Conviction by Kelly Loy Gilbert Read Free Book Online Page B

testify?”
    He blinks at me. “I beg your pardon?”
    “Like, it was your idea, and my dad didn’t argue? Or he was the one who came up with it?”
    “There wasn’t much conversation. You’re an eyewitness. It’s your father.”
    “But did he tell you in so many words that I would testify, or what?”
    “Really, Braden, there’s no need to be so nervous.” He claps his hand on my back and smiles with his lips closed. “Your father trusts you, and so do I.”

T here’ve been dark gray clouds gathering over the orchards at the horizon and threatening rain all day, but there’s a good-size crowd
gathering for the game when we head out onto the field that afternoon to warm up. Baseball is king in Ornette, the thing you talk about with strangers in line at the store and relive when
you’re barbecuing at the lake in the summer. Last year when we took the championship it felt like the whole town made the trip to Southern California to see us play. Something about the crowd
today makes me feel safer—the normalcy of it, partly, and also I guess it feels like a sign of good faith. Everyone in the crowd’s been listening to my dad announce our games nearly all
my life.
    I toss a few off-speed pitches to Colin, my catcher, to warm up, and I half watch who’s coming into the stands. I guess this was dumb, but I’d thought maybe Trey would be here.
He’s not. But it’s a bad habit to watch attendance, anyway—at best, it’s just a lot of people to worry about letting down.
    To make the playoffs again this year, we can lose no more than once, and today won’t be that day. Sierra West isn’t a real threat like Brantley or La Abra, and last year we took them
11–2. Today I’m pitching against Logan Marshall, a second-string pitcher who last year had nothing more than a halfway decent slider he couldn’t command half the time anyway, and
whose career will probably end in Tuesday night community softball once he graduates. I’ve already told Colin I want to throw curveballs today to practice for Brantley, since Sierra’s
the kind of team you can practice on.
    But still, even though Logan Marshall isn’t someone I’m afraid of, even though I’m not actually worried about this game, there’s a stinging, pulsing anxiety building in
my muscles like lactic acid. It gets worse when I take the mound and there’s a loud, breathy staticky sound from the announcer’s booth. Colin gets the game ball from the umpire and
tosses it to me, and whoever they got to replace my dad reads my stats from a list in a way that makes me think he’s never heard of me in his life. Before I can stop it, I see again my
dad’s arms wrenched behind his back, the way his legs buckled from pain or maybe fear.
    I curl my hand around the ball. There’s a place in your mind where any voices you let in slip down your spine and into your lungs and heart, become a thing you breathe and bleed, and my
dad taught me this: how to stake a barricade against those ones you can’t allow. I wait until I’m back in control, until there’s nothing else except the next pitch.
    I position my right foot against the edge of the rubber and stand straight, sheltering the ball in my glove. Colin puts down a sign for a fastball and then sets up outside, and I position my
fingers around the ball’s seams, and I lift my left leg and balance on my right and watch the hitter circle his bat. It’s not often that you matter more than you do in that moment, when
you’re another person’s entire world. Then I draw back my arm and shift all my weight forward at the same time as I fling my arm as hard as it will go in one calibrated explosion and
the ball goes rocketing out of my hand, a pure, clean line across the grass, and it flies over the plate and is swallowed safely into Colin’s glove before the batter ever moves.
    Strike one.
    I escape the first inning with nothing worse against me than a single. As I go back into the dugout, Colin’s