Extra Life Read Online Free PDF Page A

county playoffs.
    Last game, down to the wire, Paige on the mound. The Firecracker, they called her. She lit the fuse and the cracker popped hard when it struck the catcher’s mitt. But late in the game she got winded and allowed too many hits. So Mom put me in. I was good. I was all about The Game back then. Daily pro stats in the newspaper. Baseball cards filed away alphabetically in binders.
    Because my parents went to college in Boston (MIT), I was a Red Sox fanatic, and my prize card was a Curt Schilling. 2004: the year Curt helped pitch away The Yankee Curse and finally win the World Series, all with a torn ankle tendon bleeding his white sock red. I kept the Curt card under my hat for good luck. It was sweat-soggy and stank of hair, but whatever.
    My first fastball took flight, and a half second later, some bruiser from Market Auto Body grand-slammed it through the windshield of a Cherokee in the parking lot.
    So, yeah, we lost. In the dugout, I crumpled the stupid Curt card and tossed it in the trash. Nobody would talk to me. Almost nobody. Paige sat down, punched me in the shoulder, and said, “Cheer up, Charlie. They woulda lost if I didn’t load the bases.”
    I probably shouldn’t have said “you’re right,” but I did.
    So now, before I could scramble down the bleachers the regular way to talk to Paige, some tall chick in a tennis skirt came cat-walking off the track toward her. One of those girls who always looked like she just sniffed a fart and was eager to lay blame.
    The girl said something to Paige. Whatever it was made Paige hike her shoulders and suck in her breath. I froze in place, close enough now to hear what they were talking about.
    “I’m just saying, you’re fast, like the boys,” Tennis Skirt said, hitching her hip. “I didn’t mean to call y’all out or nothing.”
    Paige folded her arms across her chest. “What do you mean, call me out ?”
    Just then, Tennis Skirt’s male minion trotted up behind her. You know this dude: the one who’s always adjusting his cup, even when he’s not wearing one? He had bleach blond hair, buzzed on the sides, spiked on top. A classic style I liked to call The Asshat .
    Asshat toed Tennis Skirt in the back of her knee to get her attention. She swore and swatted him, but he just laughed and said, “I let you get half a lap ahead of me and here you are flirting with some other guy?”
    He nodded at Paige to show who he meant.
    They found themselves hilarious. Paige stood her ground, silent, taking it.
    “I heard y’all hang out with homeless chicks downtown,” Tennis Skirt said to Paige.
    “I volunteer at a women’s shelter if that’s what you mean,” Paige said.
    Asshat grinned, tongue jabbing his inner cheek. He said, “That’s pretty kinky, dude.”
    Paige didn’t respond, which freaked me out. Never had I ever hurled an insult at Paige that she didn’t fling straight back at me. So to see her helpless, it was disorienting. I could suddenly feel the rotation of the earth.
    I stepped onto the bottom bench of the aluminum bleachers. My shoes made a dramatic laser-gun echo. Asshat took notice of me and announced, “Look at that, it’s the gay and lesbian alliance.”
    “Hate speech?” I asked him. “Seriously?”
    Asshat’s biceps pulsed left/right, left/right.
    Coach Belk was nowhere around, I noticed. She was notorious for random smoke breaks, and this was conveniently one of those times. We’d have to fend for ourselves.
    “Got a problem, Vale?” Asshat asked me.
    “Your whole shtick is tired. A good insult’s got to be clever.”
    “Russ,” Paige growled, somehow behind me now. Without even really realizing, I’d jumped down off the bleachers and nearly chested up to the Asshat.
    “So y’all admit you and her are gay together?” he said.
    Strike one, Chief. Even Tennis Skirt rolled her eyes at that lame crack. I could see it, how the realization of his own lameness cranked through Asshat’s head like a penny through