Free High and Inside by Jeff Rud Page A

Jake and his cousins meant at the dance about taking a long hike? He knew he was on the outside of an inside joke but he couldn’t figure it out.
    Just as he was about to nod off, it hit him. “A long hike.” Those were exactly the words Vance had used at Long Lake a couple of weeks ago. Jake and his cousins must have gone outside to smoke a joint. At the school dance! It all made sense now. That was why Marcia had come back so soon. Her dad was a drug and alcohol counselor for the school district, and she definitely wouldn’t have been comfortable with that. And it also explained why Jake and his cousins had spent the rest of the dance by themselves.
    What was Jake doing? Matt once again felt distant from his longtime friend. But he was kind of glad he hadn’t clued into what was happening with Jake and his cousins earlier that night. At least they hadn’t pressured him into going outside.
    As he drifted off to sleep, Matt couldn’t help but worry about his friend.

chapter ten
    As soon as he finished breakfast the next morning, Matt grabbed his baseball glove, cap and batting helmet and jumped on his bike for the ride to South Side Middle School. By the time he arrived at the school, Charlie had already hauled out the pitching machine and had it set up on the mound.
    â€œSorry,” Matt said as he parked his bike. “Am I late?”
    Charlie shook his head. “I just wanted to mess around with this machine a bit to make sure I had it working before you got here,” he said.
    After a few warm-up swings, Charlie called for Matt to get into the batter’s box. “I thought you did pretty well against Forshaw the other day,” he told Matt. “Let’s get to work.”
    Matt stood in the box as Charlie again fed balls into the whirring pitching machine. They were coming across the plate regularly now, about letter high and fast. But after missing the first few pitches, Matt began to connect consistently with the yellow practice balls, spraying them around the infield and nearly hitting Charlie a few times.
    â€œWe’re at seventy now,” the manager said. “Not many guys in the league are faster than this. I’ll put it up to seventy-five. That’s about as quick as you’re ever going to see it.”
    The pitches were coming slightly faster now, but still across the plate. Within a few minutes, Matt was smacking three out of four at the higher speed.
    Matt ran around the diamond collecting all of the balls he had hit and bringing them back to Charlie. As Matt gathered the balls, Charlie was tinkering with the pitching machine. “Okay, Matt,” he said. “We’ll try one more bag, but I’m mixing it up this time.”
    Matt returned to the batter’s box. He wondered what, exactly, Charlie meant by “mixing it up.”
    The first pitch was another chest-high fastball. Matt swung confidently, poking it into right field. That was a serious hit because these softer practice balls didn’t travel nearly as far as a real baseball.
    Charlie dropped the next ball into the machine. It was high and inside. Matt had to duck to get out of the way. “What are you doing, Charlie?” he yelled. “Trying to go for my head?”
    Charlie grinned and chuckled from behind the machine. “You want to learn how to stand in there, don’t you?” he said. “This is how you do it. By doing it.”
    Matt realized Charlie was right. How did this kid, who couldn’t even run, know so much about baseball? He settled back into the box and took a practice cut. The next pitch was outside. He left that one alone. The next was down the middle, and he swung and missed. The following two were inside, forcing him to duck out of the way.
    By the time they had gone through the fifty practice balls, Matt was tired from swinging and ducking and bobbing. But Charlie had a satisfied look on his face. “You just did fifty