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MAX SWINGS FOR THE FENCES

  BY ANNE URSU

  It wasn’t as if Maximilian Funk didn’t know that things were going to go badly. After all, there’s no good that can come out of being a new kid in school, especially when you’ve just moved halfway across the country, especially especially in the middle of the year. Nothing says Give me a wedgie and hang me from the flagpole like waltzing into a new middle school in February at a time when there are no other new kids to hide behind.

  He knew things were going to go badly. If he knew just how badly they were actually going to go, though, he would have faked some illness that would keep him out of school for the rest of the year. Like Ebola.

  So Max slowly got ready for his first day at Willard Middle School, spending more time than anybody ever had trying to decide whether it would be better to wear a sweater and T-shirt or a sweater and button-down shirt. He just wanted to get it right. Max had spent his middle school life thus far working hard to be the sort of kid no one ever noticed, except perhaps to say “Oh, I didn’t see you there.” Because there were only two ways to get noticed in middle school, and Max was never going to be the kid who got noticed in a Good Way, like if he were a basketball stud or did something amazing like winning an ice cream–eating contest or solving one of Mrs. Bjork’s extra credit word problems. So that left the Bad Way. Better not to be noticed at all.

  When he got downstairs, his mom presented him with a Minnesota Twins cap, flashing him a huge I-know-I-ruined-your-life-but-I-bought-you-this-fabulous-hat-so-it’s-all-better-now smile. “Now you’ll look like a native,” she proclaimed.

  Max frowned. He did not wear baseball caps. Baseball caps only served to emphasize his ears. Which were already doing a fine job of emphasizing themselves.

  “Mom,” he said, not trying to keep the exasperation from his voice, “baseball hats are for jocks. I can’t stride in there pretending I’m a jock.” Middle school kids could smell posers like a T. rex could smell a lame triceratops. It was a biological fact.

  “You are a jock!”

  “I play tennis, Mom.”

  “That’s a sport!”

  “Trust me. It’s not the same thing.”

  “Come on, honey. Don’t be nervous. Everyone’s going to love you.”

  “It’s February, Mom. Nobody cares.”

  “Of course they care!” she said. “You have so much to offer them!”

  Max tried to keep from rolling his eyes. Every mother thought her kid was extraordinary. By definition, at least 75 percent of them had to be kidding themselves.

  “Anyway,” she added, putting the cap on his head, “this town’s nuts about baseball. Just tell everyone at school you’re from Beau Fletcher’s hometown. They’ll think you’re a celebrity!”

  Max sighed. Beau Fletcher was the veteran All-Star third baseman for the Minnesota Twins, a two-time MVP, future Hall of Famer, and the greatest thing to come out of New Hartford, NY, ever. People in New Hartford said Beau Fletcher’s name with this dazed reverence, like he’d invented soup or something. It didn’t matter whether he was a nice guy or anything. All that mattered was that he hit a jillion home runs. After Beau donated some money to help rebuild Roosevelt High’s athletic fields, there was a movement to rename the school after him. After all, what had Franklin Delano Roosevelt done for them lately? In New Hartford, Beau Fletcher mattered so much that the universe needed to make people who didn’t matter at all just to keep everything in balance.

  People like Max.

  And then it was time to go. Max’s dread followed him to the car. It huddled its overgrown body into the backseat and kicked Max’s seat the whole way to school. It lurked behind him as he went up the steps to the school and through the doors and down the hallway following the signs to the main office. And then, right before Max went in, it wrapped him up in an icy, immobilizing embrace—and then disappeared suddenly, leaving him all alone.

  And that’s when everything changed.

  Because in the main office stood a woman, and next to her was a girl. And she was the most beautiful girl Max had ever seen. The girl had long, thick, wavy hair like a mermaid might have. And it was a rich, dark red, the kind of color that should only exist in a Crayola box or maybe a very special kind of slushie. And her eyes, her eyes were green like emeralds. Or Kryptonite.

  Max’s ears flushed.

  “This is your official new student buddy,” the woman, who had apparently been talking for some time, said. “Molly Kinsman. She’s in sixth grade too.”

