Bridge of Scarlet Leaves. Kristina McMorris

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СКАЧАТЬ is what?”

      She rolled her eyes, making him wish he’d just played along. “You know, TJ, you’re about as good at apologizing as you are at listenin’.” She continued into the ballpark, collecting rocks from the lumpy dirt.

      TJ slogged behind. By the light of the moon, he took inventory of the place he hadn’t visited in at least a decade. The park was even more run-down than he remembered, and smaller. A lot smaller. When the new ball field had opened several blocks away, complete with kelly-green grass and shiny cages and splinter-less benches, kids had immediately shunned the old hangout. It was a toy they’d outgrown and dumped in a dusty attic.

      Only now did TJ detect a sadness etched like wrinkles in the sandlot’s shadows.

      “Right over there.” Jo pointed out a set of sagging bleachers. “That’s where I carved my initials, front row on the left. My own VIP seat. Every weekend Pop and I would come here and watch my brothers play. I tell ya, we missed a heap of Sunday Masses, but never a Saturday game.” She jiggled the rocks in her hand as if seasoned at throwing dice. Even TJ would think twice before going up against her in back-alley craps. “One day the coach got so tired of me nagging about wanting to hit, he put me in. Thought it would shut me up.”

      “Well, obviously that didn’t work.”

      Without warning, she flung a pebble that TJ barely dodged.

      “And that, buster, was with my left arm.”

      TJ shook his head. A quiet laugh shot from his mouth as he dared to follow her.

      On the sorry excuse of a mound, level as the Sierra Madres, Jo planted her loafer-clad feet. A pitcher’s stance. She transferred the rocks, save for one, into her coat pocket. With her right hand, she drew back and slung the stone at her target, the lid of a soup can dangling from the batter’s cage. Plunk. The tin rattled against the warped and rusted fence.

      Not bad. For a girl.

      “So, how’d you make out?” he asked. “Up at bat?”

      “Walked,” she said with disdain. “A beanball to the leg.” She flipped her cap backward with a sharp tug and set her shoulders. Sent out another nugget. Plunk. “My brother Otis was pitching. Told his buddies he wanted to teach me a lesson, which was baloney. He was terrified of his little sister scoring a home run off him.” She wound up and threw at the lid again, as hard as her expression. Another bull’s-eye. Three for three. Without daylight.

      TJ tried to look unimpressed. “How long ago all this happen?”

      “I dunno. Eight, maybe nine years back.”

      A smirk stretched his lips. “And . . . you’re still holding a grudge?”

      She pondered this briefly, rubbing a fourth stone with her thumb. “Irish blood,” she concluded. “Forgiving wasn’t exactly passed down by our ancestors.”

      TJ, too, had a dash of Irish mixed into his hodgepodge of European descent. Perhaps this explained his shallow well of forgiveness. He dreaded to think what other traits he’d inherited from his father.

      Averting the thought, he focused on the road that had delivered them there. “I gotta get back.”

      “No,” Jo said.

      He turned to her. “No?”

      “Not till I show you why I brought you here.” She tossed her rock aside and sat on the mound. Then she slapped the dirt beside her twice, peering at him expectantly.

      He scrunched his face. “Um, yeah. As nice as it would be to hang out and tell ghost stories, I do need to get some studying done.” His future at the university sadly depended on it.

      “Two minutes and we’ll go.”

      “Jo, I really need—”

      “Would you stop your moanin’ and take a load off?”

      Clearly arguing would get him nowhere. And he couldn’t very well leave a girl, no matter how self-reliant, alone at night in a deserted park. Safety aside, it was just plain rude.

      “All right,” he muttered, “but make it quick.” He took a seat on the packed slope.

      “That wasn’t so hard now, was it? Now, lie back.”

      “What?”

      She groaned at him. “Just do it.”

      Concerned by her intentions, he didn’t move. The two of them had never really hit it off, but if any other girl had invited him to cozy up like this, he’d know where it was leading.

      “Don’t flatter yourself,” she spat as if reading his thoughts. Then she lay back, head on her hands, convincing him to recline.

      The coolness of the ground soaked through his clothing, sparking a shudder. “Now what?”

      “Relax.” She took a leisurely breath. “And look up.”

      He cushioned his neck with his fist and dragged his gaze toward the sky. The lens of his vision adjusted, intensifying the spray of white specks. Clear as salt crystals on an endless black table. Were the stars tonight brighter than usual? Or had it simply been that long since he’d paid notice?

      Within seconds, everything else faded away. He was suspended in space, floating among those specks like he’d dreamed of as a kid. He was an adventurer visiting other galaxies, a fearless explorer. There were no responsibilities anchoring him in place. And for the first time since he could remember, TJ felt free.

      “This is what I wanted to show you.” Jo’s voice, like gravity, yanked him back to earth. Again, he lay in the old ballpark. “My pop,” she went on, “he knew everything about the stars. Was a big hobby for him. He’s the one who taught me about constellations making up pictures and whatnot.”

      “Yeah?” TJ said. “Like what?”

      She gave him a skeptical side-glance. Seeming satisfied by his sincerity, she raised her arm and pointed. “You see those three running up and down in a row?” She waited for him to respond.

      “I see ’em.”

      “Well, they’re the belt hanging on Orion, the hunter. And next to it, right there, are three more dots that make the line of his sword.” She picked up speed while motioning from one area to the next. “Above him is Taurus, that’s the bull he’s fighting, and on the left are his guard dogs. The lower one is Canis Major, and the star at the top of it is Sirius. That’s the brightest star in the night sky. Believe it or not, it’s almost twice as bright as the next brightest star. . . .” Not until she trailed off and cut to his gaze did he realize he was staring at her. “Swell.” She looked away. “Now you think I’m a nut job.”

      “Actually, I was thinking . . .” He was thinking that he’d never noticed what a pretty face she had. Had a naturalness about her. She wasn’t one for wearing makeup, and he sort of liked that—though he wasn’t about to say it. “I was wondering how you remember so much about all of them. The constellations, I mean.”

      “Oh. Well. I don’t remember them all. СКАЧАТЬ