The One Underneath

|| What Do You Mean? ||

"How do you just cuss at the umpire?" I giggled at Alex. He was telling me about the first time he was ejected from a major league game as we ate lunch at a cafe in San Francisco.

"I was so mad. It just happened!" He laughed.

"You can't tell me you've never yelled at am ump. I mean, you're AJ Pierzynski's niece."

"I didn't say I've never yelled at one, I'm saying I've never cussed at one. There's a difference." I raised an eyebrow.

"Noted." He smiled, taking a drink of his tea.

"Are you nervous about the game?" I asked.

"I guess so. The Giants haven't been too bad for me, though." He shrugged.

"Well, I know you'll do good." I told him.

"I don't want you to go back to softball." He admitted with a sad voice.

"Well, I don't want you to go to the other side of the country and play baseball but I know that it's your dream." I state.

"Whoa, sass master." He put his hands up.

"I'm not being sassy, it's just that playing softball professionally is my dream. You're living your dream, I am going to live mine." I was aggravated.

"Like, I don't even know why you'd even say that."

"I, just." He said.

I got up and left, leaving the restaurant. Here I was, alone on the streets of San Francisco. What was I doing? I turned to my left and started walking. I didn't know where I was going, but I didn't care. I heard somebody come up behind me, expecting it to be Alex. But the person I met when I turned around looked a lot meaner than a 23 year old wanna-be punk.

He had a gun to my head. I froze. I didn't know what to do, I was terrified. The unknown person had their hand around my throat, basically choking me. I tried to fight as hard as possible to stay consious, but I was slowly loosing the battle as he drug me down an alleyway. He put pills in my mouth before I could say anything, causing me to blackout quickly.

*AJ's POV*

"AJ." Alex called me frantically.

"What's up, bud?" I asked him.

"Addilynn. I d-don't know where s-she went." He stuttered across his words.

"What do you mean you don't know where she went?" I snapped.

"Just meet me outside the stadium." He hung up. I told Lisa where I was going and headed out. I came up to a pacing Alex who was on the phone.

"What's going on Woody?" I jumped out, running up to him.

"She won't answer my calls or texts." He was actually crying, holding his phone in his hand with his hands on his head.

"Okay, calm down. You need to tell me why she's gone in the first place." I grabbed his forearms, trying to stop his pacing.

"So, we were eating and we were just talking about her leaving for softball and I told her I didn't want her to leave," He said nervously, still crying.

"And then she freaked out on me because apparently I was stopping her from chasing her dream or something. Anyways, she freaked on me and ran out. I don't know where she went."

We called 911 and told them everything. They sent out a few cops but couldn't officially report her missing because it hadn't been long enough. We went to all the possible places she could be and there wasn't a trace of her anywhere. My worst fears were coming true.

"AJ, what are we gonna do?" Alex sobbed.

"First off, you're going to stop crying." I told him. Sure, I was upset too, but we couldn't go crazy in this situation.

"Second off, we need to go back to the hotel and tell everybody what is going on."

We got back to the hotel and informed everyone what was happening. We couldn't cancel the game, so we played through it and lost. But we had a reason. Our whole team was all out of sorts because of Addilynn. I don't think any of us slept the whole night even though the game wore us out. You could just tell that everyone was worried, no matter if they were close to her or not.

We needed her back.