  “Hi, Max,” Molly said, smiling a smile that would need no orthodontia. “I’m going to show you your classes and stuff, okay?”

  Max opened his mouth but couldn’t come up with a response. This was the sort of girl who would never pay attention to him unless she was assigned to. Her eyes were so green. Who did they remind him of?

  “Ready?”

  “Catwoman!” he thought. Except he said it out loud. His mouth hung open.

  The girl blinked. “What?”

  “I mean, yes,” Max said. “I’m ready. Thanks. Thank you. Ready, Freddie!”

  He closed his mouth. Molly gave him a curious look, then led him around the school. She chatted as she showed him his locker, the gym, the library, the cafeteria. And Max just followed, nodding and grunting like an ape desperately trying to hide the fact that it’d just been body-switched with a sixth-grade boy. But, he reflected, at least nodding and grunting was better than babbling. If he started talking, who knows what ridiculous thing would come out of his mouth next?

  Molly dropped him off at his homeroom. “So, come find me in the cafeteria at lunch, okay?” she said brightly. “You can sit with us.”

  And then she turned and left, her invitation hanging in the air.

  Max stared. Did she really want to hang out with him? Or was this just part of her job description?

  Max sat through his first three periods wishing he were a different sort of person, the kind who might impress a girl like Molly, the kind who had anything interesting about him at all. If Molly thought he was cool, then surely the other kids would too. And then they wouldn’t string him up on the flagpole by his underwear. There was a lot at stake.

  Plus, then he’d get to hang out with her.

  At lunchtime, he surveyed the cafeteria, and his eyes instantly found Molly’s red head as if drawn there. His stomach flipped. Don’t blow it, he told himself as he walked over. This is your chance. Ready, Freddie.

  Molly was sitting at a table with a blond girl and a tall, dark-haired boy. Max gulped. The boy looked like the wedgie-giving sort.

  “Hi!” Molly said, smiling up at him. “Max, this is Jenny, and this is Logan. Guys, this is Max. He just moved here.”

  Max sat down and attempted to look interesting.

  “Oh, do you like the Twins?” Jenny asked, nodding to his hat.

  “Oh, well, you know,” Max said, “my mom gave this to me….” He cast a look at Molly. Should he play it like someone who loved baseball or someone who didn’t really care that much? Was Jenny looking at his ears?

  “Dude,” said Logan, leaning in suddenly. “What position do you play?”

  “Uh,” Max looked around. Molly and Jenny were staring at him expectantly. “What do you mean?”

  “What do I mean?” He nodded to Max’s hat. “Baseball. Practice starts today!”

  Of course. Logan was clearly a crazed jock who naturally assumed everyone around him was always thinking about baseball just because he was. Max looked at the girls but couldn’t read them.

  “Baseball?” he said. “It’s February! There’s snow on the ground!” There. That was a good, noncommittal answer.

  “So?” Logan asked, looking at him as if he’d said fish sticks were best when made out of people.

  “The all-city sixth-grade tournament is coming up,” explained Jenny. “We lost it last year. We’re starting early.”

  Logan straightened. “We didn’t lose anything. Last year’s sixth graders did. But
we’re going to get it back this year. We have the best pitcher in the city.”

  “That’s you, I assume?” Max said, half to himself. He knew this boy’s type.

  There was that look again. “Naw, dude. I’m shortstop. What about you?” He looked Max up and down in a way that reminded him of the way his mom picked out tomatoes in the grocery store. “We really could use a left fielder.”

  “Well, um, I don’t really play baseball.”

  No one seemed to know what to say to that. Everyone suddenly looked down at their trays.

  “I mean, I like baseball and everything,” Max said quickly. “But I’m not very good at it. You know.” He looked at Molly and laughed in what he hoped was a charmingly self-deprecating manner. “Everyone says I throw like a girl!”

  The two girls turned their heads toward him slowly. Logan let out a long whistle.

  Max grimaced. He’d just made himself sound like a total loser. “I mean,” he said quickly, “I play tennis.”

  Logan blinked. “What?”

