Team Meena by Karla Manternach

Team Meena by Karla Manternach

Author:Karla Manternach
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published: 2023-01-17T00:00:00+00:00


13

Lin’s next field of flowers looks a lot better than her first.

She paints dandelions this time instead of tulips. Some are yellow stars. Others are white circles. I do give her a few tips, but mostly, I just sit next to her and say things like, “Nice!” and “Pretty!” and “Good job!”

A few times, she gets the yellow paint a little too close to the green, and my hands get itchy to take the brush and do it for her. Then I imagine her taking the bat away from me, and I stop myself.

By last recess, I don’t have any mad-at-her left inside me, so we practice softball after all. “Can we work on catching today?” I ask when we stop at our cubbies.

“You still can’t hit off a pitcher,” she says.

“You don’t think I can’t catch, either, remember? You made my last play for me.”

She looks a little embarrassed. “If you can’t catch,” she says, “your mom can stick you in right field. Hardly anyone hits out there anyway. But everyone has to bat.”

She grabs her own bat out of her cubby and hands it to me. The metal barrel is covered with tiny dings and scratches, but underneath, it’s shiny and bright blue. “Come on,” she says. “We can’t score if we don’t get on base.”

We find a spot on the playground away from everyone else. Lin pitches slow, without any wind-up, but the ball still feels like it’s hurtling toward me. Whiff!

“Watch the ball,” she says, for the zillionth time.

But as soon as it’s coming at me, I lose track of it again. Whiff!

“Right here, Meena,” She grabs another ball and holds it up, like she’s giving me a chance to memorize it.

I glare at it like I’m trying to beat it in a staring contest.

She throws. The ball comes toward me in a gentle arc. For a second, I can actually see it turning in midair as I bring my bat around.

Tap.

Lin gasps. “You hit it.”

I look at where it landed at my feet. “I did?”

“You got a piece of it, yeah!”

“Not a very big piece.”

But I get a few more pieces after that. I start to find a just-right spot on the ball that makes it zing into the air. By last recess on Thursday, I even hit it over Lin’s head!

When we get to practice that night, my fielding still isn’t great, but I’m sure I’ll do better at the plate. Then Mom waves us in for batting practice and calls out, “Brooklyn, come in and face a few batters.”

I suck in a breath. “Aren’t you pitching to us?”

Mom smiles. “Welcome to the big leagues. Let’s hear it for our first pitcher, team!”

The other girls cheer as Brooklyn jogs to the pitching circle, looking smug. I clap a little, but it’s hard to feel much team spirit for her.

She scuffs her cleat in the dirt and throws a few warm-up pitches. They rocket into Avery’s glove. Thwap! Thwap! Thwap!

“Dang, girl,” Avery says, shaking out her hand.



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