“And then I went, like, blam! And he was, like, ahh!” Ashton exaggerated his tall tale, acting out everything that happened.

“I don’t think that you defeated king Tut and met Stephen King right after.” Robin tried her best to ignore him, maneuvering through the bat display. They were inside a sports store, searching for weapons after this idiot burned their old ones.

“I did! They both have ‘king’ in their name, so it makes sense, right?” He argued back, crossing his arms like a toddler. Robin rolled her eyes. This guy was getting on her last nerve. Actually, she wasn’t sure that she had any nerves left.

“Can you start helping? What was the point of you coming along if you’re going to talk my ear off the entire time?” She snapped back, eyebrows furrowing.

Ashton grumbled, mimicking Robin in a high-pitched voice. She noticed and shot a scowl at him.

“Think fast,” Robin swiftly grabbed a bat and threw it at him. Ashton’s eyes widened and he swerved to his left. The bat slammed into some bikes before falling down at his feet.

“Are you trying to kill me?” His outgoing demeanor faltered as his fists clenched. Robin disregarded him, flicking her hand dismissively as if he were a peasant. Not like that was far from the truth. He was.

“I wish, but Vicky and the others would kill me too, so no.” Robin spoke with brutal honesty. “That’s yours by the way.” She returned to scavenging.

Ashton hesitated before grabbing the handle of the bat. It was heavy, despite not being metal like modern bats. It felt like it belonged in his hands. He messed with it some more, swinging it as if he were attacking enemies.

“This is perfect, thanks!”

“Don’t mention it.”

Ashton took a couple of practice swings with his new bat and turned back to Robin.

"Thanks!" he said, before leaving to go to practice.

At practice, Ashton hit almost every pitch and smashed a couple of monster home runs. He spotted Robin watching him from outside the fence around the field. Robin waved and Ashton responded with a short wave.

As practice ended, the coach gathered everyone together to talk about their next game.

"Let's go everyone!" coach Mike told the players, "good practice, but we'll need to play even harder to beat the Hawks tomorrow. If some people keep it up we can win this, but we'll need everyone to put in their full effort." After a few more minutes of talking, coach Mike broke the huddle and Ashton ran over to Robin.

"Hey, how's it going?" he asked.

"Pretty good," she responded, "You had better beat the Hawks, no one likes them at all. Their team plays dirty and even cheats to win."

"Okay, I'll keep that in mind," Ashton responded, "Thanks for the information."

The next day, Ashton's team, the Bulldogs, played the Hawks. After some warm up time, the Bulldogs took the field on defense. The inning went well and the Bulldogs held the Hawks scoreless.

After eight innings of play, the score was tied at two to two. It was now the bottom of the ninth, and Ashton was up to bat. The first pitch was low and on the inside, but was called for a strike. The next two pitches were out of the strike zone and called for balls. On the fourth pitch, Ashton swung, but only clipped the edge of the ball and fouled it off. He stepped out of the batters box for a moment to calm down and wipe off his hands. Then he stepped back into the box. As soon as the pitcher went into his windup, Ashton realized something wasn't right, but it was too late to bail. The pitcher released the ball and the small white ball headed straight for Ashton's head. Ashton didn't have enough time to react though, and the last thing he saw before blacking out was the white object hurling sixty miles an hour, at his head.

He hadn't expected to wake up in the hospital. Actually, Ashton didn't really know what he'd been expecting, but definitely not to still be functioning after a baseball hit him right on the nose.

Speaking about his nose, Ashton reached up to touch it and felt the medical gauze wrapped around it. Ouch, that must have hurt. He wasn't sure if it had broken, though he didn't really want to know either. Argh, just thinking about it made his nose throb, though that wasn't even the worst of it, he was sure. It couldn't have been, not after a white ball hurtling 60 miles an hour hit him square in the face.

He got up to walk to the bathroom in the hospital, looking himself over in the mirror. He wouldn't say he was ugly. Frankly, he'd been told he was pretty average-looking, except for the huge bruise around his nose that even the medical tape couldn't hide. Ashton had heard of this happening to people, but he'd never really expected it to happen to him. These stories were what you told to scare the younger kids into actually being able to use a baseball bat correctly.

How were his freckles? It seemed like a pretty stupid thing to worry about, considering, but he knew that was the best part of his face. His eyes were a maroon that would blend into any crowd, and he wasn't particularly short, or tall. His freckles were his most defining feature, which usually added to the impish lopsided grin he got right before he did something that made Robin reconsider their friendship, which was every day, at this point.

Robin. Thinking about her was interesting, because he was sure she was pacing a hole into the ground, even if she'd almost killed him with a baseball bat earlier that...

What day was it? He hadn't looked at the calendar yet, but it couldn't still be Sunday. He remembered that the sun had been low in the sky before whatever happened to him, and the sun had been glaring when he'd woken up, like it was judging his life choices. Frankly, Ashton couldn't really blame it.

He checked the calendar after washing his hands, drying them and glancing at the date, forcing himself to put the words together. They were hopping all over the page, but thank goodness he'd seen a calendar before.

Monday. He'd missed his parents' big dinner with the rest of his family. Usually his mom made something simple, like spaghetti or ham. He'd gotten brought to the hospital, though, so he wondered how the mood must have been at the dinner table, with one extra plate set for a boy who wouldn't get there that night.

He dialled his mom's cell phone number, the one only used for emergencies. This accounted as an emergency, or at least it should, since he was in the hospital. He'd barely dialed it before she picked up.