Baseball Karma

    "Take me out to the ballgame!" Kasey Sumners shouted, not in a burst of somewhat nostalgic cheer, but as a sheer demand.
    Her boyfriend Jack just cringed, his so-called dominant male role again trampled under the force that was Ms. Sumners. They had been going out for three months, and it had been a good two-and-a-half since he had found out how bossy she was. After that, he deeply regretted their relationship. Besides, bossy just wasn't the exact right word; saying that Kasey Sumners was bossy was like saying having received a dead puppy for your fifth birthday had put a little damper on the celebration.
    "I dunno, Kase…I thought maybe we'd...I don't know. Do something else." Like go parachuting, he thought bitterly, only I won't use a parachute and then I'll never have to hear your sorry excuse for a voice ever again. She just smirked, a smirk a thousand times bitterer than Jack's thoughts. For a brief moment he was certain he would lose all the manliness he had retained and break down and scream. Just scream, not in horror, but in simple, pure, beautiful insanity.
    "No, Jack…you're going to take me to the ballgame." It was not even a statement; it was a fact. And as much as he hated it, he knew.
    The half truth was that he didn't know why he hadn't broken up with her when he learned of her almost psychotic, controlling ways. The real truth was that deep down he was afraid of her. She was crazy, and not in crazy ex-girlfriend crazy, even though he figured that when he finally did break up with her she'd be the worst type of crazy ex-girlfriend there ever was.
    "Okay, Kase, we'll go," Jack answered, fighting back a second breakdown. She smirked her superior smirk. He reached for his keys only to have the cold metal snatched away from under his fingertips.
    "I'm driving," Kasey announced and growled simultaneously. Jack felt a certain rage build up inside him, and he thought for a moment about demanding his keys back. The car in question, a beautiful 1970 Plymouth 'Cuda, had been his fathers'--handed down only with the promise of certain death if even a single scratch marred its custom fire-red metal flake paint job. For a moment he was sure this was all a good foundation to start up a fight with Kasey, but then he thought again. The real question was not about his car, but whose wrath he would rather face; his father's, if anything should happen to the vehicle, or Kasey's, if he told her that he wouldn't allow her to drive. Before he could make up his mind, however, she was already in the driver's seat--screaming at him to hurry up, no less. With a grudging sigh he walked over to the passenger side of his own car, the bubbling rage turning into a hateful throb low in his chest. He didn't bother to put his safety belt on as he slid low into his seat. If she got them into a car accident and he went through the windshield, it would be all for the best.
    Fortunately or unfortunately, Kasey made it to the stadium without getting them into a fatal car crash. Nevertheless, Kasey's bossiness quadrupled once they got to the sports arena, probably because now she had an audience to acknowledge her as she crushed Jack's ego into the ground.
    "Can't you do anything right, you klutz?!" she exclaimed fervently, her eyes flashing like a cynical priest that had preached a particularly fire and brimstone sermon. Jack had tried to hand her a Diet Coke. She had demanded he retrieve it from a concessions stand that was placed in the most unreachable place in the cosmos. Kasey did not look where she was going and nearly knocked the whole thing out of his hands.
    "Do you think you could look where you were going?" he muttered. It was a weak comeback in comparison to her pair of glaring demon eyes, mere bloodshot daggers hidden inside a human skull.
    "Go get me something to eat," Kasey hissed.
    He went. He would rather take the impossible journey through crowds of people to another unreachable concession stand than spend any more time at a baseball game with Kasey Sumners.
    At that exact moment a loud 'crack' shot through the air. Someone behind them screamed 'look out!' But it was too late for Jack to even twitch. Something came flying through the air and hit Kasey square in the head. She let out a shallow bark as she was knocked to the ground. It was the last noise Jack ever heard of her screeching voice.
    The ambulance loaded Ms. Sumners into the back with a lack of grace that made Jack proud in some perverse manner. She was knocked out, a brain concussion for sure, but he didn't really seem to be bothered all that much. In his hands he held the half of the "miracle" baseball bat that had broken off and flew into his ex-girlfriend's forehead and decided he would encase it, put in his room somewhere where he would remember the occasion perpetually.
    "You know what?" he muttered to himself as he walked over to his Plymouth 'Cuda and ducked into the driver's seat, "going to the baseball game turned out to be a good idea, after all." He didn't bother to follow the ambulance to the hospital. It wasn't on his way home.

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Written by [Deg]. Edited by the (one of the few) amazing HUHS teachers, Mr. Boyd.

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