Wing Ding by Kevin Markey Page A

and true, the ball met plastic andmade a beautiful thunk .
    â€œWay to go, Stump!” I roared, slapping high fives with the Blues. He’d cut the Reds’ lead down to a single point and still had five shots left. Things looked good. Stump looked even better. He looked like he’d beaten the yips!
    As he gathered himself for his second shot, a strong gust of wind blasted through the park. It must have disturbed the grasshoppers, because all of a sudden they started buzzing louder than ever. It definitely disturbed Stump. His arm hiccuped and the ball bounced wide of the mark.
    Four shots to go.
    â€œNice and easy now,” called Gasser.
    Stump nodded. The grasshoppers whined. He threw. The ball fell short. Three shots to go.
    His next one sent Mr. Bones scrambling for cover.
    We winced.
    â€œJust toss it like you always do,” I called. “Nothing to it.”
    He tossed the ball, all right. He tossed itsmack off the side of the climbing structure in the middle of the playground. The grasshoppers seemed to get a kick out of that. Their chirping sounded like laughter.
    One shot left. Stump needed to make it count to tie the game. Judging by the way his arm twitched, what he really needed was a miracle.
    We tried to drown out the bugs by cheering. Everybody joined in, Reds and Blues alike. Forget the score. Stump was our friend. He was our teammate. We hated to see him struggle. All of us pulled desperately for him.
    And he tried. You could see how hard he tried. He took a deep breath. His right arm drew back, and the left reached forward and pointed at the target. It all looked textbook…right up to the end. Just as he released the ball, a horrible shiver ran through his body. A twitch, a jolt, a jerk, a stammer. The yips. He fired the ball into the ground like he meant to bury it.
    Our cheers died in our throats. We looked away. It was probably the worst throw any of ushad ever seen in our lives.
    Skip Lou kept quiet. He just circled his finger in the air.
    Slingshot, Gasser, Velcro, Stump, and I took off on the Losers’ Lap. We kept quiet, too. We had nothing to say. As we jogged around the playground, only our footsteps and steady breathing disturbed the uneasy silence. That and grasshoppers droning in windswept trees.

CHAPTER 15
    W hen we finished the Loser’s Lap, Skip tried to run some batting practice. But nobody had much heart for it. Between the yips and the kite festival, now in full swing across the park, we couldn’t concentrate. After a while he made like the sunset and called it a day.
    â€œPack it in, fellows,” he said. “I can see your minds are elsewhere. Let’s meet back here first thing tomorrow morning. We’ll see if we can get the field in any kind of shape for the All-Star Game. In the meantime, go and try to have some fun.”
    With that we grabbed our kites and took off across the park, where flying objects of everysize, shape, and color painted the sky like a rainbow. Bat kites, bird kites, butterfly kites, box kites as big as refrigerators, traditional diamond-shaped kites sporting hot colors and long, streaming tails. Snarling red-and-gold Chinese dragons, silver flying saucers, stunt kites, stacking kites. Kites cut to look like biplanes and pirate ships, octopuses and sting-rays, puppy dogs and polar bears—all soaring among the high-flying clouds.
    Down on the ground, a huge crowd milled about gawking, eating, and swaying to the loud music that thumped from a white tent emblazoned with the logo of the radio station WHOT 102.5. Some vendors peddled fried dough from red-and-white-striped carts. Others sold hamburgers, and hot dogs sizzled on a grill. Souvenir sellers hawked T-shirts and bumper stickers. Kids wrestled on the ground, dogs barked, the wind raced.
    Flicker Pringle was there, too, flying his Death Star high overhead.
    Eager to launch, I handed my winder to Stump. “Let out some line,” I told him, backing away with