Lost Boy

by Tim Green

  Ryder stared for a moment. “I just hand him the ball and say, ‘Mr. Trent, remember Auburn, New York? I’m your son. Ruby’s my mom’?”

  Mr. Starr blinked. “That’s it. That’ll get him and then you hand him the note I printed out last night. My email is on it and hopefully he’ll reach out.”

  Ryder patted his pants pocket. Mr. Starr had composed a note meant not to scare Thomas Trent off, but to draw him in.

  “Do you think it’ll work?” Ryder asked.

  “We have to try. He’s right here, for God’s sake.” Mr. Starr pulled open a desk drawer and fished around awkwardly for a minute before producing a thin fold of money. “Use this for whatever you need.”

  “I can’t take your money. . . .”

  Mr. Starr shook his head. “I don’t need it. You might need it. What about the subway? So just take it.”

  Ryder reached out and took the money. He put a hand on Mr. Starr’s shoulder, trying not to recoil at the feel of his frozen frame beneath the white cotton dress shirt that was threadbare and stained around the wrists and collar.

  “Oh, go already.” Mr. Starr sounded grumpy but his eyes weren’t. “And don’t forget the ball.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Starr.” Ryder picked the ball up off the couch and retreated as he struggled into his coat, then let himself out and jogged down the stairs. The morning sun hit him on the street, and even when he closed his eyes, he could feel its energy pushing through the red screen of his lids. The air was crisp and the noises of the city sang softly to him. His heart banged in his chest because he knew—without a doubt—that today would be a day he’d never forget.

  When Ryder came up out of the subway, the wind hit him full force and pushed the tangy smell of the Harlem River up his nose. It was a smell he knew.

  He’d been at Yankee Stadium before, having begged his mom every year since he was seven years old to take him to a game for his birthday. They’d arrive by subway and go right into the stadium, sitting in the upper deck along the outfield, the cheap seats. She’d always been a little stiff about it. He had assumed that was because she wasn’t a huge baseball fan, but now wondered if it was painful for her because of the connection with his father. He supposed seeing the star players and knowing their salaries would be a tough reminder of just how much she struggled to make ends meet.

  He asked an old guy on the sidewalk if he knew where the parking garage was, and the man directed him up the street next to the stadium.

  “You gotta go across the street for the parking garage, though.” The skin under the old man’s chin flapped when he spoke, and he acted like he was chewing on something bitter.

  Ryder thanked the man, waited for the light, and crossed the street in a hurry. When he reached the parking garage, he didn’t see a way for buses to get in and he didn’t see anyone to ask about a loading dock. He hustled up a side street farther than he intended to, then scolded himself for being a chicken. The neighborhood was tougher than his own, and he was nervous. But it shouldn’t matter. Wasn’t his mom’s life on the line? This was a quest, his quest. He was like those kids he read about in books about knights and dragons, the quiet kid who kept to himself, but when called upon could commit acts of amazing heroism.

  He stood a little straighter, gritted his teeth, and pressed on up the street, hoping to see someone who could tell him if this was the right parking garage, and that’s when he noticed two older kids coming directly toward him. One had orange hair cut so close he looked nearly bald and a pale freckled face, flat as a frying pan. The other was shorter and more muscular, with jet-black hair and the small squinty eyes of an attack dog. Ryder’s stomach dropped. Something about these two boys was menacing. He looked around for a sign of anyone else—not even a cop, but just another adult.

  The only people he saw were two more older kids coming up behind him, one short and fat, like a little Buddha statue, and the other with a nasty growth of fuzz on his face that looked more like mold than hair. Both wore hooded sweatshirts pulled up over their heads so part of each one’s face was hidden in shadows. Panic gripped Ryder’s throat and his hair stood on end. He crossed the street, hopeful he was just being a scaredy-cat, but the older kids crossed too and he could see the spaces in their crooked, grinning teeth.

  Ryder stopped and they did too, four of them now, surrounding him.

  “Hey, kid. You ain’t from around here.” Orange seemed to be their leader.

  “No.” Ryder could barely speak, and still, a small light of hope shone in the corner of his mind. Maybe they were just teasing.

  One of the boys behind him spoke in a slow, guttural voice. “What you got in your pockets? Money for popcorn and peanuts? Maybe a Yankees pennant?”

  “Maybe he don’t know he’s on a toll road?” Orange cocked his head and looked at the attack dog, both of them smirking.

  “Oh, yeah.” Attack Dog snapped his fingers. “But he won’t try to get away with not paying the toll. He look like he a law-abiding citizen. That what you are, boy?”

  “I’m just lost.” Ryder felt stupid and weak. “I’m looking for where the visiting team buses go.”

  Orange laughed. “Lost boy.”

  Ryder wanted desperately to share his secret with them because he felt that if he did, they would let him go, a lost boy looking for the father he never met? These boys looked like they could be missing a father or two among them.

  Snick.

  The gleam of a switchblade startled him. Ryder’s knees started to tremble. “What do you want?”

  “What you got?” Orange asked.

  Attack Dog leered at him and parted open his coat with one hand. Jammed into the waist of his jeans was the handle of his own knife.

  Ryder felt tears start to stream down his cheeks as he dug into his pockets and turned them all inside out. The baseball plunked to the sidewalk, then the money and the note Mr. Starr had given him fluttered to the ground.

  “Aww, don’t you go cryin’. What are you, a baby?” Orange looked truly disgusted as he snatched up the money, the baseball, and the note. “It’s just a toll. Your mommy’s gonna get you a pennant anyway. I see it every time.”

