Authors: Barry Lyga
"You can't be a perfect
anything,
Josh."
"I know that. But you can get a little closer than a five hundred batting average. You can fire a rocket into space and have it land on Mars and that's closer to perfect than anything else I'll ever know."
She hugs me. "I'm glad for you, then. I'm glad you decided."
I squeeze her tight. "I'm sorry. I should have told you before we ... before we made love. I'll be far away. It'll be tough. I won't be able to call a lot or visit a lot because of the money. And I understand if you don't want to see me anymore because of it. I really do. I totally under—"
"God, Josh!" She smacks me on the arm. "Cut it out! I'm
not
giving up on you! Not after all this. In fact..." A devious look crosses her face and she rummages around for her purse. "This is perfect..."
"What's perfect?"
She hauls her purse into her lap and looks inside. "This is just perfect. I was going to give it to you soon anyway. Now it's absolutely perfect."
"
What's
perfect, Rache?"
She whips something out of her purse and presents it to me with a "Ta-da!" and a flourish. It's a cell phone.
"I don't get it."
"It's a prepaid cell phone, dummy." She pushes it into my hands, her eyes sparkling, her smile radiant and perfect.
"It's got my phone number programmed into it and a hundred hours of call time."
I don't know what to say, so I just let her kiss me gently, softly.
"After that," she says, "it's up to you..."
Here's the thing about baseball—it's not the individual sport I thought it was. Turns out I was wrong about that.
Yeah, the batter is a lone man against the world. He stands in the batter's box like a soldier and it's up to him—and him alone—what happens next.
But here's the thing I didn't understand until I was forced to, until recently: In order to hit a home run...
Someone else has to pitch the ball.
Thanks to Kathy and Liz at Anderson Literary; Margaret ("I've never had to tell an author this before") and the Usual Suspects at Houghton Mifflin; and the Betas: Eric, Ally, and Robin.
Extra-special thanks go out to David P. Dagget and Amy Blank Ocampo, deputy and assistant state's attorneys for Carroll County, Maryland, for their advice and counsel on legal matters pertaining to the story. Any and all errors, goof-ups, or just plain screwy legal goings-on are entirely
my
fault, not theirs.
Further thanks to Larry Meekins (head baseball coach at Franklin High School) and Randy Pentz (athletic director at Owings Mills High School) for providing high school baseball insights. Again, errors are my fault.
Last but not least, thanks to my father, Geoff Lyga, for providing baseball info, verifying facts, triple-checking my math, and raising me a Red Sox fan.