FBI Girl by Maura Conlon-McIvor

Author:Maura Conlon-McIvor [CONLON-MCIVOR, MAURA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO000000
ISBN: 9780759512214
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2004-08-24T00:00:00+00:00

Things change the summer before eighth grade, the year I am to graduate from St. Bede, when the Jacaranda Highlands softball league makes its debut and Mom suggests I try out. I am drafted to a team called the Groovies. Our coach, Bill, must be one of those hippies because he wears leather thong sandals to practice and sometimes goes barefoot. He keeps his long brown hair in a ponytail and leaves his first three shirt buttons undone so we can see the hairs on his chest, although I try not to look at that.

Bill tells me that with the muscles I have in my legs and my arms, I will be a powerful player. I go home after the first practice, look in the mirror, and think of Dad when he goes for a swim in the pool at night and how his muscles bulge in his legs and arms. Mom doesn’t have the same natural muscle. She is tall, with slender legs like the women in fashion magazines. I must take after Dad, which means someday I’ll be hitting homers like him.

I show up at our next practice, hoping Bill the hippie coach will stick me on the pitcher’s mound and teach me how to do one of those windups. Bill’s eyes are sometimes bloodshot, but alert. He keeps looking at my height and muscles and thinks hmm, hmm, I will be the power girl who’ll hit the grand slams. First he puts me at shortstop, but I can’t fire the ball fast enough to first base. He tries me batting fourth on the lineup, and although I am good at swinging, I shut my eyes with each pitch.

Bill puts a scratch next to my name. Now he sends me scuffling out to the lonely grasses of right field, just two innings a game, and I start praying to God no ball will ever come flying out to me. I think I’ll transform into a tree with a sign that reads Hit it to center field—not to me! I am always the last to bat, and when I walk out to the plate, all the fielders sneak in closer as they know I can’t hit a thing. Even the bench sends out a sigh because in all our practices and in four games so far, I’ve never made it to first base.

Dad and Michael and even John are powerhouses, so I think I should be too, whamming the ball out past the center fielder, making her run, fetching the results of my spinning might. But even before I swing, the pitchers smile like they know ahead of time I’ll be striking out again.

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