“I guess so.” Amanda scrubbed the table back and forth with her hand. “It was bad after you left. Like Dad would take me to travel team because he was the coach, but when I went to a friend’s house or something, she would forget where I was and just leave me there for the whole day. I could see people getting uncomfortable, like they didn’t want to tell me to leave because it would be rude. And I didn’t want to ask them to take me home because, half the time, her car would be out in the driveway. She’d just be asleep. It wasn’t like when I come to your house and can just stay.”
She drew in a deep breath and scrubbed the table some more. The dirt she was trying to get out was obviously permanent, but I didn’t say anything.
“Plus, I didn’t want them to know how messed up she was. Now everyone knows.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Last week, two police cars came to our house, and they took her away. There were all these lights flashing, and everyone—even neighbors we never see—came out of their houses to look. Then more police cars came. I don’t know why they needed so many cars to take away one woman who was half asleep. It was like one of those shows where they bust some big drug dealer, but it was just my mom, and she wasn’t fighting or anything. She just looked tired. Even my dad, he was, like, demanding to know what was going on, but when the cop said prescription fraud, he just threw up his hands. Like, he actually threw them up, like he’d expected it. He told Casey and me to go inside. I heard him on the phone with someone, saying something about again.”
“What’d you do?” I asked, picturing it, sort of wishing I’d been there but also sort of glad I hadn’t been.
“I just went to my room and turned on the music and closed my eyes until it was over. I could still see the red-and-blue lights behind my eyelids, though.”
She put her hand over her eyes like she was demonstrating, but I thought she was wiping at a tear. I wanted to touch her somehow, but I thought she might hit me, so I just said, “Wow, that sucks.”
“So since then, I’ve barely gone out of the house except if I have to for practice or a game. It’s so embarrassing that everyone knows my own mother can’t stand to be around us.”
“What? What does that have to do with you?”
“That’s what she told my dad. My grandmother bailed her out, and when she came to get her stuff, she told my dad she was sorry but it was too much pressure. She said she felt so stressed out, and she needed to take a pill just to play with us.”
Wow. She looked down, and I knew she was crying. I reached over and touched her shoulder. She stiffened for a second, and I started to jerk my hand back. But then she leaned forward across the table and pulled me toward her.
“That’s messed up,” I said. “She’s messed up, not you.” It was something I’d heard a shrink say on one of Mom’s TV shows.
“I know, but—”
“No. It’s not you. It’s about her. She’s . . .” I searched for the right word. “She’s weak. You’re not weak.”
“I guess.”
“It’s like with my dad. He’s always working. He never spends any time with us, and he says it’s because he’s so busy at work. But other people’s dads don’t work all the time. Your dad doesn’t. My dad just likes work more than he likes us.”
“And my mom likes drugs more than she likes me?”
“Yeah.”
“Just part of being an ugly duckling, I guess,” Amanda said, and I knew I should say she wasn’t one. Someone on TV would say that. But sometimes, it seemed better just to be quiet. We sat there a minute, not talking. A car came down the street, but I knew they probably couldn’t see us through the trees, not if they weren’t looking for us. I heard a door slam from my house, and I wondered if Matt was coming out to bother me. Amanda must have had the same thought because she said, “Do you have a softball?”
“I have a baseball.”
“That’s fine. I just want to throw it. You can catch.”
We went up and got my baseball stuff. It took a while because even though my mom had supposedly been recovering all summer, that hadn’t stopped her from cleaning out the closets, but finally, we found it.
“Do you think your mom knows?” Amanda asked.
“I don’t think so. She’s been in the hospital.” I figured if my mom knew, she’d have mentioned it on our drive.
We went to the backyard. Amanda pitched while I caught. Even though it was a baseball, Amanda pitched it underhand like a softball, and it was so hard and fast my fingers ached after maybe the fifth pitch and felt like they might be broken after the tenth. I didn’t say anything, though. I just kept catching until Mom said it was time for dinner, and did Amanda want to stay. “I made tuna casserole, Chris’s favorite.” She knew it was Amanda’s favorite too.
“Okay. And my dad says if Chris wants to come over tomorrow, they could run some plays.”
“That’s nice,” Mom said. “Is that baseball?”
“Football,” I corrected her. “Tryouts are next week.”
Later, after Amanda left, I heard my mom talking to my dad. She said something about “that poor girl.” So she’d known all along.
So it turned out to be a bad year for Amanda and a good year for me after all. The year Amanda’s mom moved out for good was the year I made the Junior PeeWees. I wasn’t big enough to play defense or play much at all, but at least I was with my friends, and Tim said I had potential. “I played high school ball even though I was short,” he said. “No reason you can’t.”
7