1st 5 Pages September Workshop - Meehan Rev 1

Name: Melanie Meehan
Genre: Middle Grade Fiction
Title: Dancing in the Rain

The spiraling bat connected with my shin just below my knee. Thwack. Was it a hard throw? Not really-- it wasn’t like my six year-old brother could hurl a plastic bat with that much force. But, somehow, that bat hit my leg in such a way that I couldn’t breathe because my shin throbbed so hard.

At first, no one noticed that I had crumpled. Max was running to the makeshift first base in our back yard. Dad and Uncle John pretended that they couldn’t hold onto the ball and the rest of the kids cheered and whooped for Max. Even my mother and Aunt Michelle clapped for Max from their patio seats. I clutched my leg on the grass behind home plate.

“You’re ten,” I said to myself, blinking away tears. “You’re too old to cry.” But those tears pushed right through the walls of my eyes and streamed down my face, leaving dark circles on my pink Red Sox t-shirt.

I tried to block them with my hands, but I needed to keep my hands around my leg because I didn’t want it to move.

“You okay, Kelly?” my cousin, Jack asked. He had been catching, so he was closest to the collision of my leg and the bat.

I nodded, but I couldn’t speak. He held out his hand to help me up, but no way was I ready to move. Whack, whack, whack, someone was hammering on the inside of my leg with a sledgehammer.

“C’mon, Kel,” Dad said, jogging across the yard. “You’re up at bat. Shake it off.”

I squinted up at him. The late afternoon sun blinded me and red spots appeared when I blinked. Words still got stuck in my throat.

Dad’s brow furrowed and he turned toward Jack. “Did the bat hit her that hard?”

“Not really.” Jack shrugged. “Max just tossed it behind him. It wasn’t like he whipped it or anything. Plus, Max uses the plastic one.”

Dad knelt down. “Can you take your hands off so I can see?”

I lifted my hands, wincing as my leg shifted.

“That’s from the bat?” Dad’s voice sounded surprised. A bump was purpling underneath my hands.

I nodded. Then, when Dad went to touch it, I hit his hand. I didn’t mean to. My hand just jumped up and blocked him, swinging as it went.

“Don’t touch it,” I said through clenched teeth.

Max remembered to call time out and jogged over from first base.
“What happened?” he asked.

“You can’t throw the bat after you hit,” Dad answered. “You whacked Kelly in the shin. See the bump?”

Max blinked. The veins stood out on his neck and his shoulders tightened. “I’m sorry, Kel.” His voice cracked.

My cousins sauntered toward home plate. I hated having everyone gather around me and my face burned, so I was relieved when they seized the opportunity to get drinks. But my leg still pounded too much to stand up and walk away.

“How’d she get that big a bump from Max’s toss?” one of them asked.

“I think she’s legit,” Jack said. “Her leg has a big bruise.”

“He didn’t even throw the bat. She just wants attention.”

I recognized Tyler’s voice and he was lucky that I couldn’t get up and punch him. He hated the fact that we were the same age and I could play most sports as well as he could. I could hit a baseball farther, a tennis ball harder... I could run faster, do more push-ups... How dare he suggest I was faking it?

“Can you walk?” Dad asked.

“I’ll try.” I wanted to get out of that circle of people staring at me. Dad helped me hobble to a chaise on the patio, away from the baseball game. Mom brought me some ice.

When she saw my bump, her eyebrows lifted high. “That’s from the plastic bat?” she asked. She turned to Dad. “How close are you letting the kids get to the batter?”

“She wasn’t that close,” Dad snapped. He took a breath. “She was several feet away. And it was Max. It’s not like he can throw that hard. Doesn’t make sense, really.”

“Hm.” I thought Mom would say more, but she just tucked a pillow behind my back and placed the bag of ice on my leg.

The game didn’t last much longer since dinner was ready. After hamburgers and hot dogs and ice cream cake with candles for my cousin Will, the kids put in a movie and the grown ups gathered around my leg. Dad had carried me to the family room sofa.

“Let’s see the leg, Kel,” Dad said.

The four of them stared.

“You can’t break a leg by having that sort of a hit,” Uncle John said. He had been watching from the batters’ box on the steps. “She didn’t twist it or anything.”

“But it’s a pretty good bump, though,” Aunt Michelle said. “And a nice color, too.”

“I still think it must have hit a bruise that she already had,” Dad said. “Sometimes when you whack an old injury, it hurts twice as much.”

Mom just made that hmm sound again and the four of them moved into the kitchen. I could tell that they were still talking about me because they kept looking in. Mom’s eyebrows kept raising and Dad’s forehead kept wrinkling.

Max snuggled against me on the sofa. He pulled a blanket over the two of us, placing it gingerly over the ice pack.

“How’s your leg, Kelly?” he asked.

“I’m okay, Max,” I said. “It feels better.” I wasn’t telling the truth, but he looked at me with such wide sad eyes that I didn’t want him to know that my leg still pounded if I moved. “Let’s just watch the movie.”

He continued to stroke my arm as we all watched the first Harry Potter movie.

“What were you talking about?” I asked Mom when she came in to check the ice and give me some motrin.

“What do you mean?”

“I know you were talking about me with Dad, John, and Michelle. What were you saying?”

She glanced at Max. His eyes were glued on the flying brooms that Harry Potter and his friends were riding.

“We were just debating about whether to take you to the emergency room,” she whispered. “I called Dr. Sylvester and he thought it would be okay to wait until tomorrow to see how you are.”

“Emergency room?” The only time I had ever been to the emergency room was when I was three and couldn’t stop throwing up. The nurse had told me that they would put a needle in my arm and sugar water would get into my body that way. When I saw the size of the needle, I ate the orange popsicle even though I hate orange popsicles. The place buzzed with crying kids and beeping machines. I shuddered at the memory. “It’s not like I’m going to die or anything. We can wait.”

“I’m sure you’re fine.” She smoothed my hair away from my face and kissed my forehead. “We’ll see how you feel in the morning.”

As it turned out, whether the ER trip had happened that Saturday night or Sunday morning, it wouldn’t have mattered. My parents were much more scared of what the doctors said about the gray image on the X-ray than they had been about the bump on my leg.