Rachael Allen - The Summer of Impossibilities

PUBLISHERS NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-1-4197-4112-8
eISBN 978-1-68335-821-3

Text copyright 2020 Rachael Allen

Book design by Hana Anouk Nakamura

Published in 2020 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

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To mothers and daughters,
especially Kim Laver,
who taught me to chase big dreams
and helped me realize that writing books
made me feel like me

I need this to be the last pitch I throw for the rest of the scrimmage. On a regular day, Id strike Carter out no problem. She always swings a half second too late. But today, my fingers and wrists have turned against me. My best friend, Paige, our catcher, signals to throw a change-upmy least painful pitch. I cringe. She knows. But Ill worry about that later.

I wind up, attempt to lock the pain away where I cant feel it, and send the change-up flying.

Carter gets a piece of it, and it pops up up up. Its gonna be a foul, I can tell, but shes already tearing toward first, because you dont wait around to see. And then the ball is coming down, and Paige is rushing to get underneath it. I close my eyes. If she catches it, the inning is over. I hear the thump of the ball in her glove. Thank. Goodness. I run over to her, screaming some unintelligible softball raving. Our first rec league scrimmage is finally over. She claps me on the back on the way to the dugout.

You okay? she asks as we slump onto the grass with our water bottles.

I nod. Im always okay.

The doctor says its senseless to fight my pain. That I have to listen to it.

Which kind of goes against everything I know about softball. Daddy taught me and my sister, Scarlett, how to play when we were five. I remember Scarlett throwing the ball down after about two minutes and saying, This is boring. But I threw it back, hard as I could, and you should have seen the way my dad looked at me. He grinned and said, Youve got an arm, kiddo.

I was used to my sister getting all the attention, usually by any means necessary. I threw the ball back to my dad even harder.

Today, my hands couldnt hurt more if someone ran them over with a truck and lit them on fire. But none of the girls seem to notice (well, except Paige, who is totally looking at me with question-mark eyes). I want to keep it that way, so I paste on a grin and skip over to Emmeline.

You killed it today, girl! I bump my hip against hers.

Thanks. She blushes. The freshmen, they are big on blushing.

Just, like, keep waiting for your pitches, and youre going to crush it this summer.

Awesome. I will! Hey, youre pitching next game, right?

Uh... My smile falters. Well, my hands have been bothering me a bit, so I dont know...

All the girlsall my favorite girls from years and years and years of playing rec softball togetherstart pressing in on me and talking all at once.

Sky, you have to!

We cant win without you!

You said that last practice too, but you always push through, dont worry!

Yeah, and even if you have to sit out a few games, you can be like our mascot!

Is that what I am now? I dont want the girls to see how that makes me feel, so I plaster on an even bigger smile and say, Totally. Her-ricanes for life.

And then theyre cheering and dancing and yelling around me, and it feels wonderful. But also like its going to be the thing that breaks me.

I remember a game a couple months ago, midway through the varsity season. The pain was so bad I had been planning to ask Coach if he could sub me out and put in a closer. But then my dad came down to the dugout, and he was all, How are your hands feeling? Hows the new medicine working? He couldnt keep the eagerness out of his voice. The thought of telling him the truth made me queasy.

So, I went back in and finished the game.

Because thats what athletes do. Because you always give 110 percent and pain is weakness leaving the body and winning isnt everythingits the only thing.

And we did win.

Three outs and sixteen broken-glass-in-my-knuckles pitches later.

I iced my hands and thought everything would be okay.

Until the pain knocked me out of bed in the middle of the night.

I remember my dad kneeling on the floor next to me, saying, Whats the matter?

And my mom standing over him. What in the damn hell do you think is the matter? You pushed her too hard, and now shes paying for it. She needs to quit the team.

It turned into one of the worst fights theyd ever had. I remember being surprised that it was over me and not my sister. While they yelled at each other about what to do with me and everything else under the sun, Scarlett got me into a warm bath. She tried to distract me, but I couldnt block it out. The pain or the fighting. Even when they went in their room and shut the door.

I was hopeful at the start of rec season. Dr. Levy said that since my rec softball team is less intense than varsity, it would give me a chance to see how my arthritis does in a lower stress environment. It felt like my last shot at making softball work.

But its too much, trying to play softball and sorting through this arthritis stuff at the same time. Too much for all of us.

I walk up to Coach after practice. I wait until no one is close enough to hear. And I open my mouth.

See you tomorrow! is what comes out.

See you, Skyler, he calls back.

I hesitate, shifting my weight from foot to foot, hoping for somethingthe truth? A miracle? But I cant seem to make myself tell him.

Ill do it tomorrow.

Paige drives me home, but since Emmeline and Carter are in the car, I still have to pretend like everything is OMGOMG-AMAZING. Its really not that hard. Beyonc comes on, and I turn it up, and we sing at the top of our lungs as we fly through downtown Winston-Salem in Paiges convertible.