Free Boy Toy by Barry Lyga

nurse. On the way here, I sort of decided that I was coming for one reason and one reason only—to apologize. To look her in the eye and say, in no uncertain terms, that I'm sorry for what I did all those years ago. But now she's got me toting baseball gear and looking at statues.
    But I figure it's her game and her rules. For now, at least.
    "Not really, Rache." I take a good long look at the statue. It's just a chunk of stone. Marble, maybe. I don't know. I've walked past it a million times.
    "You ever read the plaque?"
    "Just her name."
    She sighs and offers me an exasperated frown. "God, Josh. How many times have you walked through this park or played in this park, and you never wondered about the woman they named it after?"
    "I just said I read her name!"
    "Read the rest of it."
    So I read it:
Dedicated and built in her name by the man who gave her life and the man who gave her death.
    "Whoa!"
    Rachel smiles smugly. "See?"
    "What does
that
mean?"
    "What do you
think
it means?"
    "I don't know." I think about it for a second. "I mean, the 'man who gave her life' would have to be her father, right?"
    She nods. "Yeah, that's what I always figured."
    "But the 'man who gave her death'...Does that mean the same guy? Or is it another guy?"
    Rachel shrugs. "I don't know. There was a whole big story about it when they first built it, but there was, y'know, another story that sort of overshadowed it at the time."
    My face burns. It's now or never.
    "Rachel, look, this isn't easy for me..."
    She cocks her head to one side like a curious dog.
    "Rachel, I'm just gonna say it." My heart, interestingly, has decided to switch into calm mode, reliably thudding along and doing little else. My pulse can't be more than seventy-five bpm. I resist the urge to check.
    "I'm sorry, Rache." As soon as the words are out, my heart starts up, kicking up a storm, blasting out a panic serenade. I can barely hear myself speak for the rushing thrum of blood in my ears. "I'm so sorry. I'm just so, so sorry." I can't stop saying it, and I can't even summon up any sort of variation on the theme. I just keep blabbing "I'm sorry" over and over again, like some kind of deranged parrot.
    She regards me, impassive, saying nothing, not even moving until I somehow ramble to a stop in the middle of the word "sorry," like a car drifting onto sand.
    "You done?" she asks.
    I'm out of breath. My heart has settled down, but my lungs are protesting. She just stares at me.
    "Yeah." I gasp it, as though I'm rounding third and heading for home and the ball is sailing
right overhead
and the catcher looks
really
confident.
    She slams the ball into her glove. "Good. Let's go."

    The SAMMPark baseball diamond isn't lit at night unless there's an official game and someone's paying for the juice, but it's a clear night and the moon and the stars and the big billboard that faces the highway offer plenty of light.
    "Let's warm up." Rachel jogs out to the mound, spins around, and tosses the ball to me at the plate, overhand. I snag it with my glove—not. What
really
happens is that I snap at it with the glove and knock it out of the air, missing my chance to catch it because I misjudged its size.
    "Good catch," she calls out.
    If Zik made a comment like that, I would know he was just kidding and I would probably call him a douchebag, but I don't know if she's just busting on me or being mean, so I say nothing as I retrieve the ball and toss it back to her, adding a little more heat than is strictly necessary. She catches it effortlessly, barely looking at it, her glove darting out to one side.
    She fires it back, overhand again, and
    I don't know why I'm so surprised by that—they only
pitch
underhanded in softball. For fielding and everything else, it's just like in baseball, except the ball's the size of a goddamn grapefruit.
    I get used to it quickly and manage to keep my glove open wide enough to avoid embarrassing myself further. She starts tossing some deliberately off to