Pretty Little Monster

Chapter One The first baseball game of the season was always memorable, though this summer it would be mundane compared to what the rest of the hottest months of the year had to hold. Later, as they pulled the body out of the lagoon on the east side of the ball park, Beth Monroe would remember back to that first game, when everyone was innocent and her worst worry was whether or not her shorts made her thighs look big. By then, Beth would long for the simplicity of life in small town Barryville 1993, before everything came unraveled. Before the new girl appeared, out of thin air, out of the shadows near the parking lot, out of a nightmare, Beth Monroe had thought her biggest problem was the fact that her older brother Shane, a senior, captain of the football team, and the shortstop on the Babe Ruth baseball team their dad coached, was an asshole who did everything he could to humiliate Beth to the point that not a single guy in their entire high school would ever dare ask her out because she was such a loser. But once this apparition appeared out of the shadows, the menial problems of high school life burned off like fog under a midday sun, and Beth longed for the days when avoiding ridicule was her priority instead of simply staying alive and accounting for all of her friends. “Was that a ball or a strike?” Lexy Ellis adjusted her glasses and stared at the machine in front of her as if she’d never kept score before. Beth Monroe tried not to let out the harsh words crowding her tongue. It had been nearly a year since Lexy had operated the scoreboard for her while she kept score in the official scorebook, and it was bound to take a little time for the rust to shake off. Still, it wasn’t that complicated. If she’d just stop talking to Andi Jones and pay attention. “It was a ball,” Andi chimed in, reaching over and setting the scoreboard to match Beth’s book. “Pay attention or old man Cooper’s going to yell at us again.” “Old man Cooper’s going to yell at us anyway,” Beth reminded them, keeping her voice down so that the ump didn’t hear her. The set up was different this year; they were perched in a scorekeeper’s room above the concession stand, which in theory sounded like a good idea, but it actually made it more difficult to see. Sure, she had a good view of the entire infield, but it wasn’t so easy to see through the window if the ball was hit into the outfield, and forget about trying to catch it if anything important was happening in the dugouts. “Beth!” She hopped to her feet, sticking her head out of the window, straining to reach over the table in front of her and look almost straight down. Her dad’s face was only about five feet below her, but at this angle, he wouldn’t be able to tell she’d heard him otherwise, and she wasn’t about to yell out the window at him. “Yeah?” “We’re putting Michael in at left field next inning. Moving Robby to right, and Tom’s going to pitch.” “Got it.” She smiled at her dad as he nodded and then resumed her seat as Richard Monroe headed off to give the scorekeeper for the other team the changes. Beth made note of them in the scorebook immediately and checked she hadn’t missed a pitch. “Strike, right?” “Of course it was a strike,” Andi groaned, as if she had any stake whatsoever in the game. “Joe just stands there and watches them fly by.” It was true—Joe was one of the worst players on the team, and Beth was surprised her dad hadn’t taken him out. But it was only the fourth inning, and they were up by six. She knew her dad tried to be as fair as possible with playing time without purposely putting the team in a situation where they might lose. And they were playing Silverton, which was good practice for some of the larger towns in the area, ones that might actually give her hometown of Barryville a run for it. Summer league had different rules for who could play, and her dad had recruited players from several other small towns that weren’t big enough to have their own summer league Babe Ruth teams. A lot of these kids would be back on the farm in the morning, and to her dad, that meant work ethic. And muscle. Beth was well aware that muscle was what had her friends volunteering to help her out with the score, even as Kyle watched strike three fly by and old man Cooper called him out, and Lexy reluctantly reached for the microphone to announce the next batter, a job all three of them hated. Before she said anything to the crowd of thirty or so, she asked, “It’s Sammy, right?” Beth nodded, trying not to make a big deal out of the fact that the most beautiful specimen known to humanity was about to take his turn at the plate. Lexy snickered, though. She was well aware of Beth’s three-year-long crush. As her friend flipped on the mic, Beth held her breath. Surely, Lexy wouldn’t say anything embarrassing. “Now batting, number five, Sammy Burk.” She flipped the mic back off before she started giggling. Despite having no amplification, the space between themselves and home plate was relatively small, and Beth didn’t miss the inquisitive look Sammy flashed in their direction before her dad shouted at him to keep his eye on the ball. The batter adjusted his uniform and placed one foot in the batter’s box and turned to check with the third base coach, which ordinarily would’ve been her dad if they weren’t so far ahead, and he wasn’t making roster changes, and then Sammy turned to face the Silverton pitcher. “Way to go, Lexy,” Beth muttered, recording the first pitch as a ball. “What? I didn’t say what I wanted to say.” She had an evil grin on her face as she tossed her curly reddish-brown hair over her shoulder and pushed the switch for the first ball down on the machine before her. “Don’t ask what that was,” Andi warned her, and Beth straightened her ponytail before returning her stare to the batter. Sammy caught the outside of the ball with the tip of his bat and sent it over the fence behind and to his left, and Fred Cooper stated the obvious, that it was a foul ball. “He is cute.” Lexy’s voice was quiet—for once. “It’s just… come on, Beth. Aren’t you wasting your time?” Beth pulled her eyes off of the blond with the bat, her mind lost in his hazel eyes. Not that she could see them right now as he was looking the other direction, staring down the