Panther picked up the broomstick, waved it at her threateningly, and then threw it down again. “What are you talking about? That don’t count!
Bear just heaved the ball in! He didn’t try to hit me, so I ain’t out! Besides, it hit you first!”
“Doesn’t matter who it hit first. It hit you last, and you’re out!”
“You’re frickin’ crazy!”
Sparrow stalked over to him, brushing her mop of straw-colored hair out of her blue eyes, brow furrowed in anger. “Don’t talk to me like that!
Don’t use that street language on me, Panther Puss! Owl, tell him he’s out!”
The rest of them came crowding in to stand around Panther and Sparrow, who by now were right in each other’s faces, yelling. Hawk watched it for a moment, amused. Then he saw Owl give him an irritated glance as she wheeled over to try to break it up, and he decided that enough was enough.
“Hey, all right, that’s the end of it!” he shouted them down, striding over. “Panther, you’re not out. You can’t be out when the ball bounces off someone or something else first. That’s the rule. But,” he held up one hand to silence Sparrow’s objection, “you have to go back to first for running over Sparrow.
Isn’t that right, Owl?” He looked over at her and winked.
She gave him a thumbs-up. “Play ball!” she shouted, one of the few things she knew they said in baseball when they wanted the game to resume, motioning Panther back to first base.
Grumbling, the players all returned to their positions. “Still say that’s bull!” snapped Panther over his shoulder as he slouched away.
Hawk ambled after Owl as she wheeled back behind home plate, hands in his pockets, head lowered so that he could watch the movement of his feet on the pavement ahead of him. “I don’t know about these games,” he said.
Owl glanced over her shoulder. “It’s good for them, Hawk. They need the games. They need something to take their minds off what’s happening around them.
They need to get all that energy and aggression out.” She gestured at him. “You should be playing, too. Why don’t you take Fixit’s place for a while?”
He shrugged. “Maybe later.”
She wheeled into position behind home plate and reached for his hand as he stopped beside her. “At least tell me what’s bothering you. And don’t say nothing because I know better. Is this about Tessa?”
It was, of course, because everything was about Tessa these days.
But it was also about Candle’s vision, and he hadn’t told Owl of that yet. He wasn’t sure he should tell anyone because he didn’t know what it meant or what he should do about it. He was still working that through, trying to decide if he should make preparations to leave the city and, if so, where he should think about going.
Leaving meant uprooting everyone from the only stable home they had known.
It meant finding another place to go to, abandoning the familiar and striking off into the unknown. It meant finding a way to persuade Tessa to go with them, to leave her parents and her life inside the compound, to give up everything she had ever known.
In short, it meant turning everyone’s world upside down. He didn’t have the first notion how to go about doing that.
“While you’re deciding how much you want to tell me,” Owl said, breaking into his thoughts, “there’s something I need to tell you.
It’s about River. She’s been going somewhere on her own without telling anyone.
Not at night, but during the daytime, when the rest of us are busy with other things and don’t notice her absence.” She paused. “I think she might be meeting someone.”
Hawk knelt beside her, one eye on Fixit, who was standing at the plate getting ready to hit the ball. “How do you know this?”
“Candle told me. You know she and River are like sisters; they don’t have many secrets. But this was one. She noticed River sneaking out and when River came back, she confronted her. River wouldn’t tell her anything, just said she had to trust her and not to tell anyone. Candle didn’t, until yesterday. She became worried after you got back from your visit with the Weatherman and she heard about the dead Croaks, so she decided to tell me.”
Hawk shook his head. “Who would she be meeting?”
“I don’t know. But Candle says she was taking something with her in a bag when she saw her leave that one time. She thinks she’s been doing this for a while. Hawk, I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to confront her about it. She would know it was Candle who told me, and that would ruin their relationship.
They’re too close for me to do that.”
He nodded. “But we have to do something.”