~*~

Practice was brutal, but I didn’t mind. Somehow the pain was keeping me going, making me want to push through. I closed my eyes, as I did every time before the ball sailed through the air. Then the push of leathery skin against my bat shocked me awake. This time, though, something was different. I can normally get a pretty decent hit, decent enough to win me team captain, but this time was definitely different. My arms seemed to fly onward, upward, as if they didn’t want to watch that ball go. Then the baseball was flying, straight, true, far and fast. Mason ran hard, but he couldn’t catch up to my perfect homer. It soared over the fence. Speechless, I stood there watching.

 “Dang, Hunter. Where’d that come from?” Collins whispered beside me. Gus Collins was  big kid, trained to tackle hard during football season. He’d been crouching behind me, but even old Gus couldn’t keep off his feet when that ball began to fly.

 “I don’t know.” I laughed suddenly, giddy with my success. Coach was looking at me in a suspicious kind of surprise. My teammates looked shocked. Then suddenly they were all slapping me on the back, joking and jeering, a sure way to tell that they were pretty excited.

~*~

  “Hey, Nathan," Mr. Bell called out cheerily from inside the kitchen as I stealthily camouflaged my bike behind some bushes. I didn’t have the time to bother with a bike lock, but I couldn’t afford to just leave it there. After all, Wakanakee was small, but not that small, and let’s face it, there are jerks everywhere.

 “Hey, Mr. Bell.” I called back. Hopping the hedge, I walked up the steps and in through the back door, every muscle screaming at me, burning like fire with soreness.  

 “I heard you hit quite a nice fastball today.” My boss murmured quietly, his blue eyes jigging. The lines about them crinkled up so even with his white moustache feathered out over his mouth, I knew he was smiling. He was already hard at work: weather-beaten hands poised over a batch of pepperoni.

I laughed. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

“Well I surely do appreciate you’re coming in to work today even though it must have been a tough practice.” With that, he turned back to the pepperoni on the cutting board. I nodded, tying my apron around my waist, and grimacing as my arms protested even this slight movement. Coach had worked us hard, even after regular practice time ended. The man seemed...different. After my hit, instead of seeming excited, he almost got tougher. I remember Coach as he was last year, jovial and  warrior-ish. He’d been the force that drove us, not with threats but with inspiration. Now there was a dark moodiness that hung about him like a cloud. He seemed like another person completely, and none of us knew why. He wasn’t himself, and it was killing the team.

 “It sure was.” I answered, drifting back to reality in Hester’s backroom kitchen. “Got a crowd tonight?” I asked, peeking out into the restaurant. Hester’s was an old-fashioned pizza parlour and it had been the hot spot for young people in Wakanakee for as long as I could remember. Tonight being friday, the place was packed. Seeing the hoard of teenagers laughing and sloshing their pop on the floor, I was glad I had come, even if I was tired. Mr. Bell was getting older and needed all the help he could get, especially with a wild crowd like this. “Whoo boy. I guess  I better suit up and get to work.” He grinned at me shyly and nodded. Mr. Bell never said much. When strangers came to town and everyone recommended Hester’s as the best place to eat, they would come in expecting the typical every-man’s-friend small town restaurant host. Then when Mr. Bell did nothing but smile, they always wondered how such a shy man had such good business. But that’s only because strangers don’t know the story.