  “Tennis. You know.” He mimed a forehand for their benefit. Max actually had a very good forehand. But this is the sort of thing that’s hard to show in mime.

  Logan scrunched up his face. “My mom plays tennis.”

  Max did not know what to say. Many people’s mothers played tennis. It did not mean there was something fundamentally wrong with the sport itself.

  “Anyway,” Logan said, “I gotta run to the library. See you later, Molly, Jenny. And”—he turned to Max—“you too, Venus!”

  Max blinked. Oh. “More like Serena,” he muttered defiantly.

  Logan looked at him, and then a smile spread across his face, and it was the most delighted evil smile Max had ever seen—sort of like how Lex Luthor might look if he unwrapped a present Christmas morning and found the keys to global thermonuclear destruction.

  “Right!” Logan said, laughing. “See you, Serena.”

  He left. Max looked at the two girls, who were distinctly not looking at him.

  “Serena’s better,” Max explained.

  And then silence, great and terrible, and Max felt himself fading into the wall, and along with it, all his prospects for a happy middle school life. Jenny shifted, then said she better go to the library too and got up and left, giving her friend a look that told Max that Molly was definitely hanging out with him because she was assigned to. He stuck his fork in his mac and cheese and attempted to jiggle it.

  “So,” Molly said after a pause, “where’d you move here from?” Her voice sounded flat. Max didn’t understand. Was the tennis thing that dumb?

  “Um, upstate New York. A little town called New Hartford. You’ve probably—”

  Molly’s eyes grew large. “That’s where Beau Fletcher’s from!”

  Oh. Right. “Yeah, I know.”

  And then Molly looked up at him again. “Did you … know him?”

  And there was that spark in her eyes again—Max might even go so far as to call it a glow. And it would be a terrible terrible thing to extinguish that glow again; why, Max didn’t think he could live with himself.

  “Know him? I mean.” Max shifted. “Oh, well, I don’t like to—”

  As he talked, he was aware that his sentence was a runaway train picking up speed—but it didn’t matter, for Jenny appeared again behind them just then to derail it.

  “Hey, Molly,” she said, “do you want a ride to practice after school?”

  “Practice?” Max said, still choo-chooing on. “For what?”

  Molly’s eyes narrowed. “Um, baseball.”

  There are times in a boy’s life when it is wise not to speak the words in his mind. But Molly’s hair was the color of a cherry slushie, and Max was not wise.

  “You go to watch baseball practice?”

  Jenny exhaled. And the glow in Molly’s eyes turned into something else entirely.

  “I’m the pitcher,” Molly said, each word an ice cube slipped down the back of Max’s pants.

  Jenny rolled her eyes. “The best one in the city,” she added, and then sighed epically and stalked away. Molly glared at Max for another two beats, and then tossed her hair and got up and turned to go. Max’s heart leaped out of his throat, followed by some words he didn’t even know were there.

  “He’s my dad!” Max said.

  Max froze. The words floated in the air. He blinked at Molly. Maybe she hadn’t heard.

  “Who’s your dad?” she said, taking a step closer.

  She’d heard.

  Now, if you were sitting on the outside of this situation, you would recognize this as the point where things could have been saved. But if you were inside it, you would see nothing at all to do but open your mouth and say:

  “Beau Fletcher. Beau Fletcher’s my dad.”

  Molly stared. And Max, Max stared too. Max’s dad was not in any way, shape, or form Beau Fletcher. Max’s dad lived in Poughkeepsie and franchised tanning salons.

  Molly tilted her head and considered Max for one moment. Two. Max did not move. Inside, he could feel his intestines begin to unravel.

  “You expect me to believe that?” she asked. But her voice didn’t sound hostile. Just curious.

  “I know,” said Max. “It’s really weird.”

  “But”—Molly’s brow contorted—“Beau Fletcher’s not married. He never has been. He’s married to the game!”

  Max nodded solemnly. “I know.”

  Molly’s eyes widened, and then she too nodded, because she was a girl of the world. She sat down next to him. Max exhaled.

