling and fumbling wasn't even funny—it was too much. We went to the supply locker, grabbed two gloves and a ball, and went out to the rear field to play catch.

Zeke had terrible form, but he usually managed to get the ball to me. And I didn't mind running after it when he threw it four feet over my head; it didn't matter. The thing about playing catch was, it had more to do with rhythm, ball in glove, transfer to other hand, throw, with the sun in your eyes a little. You didn't need to think when you were playing catch. It was just catch, throw. Catch, throw. Catch, throw. I learned this in the days after Mrs. Bob the Baker left, when Dad and I played catch every night.

It's nice, sometimes, not to think.

Y
OU
always hear people saying how the hardest thing about journalism is that you have to be objective. I was
born
objective. My family specialized in being objective. It was in the blood. Even if a team was great—your favorite team—that had to disappear when you were an umpire, when you called a game. I totally got that.

When writing an article, you had to show readers the facts, just the facts. It was like standing behind the plate. Umpire and reporter both had to be impartial and fair.

At lunch, I gave it one last shot as I watched Zeke unpack his lunch: a large, unopened box of crackers and a chocolate bar. “I'll give you my sandwich if you'll go to the meeting with me after school.”

This got the interest of Charley and Andrew. I was not generally a lunch sharer—the lunches Chet sent me with were the stuff of legend.

Zeke sort of shook his head with a face that said no way, but still asked, “What did Chet give you? Is it ham, salami, and provolone? Because I think I might be able to make it if it is . . .”

I unwrapped my sandwich and had to catch my breath for a second. I knew it was stupid, but Chet always cut my sandwiches straight across, and today it was cut on the diagonal, the way my mother used to do it. It was like my body was confused, thinking maybe my mother made this sandwich, just like she used to, only I knew that wasn't true. Chet had left the bag for me yesterday afternoon. I didn't feel like crying or anything, but it was a weird moment of emotional and lunch confusion.

I looked in between the slices of bread: “Looks like roast beef today,” I said.

“Then I definitely don't have time,” Zeke said, as though that made sense. He started feeding crackers into his mouth at an alarming rate. “Ouottarink?” he asked.

“WHAT?” Andrew said.

“Dude, don't ask him what,” Charley said, annoyed. “He'll talk more. Look at all that cracker spew. Just wait. Zeke. Chew. THEN talk.”

Zeke nodded, like this was the first time such a thing had been suggested and it was a pretty good idea.

“He asked if I had a drink,” I explained. “If you get a cup, I'll pour you some of my water. I don't want cracker spew backwash, thank you very much.”

Zeke nodded, like of course, he could understand why a person wouldn't want that. For such an agreeable guy, it seemed just mean that he wouldn't come to the meeting with me. “Anyway,” he said, “I don't want to stay late at school. Isn't today the day they start working on obstruction and interference? You know I love watching people run into each other.”

“But isn't it raining?” I asked. It was hard to tell from the cafeteria, which had no windows, but it had been raining all day. That meant a whole day indoors at BTP—a big group in the lecture hall and then smaller groups in the classrooms. “They're not going to do fieldwork in the rain.”

Zeke shrugged. “Rain's gotta end sometime.”

***

Of course I wasn't able to talk Charley or Andrew or anyone into coming to the meeting with me, so I went alone. The room was full and buzzing with the voices of seventh- and eighth-graders who all seemed to know each other. They were sitting on desks, laughing. I looked around for a familiar face, but there wasn't one. Not one. It was like I'd walked into a meeting for a school newspaper in Toronto or Australia instead of Clay Coves, New Jersey.

I pulled out my English homework and started to read a short story that was originally published in 1918. Of course, given my gene pool, I started to drift, thinking that that year was the last time the Red Sox won the World Series before winning again in 2004. But I was also wondering why Mr. Donovan couldn't assign something slightly more current. Maybe even written in the kind of English that was the same English I knew how to speak.

I was struggling through the second page, going back to the first to see if the author was talking about the same characters or different ones, when Mr. Donovan showed up. With Chris Sykes. The kid who hated me.

“Thank you for coming. It's great to see all your faces back,” Mr. Donovan said, looking around the room. He spotted me in the back and added, “And some new ones. A new one.” Everyone turned to look at me, and I had the strange desire to dive out the window.

I closed my book and bent to put it away.

“I know you're all anxious to get going, but for our new visitor, I'd like to explain how things work around here. Eighth-graders are pretty much in charge. I am the faculty advisor, and all articles must be approved by me. But to a great extent, this is a student-run enterprise. Eighth-grade students put in their time last year, shadowing last year's editors during spring semester. Seventh-graders will of course play a big role, reporting and editing. We love for new students to take part too. In the spring, Casey, you and any other interested sixth-graders will get a chance to work with upperclassmen on copy editing.”

I did not have a poker face—you could almost always tell what I was thinking just by looking at me. My hand wasn't raised, but my confusion must have been right there in my expression.

“You have a question, Mr. Snowden?”

“No. I mean not a question, but it just sounded like—I mean, anyone who wants to write can write, right?”

“Everyone can write for the paper,” he said, “once they're in seventh grade.” Everyone laughed.

“Wait, what? So in sixth grade, nothing? There's no section or kind of article or anything?” I had been waiting for this forever, and now I couldn't do it? “Do you have, like, a sports section? Maybe we could try to put together a sports . . .”

People were starting to give me looks. Like everyone should know that sixth-graders were supposed to be, what, silent or something?

