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to be about a zillion to one.
    Joelle traced the thread of the ball with her finger. Everybody in south Minneapolis knew Jason Cunningham and his kid sister Joelle. Here, nobody had ever heard of either of them. It was a lonely feeling. Joelle would give anything to talk to her brother right now, like she used to every day.
    She sat up quickly. Hey, why
couldn’t
she call him? It was long distance, but her parents had promised she could talk to Jason as often as she wanted.
    Joelle leaped off the bed and ran across the hall to her parents’ bedroom. She dodged the moving boxes and finally located the phone on the floor.
    Just punching in Jason’s number made Joelle feel better. Her brother knew how she felt about playing baseball. Maybe he’d even have some ideas for how she could change that coach’s mind.
    But the phone rang three … four … five times, and then an answering machine clicked on. “Hey, we’re either out or we’re busy,” a strange voice said. It definitely wasn’t Jason’s. “Leave a message and we’ll get back to you.”
    Joelle’s heart sank. Obviously her brother had more important things to do than talk to her. She hung up without leaving a message.
    “So, how was everyone’s day?” Dad said cheerfully as the three of them sat down to dinner. Steam rose from the take-out cartons in the middle of the table. Even without looking, Joelle knew it was chicken chow mein and beef with broccoli.
    “Just fine,” Mom replied. “I wasn’t at my desk ten minutes before Noreen dropped a huge pile of briefs on my desk.” Joelle’s mother was a paralegal. Today had been her first day at the new law office. Joelle’s dad managed a Bear Foods store. His supervisor back in Minneapolis had offered him his own store in Greendale, which was why the family had moved here.
    “Good,” Dad said, helping himself to the chow mein. “I have to say, it sure is nice being home at six o’clock.”
    “No more long commute,” Mom said with a smile. She passed the carton of rice to Joelle. “So how about you, honey? How was your day?”
    “Yeah, how does the new baseball team look?” Dad asked.
    “I wouldn’t know,” Joelle said glumly as she dug into the rice. “The coach didn’t let me hang around too long.”
    Dad’s chopsticks stopped halfway to his mouth. “What do you mean, the coach didn’t let you hang around? You made the team, didn’t you?”
    Joelle shook her head. “I didn’t get to try out.”
    “What?” Dad asked.
    “Why not?” Mom asked.
    Joelle shrugged and dumped some beef with broccoli onto her plate. “As long as there’s a softball team at Hoover, I can’t play baseball.” She slammed the carton down, splashing brown sauce on her wrist.
    Dad pushed his glasses up on his nose. “You can’t be serious.”
    Joelle licked the sauce off her wrist. “If I wanted to play football, they’d have to let me try out because they don’t have a girls’ football team. But since Hoover has a softball team, they don’t have to let me try out for baseball.”
    “But that’s ridiculous,” Dad said. “Softball and baseball aren’t the same sport.”
    “That’s what I told them.” Joelle repeated to her parents everything Ms. Fenner, Coach Carlyle, and Mr. White had said.
    “So I don’t get it,” she finished. “Mr. White says if they startletting girls play baseball, then they’ll have to drop a girls’ sport. How is that fair?”
    “Well, I don’t know. I guess you’d have to bring that up with the school board or the superintendent,” Dad said.
    “Is that the person who makes all the school rules?” Joelle asked.
    “Basically,” Dad replied. “At least he enforces them.”
    Joelle chewed thoughtfully. “Okay. Maybe I should talk to the superintendent, then,” she said. “If I could show him that softball and baseball are different, then they might let me play, right?”
    “Hold on a minute, Joelle,” Mom said. “I’m not sure you want to go to the