B00BSH8JUC EBOK Page 4

  “It’s okay, Coach. That’s all I was going to do, anyway.”

  The umpire probably should have thumbed Shamrock out of the game, but she was as awestruck as everyone else. Randie didn’t protest either. It wasn’t her way. She believed in winning the game yourself, not with appeals to officials.

  Anyway, Shamrock’s perfect game was foiled. As I jogged down the line, my teammates stood and clapped, and I felt terrific. It’s not every day you get applauded for being hit by a pitch.

  After a moment, the Maycomb players gave Shamrock a hand too. She didn’t acknowledge it. She just stood out there in whatever zone she was in and waited for the next batter. She still had two outs to go.

  Vanessa Chamberlain, our center fielder, was next up. I took a long lead off first base. Now that the spell was broken, I intended to spoil Shamrock’s shutout, too, if I could.

  Vanessa had the same thing in mind. She swung at the first pitch and sent a nifty liner back up the middle. I took off at contact, only to see Shamrock spear the ball on the fly at her shoetops. I tried to scramble back to base, but my wheels spun under me on the dirt, and I went down at full extension. Shamrock calmly threw to first to double me off, and the game was over.

  The Maycomb players shrieked and jumped and scampered onto the field for a celebration. They mobbed Shamrock. Even if she hadn’t given them a perfect game, she had delivered a no-hitter. I got up slowly from the ground, brushed dirt off my uniform and tasted dust in my throat.

  Maycomb finally settled down enough for the traditional, sportsmanlike team handshakes. I lined up at the end of my team and patted palms down the line, the way we were supposed to.

  Shamrock was the last player on their side. I watched her coming, wondering what she would do. She did not pass by. Instead, she gave me a real handshake and said, “Hey, Kotter, can I buy you a Coke?”

  I smiled in spite of myself. “Sure.”

  “OK. You know where the campus snack bar is—in that red brick building behind the dining hall? Put your gear away and meet me there in fifteen minutes.”

  My heart was pounding as I entered the snack bar. I was still in my dirt-stained uniform, but I had my cap tipped at a cocky angle, as though Hillsboro had won the game. The snack bar was closed for the summer, but there was a row of vending machines for the true snackaholics. It was cool and dark inside.

  Shamrock was already there, waiting in the otherwise deserted building. She was still in her uniform, too. She dug change out of her pocket when she saw me and began dropping coins into the soda machine. They clanked loudly in the quiet, and the cans rolled noisily down the chute.

  She handed me a Coke, and we popped the tops and sipped. I wondered whether she was feeling as awkward and nervous as I was.

  “You really put it to us,” I said. “That was a hell of a pitching performance.”

  “Well, you sure tried to put it to me, hitting that smash up the middle.”

  “I said I would, didn’t I?”

  “And I said I’d strike you out.”

  “Striking me out is one thing. I can’t believe you threw at me. You gave up a perfect game to drill me.”

  “I thought you’d probably bail out.”

  “But you didn’t know for sure.”

  “True. I thought about that. Then I figured I might have the chance for another perfect game someday, but I’d probably never pitch to you again. I had to go for it.”

  “You could have been tossed out of the game.”

  “I didn’t care. Anyway,” she shrugged, “every batter in this tournament is going to know what I did, and they’ll all be thinking about it when they come up to the plate. I’m going to have an easy week.”

  I shook my head. “You’re something else.”

  “Well, you’re something else yourself.”

  By now I was trembling. Things were happening inside me that I’d never felt before. I knew I wanted this to go on, but I didn’t know how to make it happen. All I could do was hope that Shamrock did.

  “Listen, Kotter, you feel like going for a walk? There’s a stream at the back of the school property and a little shady path beside it. It’s real nice. You want me to show you?”

  “Sure.”

  We took the walk. We had lunch together. We watched a couple of the other tournament games in the afternoon, sitting side by side and talking softball. It didn’t exactly go unnoticed. By the time I joined my teammates for dinner, they were all over me.

