When I enter the locker room on the last day of school a week later, the sour smell hits me like a line drive to the face. I wish I didn’t know what that felt like, but my face still says otherwise. I’m lucky all I got was some serious bruises and broken skin, and that my eye didn’t explode, or something. Has it always smelled this bad? It’s lunch hour on the last day of school, so the locker room is empty, but I know Coach Martinez will be here. He teaches freshman algebra, and is always in his office during lunch time. It’s usually open tutoring time, for guys with at-risk GPAs. Not at risk of not graduating, just dangerously close to being kicked off the team. But those guys are usually cleared out by now, making their way toward classes. They’re not sticking around one second longer than they have to.

“Hey, Stevens,” I say to our third baseman—the biggest asshole on the team—who is leaving Coach M’s office as I come down the dark tiled hallway. He nods as he passes me, and keeps walking. Everyone acts like this is all my fault, and it’s hard to even argue. Losing the game meant the end of practices, so aside from the occasional side-eye from Zander in our physics class, I’ve gotten off pretty easy.

I knock on the window before I step through the door. Coach M is sitting at his desk, a Riverton Hornets hat pulled over his shaggy black hair.

“Emerson, you’re just in time.” A giant grin fills his face; if the loss is getting to him, he hasn’t let on. “We’ve got a few minutes. You need a quick session?” He laughs, because I’m far from needing tutoring, and he knows it. Our team was academic all-state last year, thanks to GPAs like mine pulling up slackers like Stevens.

“I’m good.”

His eyes drop to the pile of blue in my hand, and scrunch up in confusion. “Problem with your uniform, kid?”

I swallow, trying to make the words come out. I’ve played baseball since I was four. Summers of tee-ball, then little league, then three years of varsity. I have a shelf around my ceiling, lining my room with metallic trophies—red and green and blue—all topped with bat-wielding gold or silver men, ready to swing. Now I’m standing here, after the last game of my junior season, and I can’t say the words that I know I have to. Even though it took me fifteen minutes to force myself into that smelly hallway. Even though I feel like I might puke all over the tiled floor.