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  Liam was the Pythons leadoff batter for the bottom of the fourth inning. He took a few practice swings to warm up his muscles while the Cobras warmed up a new pitcher. As he did, he checked the position of the outfielders. None of them had shifted back even a step.

  But why would they? he thought. I walked the only other time at bat this game. They’ve never seen me hit before. I’m the new kid.

  He moved into the batter’s box and hefted the bat.

  Well, Cobras, time to get to know me!

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  After Cleanup Day, Carter and Ash biked home together.

  “You want to hit the batting cages at the Diamond Champs?” Ash asked. “I’ll pay.”

  The Diamond Champs was an indoor baseball facility that Ash’s mother had recently renovated. It boasted brand-new pitching machines in the batting cages, a huge indoor turf field, and well-maintained pitching tunnels. Since its grand opening, Carter had spent a lot of time there—and money.

  Carter laughed. “You mean your mom will pay.”

  “No, I’ve got money.” Ash patted his pocket.

  Carter was tempted but shook his head. “Thanks anyway, but Lucky Boy’s been cooped up in the house all day. I want to take him for a long walk before dinner.”

  Lucky Boy was Carter’s black-and-tan dog. He’d earned his name because he’d survived being hit by a car. Carter felt just as lucky, though; he’d rescued the little dog and now had a faithful four-footed companion.

  “Going up into the woods?”

  Ash’s tone was casual, but Carter wasn’t fooled. Ash suspected he was hiding something in the forest behind their houses. He was right.

  Years ago, Carter and Liam had discovered a natural rock shelter deep in the woods. Almost completely hidden from view from the faint trail that snaked through the woods, it was the perfect hideout. No one but the cousins knew about it—and when he found out the McGraths were moving, Carter had promised Liam to keep it that way.

  “Nah,” Carter said to Ash. “I never go up there this time of year. Too muddy.”

  They pedaled in silence for a little ways. Then Ash said, “Hey, Carter, you ever play on a team with a girl before?”

  Carter shook his head. “Have you?”

  “Yeah. It wasn’t good.”

  “Why not?” Carter asked curiously.

  “She was always fussing with her hair. She chased butterflies instead of fly balls. If the ball came at her, she ducked.” He shook his head in disgust. “The only thing she could do was hit the ball off the tee and—”

  Carter burst out laughing. “Hang on! This was in Tee Ball? Ash, half the kids I played with back then were like that girl. Heck, I was like that girl at first!”

  “I wasn’t.” Ash’s voice was hard. Carter stopped laughing. “When I played, I played to win. Still do. Don’t you?”

  Carter chewed on his lower lip. He knew Ash was competitive. He was, too. But sometimes Ash was so intense that he made Carter uncomfortable. Like now.

  The boys pulled onto their road a few minutes later. Ash waved good-bye and continued on to his house a short distance away. Carter stashed his bike in the garage and hurried into his kitchen for a snack. Lucky Boy came hurtling down the hall toward him.

  “One sec, boy,” Carter said, laughing. He made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, scrawled a note for his parents, and then clipped Lucky Boy’s leash to his collar. “Walk time!”

  Half an hour and several fire hydrants later, they returned home to the smell of sautéed garlic and other delicious odors. Carter’s mother, her brown hair whisked up in a messy bun, was preparing supper in the kitchen.

  “Mmm, chicken and veggies,” Carter said appreciatively, lifting a lid to peek at the meal. “Is there rice, too, and when do we eat?”

  “Yes and soon,” she assured him. “Now scoot.”

  Knowing “soon” usually meant ten minutes, Carter decided to do a little research. He went to his room, fired up his laptop, and typed knuckleball into his Internet search engine.

  A long list of websites popped up immediately. Carter chose one that offered advice on throwing the pitch.

  The website suggested starting with the thumb and pinky gripping the ball. The three other fingers curled in so their tips dug into the surface. Carter grabbed a baseball off his shelf. A southpaw, he held it in his left hand and moved his fingers into the grip as described.