“Can I speak?” Chris Sykes asked. Mr. Donovan smiled at him and gestured with his hand like,
It's all yours
.

“Sixth-graders get involved by helping us sell advertising space. A lot of local stores have already said they'll buy ads in the
Messenger
, but we're always looking for new ones. We have an advertising kit you can use—”

“What does that have to do with journalism?”

“What?” Chris said, annoyed.

“I mean, I came here because I like to write. I don't like selling stuff. I'd have started a lemonade stand or something if I wanted to sell stuff.” I was surprising myself, but there was Chris Sykes, of all people, telling me I couldn't do what I'd been waiting to do since forever!

A few kids laughed. Chris looked pissed. “Why don't you, then? Go open your lemonade stand.” I was waiting for him to suggest we hire vampires to squeeze the lemons.

Mr. Donovan put up his hand. Then he said, “This newspaper's a business. Businesses need money, funding.”

“It's the way it's always been,” Chris said. “When I was a sixth-grader, it's what I did. It's how I earned my spot.”

Was I missing something? “Wouldn't it make more sense to let people who are the best reporters do the reporting and the people who are the best salesmen, or those who like being salesmen, sell ads and stuff?”

I felt a shift in the room. Some kids nudged each other, a few pointed with their chins or the tops of their heads in my direction, in a not-so-positive “Get a load of that kid” kind of way. Or maybe a “When is he going to shut up?” way.

It wasn't exactly the start I had imagined for my journalism career.

“I guess it would be fair to say that no sixth-grader has ever had a story in our paper. That doesn't mean it's impossible. Just very unlikely. It takes time to learn how to write a good article. And you're in the right place to learn. Shifting gears now,” Mr. Donovan said. “We're going to have to get a really early start with our first edition, because Chris and Tomas and I have decided that we are going to enter this year's Honorbound Newspaper Competition.”

Someone yelled out, “What's that?” but my mind was already wondering why I was even here. I could be back at BTP, in the rhythm of a world I knew and loved, instead of sitting here with people who wondered why I didn't want to walk from store to store asking, “Would you like to buy an ad in our school paper?” I would have joined the Girl Scouts if I wanted to do fundraising. At least then there'd have been good cookies.

Mmm. Thin Mints. Samoas.

Mr. Donovan kept going on about our school's outdated equipment and how, if we won this competition, we'd get a whole new state-of-the-art computer setup. He said the schools that had won in the past had entered really big stories, investigative reporting kinds of things, and we might want to think big, beyond the school's walls. The next meeting would be Monday.

My first thought was to skip that meeting—and all the other ones. But really, even though the whole thing kind of sucked so far, I didn't plan to take no for an answer. No other sixth-grader could have ever wanted it as much as I did. I would be the first.

I
WAS
sitting on the couch by myself, hoping I might magically think of a perfect article to write for the newspaper—something so good they couldn't turn it down. I looked through my most recent baseball-games notebook, but nothing triggered a great idea.

Dad and Pop banged in through the back door. I heard Pop go straight upstairs. Dad came in the living room and sat right next to me.

He looked at me and said, “Casey, you've got to call your mom. It's not right. She's your mother.”

I started to stand up, but he said, “Stop. Now. This is a conversation we need to have.”

I wanted to leave. I wanted to be left alone to think of what I was going to write my article about. I wanted to never have this conversation. “What difference does it make to her if she talks to me or not?”

“A big difference.”

I blew out some air, a nonverbal way of saying,
Yeah, right
.

“You've broken her heart. She misses you. She wants to talk to you.”

If you thought about that, about who broke whose heart, you'd have to say he'd gotten it all wrong.

“Casey, this is hard. I have issues with your mother too, believe me. But you've been acting like she committed a crime. She didn't. This happens to families all the time, doesn't it? Some marriages don't last. But you still have to do what's right. I'm dialing the phone now. And you're staying here. And you're talking to her.”

There were times when you could no longer run. Dad dialed and then handed me the phone. Mrs. Bob the Baker answered right away, like she was sitting next to the phone, waiting for it to ring.

“Hello?”

“It's Casey,” I said.

She was quiet for a second longer than the normal amount of time and then said, “I'm glad you called.”

Dad was still right next to me. I said, “I've been busy.”

“Well, it's nice to hear your voice,” she said. “I've really missed you.”

Sorry. I had no response to that.

“I'd like us to get back into some kind of routine where you come and stay with me.”

Oh, no, she did not. She did not just say that.

“I know we never got into a routine at first when I was traveling, and then we weren't that good at making it happen the way it was supposed to once I got back. I didn't want to push. But it's gone on too long like this, Casey, and I want us to spend time together.”

“I've been really busy,” I said again.

“I'm sure,” she said. “Middle school must be a big change for you.”

“I guess,” I said.

“Well, I'm looking forward to talking with you in person. I'll work it out with your father. Do you want to put him on now?”

No. I did not. So instead of giving her what she was asking for, I gave her something else I knew she wanted: information. “So middle school's kind of different, you know,” I said.

“I do! I know! I want to hear all about it. Why don't you plan to come over—”

“I can tell you about it now,” I said. My father smiled at me and walked away. I rambled about my classes, and when we were done and she asked me to figure out with Dad what days each week would be good for me to stay with her, I said I would, but I knew I wouldn't.

When we hung up, I was surprised that I felt more relieved than mad. I wasn't dumb enough to believe she'd stop calling. But I had a feeling I'd be free for at least the next week—no screening calls, no threatened visits. I had paid my dues—I'd talked to her.