Sammy Keyes and the Sisters of Mercy by Wendelin Van Draanen Page A

yells, “Shut up, would you?”
    Now, even through all her gear you can tell that Babs issmiling. And as Becky Bork steps up to the plate, Babs crouches into position and calls, “One out, force at second or third!” because she’s expecting to pick off two more outs without chipping a nail.
    What she wasn’t expecting was for Becky to bat left-handed. See, Becky’s right-handed, but sometimes she decides to bat the other way. And, right or left, she doesn’t just hit grounders. Ms. Rothhammer’s got her fourth in the lineup because if Becky connects with the ball, it’s
gone
, and that usually means we’re on the board.
    Trouble is, that’s a big if. Becky’s gone
games
without connecting, but it doesn’t seem to bother her. She just comes back to the bench with, “I’ll get it next time. Wait and see. I will.”
    So Becky picks the heaviest bat available, steps up, and slams the plate a few times like she’s trying to crack it open. Then she tucks in her lower lip and wags the bat in the air.
    Emiko plays with her toehold a bit, then whips a pitch straight through the strike zone.
    Becky keeps on wagging.
    Mr. Caan yells, “Steeerike one!” and Babs tosses the ball back to Emiko.
    Emiko plays with the ball a minute and then whips another one right down the middle.
    Becky keeps right on wagging.
    Now, I’m looking at Dot and Dot’s looking at me, and we’re both getting kind of nervous. I mean, Becky’s up there looking like a crazed robot waving a wooden arm, and we’re both thinking there’s no way she’s going to get a hit, let alone drive us in.
    Then Emiko does something she should never have done. She throws her a change-up. Against any other power hitter a change-up might’ve been a good idea, but against Becky? Mis-take! That’s
her
pitch.
    The minute Becky sees that ball coming toward her, well, the crazed robot with the wagging wooden arm comes alive. She steps into the pitch and
wham!
It goes hurling out to right field, and no amount of praying is going to land that ball in Tenille Toolee’s glove.
    So around the bases we go, just kind of dancing across home plate and giving each other high-fives until our hands hurt.
    And when the cheering finally dies down and Dot, Becky, and I are back on the bench, I look out at the field, and I can’t see much but Heather. She’s out there, pacing between third and second like a caged tiger. A hungry caged tiger.
    And I can tell from the way she’s looking at me—I’m her pail of meat.

We won, 6–1. Mr. Vince’s team did make some good plays, and I hate to admit it, but Heather made two terrific outs. But I think they were so thrown by the first inning and we were so charged by it that they kept blowing it, and the mistakes we made just seemed to wash right off.
    For a while we thought we might even shut them out, but then Gisa hit a ball clear over Kris Zilli’s head, and before you know it, Gisa’s dancing up and down on home plate yelling, “
Ja! Ja! Ja!
I did it! I did it!” and they were on the board.
    After the last out, we tried to go up and shake hands, but they just ignored us. All except Heather and Emiko, that is. Heather gave me the scariest Evil Eye I’ve ever seen, and Emiko went up to Marissa and told her, “Great pitching. You deserved the win.”
    So while their team is getting yelled at by Mr. Vince, Miss Pitt waltzes around giving us hugs, saying how proud she is of us. We’re all keeping half an eye on Ms. Rothhammer, though, because she’s in the enemy camp with her hand out to Mr. Vince.
    At first he stands there like he’s much too busy holding a clipboard to shake her hand, but finally he shufflesthings around and gives her a quick shake. And when Ms. Rothhammer jogs back over to us, there’s a smile dying to explode all over her face.
    She stands there for a minute, studying her tennis shoes. Then she looks up and says, “You girls did me proud,” and if I didn’t know her better, I’d swear there were