Excerpt: All's Fair in Love, War, and Girls' Baseball

Amaryllis frowned as started unpacking boxes in her new room. It was a nice enough room, all things considered. The problem was that it wasn’t her old room, with its comfortable old bay window and view of the duck pond down the street.

Instead, Amaryllis had a boxy little room, which might be affectionately described as cozy. In layman’s terms, of course that meant the room was absolutely miniscule in size. When Amaryllis first saw her room, she gave a silent vow of thanks that she wasn’t what one would call a packrat.

Still, Amaryllis wasn’t sure why her parents wanted to move to this particular tiny town in this particular state. Yes, they would be closer to her older sister, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Amaryllis’s parents and her sister often bickered like cats and dogs.

Amaryllis was pretty willing to bet that none of them were going to like living in the same town again. She was pretty sure her sister was going to be furious; because she was absolutely positive her sister had moved away at such a young age in order to get as far away from her parents as possible.

But fate likes to be funny sometimes, and now here was Amaryllis, unpacking boxes in her new-to-her teeny-tiny breadbox bedroom. Technically, her family had moved her because of her parents’ new jobs. Amaryllis suspected the fact that the moved also placed them in the same town as her older sister was an extra bonus. It was somewhat likely that that could have been the final factor that made them decide to make this move.

She made a mental note to kill her sister for it later, when she saw her next. Despite the difference in their ages and personalities, the two sisters got along fairly well and often enjoyed each others’ company.

But tonight, Amaryllis was not in the mood to be gracious or get along well with anyone. She was tired, and she hated unpacking. Her feet hurt and all the dust from these boxes were making her eyes all watery and itchy.

In any case, she was sufficiently distracted and working herself into one fine bad mood. However, a knock on the door caught her attention instead. It stopped Amaryllis right in her tracks, and she wondered who could have bothered knocking. Her parents often barged right in.

“Ah, who is it?” she said, sneezing as she roughly shoved a box out of the way of her line of vision.

“Gesundheit!” said a voice from outside the door. “I’m Ami. I live next door, and I was dragged over here by my mother with a basket of stuff for the new neighbors. Your parents said you were working up here and that I should go introduce myself, since we’re about the same age or something like that.”

Amaryllis set the box in her hands on the ground and studied the girl closely. She had on a pair of glasses with oval frames, and her short black hair was cut to her chin in a layered style. She was dressed immaculately in a pair of jeans – were they pressed? – and a very ruffly lace blouse.

“Ah. What, you’re a freshman, too?” said Amaryllis. She suddenly felt very unkempt, with her hair in its two raggedy pigtails and her bangs plastered to the front of her face by large amounts of sweat. It was a surprisingly warm day for early March, and moving was tedious work.

“Yeah, I’m a freshman over at the high school. So, do you have a name or something?” Ami asked, quirking one eyebrow up above the frame of her black plastic glasses. “Or do I get to call you New Girl for a while?”

Amaryllis quickly wiped her grubby hands on the legs of her khaki cargo pants and extended one over to Ami. “I’m Amaryllis. Pleased to make your acquaintance. I think.”

Ami accepted the hand with a flourish and shook it firmly. “So, what brings you over to this sleepy little town of ours?” she asked, moving a suitcase out of the way to sit on the edge of Amaryllis’s bed.

Amaryllis shoved a stack of clothes off of her bed and sat down next to Ami. “It’s not that sleepy, really. It’s bigger than my old town was!” she said with a small smile. “Our old town was really suburban. I like how this house is more centrally located to everything.”

“Well, everything is kind of not much,” said “But I suppose it’s to each their own. Okay, Amaryllis, you can be easily entertained by my sleepy little hometown for now, I suppose. Welcome to Adela Acres, please enjoy your stay.”

Amaryllis resisted the urge to grin at Ami’s obvious sarcasm. “I’m sorry that the room’s kind of a total disaster,” Amaryllis said, choosing to apologize instead, and realizing she probably should have mentioned that first off.

“You’re moving in, and you just got here today!” replied Ami. “This kind of thing is to be slightly expected, really. So anyway, where did you guys move here from?”

Amaryllis pursed her lips for a moment, lost in though. “It’s a bit of a long story, but we came here from Florida. That’s where I was born. However, we were overseas for a few months before that, and we were in Pennsylvania before that. I was born in Oregon, so I guess you could say that’s my hometown.”

