Free Max Swings for the Fences by Anne Ursu Page B

girls but couldn’t read them.
    â€œBaseball?” he said. “It’s February! There’s snow on the ground!” There. That was a good, noncommittal answer.
    â€œSo?” Logan asked, looking at him as if he’d said fish sticks were best when made out of people.
    â€œThe 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.”
    â€œThat’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.”
    â€œWell, um, I don’t really play baseball.”
    No one seemed to know what to say to that. Everyone suddenly looked down at their trays.
    â€œI 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?”
    â€œTennis. 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.
    â€œAnyway,” 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.
    â€œRight!” Logan said, laughing. “See you, Serena.”
    He left. Max looked at the two girls, who were distinctly not looking at him.
    â€œSerena’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.
    â€œSo,” 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?
    â€œUm, 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.
    â€œKnow 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