Curveball : The Year I Lost My Grip (9780545393119) (4 page)

“Yuck,” Angelika said.

“Thanks,” I replied.

“No, not you,” she said. “It's the camera. It has a really horrible shutter lag, so every time I tried to get a good shot, by the time the autofocus locked in, it was too late. And the exposure … that's all my fault.”

I reached for the mouse, then clicked down through the photos on screen until we got to the ones we'd taken by the window. “Maybe you had better luck with the brighter light,” I said. But if anything, the brighter shots were worse. They were so overexposed I looked like a ghost. Or a perfectly white mannequin with a deep-black wig. I kept clicking until the last few frames were up. I looked really closely at those, partly because I wanted to see how horrible my elbow looked, and partly because I wanted to see whether Angelika had focused in on it. But the shots were so washed-out you couldn't really even tell that my arm was an arm.

Angelika sighed, said, “I give up,” clicked out of the screen, and ejected the memory card. Then she flipped the card into my hands, slung the camera into my lap, and said, “Your turn, Pete. Make me a star!”

I know this isn't going to make sense to anyone who isn't a camera nerd like I am, but I couldn't even stand the thought of using such inferior equipment for anything I was being graded on. After my grandfather's stuff, this was like asking a fighter pilot to fly a hot-air balloon. As Angelika tried sitting at different angles on the stool by the window, I tried to find some decent menu options for programming the camera, but there were huge gaps between the available shutter speeds, the maximum aperture of the lens was pathetic, and the ISOs only went up to 800, instead of the 25,600 on Grampa's Nikons. Put into simple English, what this meant was that there was no way I could get any kind of decent shot.

That's why I said what I said next. Even if it came out sounding totally wrong, I was just trying to put some effort into the first graded project of my high school career. “Listen, Angelika, why don't we meet up at my house to work on this? I, um, I have much nicer equipment.”

Oh, God
, I thought as soon as it was too late.
That sounded wildly inappropriate.
Angelika pushed her
glasses down her nose a bit, peered over them at me, and said, “Ooh, I'd love to come to your house and check out your equipment.” Then she laughed and added, “But don't you think you're moving a little fast?”

Why is it that every single desirable female I've ever met can make me feel like an idiot in five seconds flat?

A few days later, AJ invited himself over to my house to shoot baskets. He only lives a couple of blocks away, and he used to have to walk right past my door to get to middle school, so we've probably spent five hundred hours playing basketball in my driveway. Now, you're probably thinking, “How can you shoot baskets if you're not medically cleared to play sports?” The answer is that I can't. Which leads to the next logical question: “What kind of insensitive weenie would invite himself over to his best friend's house to do something his friend would totally kill to do, but isn't allowed to?”

I find myself having those kinds of thoughts all the time, but that's just AJ. I love the guy, but he barely seems to notice that other human beings have emo
tions, so he says and does completely offensive stuff at random moments without a shred of explanation. Once, in seventh grade, I had a huge argument with AJ because he wouldn't stop saying my sister was “suh-mokin' hottt!” I ended up storming out of his house. When I got home, I was so mad that I told Samantha what had happened, and she said, “Ooh, that's so cute! You have to understand, Petey, your friend AJ is essentially a caveman. He only has three feelings: hungry, hyper, and horny. He's a great kid if you can just resign yourself to that. And maybe throw him some chunks of raw meat or something once in a while to keep him happy.”

My sister is a genius judge of character.

So there I was, sitting on my butt, cooking in the Indian summer sun and watching my caveman buddy take about forty-three million foul shots. As an added bonus, he was enlightening me with his insights about the female mind. “So then” — grunt, shoot, swish — “she just invited herself over here and told you to take pictures of her?”

“No,” I said, “that's not what happened at all. Mr. Marsh assigned us to be partners, and then —”

“She wants you, man.”

“What are you talking about? I just said the teacher
assigned
us to work together. And then I was the one who asked
her
to come over.”

“Oh, yeah” — grunt, shoot, swish — “she totally wants you.”

I stood up, walked over to AJ, and knocked on the side of his head. “Are you listening to me at all? The teacher made the assignment, and then I made the invitation.”

He pushed me away with one hand, and shot with the other. It was a complete air ball, and he said, “See, now you made me miss. Like it's
my
fault you can't accept what's happening in your love life.”

I sat back down in disgust. “My
love life
?”

He smirked. “Yup. See, she made you invite her over here. First she arranged to be in your class. Then she probably knew you'd be the only two freshmen in there, so she would be your partner. Her final sly move was to use her femi-mind tricks to control you into asking her out.”

“Femi-mind tricks?”