  “Kotter, what are you doing, fraternizing with the enemy?” Vanessa asked.

  “How could you—after she deliberately threw at you?” Bonita demanded.

  I shrugged. “She’s a lot nicer off the field.”

  “We could be really mad at you,” Estelle said, “except you’re the one who broke up her perfect game.”

  “The hard way,” Amanda added.

  That was that. I continued to see Shamrock as the tournament went on. She kept mowing through the opposition, and eventually she pitched Maycomb to the championship. Meanwhile, the pressure was off us after losing that first game. We played solid ball the rest of the way and wound up coming in third. Randie was very proud of us and promised that next year, with Shamrock ineligible to play, we could win it all ourselves.

  The night before the tournament ended, Shamrock stopped me after dinner. There were easy smiles between us now, but I thought I detected a little hesitation in her. “Hey, Kotter,” she said, her voice too low for anyone else to hear, “meet me in ten minutes at the snack bar, okay?”

  The building was as dark and cool and deserted as when we first met there. Shamrock lounged at the vending machines, her body slouched in the posture of a street tough. She gave me a cool once-over, and I felt my muscles tightening. There was something in this meeting that told me I would never be the same again.

  I waited for her to speak. When she did, her voice was rough and husky, as though she didn’t want to give anything away. “Kotter, it’s been a great week. I’m going to miss you.”

  “Hell, Shamrock, I’m going to miss you too. It’s been fun.”

  She shocked me by taking my hand. “We could—We could—You know what I mean?”

  I wanted to answer her, but there was electricity shooting from her fingers into my palm and spreading everywhere, and I couldn’t talk. The most I could do was twitch, so I twitched my hand until it squeezed hers back, and then somehow I managed to nod my head yes.

  “These last few days, it’s all I’ve been able to think about,” she whispered.

  “I—I’ve never done this before.”

  “It’s all right. I have.”

  “A—a lot?”

  “No, just once. At a softball camp last summer. With a college student who was umpiring.”

  “Where can we go?”

  “We can’t go to my room. My coach checks on us.”

  I thought a moment, then took the plunge. “We can go to my room. Coach Wilkes never checks on us.”

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  “No one should be around yet. It’s too early. We should be able to sneak in without being seen.”

  No one bothered us as we walked to my dormitory. The tournament sponsors provided plenty of nighttime activities—movies, ping pong, video games, swimming, volleyball under the lights, music and nonstop snacks in the dining hall—and the dormitory was empty. We slipped into my room unnoticed. I wished briefly that the doors had locks on them, but I wasn’t worried.

  We sat on my bed. Shamrock took my hand, and I was embarrassed that my palm was sweaty. “Are you scared?” she asked.

  “Not scared exactly. Just—I don’t know how to do anything.”

  “It’s okay. That’s the way I felt last summer. Nature will take over, believe me.” She kissed me softly on the cheek, and I felt my body start to hum in all the right places. She kissed me gently on the lips, and things weren’t just humming anymore. Now it was a whole choir of angels belting away at the “Hallelujah Chorus.”


  So this was kissing. I marveled at how it could take a hard-nosed pitcher and turn her into enchantment and mystery. I tried to focus on the sensation of her lips against mine, but the rest of me kept getting in there, too. It was as much a part of these kisses as our mouths, crushing eagerly together.

  I wrapped an arm around her middle. She pulled away and smiled and pressed my arm more tightly against her. “See?” she murmured. “I told you nature would tell you what to do.”

  Now as we kissed, we embraced, and in my mind I cursed the clothing that kept skin away from skin. I wanted nothing in between us, and at the same time I wanted this exquisite agony of desire to last forever. I wanted everything to hurry up, and I also wanted it to slow down so every single moment would be special. Romance had a way of making a mockery of time.