“Why did you move around so much?” asked Ami, her curiosity getting the better of her. “And where was overseas, exactly?”

“Hong Kong, but I was only there for three months,” explained Amaryllis. “My dad was transferred over there for work for a year. My mom stayed with me and the rest of my family while we finished out the school year, and then we came back to the States with my father and moved to Florida. Since my mother’s mom still lives over there, it was nice to get to meet some of my family and stuff.”

“Oh, I thought you were an only child,” said Ami, then she bit her lip. “I guess that’s what I get for making an assumption about your family.”

“My family situation is kind of messy,” explained Amaryllis. “My older sister lives in town, though, and so does my niece, Artemis. She’s five and really bright and sweet.”

“Five, huh? My friend Cleo has a sister about that age. I’ll have to see if the two of them know each other,” said Ami. “Is your sister happy to be close to the rest of your family again?”

Amaryllis frowned. “Not exactly,” she said, after a moment. “She fights with my parents an awful lot. About big things and little things.”

Ami nodded in understanding. “I have a younger sister, Maria. She’s ten, but we don’t get along very well. She’s over at the sporting goods store getting equipment, or else I’m sure my mother would have dragged her along, too.”

“Equipment?” asked Amaryllis, her ears perking up. “For what?”

“My sister and I both play baseball,” explained Ami. “There’s a girls’ baseball league in town, from ages 5 all the way through to adult and senior levels.”

“Girls’ baseball?” asked Amaryllis, her ears perking up. “Not softball, you mean?”

“Definitely baseball,” replied Ami. “Try-outs are this week for the spring and summer leagues.”

Amaryllis grinned for a moment before replying. “Do you think I could maybe try? I liked playing first base best. I used to play around with my cousins and stuff. Because we moved all the time, it made it hard to join leagues or take lessons or anything.”

“But you’re maybe interested in playing baseball?” asked Ami. Aren’t you planning to move again, soon? Or do you plan to stay here for a while?”

Amaryllis shrugged her shoulders for a moment before responding. “I think my parents want to stay here for a while. My dad has a new job, one that keeps him from moving around quite so much. Also, my parents I think want to maybe set things right with my sister. They haven’t said it quite so clearly yet, but I have a feeling that part of the reason we moved all the way over here is to try and give them a chance to repair their relationship with her and my niece.”

Ami grinned, a big smile that seemed almost uncharacteristically pleasing on the girls’ face. Amaryllis had a sneaking suspicion that Ami was a fairly somber person who rarely found reason to be caught doing such mundane things like grinning. She thought about commenting on that, but realized that she didn’t really know her well enough yet to make such statements. But she felt like maybe the two of them could possibly grow to be good friends at some point.

“It kind of stinks that I’m going to have to join the class so late in the school year,” said Amaryllis out loud. “There are only what – three months left in the school year?”

“Well, it could be worse,” decided Ami. “And besides, you’ll have me to keep you in line and the rest of my friends too. So, anyway, are you going to try out for baseball?”

Amaryllis nodded. “Yeah, I’d like that. My parents have practically promised that we won’t move again until I’m done with high school, which is really good. So, I think I can really start to get involved in some things. I was always kind of not ready to do new things before, because we always seemed to move away before I was ready to go.”

“Maybe you can join our team,” said Ami. “We could maybe use a good first baseman. We’re going to try to make it to the tournament in Fort Myers this year. And we need all the help we can get!”

“You guys play in tournaments?” asked Amaryllis, her eyes opening wide in surprise. “I didn’t realize that there were any.”

“Well, yeah, of course!” said Ami. “We have the local ones with the league. And the winner of that one gets to go ahead and play in a big regional tournament in Florida. It’s not quite the World Series, but it’s pretty awesome all the same.”
“Yeah,” Amaryllis smiled as she picked up a stuffed animal out of her bag. “So ah, try-outs are this week, right?”

“Yes,” replied Ami. “Do you know where your glove is? I can go out and practice with you if you want. I’ll even take you over to the field after school tomorrow if you want, to try out.”

Amaryllis nodded. “That would be nice,” she said. “Maybe it won’t be so bad in this new town after all.”