“Yeah. All the high school girls have 'em.”

I stared at AJ blankly. He's used to that, so when he's on a roll, it doesn't affect him. He continued as though I were leaning forward on one arm, looking up at him in an awed silence. “See, you know how there's, like, band camp and football camp and stuff right before school starts?”

I nodded as slightly as possible. I didn't want to indicate any sort of agreement or anything.

“Well, for girls, I've heard there's this special kind of camp that we're not supposed to even know about. For maybe three days before freshman year, they go up to the high school for, like, hormone boot camp. I'm pretty sure the instructors are the senior cheerleaders or something. Anyway, the girls master essential feminine wiles, and then they use 'em on us.”

“Um, and you know this how?”

“Because of Elena Zubritskaya.”

Elena Zubritskaya was this girl who had moved to our town from Russia in seventh grade. She was short and petite, with dark hair and glasses. In middle school, she had been quiet, shy, and mostly invisible.
I hadn't seen her around in high school so far, but I guess AJ had.

“What about her?”

“What about her? What
about
her? Have you been walking the hallways
blindfolded
for the past two weeks? She went away for the summer a mouse, and came back a raging tigress!”

“Really? Little Elena?”

“Believe me, Pete, you are the last male in the world who's still thinking of her as ‘little' Elena. She's a whole new woman. I mean, she always had a raging body …”

(She did? I honestly, honestly had never noticed.)

“… but now she's
working
it. I mean, the girl is
strutting
through the building. She has completely morphed into a bespectacled love goddess! Plus, you know how she didn't used to talk a whole lot, and we thought she couldn't even speak English? Now she's like ‘So heavy this books,' and eleven guys suddenly appear to help her with her bag. Or she'll go ‘I no have pencil,' and instantly, there's seventeen guys standing around her with pencils in their hands. She
might not have her grammar down yet, but she's suddenly fluent in the international language of love. And she's leaving a trail of destruction. It's sick.”

AJ took a break from talking to practice driving toward the hoop, while I sat there trying to follow what Elena Zubritskaya had to do with Angelika, or with AJ's imaginary secret hot-girl boot camp. AJ isn't a big fan of silence, though, so eventually he started lecturing me again. “So you see, Pete, that's how I know this Angelika babe is bent on dominating and controlling your mind.”

“And what do you think I'm supposed to do about this?”

He tried a behind-the-back layup, watched the ball rattle around the rim before rolling off, and said, “Any control you think you have is an illusion. I recommend you just let it happen.”

I pondered this for a while. Then I picked out what I thought was one of the bigger gaping flaws in his so-called logic. “OK, then. Let's just say Elena has suddenly been endowed with some kind of Victoria's Secret mojo.”

“Oh, she has. She totally has.”

“Whatever. She's not using it on any one specific guy, right? She's just captivating every guy in sight.”

“So?”

“So, even if I think Angelika might be flirting with me specifically, she's probably not. She's probably just using her femi-mind tricks on everyone, and I happen to be sitting next to her in one of her classes.” I couldn't help but notice that, despite the blatant insanity of this whole discussion, AJ now had me using his daffy new word. I swear, he's insidious.

“Well, then, either she is flirting with you deliberately, or she's flirting with you deliberately. Which means she is, in fact, flirting with you deliberately.”

“Wha-a-at?”

“See, if she weren't, you wouldn't wonder if she was. But you
are
wondering, which means she is.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose right above my glasses. My head was starting to hurt. “Even assuming that she is interested in me, why in the world would she be? We just met. I don't know anything
about her, and she doesn't know anything about me. We've barely even talked.”

“That's perfect. You're a mysterious stranger on a train.”

“Huh?”

“Women like mysterious guys. Trust me: It's well-known.”

“Well, what happens when I stop being a stranger on a train? I mean, after all this flirting, won't she eventually get to know me?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Won't that be the end of the mystery?”

“Sure, but then she'll like you for all of your studly attributes.”

“Like what? My commanding five feet of height? My keen eyesight?”

“No, you're an athlete. Women love athletes.”

Again with the insensitiveness. Insensitivity? Whatever, here was AJ, blundering in and stomping on my biggest sore spot. “Uh, in case you haven't noticed, I'm not an athlete anymore.”

“Yes, you are. You're an injured athlete. They love that, too. You're like a wounded bird she can nurse back to health.”

“But what if I'm never nursed back to health? The doctor said I might not pitch again.” Actually, I was being dishonest. The doctor had flat-out said that I WOULD never pitch again.

“Meh, he was wrong.”

I glared. AJ ignored. “I'm serious, Pete. And even if he was right, you just won't pitch. You can be our catcher.”

