The Hitting Zone

After practice, we were all feeling drained, with maybe the exception of Zeke, who never looked tired. He drove us all home, where we were able to shower and sit down for dinner.

Zeke was the first one to say something about this weekend's tournament. "Mom, Dad, the game for Saturday has been pushed to a later date."

"Oh?" Mr. Atkins raised an eyebrow, but didn't dwell on it for long. "Too bad. Do you boys want to plan something for the weekend instead?"

"It was postponed because we were invited to a tournament." Zeke ignored his dad and continued on. "The Foothill Classic. Just like last year. Did you guys want to drive us and watch? Or do you want to stay home and I'll just drive us there and back?"

Mr. Atkins shook his head. "Of course we'll go. It's fun to watch you boys play. We'll all go together and make a trip out of it. Stay the night there so we don't have to drive again on Sunday. If I remember, this was the tournament that was almost a three hour drive. Do you know what time the first game will be?"

My jaw dropped. Three hours? What. Why didn't anyone say that beforehand?

"Why even bother staying the night?" Kyle snorted. "We'll be lucky just to get past game one. Remember last year, Dad? We were mercy ruled by that one school?? We didn't even make it two hours."

My jaw remained opened. They were once mercy ruled? That doesn't sound right... Especially when you have a Zeke on your team. Yet the tense silence around the table said otherwise.

Mrs. Atkins was the first one to break the silence. "A baseball game can be unpredictable. Just like life. Have some more confidence, Kyle. You've been doing well." She looked around the table. "All of you have been playing very well. Your father and I wouldn't miss any of your games for the world. Even if you do get blown out. We'll just stay the night in the hotel and spend Sunday sightseeing or something." She looked to me. "Jake, you haven't been to San Francisco or Oakland right?"

"I'm from Southern California." I stated clearly.

"See? There's our backup plan. If you boys don't do well, we can take the long way home and show Jake some cool spots." She tried to soothe them.

"I plan on winning. Not losing." Zeke stood up at his spot. "Thanks for dinner." He grabbed his plate and glass, and then took it to the kitchen. As he passed by the table on his way out of the dining room, he said, "I'm going for a light jog around the neighborhood."

"Be back before 10." Mr. Atkins frowned as his eldest walked away from him, without another word. "That boy is so taciturn. I can never tell what he's thinking."

Noah waited until he heard the front door shut before saying anything. "I could. He didn't like how Mom was making plans for if we lose."

"What? Why?" Mrs. Atkins looked at her youngest, worried. "It's normal to have backup plans just in case. It's what parents should do."

Noah rolled his eyes. "Yea Mom. But, you're not supposed to share that with us. Just keep it to yourself. What you should have said would be something along the lines of: have confidence Kyle; I believe you guys will win it all."

"Do you really want mom to lie to us?" Kyle shook his head, dismayed. "Be realistic. I know Dave got me pumped up earlier during practice, but that was just heat of the moment stuff." He stood up with his dishes. "I'm done too. Excuse me." He deposited his dirty dishes in the sink and headed up the stairs.

"Is...is this weekend going to be hard?" I glanced around the table.

Dave was the first to sigh. "Yep. We're just a no name school to these guys. Last year, we thought we were coming in hot since we were the only division three school invited to a mainly division one tourney. What a joke. All of us pitchers got rocked, and our bats couldn't hit anything."

"Even Zeke?" My eyebrows shot up, looking at Noah for confirmation.

"Zeke had one of his worst days at the plate. He went 0-3. All strikeouts." Noah said in a low voice as if he was worried Zeke could overhear us, even on his run. "However, that pitcher was number one at the time and even got drafted right out of high school. He was incredible!"

"But now Zeke's number one...so we should do well?" I asked a follow-up question.

"Zeke's number one in OUR county. The Foothill Classic is in a completely different county. A bigger one with more competitive teams and players." Noah let out a sigh. "I've told you that school population plays a part in the division. If a school is a bigger, they're more likely to have better players grouped together. Another factor, are private schools. They get to recruit specially talented individuals and basically set up a top notch team."

"Oh." I squeaked out.

"Yep. Think Paradise Preparatory. But better. Paradise Prep is just a private school in division two. And they tried to play us like we were dolls. Could you imagine what division one schools would be like?"

I thought back to the finals of my first tournament. "Will they also give us a handicap?"

"No, you dope." Noah rolled his eyes. "Paradise Preparatory just likes to think they're better than anyone else. These other schools will want to squash us just to get us out of the way. Like last year. A mercy rule. Against Zeke. Could you imagine?"

I slowly shook my head. I really couldn't see it. Zeke is infallible in my eyes.

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Author's note: sorry, I think I'm going to need more than 500 characters to tell you guys about my day. So. First off, I redid all those early, small chapters of mine and posted them on Moonquill. Afterwards, I was looking into making it into a book and then found out I would have to take it off all websites for it to be published with kindle so yea...no more book. Not yet. Maybe when I actually complete the story. Next, I'm thinking I could work on my other story (that gets almost none of my attention) and turn that into a cheap book to try and make some money. Will I? Eh. I don't know just yet. More bad news, webnovel told me I can't be featured again because my chapters are too small....*sigh*

As of right now, I'm really leaning towards moonquill just because everything else is just dragging me down and making me depressed. So, I'll be working on posting all my chapters there this upcoming week. As soon as it's all caught up, I might just post there and only there. Slightly disappointed that almost none of you went to check out my edited work on moonquill btw...