High and Dry by Sarah Skilton Page B

clogged with mud. I was sparkling. I looked like I’d stepped out of a commercial for Tide laundry detergent, and this immediately earned me Coach’s ire. He thought I was soft. My shoes were new, from the Sports Chalet in town, and my glove still had the tag attached. Coach took one look at me and introduced me as the new kid all the way from New Mexico who was afraid to get down in the muck.
I guess you think we look dirty. Not used to the dirt, kid? Fifty push-ups, let me hear you count ’em, kiss the dirt, kiss the dirt.
    My second mistake was being my mother’s son. Coach Tierson used to teach social studies at Palm Valley High. Well, now he had to reapply for the position against cheaper, nonunion hires, and it wasn’t looking good for the ol’ man. It was the only time I remembered being happy about a stranger’s misfortune. The schadenfreude went down like a cherry Slurpee: it wired me up and left my brain tingly. Another drink that does nothing but make you thirsty. What is sugar, after all, but kids’ booze?
    My third mistake was telling everyone my granddad worked at Lockheed Martin, and how Lockheed was the name of Shadowcat’s dragon in
X-Men
, and wasn’t that swell? (To soothe the pain of moving, my father had bequeathed to me his entire comic book collection from the 1970s and 1980s.) This was a piece of trivia I thought the other boys might appreciate. Wasn’t I clever, integrating a fun fact of Palm Valley with a fun fact about superheroes? What it got me was blank looks and a “nerd” brand.
    I decided I’d better shut that part of myself down, quick. All of it. Everything I liked, everything that made me
me
was to besuppressed, ignored, and denied, until I could no longer remember what it was I’d been hiding. I’d be a jock. I’d be the quiet but effective type who said all he needed to say on the field via his baseball prowess.
    In short, I’d be like Ryder.
    Ryder was our star, the best hitter, runner, fielder, and thrower. His eyes were quick and bright, he was always accurately predicting where the ball would land, and he could catch anything: grounders, pop-ups, line drives, fly balls.
    I was a good hitter, but I always threw my bat. I couldn’t help it; it was like this trajectory my arms were on, and there was no way off the track once I started on it.
    It was inevitable.
    I could tell myself all morning, “Don’t throw the bat”—I could be thinking it even as I stood at the plate—but it made no difference. I’d swing wide and connect with the ball, feel the tremors up and down my arms, the bat vibrating so hard it stung my palms, and I’d let go, the bat flying away and smashing into the chain-link fence. I’d be off and running toward first before any of it registered, until I could hear a faint din growing louder and louder like a train coming out of a tunnel, and then I’d realize it was a full-on meltdown from Coach Tierson. “Dixon! What have I told you about throwing your bat? Get back here and pick it up!”
    Confused, I’d halt three-quarters of the way to first base, turn around, and look at Coach. He’d throw his glove onto the grass, scattering dust and grit, and start toward me. The urge to fleewould nearly overwhelm me;
It’s not worth it, Charlie
, I’d think,
just get out of here
… I didn’t even know how to find my new house from the field, though. If I’d taken off running, I’d be lost. I was stranded out there, helpless, until Mom came to pick me up. Besides, it was too late to run; I was frozen in place, dumbfounded and perplexed about what I’d done wrong, and he was a red-faced blubbery flubber storming toward me.
    Day after day, the same words flung like shit against a wall, and I was the wall. I was worthless, a pussy, a fucking pussy, was I going to cry like a pussy? Did I need to practice with a NERF? Did he have to