Equipment over my shoulders, I follow the uniforms to the field. What I expect to see isn't there.
Another boy wonders what I think aloud. "Where's Coach?"
"He had a teacher meeting this afternoon," Mike says, opening the bag I just sat down.
"Do we wait?" Emmett asks.
"I don't know. Ask Bella."
They're looking at me. They expect an answer. "Run short stop drills until he gets here."
They do. I reign over a small, yet powerful army of boys in tight pants. While drills are boring, literature is even more so. I'm elbow deep in it when Edward walks into the field thirty minutes later. He's wearing sunglasses under an overcast sky, a whistle to command my minions around his neck. King and queen of the field. We rule together. The shrill calls them in. He directs and is eager to watch their progress. He pays no attention to me. I feel small and useless in the dug out. An ornament in the shade.
I keep my nose in The Grapes of Wrath. My sadness is contained. My anger roams free. He dismisses me easily. It shouldn't bother me. That damn glitter on his finger should steer me away. It does little, like the book in my hands. I kick my feet onto the bench and lay back, holding John Steinbeck's words over my face, hoping they will fall onto me.
Edward's voice is in my ear. "Good job, Crowley!" He claps his hands and steps in the dug-out. I hear him over my head, his feet shuffling, a slight groan erupting from his throat as he sits. He's twenty-eight, not a hundred and eight. I say nothing. I do nothing except read.
"Hello," he finally says after a few short seconds of silence.
"Oh, do you see me now?" I'm nonchalant. I'm confident. I'm angry.
"I see you all the time."
"You could've fooled me." I turn the page. It's an act. I'm not reading now. I haven't since he came to the field.
"If I fool you then I fool everyone else. Switch it up, McCarthy!"
I pretend to read, adjust my bare legs on the bench, crossing one leg over my bent knee. Heaviness invades me. It's his eyes. The bench bounces. It's his knee jumping up and down.
"I can't read," I say.
The bench desists in movement. I control the king.