I'll Be Here

your peer group?”
    “Ha!”  I roll my eyes.  “Next question.”
    The rest of the hour isn’t so bad.   Nate is funny and surprisingly smart and I enjoy the stories that he shares in response to the questions. 
    I probably laugh more than I should when he launches into a whole tirade about being stereotyped as a juvenile delinquent that survives on a diet of fried chicken and watermelon just because he’s black.  He looks surprised when my giggle becomes a cackle.  I guess being starved for social interaction will do that to a person. 
    As I walk out of the class, I’m actually smiling. 
    It’s one of my first spontaneous, not forced-so-that-I-can hold-my-head-up smiles in days and the muscles in my cheeks are a little sore from the disuse.  It’s such a change that I almost expect a cartoonish bluebird to land on my shoulder and start whistling the “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” tune.
    “Whoa!”  My foot gets caught up on something solid and I lurch forward catching myself against a desk before I can full-on face plant. 
    “Whoops!”  Felicia Quinn smiles sweetly and yanks her foot out of the aisle as she stands with a bounce. 
    She slides past me, her red ponytail swinging with the exaggerated motions of her stride.  “You should really be more careful where you step Willow .”
    Sure, it could have been an accident, but Felicia is a junior on the pep squad with Taylor so probably not.   
    As I walk to my next class I think that it’s like the past two years have been erased in mere days.  No more beach parties or late-night yacht runs for Willow James.  Clearly anyone and everyone think I am the wrong kind of people and I would only do when the Great and Powerful Dustin Rant was giving me the time of day. 
    ***
    After the basketball fiasco in elementary school I’d given up the hope of being an athlete, but in the sixth grade my history teacher Mr. Dillon, who was also the junior varsity softball coach, talked me into joining the team with a promise that he could turn anyone into a “player.” 
    Honestly, I joined mainly to bask in the glow of the dreamy Mr. Dillon, who wore too-short pants on purpose and a chunky leather bracelet on his left wrist.  I didn’t know at the time, but he was carrying on a covert relationship with Ms. Sue, the secretary from the front office whom he would later make an honest woman of.
    “You’ll thank me when you get a scholarship,” he’d said, smiling from the swivel chair behind his desk.
    Yeah right. 
    I decided he would regret asking me to join his team, but I signed my name to the bottom of form and was issued an emerald green and white uniform shirt. 
    I lasted four games.
    Mr. Dillon didn’t kick me off the team.  No.  He was too much of a nice guy for that.  He spent extra time with me during practice and he gave me little pep talks as I filed out of his class.  I knew that these were supposed to inspire confidence in me, but the truth is that they only made me feel like more of a loser.  In the end, I quit on my own. 
    I quit because I couldn’t handle going to the plate.  The outfield I could deal with—if I missed a ball or let my mind wander, no one noticed most of the time.  But stepping up to bat while all eyes fell to me—digging into my skin like tacks on a cork pinboard—was too much. 
    My heart beat deeply in my chest and the blood swirled underneath the skin of my temples as the red dust of the field whirled around me and I felt all wrong.  I knew that I looked ridiculous up there waiting for the other girl to throw to me.  I hated the waiting for failure that would eventually come from the whole thing. 
    As a rule, I liked beginnings and endings—not the middle parts.  And it seemed to me that going up to bat was an endless cycle of middles.  I was the kind of girl who snuck ahead to read the last chapter of a novel.  When I was little I would creep into my mom’s closet to find my birthday presents early because I couldn’t stand the not-knowing. 
    No, I am not the kind of girl who goes up to bat with anything on the line.  I wasn’t then and I’m not that girl now.  But with my whole world shifting and this empty feeling inside of me, I don’t really have a choice. 
    I find Taylor by her locker and take a deep breath and pretend that my heart is not knocking.  My left hand is holding the strap of my bag so tightly that my knuckles have gone exceedingly pale.
    “Excuse me.”  I tap her on