Page 82 of The Way We Swing Back

We were up 6–0.

For the first time in years, I could taste the payback. It came from deep in my chest, the same place the self-doubt used to live.

I jogged out to the mound for the sixth inning.

Pop-up to short. Strikeout on three pitches. Then I threw three perfect curveballs, ending with one so nasty it made the batter buckle like someone had pulled the floor out from under him.

I walked back to the dugout, my head light. The crowd stood on its feet. I saw them. I just couldn’t hear them. I was inside a moment bigger than noise.

I found my seat on the bench, waiting for Gavin. We always talked between innings—always. But he hadn’t said anything last inning, either. No one had.

Something prickled at the back of my neck, but I couldn’t place why. My fingers went behind my ears, trying to scratch it away but failing.

I glanced around the dugout to find Gavin, and he stood at the fence, his fingers squeezing so tight I could see his wrists shaking. Jake stood next to him, dancing on his toes, eyes straight ahead, not a word shared between them.

No one else talked, either; all of their bodies were angled away from me, no matter where they stood. Even Tanner, keeping score at the end of the dugout, kept his eyes locked ahead.

My body moved on instinct, and I reached him in two steps.

“Give me that,” I said, reaching for the score book.

“No,” he said, yanking it away from me, staring at the field.

“Let me check something,” I said.

“Go rest up for the seventh,” he said, his voice crackling on every word. His hands locked like a vice on the book, squeezing it tight to his chest.

There was only one reason he wouldn’t show me what was on the page. I looked at the scoreboard, anyway.

Zero hits. Zero walks. Zero errors.

That gut feeling? The itch I’d been trying not to scratch? It was this. I was throwing a perfect game.

Suddenly, the silence in the dugout collapsed into my space. I walked to the bench, and every face stayed away. No chatter. Like I was radioactive.

Two years ago, I’d sat with Tanner the night before the state finals, and we’d talked about how baseball was a game of failure. How perfection wasn’t real. But today, I didn’t just have a chance for redemption—I had a chance to be perfect.

My eyes closed without thinking, staying shut, the darkness barely holding back flashes of the zeros on the scoreboard. This wasn’t something you talked about while it happened–no one was coming to save me now.

Our batters went down in order in the bottom of the sixth. I stood slowly and grabbed my glove. I looked around the dugout. No one moved, not wanting to be the one to jinx the moment.

But reality clicked. This wasn’t about me anymore. It was about the team. The state title. The ghosts from two years ago, the ones that had haunted so many of us, had haunted me.

I stood near the dugout steps. “Everyone on me,” I said.

They looked up. Shocked. Yeah, I was breaking superstition. Good.

“It’d be pretty cool if we threw a perfect game in the state title, wouldn’t it?” I said, laughing lightly.

Gavin broke first, giggling with his mask in his right hand. The rest followed, sighs of relief across their faces.

I gave them a nod. “Now let’s play some good defense and finish this off!” I jogged to the mound, breath even, heart steady. My warm-up tosses flew clean, my arm still sharp and loose.

Gavin’s first sign: curveball. Strike one.

I followed with two more, neither missing the zone. The batter didn’t swing at either.

The infield zipped the ball around, the fastest throws any of them had ever made. When it got to him, Zach tossed the ball back to me. “Two more,” he said, pumping his fist.