Walking to the bus, Davon thought about the laughter from showcase day. It had felt enormous then, like a wall of sound. Today it had shrunk to a few quiet looks and one honest question from Cody. He had not won the team in one practice, and he did not expect to. He had earned a drill, a throwing partner, and a conversation. For a first day, that was enough. He sat by the window on the bus, glove in his lap, and watched Riverbend slide past, already thinking about tomorrow's routine.
Chapter 16: Learning to Belong
Belonging, Davon learned, was not a single moment. It was a stack of small days, each one ordinary, each one asking him to show up again. Practices settled into a pattern: school in the morning, homework on the bus in the afternoon, Riverbend in the late light, supper with Rose when he got home. Some days his arm felt strong and loose. Other days it felt heavy, as if he had thrown too many balls against the wall the night before, which he had not, but his body was still learning the difference between practice and play.
Beasley kept the routine steady. Hard throwing days were followed by easy days. On easy days, Davon worked on fielding bunts, holding runners, backing up bases, the unglamorous parts of pitching that never made a video. He learned to watch a hitter's feet, to notice when a batter crowded the plate, to change his timing with a small pause before delivery. Marcus helped, calling pitches in practice and explaining why a change-up after two fastballs could make a good hitter look foolish.
School did not pause for baseball. His teachers still expected essays on time and math problems worked out fully. Davon did his homework on the bus with his notebook balanced on his knees, the fields rolling past the window. Sometimes Maya sat with him and quizzed him on vocabulary, teasing him when he got a word wrong, then helping him get it right. She never made him feel like baseball mattered more than school, and he was grateful for that, even when he was tired.
One afternoon, his shoulder ached after practice in a way that worried him. Not sharp pain, but a dull heaviness that did not fade with stretching. He remembered Beasley's rule and told him right away, instead of hiding it. Beasley nodded, unsurprised.
"Good," he said. "That's what telling me is for. Tomorrow you rest the arm. You can still come, still watch, still learn. Rest is part of the job."
Davon sat on the bench the next day and watched Cody pitch. He studied Cody's delivery the way he used to study games through the fence, noticing the elbow, the stride, the finish. Cody was throwing well, and Davon felt a complicated mix of admiration and envy. He wanted to be out there, but he also wanted Cody to succeed, because Cody had started to talk to him like a teammate, not a threat.
During that rest day, Beasley taught him something else: how to keep a pitcher's notebook. Not just velocities and counts, but notes about hitters, about what worked and what did not, about how he felt on a given day. "Your memory will lie to you," Beasley said. "It remembers the great pitch and forgets the walk before it. Write it down, and you'll learn faster."
Davon started writing every night at the kitchen table while Rose sewed or read. He wrote about his change-up, about his landing foot, about the day his arm felt heavy and what he had done differently. The notebook grew thick with small, honest entries.
By the end of the second week, something had shifted. The boys no longer went quiet when he arrived. Someone saved him a spot in the throwing line. Cody asked him to warm up together before a scrimmage. Marcus joked with him about his borrowed cleats, which finally fit better now that he had learned to lace them properly. It was not friendship all at once, but it was the beginning of it, built the way Beasley said everything was built: post by post.
One practice, the team worked on rundowns and cutoffs, drills that looked chaotic until you understood the pattern. Davon made a mistake, throwing to the wrong base, and a run scored in the scrimmage. He braced for laughter, but Marcus only said, "Next time, look at the runner first, then throw." Cody nodded in agreement. Davon wrote that down that night, too, because belonging also meant being allowed to make a mistake and be corrected, not mocked. That felt like a bigger change than any single good pitch.
Beasley also trusted him with small jobs, like carrying the bucket back and checking the bullpen was raked. Davon liked those jobs. They reminded him of mowing, of work done properly whether anyone watched or not.
One evening, walking home with his bag over his shoulder, Davon realized he no longer felt like a visitor at Riverbend. He still mowed the field every other Saturday, and he still liked the quiet of that work. But now he also belonged to the team that practiced there, not because anyone had handed him belonging, but because he had earned it in small, repeatable ways: showing up, telling the truth about his arm, doing his homework, writing things down. Rose was waiting with supper, and when he told her about the rest day, she smiled.