Chapter 23: Rory's Home Run

Dane bent to the microphone in my hand.

His mouth was an inch from my knuckles, and the speakers carried every breath.

"Barron," he said. "It's been you for two years."

Then he kissed me, in front of the cheerleaders and the band and his father.

The sound that came out of the stands was so big that I felt it in the grass.

Rory, in the booth, whooped into his headset, and the whole stadium heard that too.

A referee jogged over with his hands on his hips.

"Kickoff is in nine minutes," he said, and he sounded almost sorry.

Dane played the rest of Senior Day, and the Herons won.

I sat in row twelve with his father, who cried openly and said it was the wind.

On Sunday afternoon Rory played the last game of the fall baseball season.

It was a small game on a cold diamond with maybe two hundred people in the bleachers.

Someone had sewn the C back onto his jersey, in crooked orange thread.

"The team voted," he said, when I leaned over the dugout rail.

"Nobody told me. I found it in my locker."

"You earned it."

"I confessed to a lot of things in a group chat." He grinned. "It turns out that's popular."

In the seventh inning he came to the plate with two men on base and the score tied.

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