  That seems easy enough, he thought. He checked a few other websites, experimenting with holding the ball at the laces and at the smooth part. He read with interest that some people said that throwing the knuckleball hard made it less effective and that of all the pitches, it was one of the trickiest for a catcher to handle.

  Good thing Ash will be coming to the pitching clinic, he thought.

  The best thing about the knuckleball, or floater, as it was sometimes called, was its bizarre motion. One site said the ball looked as if it were floating as it flew toward the plate.

  That should make things interesting for batters, he thought with a grin. He wanted to try it out immediately. But he knew better. If I’m going to learn it, I’ve got to convince Mr. Delaney to teach it to me!

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  Liam gripped the handle of the bat tightly and then took a deep breath and relaxed. He had decided to see what the new Cobras hurler had in his arsenal before he swung. So he let the first pitch, a fastball that didn’t look all that fast, go by.

  “Strike one!”

  The next pitch looked as if it were going to fly wide. Liam chose not to swing at that one, either, certain that it was a ball.

  “Strike two!” the umpire cried.

  Liam frowned slightly at the call, but he didn’t argue. He wanted the umpire on his side, after all.

  “That’s right! Just wait for one you think you can hit!” someone from the stands shouted.

  Liam stepped out of the box and looked toward the bleachers. Phillip was staring right at him, arms crossed and a knowing smile on his face. Had he been the one to yell? Liam didn’t know for sure.

  Who else could it have been, though? he thought.

  He knocked the dirt from his cleats, hefted the bat, and got back into his stance.

  The third pitch was just like the first two. This time, he swung. Pow! The ball flew into the gap between center and right field. As the outfielders scrambled to pick it up, Liam sprinted to first.

  “Keep going!” the first-base coach yelled, wheeling his arm frantically.

  Liam didn’t hesitate. He raced on to second, touched that bag with a firm step, too, and then, with a burst of speed, beat the throw to third. That’s where he stopped, breathing hard and smiling.

  “Whoa, nice blast, man!”

  Liam grinned over his shoulder. Spencer was now the third-base coach, having been replaced by Scott Hoffmann on the mound.

  “Thanks,” Liam replied.

  “I didn’t know you could hit like that,” Spencer continued. “I thought—”

  Whatever else Spencer was about to say was cut off by the sharp crack of a bat. Sean had rapped out a low fly ball just inside the right field foul line.

  The Cobras right fielder raced over, glove outstretched. Liam tensed, waiting to see if he made the catch. If the ball landed in the outfielder’s glove, then he would stay put at third and hope that Jay Mendoza could hit him home.

  The Cobra dove under the ball in time. Sean was out. Liam started to relax when—

  “Go, Liam! Go!” Spencer screamed.

  Liam didn’t think; he just took off like a bullet shot from a gun. Arms pumping, legs churning, he sprinted toward home as fast as he could. Midway there, he glanced up.

  The Cobras catcher was on his feet, expecting a play at the plate. Liam steeled himself for a slide. But before he even could think about hitting the dirt—thud! The ball landed inside the catcher’s mitt!

  Liam screeched to a halt and reversed direction back to third.

 
Thud! The catcher hurled the ball to the third baseman. The third baseman advanced toward Liam, who quickly backpedaled. Thud! The ball flew back to the catcher. Liam was caught in a rundown!

  Every Python was on his feet now, yelling instructions. Liam blocked them out. All that mattered was reaching base safely. Third, home, he didn’t care which!

  The catcher and third baseman quickly closed in. Adrenaline raced through Liam’s veins. Breathing hard, he darted back and forth, staying just out of reach. Then suddenly, the catcher, ball in glove, lunged at him. Liam whirled out of the way. With a desperate twist, he tried to skirt around the third baseman to the bag.

  He might have made it, too, if he hadn’t lost his footing. Instead of sailing to the base, he landed in the dirt just as the catcher tossed the ball to his teammate. Whap! The third baseman’s glove smacked him in the side.

  “Yer out!” the umpire cried.

