Heft: A Novel by Liz Moore


Kel --


One girl in my high school, her family belongs, and even though we are not friends I know it about her. It’s the thing that is always said next after her name.     990  {to the fancy country club}

Who I was meant something different here than it did at home. At home I was in charge of all the boys at my school. I am not exaggerating, it was true. I was in charge of them as surely as if I had been elected. I told them things to do and they did them.     1020

My classmates spoke perfect drawling lazy English. They spoke like rich adults. I think, said one, that what Reagan was forgetting was that people *give a damn* about other people. It was astonishing.     1042
 


I can throw and catch balls. I can run faster than most people. I can swing bats and launch my body like a missile toward the bodies of other players and I can knock them down. I can jump. I can tense my muscles and swallow the blows that come in my direction from elbows and shoulders and hips.     1071


We had to petition the town again to let me stay at PLHS because my mom didn’t work at the school anymore. Coach Ramirez took me with him to a school board meeting and told them, Here is a straight-A student with a very sick mom, and I dressed up in khakis and tucked my stupid shirt in. And I am a straight-C student if I am anything.     1117

    
A mattress in the backyard. A mattress with a red bull’s-eye on it.     4041

Marcus can throw the ball too—better than I can, maybe. It stings to catch a ball that this kid throws in from the outfield. I can feel it for seconds afterward.     4041

Marcus tosses the ball up in the air and catches it. How many hours have I spent in my life doing that. Just doing that with any type of ball I could find. Baseballs and basketballs and footballs. Rocks when there were none. Marbles. Pennies. Flipping quarters. Throwing books in the air and catching them. Just tossing things.  I think it is what I have done most in my life. Lying down on my bed or standing up or out in the little backyard.     4080

My mother drew the bull’s-eye. She propped the mattress up and drew the red bull’s-eye on it for me. My mother, wearing sweatpants and a robe, her feet bare in our grassless backyard, and there I was behind her, tossing a baseball into the air.  And catching it. Oh I caught it.  Oh I always did.     4115

    
I think about the Marcus Hobarts of the world, the people who play like they are magic, the people who play like they were made for baseball and baseball was made for them. Sometimes I think that I am like this too, like I am part of this, but there are days, more and more, when I’m not sure. And I think you have to be sure. I think the Marcus Hobarts of the world are positive.     4335


Kel, says Dr. Moscot, and I say, Wait.   Kel, says Dr. Moscot.   Hang on a second, I say.
I’m very sorry to tell you this, says Dr. Moscot. This is what it feels like, I keep thinking. For so many years I’ve been wondering.     2582

She’s dead, I say again, and it’s the third time I’ve said it and the first time I’ve meant it: that she’s gone, my mother is gone, I cannot ask her anything or tell her anything ever again.     3285



Why is he staying here? Mrs. Harper pauses. He lost his mama, she says finally.  His mama? says Margo. Yes, says Mrs. Harper. The way we lost Andy. He lost his mama. Oh no, says Margo.     4172

She’s the best girl I’ve ever known.     1173 {Lindsay Harper}
 
I have stopped lying or being very silent. I have been telling everyone the truth. I have been letting them help me. They all want to help me and so I am letting them. Lindsay told me that when someone in your family dies you have to let people think they are helping. It is kind to. It helps them, she told me. It helps them to think they are helping. So I’ve been trying. For Lindsay.     3870

Yes. I keep letting people help me. I feel like I am opening, but also like I am dying.     3883