It took a bit of persuasion to get April to play with us. Poor April. Once Felik and Grigor chose you, you didn't have much chance to refuse. Her mom didn't mind her taking sometimes for sport activity. In fact, she encouraged it because she didn't want April to spend all her free time working at the cafeteria. Besides Felik and Grigor had made the schedule easy for her to get her training, just five hours a week.
April, me, Olive and the two coaches went straight from the baseball field to the Matryoskha Restaurant.
We stepped out of their shiny Bentley and wondered why they brought us to this place. Felik greeted everyone as he swept us through the restaurant into the kitchen.
"Mitko!" he called out.
I recognized the guy at the stov
Felik paced up and down the sideline. Grigor stood stock still, legs astride, arms folded, only saying a few quiet words to his boyfriend, who would then sign to us. Tip hat, touch shoulders and rub the nose. That means you should hit the ball. Scratch ear, rub hands and tip hat. It means don't hit.Each of us had memorized the signs, but I wondered if any of us remembered those codes under pressure. The pack of Russian supporters was incredibly noisy, doing a commentary all through the game in a weird mixture of Russian and English. Every time, the Rejects looked like they were doing something decent, Mitko and his friends went bananas.The parents, huddled on the sidelines, were confused, who were these crazy Russian people who didn't even have kids in the team? Why were they here cheering their heads off for players they didn't even
A wall of bodies crashed on me. Then I found myself in the air, carried by the otherslike I was a war hero. Our fans were going nuts at the sideline, chantingDarci! Darci! Darci!"Oh yes! We did it!" cheered Felik. "I knew you were gonna make us proud!"I blushed and giggled. After my teammates put me down, I saw my mom go up to Grigor."Excuse me," she said shyly to the big man. "I'm Darci's mom. I just wanted..."Grigor surprised her by grabbing her hand in his and shook it firmly with gratitude. Felik joined him."Did you see your daughter out there?" he said. "What a wonderful baseball player she is!"The mo
There was a lot of truth in Olive's words. I turned to Charlotte who was fussing over her camera. She was right there -only a few feet away, but she might as well have been on the other side of the moon and all I could do was look."I guess we just don't have it, Olive," I said to her."Well, unlike you, I have tried talking to Nora," she said and tossed the ball to me. "She handles herself so cool. And I'm there sweating like a pig, screaming panic in my head, some idiotic blah blah coming out of my mouth. You have a better chance than me, Darci."I was just as a romantic hopeless as she was, and I didn't know why she had so much faith in me."Hey! You girls are here, too?"We turne
Over the last couple of years, Mom had stopped coming to my baseball games. She said it made her 'too tense.'Now she seemed to show interest in seeing me play. I guessed she probably felt bad, because Dad went to coach the Blue Belles, and there was no one to come to my games.Felik and Grigor found out that we were training on our own almost every day and started bringing their friends to help us. Mitko would work with April and Olive on pitching and catching. But we also got Zoya (the young woman who gave us ice cream and turned out to be a very classy hitter). They'd divide us into small groups and work on particular skills.At first, there were just five of us show up. Then Rosie, Susan, and even Harper came. Stefanie was the last to join. She accused us of trying to exclude her f
The Reject players warmed up on the field, urged on by a cage fighter-looking man and a baseball mafia member.The mob of noisy Russian supporters passing around food. Zoya went straight up to Mom and offered her some Russian biscuits and cakes on a tray. Mom pointed me out - that one is my daughter. Zoya gushed and carried on, giving free treats."Here they are!Moya komanda!My team!" Mitko whooped in excitement. He had hooped up an espresso coffee machine with electric cords and water hoses."What does everyone want?" he said, throwing his arms wide. "Cappucino, latte, cocoa?"Mom stared with her mouth hanging open, amazed.Mitko bowed to her with a flourish. "G
The score was a tie between the Rejects and the Wanderers. The extra innings were needed to break the tie.Olive was a pitcher. She stood on the mound while everyone in our team watched in anticipation. At last, Olive threw a fast-speed ball, which went into Harper's glove neatly. We breathed a sigh of relief.Another pitch.Olive took a deep breath and held another ball in her hand. Then she raised her left knee up before sending another flying ball. It went into Harper's glove again. As we did in training, she threw it back across the field, Olive ducked so that it could pass on to Tonya, but a Wanderer ran like a wind and slide through the ground to steal the base before the ball was caught."Safe!" the umpire cried.
With my hands jammed in the pockets of my jacket, I walked down our street and across the footbridge. If I stayed out of the house for a while, things would settle down. Dad would shut himself in the study and work. Mom would put music on really loud and scrub out the sink. By dinnertime, all of us would be quiet and polite and act like a family again.I didn't have anywhere in particular to go but as I strolled some more, I found myself at the front entrance of the Matryoshka. It was closed until dinner time. But in the alley that ran down the back of the cafés, the door into the kitchen was open.I peered in to see Mitko working on the stove. Felik was chopping stuff on the long benches with the woman who gave me some bread. Their hands flew over piles of veggies in machine-gun-fast movements.
On Sunday afternoons, Grigor, Felik, Mitko, Zoya, and the bakery owner Polina would gather in the room with other patrons above Matryoshka. In the midst of steam of coffee, they huddled in front of a huge flat-screen TV to watch Charlotte's videos of the previous games.Once the coaches found out about Olive's baseball brain, she became the key part of 'the Tactical Team'. They would analyze the game, debate about the latest strategies used by professional leagues, and plan next week's training schedule.I tagged along with Olive, not because I wanted to discuss the tactics, but because Charlotte was also there in those Sunday sessions. But I didn't understand half of what they were talking about, and my eyes would wander away from the screen to the blonde girl. At one point, she turned as if she could feel my stare and caught me lookin