"I miss screaming and fighting and kissing in the rain, now it's 2 am and I'm cursing your name."
Hope Brown wasn't planning on sticking around, neither was her grandma.
New town, new summer, same plan: stay invisible, stay moving, never let anyone matter.
But the Sandlot boys have a way of noticing things-especially Benny, all swagger and sunlight, the kind of boy who turns base-stealing into hard liqour poetry.
Hope throws harder than she talks. She barely smiles, but when she does... it sticks with you. She's got calluses on her palms and a storm behind her eyes.
And Benny? Benny's the first person who doesn't flinch.
"He asked what I was running from. I asked what he was running toward. We never answered."
In a summer of cracked bats, firefly-lit fences, and almost-kisses that taste like bubblegum and fear, Hope has to decide:
Does she want to be the girl who leaves again-or the one who finally stays?
"I have emotional motion sickness, somebody roll the windows down."