My solitary training ends when little league season begins. I tell my new coach about my pitching, but as a rookie I’m relegated to the outfield. It is not until halfway through the season, when our scheduled pitcher is home sick, that I have a chance to test my skills. We are facing my brother’s team. Though this somehow feels right to me, I’m nervous. Terrified, really. With my parents watching from the stands, I accidentally hit the first two batters before I’m finally able to control my pitches. I project myself back onto that strip of grass in winter. Behind home plate, the catcher becomes the pitchback. His mitt moves from one corner of the strike zone to another, and I don’t miss.
My brother leads off the second inning. I know he doesn’t like pitches high and away, so that’s where I throw them. He watches one go by for a strike, then another. I can see him getting anxious. When he crowds the plate to reach for the next one, I throw it down and in instead. He swings awkwardly and misses. Strike three. He bangs his bat on the plate and barks at the umpire before stomping back to the dugout, staring me down the entire way.
Our little drama repeats itself in the fourth inning, the only variation being the location of the three strikes and the even deeper scowl Dean gives me as he stomps back to the bench. He doesn’t come to the plate again until the final inning, with two outs and a man on second. I’ve pitched well, and we’re up by a run, yet my brother can tie the game if he gets a hit. He strides from the dugout, all swagger and bravado, but as he digs into the batter’s box I see that his face is flushed, and he avoids my eye.
The first pitch is low and away, and Dean flails wildly at it. Strike one. His composure has crumbled, and his normally athletic swing has broken down into an angry hack. He curses loudly enough for our parents to hear. The second strike sails by. Dean steps out of the batter’s box to collect his thoughts. When he finally looks at me, the mask of his anger has cracked, and the fear shows through.
I understand. He’s one of the twelve-year-olds, in his final year of little league. Striking out to your little brother, especially when the game is on the line, would be humiliating. I think about the two of us catching leaves together, and how I let him win, and that joyful look on his face. I realize that I can let him win now, too. I can throw a pitch down the middle and he’ll hit it, and tie the game, and smile that happy smile of his. But to let him win at leaf-catching required only that I lie about my tally of leaves, not that I purposely fail to catch them. Now, I’d have to fail on purpose—abandon all my winter practice, all the long hours with that goddamn pitchback and that goddamn basement wall. I’d have to tell my body not to do its best, not to be itself. And I can’t bring myself to do that. I decide to pitch the way I know how. If my brother can hit a fastball on the outside corner, I’ll be the first to congratulate him. If not—well, he can go suck it.
He misses. He swings himself nearly out of his shoes, and ends up on his knees. From there he stares back at the catcher’s mitt, where the third strike rests snugly, safe from the now empty menace of Dean’s bat. The game is over. My brother’s shoulders give one small heave as he fights back tears. Then he stands up and hurls the bat against the fence. His outburst silences the crowd, so that when he turns and jeers at me, everyone can hear.
“Lucky pitch, weirdo. Who taught you that—your dancing monster?”
This is the beginning of the end of my undistinguished baseball career. By the following week, Dean has told half the league that I believe monsters visit me in my room each night to dance and sing and perform plays in flowered dresses. My relationships with the other players—most of whom are also classmates of mine at school—had previously ranged from friendship to, at worst, indifference, but are now transformed into ridicule or, at best, avoidance. Even my own teammates snicker behind my back. After a month of this, the flush in my face and ache in my chest start to feel permanent, and I decide I don’t need it anymore. I tell my mom that my shoulder hurts from too much throwing. In fact, it does hurt a bit, though whether the pain is from throwing is an open question. She lets me skip a practice, then a game, then another game, and without anyone declaring it, we come to the understanding that I’m not going back.
By the time summer arrives, I am spending more and more time alone. When I tire of the thin strip of trees behind our house, I venture into our neighbor’s more expansive woods. This is not the best idea. Mr. Harding is a notoriously mean human being. He is so thoroughly cantankerous that you get the feeling it was not the events of his life that made him so but rather that he was born hostile, and remained true to form throughout every one of his eighty-plus years. The woods behind his house are thick with leaves and mysteries, including the presence of old, rusted farm equipment—a hand plow, the shell of a tractor—which in my mother’s opinion makes the woods dangerous and is another reason why I shouldn’t be there.
It is late afternoon, and I am deep within these forbidden woods, when I find a group of low stones arranged into an unnaturally perfect ring. Resting on an old tree stump near the center of the ring is a book. Or most of a book—its cover and first few pages have been torn away. Without stopping to ponder its origin, or the incongruity of its presence here in the undergrowth, or even why I haven’t stumbled upon it sooner, I pick it up, sit down with my back to the tree stump, and begin reading.
At that time in Neverene, there was a giant, with a giant heart.
A shiver runs through me. I am suddenly disoriented, though I don’t know why. At the moment I finished reading these words, it seemed to me that there was a click and, for a fraction of a second, a darkening of the world around me, like the fall of a camera shutter. The sensation is so strong that I look around to see if someone is there, or if anything has changed. Yet everything appears in its place. The afternoon sun dapples the lap of my dirty jeans. The leaves sway in an imperceptible breath of wind. I shrug off my jitters and open the book again.
This time, when my surroundings disappear, I let them. For a moment there are only the letters on the page, and then they too are gone, and all that exists is the world they conjure. Neverene. From the beginning, a medley of tales seems already under way, featuring a motley collection of players. But it is Neverene itself that captivates me. It is fantastical, mystical—and somehow conscious. Everything in Neverene—animate or inanimate—is awake. Trees speak, rocks feel, even the weather has intentions. And then there is the giant, with a heart so big he can commune with all of it, whether flesh or wood, stone or sky.
I stop reading only when the failing light demands it, when the white pages seem to glow and the black letters shuffle and blend into one another. I look up. Hours have passed. The sun is gone, and the woods have fallen into half-light. The crickets start their chorus. Tiny sparks pulse in the air around me as the fireflies come to life. I rise on stiff legs and look for the path home, but the way is dark and my head is light. I’m chilled and, admittedly, a little scared. I don’t want to try to find my way back through the woods, so I opt for the shorter route that cuts across Mr. Harding’s back lawn. A risky move, but I hope the darkness will cover me.
I leave the woods and race across the open grass, hunching over as if this might somehow make me less visible. I am close to Mr. Harding’s house, and have almost reached the edge of his property, when a voice calls out.