“Can I talk to you for a minute, Mr. Rose?” Mikey asked, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth as she tried not to think about what Coach Dilmore was going to do to her when she showed up late to practice today.
“Of course,” he said, gesturing for her to sit down at the desk across from him. “I actually wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Good or bad?” Mikey asked, because she liked to clear that kind of thing up as soon as possible.
Chuckling, Mr. Rose said, “It’s good. I’ve been really impressed by how hard you’ve been working lately. We all have.”
“Thank you,” Mikey found herself mumbling awkwardly as she sat there, trying to figure out how she was going to do this.
“I’ll be honest. I’m curious about why you’ve suddenly started applying yourself to your schoolwork,” he said as Mikey took that as her cue to get on with it.
“I’m working on something, which is why I’m here. I need a favor, well, actually two,” she admitted.
“Of course, what can I help you with?”
“I’m trying to get into Latin Scribe High School.”
“Wow,” Mr. Rose said, looking stunned as he sat back in his chair.
“That’s why I’ve been trying to get my grades up,” Mikey admitted as she watched his expression go from shocked to curious and finally settled on thoughtful as he considered her. Nodding absently, Mr. Rose glanced at the windows for a second before looking back at her.
“I caught a few minutes of practice the other day,” he told her, watching her with a curious gleam in his eye that had her wondering which part of her humiliation he’d caught, the coach yelling at her or the part where she was forced to warm the bench now that he’d given her spot away.
Her new job was to warm the bench unless she needed to fill in for someone else if they couldn’t play because of an injury. Except for pitching, since he had plenty of backup for that. She was allowed to exercise with the team and run drills during practice, but that was it. The majority of the time she spent warming the bench.
She never thought that she would be able to hate baseball, but she was slowly starting to. Every day it was getting a little harder than the last to pull on her uniform and make herself go to that field knowing that she was going to sit on the bench. And the games…were the worst part. Being forced to warm the bench while her team played was probably the hardest thing she’d ever done, knowing that she should be on that field.
“Mikey, why aren’t you pitching?”
“I didn’t get the position,” she said, forcing herself to shrug it off like it was no big deal.
“You should have,” Mr. Rose said, taking her by surprise.
At her stunned look, he said, “I saw you pitch in the tournament last year. I’ve never seen anyone pitch a perfect game before. You d
id an amazing job, which had me wondering why your coach isn’t using you.”
“He doesn’t want me to pitch,” she mumbled, not really sure how to respond.
“And that’s why you want to go to Latin Scribe, isn’t it? To get a chance to play?”
“Yes,” Mikey mumbled weakly because she would do anything for another chance to play baseball.
Nodding, Mr. Rose asked, “What can I do to help?”
“I need a letter of recommendation.”
“Consider it done. I’m sure the rest of your teachers would be more than happy to write one for you, as well,” Mr. Rose told her as he grabbed a pen and made a note in his planner.
“I’ll ask them,” she promised.
“What’s the other favor you need?” Mr. Rose asked as he finished writing his note and tossed the pen back on his desk.
“I have to write an essay for the application and I was hoping that you could take a look at it and make sure that the grammar and everything was okay,” she said with a hopeful smile.
“I’d be more than happy to take a look at it.”
Nodding, Mikey pulled out the essay that she’d been working on for the past few weeks and handed it to him. Mr. Rose began reading it only to frown. After another moment, he glanced up at her, throwing her a questioning look before he continued reading her essay. When he was done, he said, “That’s really good, but I just have one question.”