  “So, why don’t you have the same last name?” she whispered, leaning in to him so close Max could touch her hair. She smelled like cupcakes.

  “Oh,” said Max. “Well, you know, my mom raised me. He wasn’t really around till I was a little older.”

  She gasped. “Does the school know?”

  “Oh, you know.” Max could not decide whether to nod or shake his head, so he jerked his head in a direction that could best be called diagonal.

  “Wow,” breathed Molly.

  “So,” Max said, blinking spasmodically. “Don’t tell anyone, okay? It’s really important.” He cleared his throat. “It would be weird, you know?”

  “Right,” said Molly. “You don’t want people to like you just because you’re Beau Fletcher’s son!”

  “Right,” said Max. Just you, he thought.

  Molly stared at him as if expecting him to say more, and when he didn’t, she just nodded as if she understood. His intestines curled back in place. Molly would never betray him. And her Catwoman eyes were fixed on him as if he himself had invented soup. Maybe the gods of middle school were finally smiling at him.

  It was a little lie, that’s all.

  That night, Max went straight up to his room. He had work to do. He was no longer a boy-ape body-switch victim. He was a liar now, and that changed everything. Liars had information. They stuck as closely to the facts as possible. Liars kept in control of their words. And they did not ever ever ever babble.

  This was going to be a challenge.

  So he spent the evening reading up on Beau Fletcher. Nobody could talk about him without gushing over his stats: one jillion home runs, and a bazillion hits, and some crazy-high OPS, whatever the heck that was. It was like Beau was so amazing they had to make up a statistic for it. Most of the biographical stuff Max knew, of course—in New Hartford they taught Beau Fletcher history sometime between the alphabet and scissors. But buried in interviews were some interesting bits of information, things that brought out the picture of Beau Fletcher the man, the sort of thing you might know if he were your dad. Like he was scared of spiders. And he ate a pastrami sandwich before every game. And he was allergic to strawberries. And his favorite movie was Wall-E. In Minnesota, he was a spokesperson for milk, and even had his own ice cream flavor, which might be the coolest thing that could happen to a person ever. He could probably get it for free whenever he wanted, too, because they can’t possibly cha
rge you for your own ice cream flavor.

  In short, Beau Fletcher was the sort of guy who, if you were going to have a famous guy for a dad, would be a great dad to have. Max was pleased.

  He strode into school the next morning armed with everything there was to know about the life and times of Beau Fletcher, in case Molly decided to quiz him on the finer points of his dad’s food allergies. But it wasn’t Molly who accosted him as he walked to first period. The hand that grabbed his arm was Jenny’s, her blond ponytail bobbing determinedly behind her.

  “Molly told me,” she whispered, voice electric.

  Max froze. “She did?” He turned slowly to look at her.

  “I can’t believe it!” Jenny said.

  “You can’t?”

  Her blue eyes were sparkling. “No, I mean. It’s amazing! But you know”—she tilted her head—“you look like him a little. Especially in the ears.”

  “Oh,” said Max. “Look, Jenny …”

  “I know, I know. I can’t tell anyone. You don’t want kids to like you just because you’re Beau Fletcher’s son, right?”

  “You promise?”

  “Swear!” Jenny said, holding her hands up.

  She disappeared into the stream of students then, and Max tried to slow down his heart. Jenny believed him. And, more importantly, Molly believed him. That’s what mattered.

  He finally saw Molly at third-period English. She was waiting outside the classroom. For him.

  “Hey,” he said, because that is the sort of thing sons of baseball players say.

  “Hi,” Molly said. She looked around and then whispered, “I got a present for your dad.”

  “What?” His ribs abruptly cinched together.

  “Yeah!” She reached into her bag and pulled out a little Wall-E pin. “I thought it could be, like, a good-luck charm, you know?”

  “His favorite movie! How did you know?”

  “I know everything about him! He’s my favorite player of all time. Maybe he could wear it in the dugout someday so I could see? You could ask him that, right?”

  “Right,” Max said. “Sure!”

  “Amazing,” Molly said. “Oh, hey”—a look of regret crossed her face—“did Jenny talk to you?”