Page 7 of Ugly Duckling
“Is he…”
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “But you need to go.”
I didn’t think.
Didn’t change out of my baseball cleats.
Didn’t even take my batting gloves off.
I just ran.
My old Jeep was pushed to the limit that day.
I drove as fast as the ol’ beast would take me.
I pulled up to the school, and the first person I saw was my uncle in the crowd.
“Uncle Parker!”
Uncle Parker turned, and I knew by the look on his face that my world had just ended.
I sank to my knees without any conscious thought of doing so.
Suddenly I was on the ground, and the only thing I could see was the tiny footprints in the gravel rock that the kids used to make their way to the track.
I swallowed hard as the tears started to fall.
My baby.
My baby boy was gone.
And some school shooter had taken it all from me.
My hopes and my dreams. Our future.
Gone, just like that.
He wouldn’t get married. He wouldn’t know what it was like to hold the whole world in his hands when his own baby boy was placed in his arms. He wouldn’t know what it was like to watch his son graduate pre-k.
He wouldn’t know anything.
Because he was stolen from me.
I threw my head back and cursed every god in existence.
Fuck this.
Fuck him.
Fuck this life.
Two years later
“And for his first at bat in the major leagues, Gunner Penn!”
I felt nothing.
I should’ve felt excited.