pitcher, no doubt. But the memory of how they’d sparkled the last time she spoke to him was fresh in her mind. She could stare into them all day if only she could get him to look at her that long…. “How do you figure she’s wasting her time?” Andi asked, jumping to Beth’s defense. She had long brown hair, a few shades darker than Beth’s, and her bangs were still perfectly fanned into a flower shape, like Lexy’s, which Beth thought was crazy since it had to be over a hundred degrees even after the sun had set. Beth’s hairspray had given out long ago, leaving her hair a mess. While there was a small fan in the back of the booth, they couldn’t move it any closer without it drowning out the game. It was a typical Missouri summer—sweltering and full of mosquitos, and Beth felt like a sweaty blob with her hair a mess and her makeup practically melted off. Lexy continued with her argument, and Beth tried not to get sucked into her negativity. “I mean, he’s one of the best looking boys in school. He’s a year older than you, Beth, and everyone knows he has asked Amber James out more times than one person can count. She’s… different than you.” Beth turned and glared at her friend, but the c***k of the bat had her eyes readjusting as Sammy connected, sending the perfect pitch flying toward the fence in center field. Clearly, the opposing team hadn’t been sprinting in practice because it seemed to take forever for the Silverton field man to get himself to where the ball had landed. By then, Shane, who’d doubled before Kyle came to bat, was jogging into home, and Sammy was rounding second. Holding her breath, Beth set her pencil aside and watched the third base coach, one of the other dads, wave Sammy to third. Finally having retrieved the ball, the center fielder, whose arms were as big around as barrels, rocketed the ball to his cutoff man. It was going to be close. Sammy slid into third, a plume of dust clouding Beth’s view as the third baseman, a lanky guy whose curly hair stuck out around his cap in every direction, reached in for the tag. The ump was right there, and gave the signal as he shouted, “Safe!” and Beth cheered, along with everyone else in attendance. Of course he was safe. She’d never doubted it for a moment. Standing up and dusting his hands across his white and navy blue striped uniform, Sammy took his hat off, ran his hand through his blond hair, and recomposed himself. For a second, Beth thought maybe he was looking at her as his eyes weren’t quite fixed on the batter, but then they drifted back down, and Lexy breathed in deeply before announcing Tom Black at the bat. “We scored,” Andi reminded Lexy as soon as she turned the mic off. “So?” Lexy asked, confused. “I know.” “It’s nine to two now.” Andi reached across Lexy and changed the scoreboard, and someone down in the bleachers shouted up a snide, “Thank you.” “Gotta make sure you’ve got the score right,” Beth reminded her friends, trying to keep the annoyance out of her own voice. Her book was right, she’d made sure of that, and now she had a few moments to stare at Sammy while he attempted to trick the pitcher into thinking there was a chance he might try to steal home. Of course, that wouldn’t happen without a wild pitch, but it was fun to watch him take a huge lead off the bag and then scramble back each time the pitcher looked in his direction. “Sorry,” Lexy muttered in response to her comment. “I guess I should stop staring down the third base line and do my job.” “Hey!” Beth said turning to look at her friend. “Scorebook is right.” Lexy laughed, loudly, and Beth shook her head. “Whatever, Lexy. We all know that you’re not here to keep me company. You know, I’ll see Michael at practice tomorrow at the batting cages, and you won’t be there. Maybe I’ll mention….” “If you do, you’d better never put me on the microphone again.” Lexy’s eyes were narrow behind her glasses, and Beth grinned, making sure her friend knew she was just joking around. She wouldn’t say anything to Michael Splinter unless Lexy wanted her to, even though of all the guys on the team, he was about the only one who ever had anything to say to her, except to ask for a piece of gum. The rest of them seemed to think of her as Shane’s lame little sister. There had been that brief exchange with Sammy, though, at practice a few days ago. He’d been nice to her, and she’d appreciated being spoken to as a person who had been around baseball her whole life and had some knowledge of how the sport was played. He’d asked her who she thought was going to win the World Series this year, and when she’d said the Blue Jays, he’d been surprised, noting he’d assumed she’d say either the Royals or the Cardinals. She hadn’t had time to go into her thinking, but she hoped she’d have a chance to talk to him about it again soon. Maybe after the game. Tonight. “It’s four hundred degrees in here,” Lexy groaned, clearing the scoreboard at the end of the eighth. It had looked as if Barryville might win in a mercy rule in the sixth, but Silverton just kept hanging on. Now, with the score twelve to four, it seemed Lexy was ready for Silverton to throw in the towel and chalk it up to a bad opening game. “When do they play again?” Andi asked. “Thursday. In Mineral Mines.” Road games were either awesome or horrible. Her dad almost always let her take a friend, and this time of year Beth was very popular with the other girls in the group of four or five she hung out with during the school year. Everyone wanted to ride with her in the off chance one of the cute boys from the team would need a ride, which was usually the case. Sometimes her mom’s mini-van would be full of ball players, and since Shane had to sit in the front on longer trips due to his car sickness, it often meant an uncomfortable ride for Beth next to one of the guys in the middle seat. At least if she had a friend with her, she could sit in the way back and have someone else alongside her who likely didn’t mind squeezing into the back with a guy they hardly knew. The town was small, but Shane was two years older than her, and most of these guys were his age and had heard for the last fifteen years that Beth Monroe was a brainiac, a nerd, and a total loser, thanks to her brother’s p********a. Few of them wanted to sit in the back next to her….