“
Our
catcher?”

“You know, on the JV team.”

“First of all, I can't play catcher, either. What if someone is stealing second base? How am I supposed to throw the ball down? What am I going to do, send it there by FedEx?”

“OK, you can play first, then. Lots of lefties play first. Plus, none of this will matter, because you're going to be fine. If doctors knew everything, they wouldn't get sued for malpractice, would they?”

AJ didn't get it. I would still have to throw the ball
sometimes, even to play first. And I was never going to be allowed to throw again. But
of course
he didn't get it, because I never came right out and told him. I had never come out and told him the whole truth about my diagnosis, my surgery, the physical therapy — anything. Maybe it was just because I hated thinking about the details. Maybe it was because I didn't want him to think I was a wuss. And maybe in a small, little part of the back of my mind, I was afraid he wouldn't hang out with me anymore if I was a lost cause.

“My prediction, Petey, is that by springtime, you'll be totally good to go.”

I gave up on the baseball argument and changed the subject. Just talking about throwing a ball made me feel all panicky, anyway. “But then I won't be a wounded stranger bird on a train anymore. So won't Angelika lose interest?”

“Nah, by then you'll be, like, soul mates.”

Not for the first time, I wished I could be AJ. It wasn't only that he had a healthy throwing arm — it was that he always believed good things would
happen. Reality didn't even enter the picture. “All righty,” he said, “I'll make you a deal. If I hit my next three free throws, Angelika and you are meant to be.”

“Oh, because you control my destiny with your ability to make your foul shots?”

He nodded, and started dribbling the ball.

“But you don't control my mind, right? Angelika controls that?”

He nodded again, shot, and scored. Twice.

“And what about my free will?”

Dribble, shoot, swish. “Dude. Who needs free will when you've got Angelika?”

 

My grandfather came over for dinner that night. Mom wasn't saying much, Dad was still at work, and Grampa was as quiet as usual. I hadn't seen him since the day he had given me his cameras, and I was totally on edge. I was scrutinizing his every move, looking for signs that he was going senile. Mom would say, “Pass the peas, Dad,” and I'd be like
Does he remember what peas are? Whew, he does. But did he pause for
a minute to think, or did he recognize the peas right away? OK, I'll give him a 10 for “identifies vegetables.”

Dinner gets kind of long when you're concentrating that hard on something so horrible. When everyone was done, Mom volunteered to do the dishes so “You boys can enjoy some male bonding.” Male bonding? What were we going to do, drink three beers and then shoot a moose?

Thinking of the word “shoot” reminded me of the forthcoming portrait date with Angelika. I told Grampa about it, and he asked, “Have you ever shot a serious portrait before?”

“No, but I've helped you do it a bunch of times. I've been with you at the studio for hundreds of engagement photos and stuff — I know what camera settings to use and everything.”

He said, “Are you sure? It's different when you're the one in charge of the shoot. Plus, sometimes with a live model, you forget what you're doing. The pressure and all …”

“I know what I'm doing.”

“Well, you want to be absolutely positive. Especially with an attractive young lady sitting in front of you, you might find it hard to concentrate.”

“How do you know she's attractive?”

He raised an eyebrow. “You just told me.”

See, he's totally fine,
I told myself.
His wit is as sharp as ever, and he can still read me like my thoughts are engraved on my forehead. But wait, if he's in such great shape, why did he give me all of his cameras and everything?
I almost asked him about the cameras right then and there, but then I got an idea. I thought,
What if I do some photography stuff with him? Maybe something might come up….

“Grampa,” I said, “I
might
need some practice before Angelika comes over. Do you think maybe you could sit for me?”

“Me?” he said. “I don't know what kind of practice that will be. I hope to God this girl doesn't look remotely like your old, shriveled grandfather.”

“Oh, come on. I just need somebody to sit there and let me get all the equipment set up and ready.
That way I won't have to, um, fiddle around when Angelika is here.”

Grampa's eyebrow shot up again, but thankfully, he didn't comment. And he followed me into the basement, where all the photography stuff was. Then he got right down to business. As I set out a stool for him, he fired off a series of questions:

“Are you going to shoot straight on or in profile?”

“With flash or without?”

“Lights and reflectors, or no?”

“Head and shoulders, or full-length?”

“Color or black-and-white?”

“What lens are you going to use? Do you want a blurred background, or do you want sharp focus all the way to the backdrop? Are you going to shoot automatic or manual? Have you charged an extra battery? Always charge an extra battery. And have some drinks ready, especially if you plan to have her under the lights for a while. It gets hot under the lights.”