  I was aware in a vague sort of way of activity in the hallway as my teammates filtered back to their rooms. I was much more focused on Shamrock’s hand, which had crept under my shirt. Deft pitcher’s fingers unhooked my bra and then lightly stroked my breasts. I prayed for her to find my nipples, but she was patiently exploring the curves and hollows of my chest, making me wait in sweet delirium.

  “You’re torturing me,” I moaned, taking my hand and trying to push hers where I wanted it to go, but she resisted.

  “It’s your first time. It should last so you’ll remember it,” she said, and I gave in and let her lead at her own damnable pace.

  Finally she got to my nipples. I thought they were the center of the universe—until Shamrock took advantage of my distraction to slip her tongue into my mouth. My body exploded into a kaleidoscope of pleasures. I squirmed and pressed against her and became infused with the holy truth that I would die if she didn’t put her hand where it counted.

  “Please, Shamrock, please,” I begged, but she only laughed. Her hands lingered on my breasts and nipples, now taut and demanding.

  Another millennium passed, and then Shamrock said, “Let’s take our clothes off.”

  We did, discarding them in a heap on the floor. Shamrock looked at me approvingly, her eyes roaming boldly, until a puzzled look came into them. “What happened to your—Oh, shit. That’s where I plunked you, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  She touched the ugly bruise gingerly and then kissed it with great care. “I can make it up to you,” she promised.

  I lay in the bed on my back, and Shamrock covered my body with hers, her skin slipping against mine in silken ecstasy. I raised my head and clutched her to me so I could use my mouth on her. I was crazed with the feel of her.

  It was at that moment that the door to my room was thrust open. Randie stood there, taking in the whole scene.

  She stiffened as surely as though she had been turned to stone. I desperately wanted to say something on the order of, “Coach, this isn’t what it looks like,” but it is hard to say anything with another girl’s breast in your mouth.

  Anyway, it was exactly what it looked like.

  Randie recovered quickly. She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. Shamrock and I shrank away from each other and braced for God’s wrath.

  Randie’s eyes looked at ours in the dim light, but she delicately avoided viewing the rest of our naked forms. “Shamrock, your coach was wondering where you had disappeared to. I’ll tell her I’ve got you,” Randie said. “Kotter, I’ll see you in my room first thing in the morning.”

  That was all she said. She left.

  “Oh, no, oh, no,” I moaned. “We’re done for Shamrock, we’ve got to get you out of here.”

  The steel gaze of the pitcher was back in her eyes. “What for?”

  “Huh?”

  “She didn’t throw me out. She didn’t say anything, except she’d tell my coach I was here and she wants to see you in the morning.”

  “You mean you’re thinking about staying?”

  “I’m a pitcher. I like to finish what I start,” Shamrock said playfully. She rubbed the side of my breast with the backs of her curled fingers, and I melted.

  I was somewhat doubtful I’d be able to put the image of Coach Wilkes in the doorway out of my mind, but I found out you have very little concern for what’s in your mind when a girl’s fingers are touching you, tenderly stroking you, and she is whispering unrepeatable things in your ear, and you are bucking and sweating and shuddering like a lost soul flung to paradise.

  Then Shamrock taught me to do what she had done, and we kept on doing it, just to make sure we got it right.

  I rose early in the morning on the other side of innocence. Shamrock dressed and kissed me good-bye and went off to live her life. I showered and went to Randie’s room with my hair still wet. I was feeling sheepish but otherwise unrepentant and surprisingly not very scared. Whatever she was going to do to me, I would accept.

  Her door was open, so I walked in. Like any good cop, she already had managed to scrounge up a cup of coffee.

  “Good morning, Coach,” I said quietly.

  “Have a seat on the bed, Kotter.”

  I sat. “Are you kicking me off the team?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to tell my parents?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to do anything to me?”

  “Why should anything be done to you?”

  “Because—because—” I started to cry uncontrollably. “Oh, God, Coach, because you trusted me and I let you down.”

  She did not let me cry alone. She came over and let me bawl in her arms until I finally sobbed myself out.

  “How do you feel, Kotter?”

