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could see little pale green buds coming out on the trees. In town, on sheltered corners of lawns, crocuses poked up, purple, yellow, and white, nestling up close to bushes, keeping low to the ground. Spring seemed to cheer everybody, give everybody things to do. Everyone, that is, except James, who found himself more and more oppressed by baseball. He wanted to quit the team, badly, but if he did—well, they’d say he was a quitter, and maybe he was, but he didn’t want to be—and besides, you could stand anything for a few months, couldn’t you? Other people could. So James should be able to. Anyway, if he couldn’t, he didn’t want anybody finding that out about him.
    On the last Friday in March, even hunger couldn’t make him hurry up the driveway home. Not on a day that had begun with the sight of Celie Anderson walking down the corridor with Andy Walker, leaning toward him a little as she said something, smiling up at him, wanting him to smile back at her. Not a day that ended with a hard, low hit to the right outfield, a hit that James had seen coming at him and still jumped back from at the last minute. He didn’t trust his glove to catch the ball, to protect his face, and he could imagine how it would feel to be smashed in the face by a ball going that fast. Nobody had said anything to him, and that was worse than if they had. He almost wished, when he thought about it, that they’d cussed him out, even though, at the time, he’d only been hoping maybe nobody had seen what happened.
    It would be, he thought, a good day to get a letter from Provincetown. He made his feet move along the dirt driveway. He needed something good to happen.
    But there was no letter, of course. And at supper Gram startedout reminding them that Dicey would be home next week for spring break. Dicey got two weeks, while the public schools only had a long weekend around Easter, a long weekend followed by a string of baseball games. Maybeth and Sammy went on and on about the things they wanted to do when Dicey was home; they wondered if Jeff and Mina would be around as well, and when Dicey would want to get her boat into the water. James ate away at macaroni and cheese, almost without tasting the food. He moved his fork steadily, filling his mouth, swallowing, filling his stomach. Thinking: they’d probably insist on coming to see the games.
    As if she could read his mind, Gram looked down the table at him and asked, “When do the baseball games start?”
    â€œI’m not sure,” James said carefully. She just looked at him and looked at him. “Second week in April?” he guessed.
    â€œPah,” she said, an exasperated noise made by blowing air out through pursed lips. “You can do better than that.”
    No, he couldn’t, James thought. Gram was staring at him, waiting, impatient, but James looked across at Maybeth, who was looking at him too. But Maybeth looked at him as if she knew how much he hated it, as if she understood how, every day, he had to make himself do it.
    â€œWill you be playing in the games?” Gram asked.
    â€œI doubt it,” James told her truthfully. That was a more cheerful thought. “Pass me the vegetables?” he asked. In the fall, Gram put up jars of zucchini mixed with tomatoes. When she heated them, she added fresh-cooked onions, which made it like a vegetable stew. James emptied the serving bowl onto his plate.
    â€œDon’t you want to play?” Sammy asked. He was serious.
    â€œDon’t be ridiculous,” James answered, then filled his mouth with food. Sammy honestly thought everybody liked playing sports. He had no imagination.
    â€œI got a seventy-one on the science test,” Maybeth said.
    For once, Gram had no opinion. “Well,” she said. “Well.”
    â€œGood-o,” Sammy said.
    Maybeth always did that, brought her good news to the table and held it out, like a little kid holding