Davon nodded, and kept throwing with Andre in the fading light, the tennis ball moving back and forth between the boy he had been and the boy who was watching him now, the wall standing steady between them, as it always had.
Chapter 21: The Rival From Marietta
The bus from Marietta arrived on a Tuesday evening, while the Falcons were still dragging the field and the light over Riverbend Athletic Park had gone thin and gold. Davon Mitchell heard the brakes sigh at the gate, and then boys in clean navy uniforms poured onto the gravel with their bags over their shoulders like they owned the place.
Marcus Bell nudged him. "That is them. Marietta. Undefeated in their league."
Davon nodded, tying the laces of the borrowed cleats Coach Tom Beasley had lent him, the ones that still pinched at the toes. Around him, the Falcons went quiet, sizing up an opponent. Cody Sullivan stood a little apart, his glove under his arm, watching the Marietta boys warm up.
Their star hitter was easy to spot: taller than the rest, broad through the shoulders, his name stenciled on his jersey as J. R. Whitfield. In the cage, his first swing sent a ball sailing over the left-field fence, and his teammates whooped like it was already a game.
"That one is gone," one of them called out. "Better bring a bigger fence."
Davon kept his hands busy, rolling a ball across his fingers. He remembered what Beasley had told him: a hitter can look like a mountain from the dugout and still have a hole in his swing. Watch the hands. Watch the feet. Do not pitch to the name on the jersey.
Whitfield walked past the Falcons' dugout and slowed to look Davon up and down. "You the fence kid?" he asked, grinning. "I saw the video. Nice boots."
Davon had heard that line for weeks. This time, standing in real cleats with dirt already on them, it sounded thinner than it used to. "I am Davon," he said. "Nice swing."
Whitfield laughed, loud but not unkind. "We will see Saturday," he said, and walked on.
Cody fell into step beside Davon as they headed for the bullpen. "He hit two out against our sister team last month," Cody said. His voice was low. "He likes the fastball up. He will chase it if you let him."
Davon glanced at him. A month ago, Cody would not have said that to him. A month ago, Cody had turned away in practice and let the silence do the talking. Now he was offering the one thing he had that Davon did not: a season of watching hitters like Whitfield.
"Thanks," Davon said. "What else?"
"He crowds the plate," Cody said. "So he can reach the outside corner. But if you come inside, he has to back off, and he hates backing off."
They reached the bullpen, where Beasley was waiting with a bucket of balls and a clipboard he never really wrote on. Beasley watched them without making a speech about teamwork. He just pointed at the mound and said, "You two. Twenty pitches each. Call your own counts."
Davon threw first. His fastball felt low and steady, and his change-up dropped the way it should. Twice he missed badly, once high and once wide, and the old frustration rose, the one that used to make him throw harder against the cinder-block wall until his arm ached. He stopped, breathed, and rolled his shoulders the way Beasley had taught him.
Cody threw next, and Davon watched his elbow stay up above his shoulder, the way it should. Cody still threw harder than Davon, but he no longer kicked the dirt after a bad pitch. He reset, the way Davon had learned to reset after a walk.
"You nervous?" Cody asked.
"Yes," Davon said, because there was no point lying to the one person who would know anyway. "Are you?"
"Every time," Cody said. "That is the part nobody puts in the video."
At his grandmother's kitchen table that evening, Rose Mitchell peeled potatoes and listened without interrupting while Davon told her about Whitfield and about Cody standing beside him instead of ahead of him.
Rose set down the peeler. "A rival is not an enemy, baby," she said. "He is just a mirror with a bat. You prepare, you play honest, and you let the game say what it says."
That night, Davon did not watch the video of himself. He watched the short clip Maya Torres had sent him of Whitfield's swing, filmed from the bleachers on her phone. He watched it three times, slowly. The hands dropped a fraction early. The front foot opened toward third base when the pitch came inside. It was not magic. It was a pattern, and patterns could be pitched to.