Becky's Kiss by Nicholas Fisher Read Free Book Online Page A

with the fingers forked out over the ball like the Spock character had done as a sign of greeting on “Star Trek,” like five hundred years ago. So, if she’d had to research it on the internet, how had she known about it five minutes before that in her dream?
    It was ‘Baseball Boy’ who was doing this, somehow, some way, and even though she kind of liked that idea, it made her mad too! He was tricking her and getting into her head. Had he drugged her? Was this some kind of new thing that would soon be all over the Internet and the subject of a million high school sex education papers, like school-supplied condoms, gender-specific cyber bullying, and the date rape drug?
    But what was the actual harm here? That she was learning intricate pitching techniques against her will?
    Well, morally intrusive or ridiculously insignificant, Becky Michigan was going to put a stop to this. The next time sweet Danny decided to show up, she was not going to let him retreat around a corner. She was going to approach him, have a face to face, grab him if she had to, and hold him.
    She closed her eyes, cereal spoon still in her mouth. Hold him. Now that was a dream worth thinking about. She chewed her Fiber One slowly, a bit of a grin at the corners of her lips. Oh yes, she wanted to hold him, and not with her butt poked out and away like some prissy little queen bee, but rather tight and close, molding together in absolute warmth and security.
    Her cell alarm beeped and her eyes flew open. Right. 6:25 a.m., time to get moving. Like Mrs. Schultz, her counselor back at Lincoln Middle School in Syracuse had taught her, time, or the lack of it, was a clumsy person’s worst enemy. Best to over-prepare, keep ahead. Leave for the bus stop early and you won’t trip over the curb, looking in your book bag for something you think you forgot to pack in your rush to leave the house.
    Becky did her dishes and gathered her school stuff, pausing at her parent’s bedroom door, opening it just a crack.
    “Dad,” she whispered. “Dad!”
    “Hmmph…yeah…yes?”
    “You’re gonna be late. Get up. You’re usually in the bathroom by now!”
    “Uh…right. Okay, Miss Rebecca.”
    Becky closed the door quietly, then leaned her forehead against it, eyes squeezed shut. Not now. She wouldn’t have the conversation now when it would make everyone late, not now when Dad was hung over and Ma had pulled a tough late shift, not now, when every second lost magnified Becky’s chances of having a blunder or three.
    She walked out into the light rain, wondering if she ever really could have that conversation with Brett Michigan, telling him that maybe ‘Miss Rebecca’ needed a father more than he needed a mother. Just the fact that she brought it up would reverse them even more! She plodded down the street, thinking about how backward life was, how much you had to learn, how much you couldn’t really change even when you tried your very, very hardest.
    She was almost to the corner of Stonybrook and Elm, and she saw an interesting looking rock under a hedge. It was glistening, round, the size of one of those mega super-balls you got out of the machines that let you try to snag a prize with the three robotic tongs worked by a lever. She bent and reached for it so she could try the ball trick she’d performed in her dream.
    She stood and balanced the rock on the backs of her index and middle fingers, the pair of digits aimed out as if she was going to poke someone in both eyes, only at waist level. She flicked the round stone into the air and caught it in the Four Seam Fastball grip—well, almost, the rock wasn’t quite big enough to do it just right. She was walking now, and she rolled it back to her knuckles like a magician, and it felt right and she flicked it up to the Cutter grip. She missed, however, and the rock slipped, and she grabbed at it, stumbling forward.
    She tried to save it, pawed for it, and just managed to flick it airborne with the tips