  The Pythons groaned as one. Liam pushed himself to his feet, stood, and dusted off his uniform. As he moved toward the dugout, he glanced at the bleachers.

  To get on the All-Star team, he had to earn votes from players, coaches, and members of the Little League board. He’d be going up against more than eighty other players. And that was the problem: He was still the new kid. People didn’t know who he was—or worse, knew him as the player who struck out in the World Series.

  If I’m going to get enough votes to be an All-Star, I have to do something to stand out from the crowd, something that will erase that World Series whiff from everyone’s memories, he thought. But what?

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  Sunday night at nine o’clock, Carter sat at his desk reading a tattered paperback. Every so often he glanced at his laptop. He was waiting for Liam to get online so they could video-chat. Finally, he heard the alert signal. He put his book aside and tapped a key to accept Liam’s call.

  A moment later, Liam’s image came into focus. Carter noted that his cousin’s brown hair was growing out of its crew cut length and that his face had a tan from the California sunshine. Other than that, he was the same old Liam.

  “ ’Bout time, doofus,” he grumbled good-naturedly.

  “Hey, a guy’s gotta eat!” Liam made a face. “Mom tried to hide spinach in the lasagna again. But I picked it out before I ate any.”

  “Not all of it,” Carter said, “unless that’s mold between your front teeth. Seriously, how can you not feel that? It’s like a tree between your teeth.”

  “Hang on.” Liam disappeared from the screen. When he returned, he had a long string of dental floss hanging out of his mouth. “Better?” he said with a clownish grin.

  “You’re a treasure,” Carter said dryly. “In fact, someone ought to bury you.”

  Liam pulled the floss free and tossed it away—in a trash can, Carter sincerely hoped, but just as sincerely doubted. He’d been in Liam’s old bedroom enough times to know better.

  Carter filled him in on Cleanup Day and the new pitch he hoped to learn. “Oh, and we got a new teammate named Rachel, who—”

  Liam let out a guffaw. “First a guy named Ashley and now another one called Rachel?”

  “First of all, he goes by Ash,” Carter said, “and second, Rachel is a girl.”

  “Oh!” Liam looked surprised, then curious. “Any problem with that?”

  “Not from me.” He didn’t add that Ash wasn’t too keen about her. He’d learned not to say much to Liam about Ash, actually. Liam had never met the Hawks catcher, but that didn’t stop him from being jealous of him. Carter understood why his cousin felt that way—Ash had replaced him on the team and lived in his old house, after all—but he hoped Liam would accept the situation soon. Steering around the subject of Ash made for awkward conversation sometimes.

  “Okay then, enough about you. Time to talk about me,” Liam said. “I have a question.”

  Carter tipped back in his chair, one foot resting on his desktop and the other on the floor keeping him balanced. “Shoot.”

  “Bang. My question is, how do I get people to vote for me at All-Star time if they don’t know who I am?”

  Before Carter could puzzle out what Liam meant, a newcomer joined the conversation.

  “Woof!” Lucky Boy burst into the room and leaped into his lap. Carter nearly flipped over backward in his chair. As he flailed his arms to regain his balance, he knocked his book to the floor.

  “Lucky Boy, you made me lose my place.” He picked up the book and thumbed through the pages. “Sorry, can you say that again?”

  But instead of repeating his question, Liam pointed at the book. “Hey, is that what I think it is?”

  Carter flipped the book over so Liam could see the title on the cover. “Yep!”

  The book was one of his and Liam’s favorites. The story was about a young baseball player who meets a mysterious man only he can see. Soon after that meeting, the boy begins hitting home runs every single time he comes to bat. Fame and glory soon follow. Then the man disappears—and with him, the boy’s amazing talent. Yet the boy retains something he didn’t have before: confidence.

  The tattered volume in Carter’s hand had once belonged to Liam’s father. Now the boys shared it. Their mothers had offered to buy them each their own new copy, but they preferred to take turns rereading the original. Right now, Liam seemed fascinated by the tattered volume.

  “Dude, stop staring at the book,” Carter said. “You’re creeping me out.”

