Mickey & Me by Dan Gutman

climbed in the backseat between Tiby and Ziggy. Maybe this would be even better, I tried to convince myself. I was being taken out on a date with four girls.
    They looked a lot different than they did in their baseball uniforms. Checkered blouses, jeans, and cowboy boots seemed to be the style of the Chicks.
    â€œI thought jeans were against the rules of conduct,” I said.
    â€œThe heck with the rules of conduct,” Ziggy declared. “Nobody tells me what to wear.”
    Merle drove a few miles until we reached an area where there were more farms than houses or stores. The girls broke into the “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” a song I knew because my mom forced me to listen to one of her CDs, which I had titled Stupid Old Songs to Puke By .
    I thought they would be taking me to a healthfood restaurant—seeing as how they were athletes and all. But when Merle pulled into the parking lot of Johnny’s Bar-B-Cue, I realized I was wrong. For all I knew, health food didn’t exist in 1944.
    The place was a bit of a dive, with peanut shells on the floor and cowboy stuff on the walls—ropes, saddles, hats, and so on. There was a pool table by the bar, which I assumed was the “Cue” in Johnny’s Bar-B-Cue. The place was almost empty.
    The girls ordered ribs, hot dogs, malteds, and Cokes. Tiby got tomato soup too. I ordered a burger.
    â€œSomething to drink?” the waitress asked.
    â€œI’ll have a Sprite,” I said.
    â€œA what?” The waitress looked up from her pad.
    â€œUh, Mountain Dew, please.”
    â€œI beg your pardon?”
    I looked around. Everybody was looking at me funny.
    â€œA Coke,” I finally decided. “Give me a Coke.”
    â€œSure thing.”
    While we waited for our food, there was a loud noise on the front steps and—to my astonishment—a chestnut horse walked right into the restaurant! And riding the horse—with a cowboy hat on her head—was Mickey Maguire.
    â€œYee-haw!” she bellowed.
    I was sure that “yee-haw” was just one of those things you only heard in the movies and not in real life. You know, like “yippee-I-oh-ki-yay” and all that hokey cowboy talk.
    Nobody seemed to think it was weird to see a woman ride into the restaurant on a horse. I assumed Mickey must do it all the time.
    Mickey tied up the horse to a pole outside and joined our table. The waitress came with the food and I dug in. The burger tasted good. I realized that I hadn’t eaten since the macaroni and cheese I’d shared with my cousin Samantha about four hours earlier.
    â€œYou like tomato soup?” I asked Tiby.
    â€œNo, I hate it,” she said, slurping up a spoonful.
    â€œThen why are you eating it?”
    â€œThe last time I ate it, I went four for five.”
    â€œYou think the tomato soup helped you go four for five?”
    â€œDidn’t hurt,” she replied.
    The girls rehashed the game, congratulating me again on my baserunning and mascoting skills. But they agreed that they should have won the game much earlier than the ninth inning. If they had made a couple of key hits, if they hadn’t made a few errors, they would have beaten the Peaches easily.
    I thought about standing up and proposing a toast. That’s what grown-ups did when they got together for meals, wasn’t it? I would thank them all for being so nice to me, and I’d make a special toast to Mickey because her husband would be coming home from the war soon.
    Something stopped me, though. Nobody else had mentioned it, and Mickey had acted kind of weirdwhen she had heard the news that the Allies captured Rome. I decided to drop the idea of a toast.
    When everybody was done eating and they had divied up the check, Merle leaned over to me.
    â€œHow would you like to go to a special place?” she whispered in my ear. “Just you and me?”
    â€œJust you and m-me?” I wanted to make sure I