Sammy Keyes and the Sisters of Mercy by Wendelin Van Draanen

stuff like snicker or laugh when you’re about to lean into a pitch. And if the umpire’s standing far enough back she’ll call you things that would make Mr.
Vince
blush. If you don’t get a decent pitch early on, you stop caring about whacking the ball and start thinking about whacking Babs.
    Anyway, Dot just scowls at her and then Mr. Caan straightens out his face protector and calls, “Batter up!”
    So Dot gets up, taps the plate a few times with the end of her bat, then raises it and waits. And waits and waits some more. And the other team’s pitcher, Emiko Lee, never does present the ball. You can see her out there, flipping it around and around in her glove, and finally she steps off the mound and calls, “I need a new ball.”
    Mr. Caan straightens out and says, “That
is
a new ball!”
    Emiko just shakes her head. “It’s lopsided!”
    Mr. Caan pushes back his mask and walks out to themound, but before he’s even halfway there, Mr. Vince is next to Emiko, taking over, inspecting the ball. The three of them stand out there for a while, arguing, and while everyone’s busy waiting, Ms. Rothhammer sneaks over from the third-base coach’s box and says to Dot, “It’s a psych-out, Dot, just relax. Close your eyes and picture yourself slamming that ball right past Gisa clear out to Anita and beyond. You can do it. Just stay cool.”
    Mr. Caan gives Emiko another ball, and after she does a few more warm-up pitches she digs herself a good toehold, presents the ball, and then windmills a pitch right over the plate.
    And Dot whacks the stitches off it. It goes smashing past third and out to left field just like Ms. Rothhammer told her to. She takes off like a firecracker, shooting around first and straight at Monet Jarlsberg on second. And when she sees Anita Arellano hurling the ball to Monet, she pours it on and then slides in, hooking the corner of the bag with her toe.
    When the dust dies down, she’s safe and Babs Filarski is steaming like a teapot. She kicks some imaginary dirt off home plate with her cleats and when she sees me waiting for her to back up, she practically spits, “Uppity seventh graders.” She straightens out her chest protector and it looks like she’s about to shove me, when Mr. Caan calls, “Let’s go, girls. We haven’t got all day.”
    The first pitch Emiko throws is low and outside. Way low. And as it’s coming in Babs says, “Swing!”
    I don’t. I step back and then measure up for the next pitch.
    It comes in low and outside again, and Babs calls, “Swing!”
again
.
    I almost did. I mean, I
want
to hit the ball. I’ve got all this adrenaline pumping and I want to run, not walk. So when the third pitch comes, Babs doesn’t have to tell me to swing. I watch the ball sail straight in the strike zone and
wham!
I whack it with all my might.
    Trouble is, the pitch was a riser, and before my bat even hit the ground I knew I was out. I tore off down the baseline anyway, because Ms. Rothhammer’s always yelling at us to give it the gun even if it looks hopeless, but I wasn’t paying much attention to first base—I was watching the ball take a nice little stroll through the air, straight for shortstop, straight for Heather Acosta.
    Heather lines up right beneath it, all right. Then she looks my way and drops it. That’s right, the giveaway pop-up of the season and she drops it. She scoops it up and fires it to first, but it’s too late. She’s just given me a freebie and let me tell you, I’m taking it. And as Xandi Chapan comes up to bat, there’s Heather across the field, glaring at me like it’s
my
fault she dropped the ball.
    I blow her a kiss and get ready to lead off. And when the ball leaves Emiko’s hand I move out about ten feet, keeping one eye on Dot and the other on Xandi. When Xandi swings, she misses, so I scoot back to the base and so does Dot.
    We wind up doing that two more times. On the third strike, Xandi throws down the bat, spins on Babs, and