Page 2 of The Run Home
Dad’s smile faded, and he got that look in his eye us boys had grown to recognize. He was done asking and pretty soon he’d be yelling or grounding us if we didn’t get with the program. “Because I askedyou.”
“Fine…” I grumbled, shuffling out the front door like I was walking to the gallows.
Shae swiped the volleyball off the ground in front of her garage and got ready to serve it for at least the hundredth time today. She faltered and almost dropped the ball when she saw me approaching, hands in the pockets of my jeans.
“You gotta pull your elbow way back or you’ll never have enough power to get it over the net.”
I didn’t play volleyball, but I was a pretty good baseball player and I knew enough about mechanics to know her weak attempt at a serve would never work.
Shae lifted her pert nose in the air and shoved a pair of glasses upward. “I don’t need your help, bat boy.”
I rolled my eyes. She’d taken to calling me bat boy, which was super annoying. “Sure looks like you do. You trying to make the team next year or what?”
Shae was super smart. She had skipped a grade in elementary school and was now in my grade. We’d be entering high school together and I’d heard through her mom and my mom that Shae desperately wanted to make the junior varsity volleyball team. I’d laughed when I heard the news. Shae wasn’t exactly sporty. Her bespectacled face was in the dictionary next to nerd.
“I’ll make the team, don’t worry. That’s why I’m practicing.”
God, she was stubborn. And pretty. The freckles across her nose were fading and at some point over the summer she’d grown boobs. Not that I was looking. Gross.
“Seriously, hand over the ball.” I took my hands out of my pockets and gestured for the ball.
Shae glared at me through narrowed eyes but tossed it to me. I caught it and served it to her, the ball making a perfect arc right to her platform. She bumped it back to me and I set it to her. My set wasn’t great, but she was able to hit it. We kept going like that for the next hour. I wasn’t nice to her. I made her lunge and reach and even dive a few times to keep the ball in the air, but she didn’t complain.
When I actually cheered at her perfect overhand serve, I realized I needed to get the hell away from her. I frowned, rolling the ball back to her.
“Where you going?” she called after me.
“Got more important shit to do, Fletcher.”
I couldn’t see her face as I walked back to my house, but I could just imagine the hurt expression. She wore that look a lot around me. I got a glimpse of Dad in the front window, arms folded across his chest. I rolled my eyes.
“We’ll work on hitting tomorrow,” I called over my shoulder right before I ascended the porch steps in two giant leaps and slammed the door behind me.
Those hour-long sessions every day with Shae somehow became the most fun I had all summer.
Not that I’d ever admit that to anyone.
Past (15 years old)
Shae madethe junior varsity volleyball team, but that hadn’t stopped her from being teased all freshman year. She was younger than all of us, and way fucking smarter, which pretty much made her a target for every bully at Blueball High. I watched it happen, cringing inwardly every time her eyes filled with unshed tears.
Dad’s gruff voice echoed in my head constantly.See a need, step in to help.
Thing was, I was popular in high school. Being a stud baseball player who already had college scouts watching mygames as a freshman pretty much sealed the deal. I didn’t want to see Shae get teased, but I also wasn’t sure I wanted to step in and make it a whole thing. I didn’t want her to think we were friends.
So I narrowed down the bullying to one particular guy in eleventh grade, Grady Summerlin. Grady was the worst to Shae, constantly teasing her about her glasses or ruining the grade curve in class. Which, really, if you think about it, shouldn’t he have felt like an idiot when a freshman was kicking his ass in junior-level classes? I cornered him after school one day, a plan in mind.
“Yo, Grady,” I hollered, pulling him aside from the herd of kids trying to leave school right as the bell rang. He was on the football team and bigger than me, but I was hoping my popularity would get him to go along with my plan.
He gave me a head dip and moved over to the chain-link fence by the baseball field with me. “Whatsup, man?”
“Hey, I need a favor. You know I live next to Shae Fletcher?”
Grady frowned. “Shae?”
The dumbass didn’t even know her name. Now I was pissed. “Yeah. Glasses, dark red hair? She sits in front of you in Lit?”
His face cleared and he smirked. “Oh, yeah. I know who you mean. She’s got a nice rack.”
