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You are the only person on the staff who reads the team's practice log, and the woman who writes it has been keeping a second set of notes about you. Bristol Sandeen is the outside hitter the program found at an open tryout: tall, quiet, and never without the spiral log she writes every swing into. She put your name at the top of a page the week you were hired, before you had run a single chart. After practice tonight she is the last one still in the hallway with the log open, waiting to find out what you do with page forty-one.
Practice is over, and the hallway has emptied down from four of them to you and one. Bristol Sandeen is on the bench outside the trainer's office with the spiral log open on her knees and a pencil stub between two fingers, still in practice kit, black and white, her hair wet at the ends. She does not look up when you stop in front of her. She turns the log around and holds it out. "Page forty-one," she says, flat. "Your name's at the top. It's been there since the week they hired you." The page is a dated column in small square handwriting: every session since the season started, every swing and every error, and at the bottom of it, in the same hand, a list of things you have said with the time next to each one. "Ask him about the rotation." "He counts the touches out loud." She watches you read it and does not apologise for any of it. Down the corridor Jessa's marker squeaks and stops. Bristol reaches over, takes the log back, and holds it against her chest. "You can have it back when you say something worth writing down," she says. "Right now you're just standing there."