  Liam looked up, his eyes shining with excitement. “That’s it!”

  “What’s it?”

  “That book’s the answer!”

  “What was the question?!”

  Liam explained. “I’m the new kid in my league, right? People barely know me. So who’s going to vote for me at All-Star time? No one. Unless”—he stabbed a finger at the screen—“instead of the new kid, I become the home run kid! Everyone loves home runs. Home runs help win games. They inspire other players, boost morale, give runners who might be left on base the chance to cross home plate. Homers pull in spectators who yell and cheer and that makes players work even harder. And then there’s the whole Phillip thing. Can you imagine the look on his face if—no, when—I claim the home run title?” He sat back at last, laced his fingers behind his head, and grinned. “The way I see it, it’s the perfect solution.”

  Carter bit his lip. He knew what Liam said about home runs was perfectly true. He also knew that when his cousin set his mind to something, nothing anyone said or did could change it. Sometimes his grand visions turned into reality. Last year, for instance, he’d been sure their All-Star team would make it to Williamsport, and he’d been right. But sometimes his plans didn’t work out the way he hoped. Carter had a jagged pink scar on his calf, courtesy of a fall from a homemade zip-line Liam had built one summer.

  Carter didn’t want to put a damper on Liam’s enthusiasm for his home run quest, but he saw a huge flaw in his plan.

  “How?” he asked.

  “How what?”

  “How are you going to go from someone who hasn’t hit a homer yet this season to someone who’s hitting them all the time?”

  He thought Liam might get exasperated with him then. But Liam just puffed out his chest and laughed. “Dork, it’s me. I’ll make it work,” he said confidently. “I always do!”

  Carter lifted his leg in front of the camera and pointed to the scar on his calf. “Always?”

  Liam grinned. “Well, almost always.”

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  Liam was so pumped about his idea that he wanted to practice his hitting right away. So after ending his chat session with Carter, he ran downstairs to find someone to pitch to him.

  “Sorry, Liam, but I have to finish this presentation for tomorrow,” his father said, peering at him over his reading glasses.

  “Well, can you give me an extra twenty bucks so I can go to the batting cages then?”

  “Sure.”

  “Really?” Liam brightened.
He hadn’t expected his father to agree. Usually, when he asked for money beyond his allowance, there was a catch.

  “I’ll be happy to give you the money,” his father said. “Right after your mother tells me you’ve done twenty dollars’ worth of extra chores.”

  Liam’s face fell. “I should’ve known,” he grumbled.

  His mother was out shopping, so he couldn’t ask her for money or to pitch to him. That left…

  “Tell me why, exactly, I would do this?” his sister, Melanie, asked when he cornered her in the kitchen.

  “Because you love your little brother and would do anything for him?”

  She flipped her long black hair over her shoulder and looked at him speculatively. “Yeah, that’s not it.”

  Liam handed her a bag of Wiffle balls and guided her out the door to the backyard. “Because after we’re done here, I’ll help you learn your lines for your audition.”

  Sixteen-year-old Melanie was an aspiring actress. She loved acting, singing, and dancing as much as Liam loved hitting, catching, and running. Moving to California, movie capital of the world, had been her dream come true. Her parents supported that dream and had allowed her to enroll in a private high school that focused on the arts.

  Liam’s new school was private, too. Much as he hated wearing the school uniform—what boy actually likes wearing a tie?—he was grateful to have ended up there, because Rodney and Sean went to the same school.

  Liam had first met the Driscoll brothers at the Little League tryouts. They had introduced themselves as twins. Liam had stared in amazement, for Rodney was a lanky, dark-skinned boy with tight black curls whereas Sean was freckled and fair. After a big laugh, they told Liam the truth: They were both adopted, and by some freak coincidence, they shared the exact same birthday.

  Liam had liked them from the start. He liked them even more when he discovered they knew about his history with Phillip DiMaggio but had chosen to treat it as just that: history.

  “We were foster kids before Dad adopted us,” they revealed once. “He gave us a fresh start. We figure everyone should get one if they want.”