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with my hands on my knees and try to take deep, long, consistent breaths.
    Kyle, Michelle, and Annabelle surround me, and Kyle offers a hand to help me up. His Popeye forearms pull me up with little effort.
    â€œHell of a game,” Michelle says. “Hey, Coach Phillips, is there room for Biggie on the baseball team this year?”
    â€œYeah, I wanna see him pitch!” Annabelle yells.
    â€œReally?” I whisper so quietly I’m not sure anyone heard it but me.
    â€œC’mon, guys, you’re going to be late for class,” Coach Phillips says. “Biggie, you can have a few more minutes of fresh air, but don’t take too long.”
    â€œCoach,” I say. I want to add, Annabelle said I should pitch? But the words settle in my throat. Instead I say, “Thank you. I won’t be long.”

Chapter 4
    The Baseball-Playing Son
    I lie on my bed and wait for my younger half-brother Maddux to get home from spending the summer traveling with my step-dad. Maddux and I get along pretty well. He’s a cocky little thing who thinks he’s gonna hit seventy home runs in the Major Leagues by the time he’s twenty, but for the most part, he’s all right. My step-dad is a different story.
    In 1990, Jim Kaczor changed the pronunciation of his last name from Kass-sore to Kazer , so that he could go by the nickname Jim “the Laser” Kaczor. He stole thirty-three bases as a senior at Finch High School and helped the Yellow Jackets win a state title, one of ten Finch has won. He has now played professionally for three organizations, including the San Diego Padres, who called him up for four days in 2004. His lifetime batting average is .100: 1-for-10, a single against the Los Angeles Dodgers on September 29. After singling to right field, he was thrown out trying to steal. So the self-proclaimed Laser has the worst possible stolen-base percentage in major league history: .000
    Laser never talks to me. I’m not complaining, just stating a fact. Is it possible for a step-dad to be embarrassed by a child he didn’t procreate? All of the Kaczors are baseball players. They’re royalty in this town. When I was younger, I always thought Laser would adopt me, but he never has. I guess only baseball players in this town can have the last name Kaczor. If he doesn’t want to be my dad, so be it. I don’t care.
    Eleven years ago, they had Maddux Kaczor, named after former Atlanta Braves pitcher Greg Maddux. In a lot of ways, Maddux is my best friend. We stay up all night playing video games and talking about his road trips.
    I like Maddux, not only because he’s my brother, but because he doesn’t expect anything from me. He doesn’t ask questions about school, work, or girls. Outside of calling me Biggie, which I said he could when I went through a Henry’s-a-stupid-old-man-name phase, he doesn’t make fun of my weight or ask me when I’m going to lose one hundred pounds. When we sneak off to Molly’s for chicken fingers, he keeps it to himself. I just wish he was around more. What really sucks is that he’s gone in the summer when I have little to do.
    Maddux is road-schooled. I can’t say he’s home-schooled because he’s never home. Laser takes him everywhere: out east for minor league baseball, down south for winter ball. Maddux sleeps in his bed in October, November, Christmas, New Year’s, and the first few weeks of February. The rest of the year, he sleeps in hotel rooms with his dad.
    The Kaczors are also filthy rich. Besides being baseball players, they have a knack for buying farmland cheap and selling it high. Laser doesn’t farm, so he sold his 2,400 acres of inheritance to his brothers and used the money to build my mom her 6,000-square-foot dream house and Maddux his own indoor baseball field. The indoor baseball diamond has green-and-white field turf, a dirt pitching mound, a batter’s box, bases, and a