Free Curveball : The Year I Lost My Grip (9780545393119) by Jordan Sonnenblick

would call me if he learned the truth: “Peter Friedman … Uh, Some Kid with a Camera”? Or even worse, “Peter … Uh, Your Name Is Peter, Right?”
    One Saturday, I went to Angelika’s house so she could redo my portrait shots. Of course, I had tormented myself over what to wear, until I just gave up and threw on jeans and a New York Yankees T-shirt over a white long-sleeved Under Armour — which was basically my default outfit anyway. I met her mom, who had this smirk on her face the whole time, like Oh, you’re the boy that takes forty random pictures of my daughter, huh? Nice T-shirt, Stalker Boy!
    By the time I had smiled and bluffed my way through the maternal interview, I realized it had been a mistake to wear the Under Armour, because I was sweating bullets. AND I couldn’t take it off,because then my jacked-up elbow would be on full photographic display.
    Angelika had set up a little studio area in the dining room, with a gray backdrop pinned to the wall, and a wooden chair next to a row of north-facing windows. I sat in the chair, and even without any direct sunlight, I was cooking. Angelika sat on a stool about ten feet away, and picked up her camera. Then she put it down again, and said, “Hey, Pete, I’ve thought a lot about what was wrong with the shots we got last time, and I think I have it. You know how Mr. Marsh said I needed to come up with a concept?”
    Angelika picked up a brown paper lunch bag that had been next to the stool, and looked away from me. Obviously, she was going to surprise me with something from the bag. I tried to work out what could be in there — Shades? Hair gel? A really, really tiny leather jacket? None of those things would be weird enough to make her break eye contact, though. As she so often did, Angelika had once again made me really curious and just a tad terrified at the same time.
    â€œUh, yeah,” I said.
    â€œWell, I think the problem is that I don’t know what my concept is, because I don’t know you.”
    â€œWhat do you mean? You’ve been to my house. We have class together every day. We’re coeditors and everything.”
    She looked up from the bag, right into my eyes. “And you take lots of pictures of me when I’m not looking.”
    Whoa. I’d been wondering for weeks whether she was ever going to bring that up. Looked like this was my lucky day!
    If you’ve noticed so far that I had been doing a lot of blushing and sweating in my ninth-grade year, you haven’t seen anything compared to what was happening to me in that moment of Under Armoured bustedness. Plus, now I added stammering to my list of socially awkward panic symptoms. “Uh, I, um, I was just checking out the — the — the white balance setting on the camera. So I …”
    Wow, Angelika’s smirk looked remarkably like her mom’s. “It’s OK, Pete. I like it that you wanted to take pictures of me. I like you .”
    Good God.
    â€œBut,” she continued, “I still don’t know anything about you. And no offense, but you don’t really, um, express your feelings much.”
    Sure I do , I thought. I express my feelings by slowly drowning in my own undergarments.
    â€œSo I went to your friend Adam.”
    Double good God. Adam is AJ’s real name. I could only imagine what AJ might have told her about me.
    â€œAnd I asked him for some ideas.”
    â€œIdeas about what?”
    â€œIdeas for objects I could pose you with. Objects that are important to you.”
    Triple good God. What had he suggested: My old Rescue Heroes action figures? My childhood Buzz Lightyear night-light? A stack of dirty magazines? I was going to have to kill him.
    She reached into the brown paper bag and pulled out something worse than all of those. I’ll give you a hint: It was round and white, with curves of red stitching, and said OFFICIAL YOUTH TOURNAMENT APPROVED on the