  “I feel like I should just die.”

  “It’s called ‘remorse,’ Kotter. Perhaps it’s an emotion you will take care to avoid in the future. Now go and pack your things. The bus is leaving after breakfast.”

  Chapter Five

  Julie cleared the dishes from the table. She never let Randie or me into the kitchen. She said we were hopeless in there.

  Meanwhile, Randie got us a couple more beers. Julie said we both were competent enough to do that.

  “Even after all these years,” Randie said, chuckling, “I can’t believe you were stupid enough to take Shamrock to your room. If I had thought you were in there, I never would have opened the door. I expected to find the place empty.”

  “Well, I never expected you to check on us. You never checked on us.”

  “I wasn’t checking on you then. I was pretending to check on you, and only because Shamrock’s coach was being a real pain about finding her. I had a pretty good idea what you two were doing, and I didn’t want any part of it.”

  “And you didn’t do anything to us, anyway.”

  Randie shook her head. “How could I? If word got out, it could have cost Shamrock that UCLA scholarship she was in line for. It certainly would have turned the state tournament into a major scandal.” Randie hollered into the kitchen, “Did you hear that, Julie? Do you see what I was up against? That’s why the day Kotter lost her virginity was absolutely the worst.”

  Julie stuck her head out of the kitchen. “Typical. Kotter gets laid, Randie, and you get screwed.”

  “Hey, it wasn’t any picnic for me, either,” I protested. “Listen, Randie, I didn’t care whether Shamrock respected me in the morning, but I sure as hell cared whether you did.”

  “You expect me to buy that?” Randie asked, and the look in her eyes told me I was in for it. “Now tell me the truth, Kotter. What do you remember most—being in the sack with Shamrock or being miserable with me afterwards?”

  “That is an unfair question. It’s been years, and everything worked out all right.”

  Randie got out of her chair and stood looming over me, as though I was one of her police recruits—and not a very good one, at that. She launched into a very humorous distortion of my Miranda rights. “Tell the truth, Kotter. You have no right to remain silent. Anything you don’t say will be held against you. There is no lawyer in the land who will dare to take your case. I
f you do choose to remain silent, every single one of your constitutional rights will be violated, and I will personally beat the shit out of you. Now talk!”

  “All right, all right. What can I say? It was a great first lay.”

  Randie sighed. “You got away with murder.”

  I smiled. Now it was my turn to needle her. “Hell, Randie, if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t even have been worried when you walked in on us.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Back in those days, I thought you were just a red-blooded, All-American coach with your eyes on the guys. I had no idea you had any sort of appreciation for what I was doing. I didn’t know about you and Julie.”

  “No, that had to wait until your next sexual escapade.”

  I winced. “Are we going to go into that, too?”

  Randie was maddeningly serene. “You bet we are.”

  ***

  The summer after my encounter with Shamrock, Randie’s prediction came true. Our softball team won the state championship and I was one of the players the team counted on.

  As I entered my senior year at Hillsboro High School, I should have been feeling pretty good about myself; but I knew better. Instead, I was aware of being headed for one of those crises that mark your life forever, and naturally it had to do with my parents. Wendell and Lynn were assuming I would go to some small, egghead college—Hillsboro would be nice but not mandatory—for liberal arts, to be followed by graduate school. Well, I didn’t want to go to any stifling, antiseptic ivory tower. I wanted to be a cop.

  I put off the confrontation as long as possible by letting Wendell and Lynn think I was conforming. I enrolled in academic courses, took my SATs and even sent away for some college catalogues.

  Meanwhile, Randie had made lieutenant, faster than anyone in the history of the department. As a sidelight she started an introductory program in criminal justice for high school seniors, and I signed up, of course. There were ten of us, meeting after school at the Hillsboro police station. I loved hanging around there, usually showing up early and staying late. Randie and the other cops encouraged me and included me as much as they could, whether it was inventorying the evidence locker or simply photocopying their reports when they were too pressed to do it themselves.