  “My mom is in the hospital.” Ryder sniffed. Shame and terror burned his face.

  “Your dad, then.” Attack Dog let his coat fall back into place and he poked Ryder in the shoulder. “How old you?”

  “Twelve. I have no dad.”

  “Who you with, boy?” asked one of the kids behind him. It was Buddha.

  Ryder shrugged. “I’m not. I took the subway. I’m trying to get an autograph from some of the Braves.”

  “The Braves.” Behind him, Buddha snorted. “No wonder you’re lost. This is New York, boy. What do you want a Braves autograph for?”

  “I’m related to one of them.” Ryder spoke softly and decided not to say Thomas Trent was his dad. “He’s a relief pitcher.”

  “Sure. Like a cousin?” Attack Dog brightened and put a thumb in his own chest. “My cousin is Rihanna.”

  “Your cousin’s not Rihanna, dip head.” Orange glared.

  “And his cousin isn’t a Brave, that’s what I’m sayin’.” Attack Dog scowled at Ryder. “Who told you that?”

  “A friend . . . of my family.”

  “What’s this?” Orange held up the note Mr. Starr had written and unfolded it.

  Ryder couldn’t speak. The note would tell these boys everything, and the shame made him sick to his stomach.

  “What’s this?” Orange growled at Ryder now.

  “It’s a note to my cousin inviting him to stop by if he wants.”

  “What, you think you live someplace fancy? Please, boy, you’re just like us.” Orange threw the note at Ryder and pointed at his shoes. “Look at those kicks you got.”

  Ryder looked down at faded gray Starters.

  Attack Dog laughed. “What’d they cost? Five bucks at the Sav-Mart? You live in some hole an’ you’re inviting a major league player to your place? That’s crazy.�
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  “Look at this ball.” Buddha tossed it up and snatched it in the air. “Thing is yellow as snot. Here. We don’t need this.”

  Ryder took the ball and jammed it back into his coat pocket. “Can you guys just let me go?”

  Orange shrugged. “We never stopped you in the first place.”

  The two who had been behind him parted now and stood on either side of him. Ryder picked up the note, turned slowly, and began to walk away. When he looked back he saw them staring, and he took off at a full sprint, running hard, away from the cackle of laughter until he reached River Avenue and bumped square into a cop.

  “Whoa. Where you going?” The cop scowled at him harder than the thieves.

  “Just . . .” Ryder did a quick calculation, knowing that if he told the cop about the boys it might entangle him like a web he couldn’t get out of anytime soon. “I’m trying to get some autographs.”

  “Ditched school? Got here early, huh?” The cop dusted his jacket.

  Ryder nodded. “Someone said the buses come near the parking garage. I’m looking for a Braves player.”

  “Braves?” The cop screwed up his thick red face. “This isn’t the right garage. You gotta head down toward the end of the stadium and they come in off of 164th Street, but I don’t know if you’ll get any autographs. You can’t get that close. There’s gates.”

  “Do they ever come over to the gates?”

  The cop scratched up under his cap. “Maybe, but the best place is inside. You want to get in there early and hang out just over their dugout. Sometimes they sign.”

  Ryder thought of his empty pockets and the stolen money. “I’ll just try here. Thanks.”

  The cop looked up the street and squinted his eyes, pointing. “I think that’s probably them right there. Better hurry.”

  Ryder turned and saw a big luxury bus rumble around the corner and pull into some gates at the back of the stadium.

  Ryder took off without a word, running faster than he ever knew he could.

  Sections of thick metal fencing stood linked together, blocking the way into the loading dock area. Two security guards in yellow jackets swung the gates closed. The bus had already come to rest just outside the stadium’s back entrance. Players in leather jackets wearing headphones stepped down off the bus and made a beeline for the dark opening that would lead them to their lockers. Ryder was more than a hundred feet away. He looked around, panicked, for a way to get closer. He had an urge to throw himself over the fence—it was only about three and a half feet high—but his mother’s training to always obey the rules just wouldn’t let him.

  He could yell, though, and that’s what he did.

  “Thomas Trent!” Ryder jumped up and down with the note in one hand and the baseball in the other, aware that a cluster of other autograph hounds had also been drawn toward the fence by the sight of the Atlanta Braves players.

  “Trent!” Ryder howled, but either none of the players could hear because of their headphones, or they ignored what to them was just some crazy kid.

  “Easy, kid, you’ll blow out a lung.” A middle-aged man in a dirty leather jacket with a binder notebook full of playing cards took a step away from him.

  Then Ryder saw Thomas Trent step down off the bus.

  The relief pitcher wasn’t wearing headphones.

  Ryder’s heart hammered against his ribs. The sight of the man who he now knew must be his father choked him so that nothing came out. Thomas Trent turned and headed for the doorway. He had a duffel bag over his shoulder, like the rest. His leather coat was dark brown, smooth and buttery looking, and he wore matching cowboy boots beneath designer jeans. Just as his front foot hit the threshold of the entrance, Ryder erupted.

  “TRENT!”

  Thomas Trent stopped and turned, looking right at Ryder from across the lot.

  Under the spell of seeing his father, Ryder wasn’t even aware that the guards had swung the gates in again, opening them wide. He heard the rumble of the bus and smelled its foul exhaust, but it meant nothing to him compared to the sight of his father and the bright green eyes looking back from beneath an eave of curly black hair that reminded him of his own.

  “I’M YOUR S—”

  When the bus drove between them, the switch went off. The spell was gone and so was his father.

  “Thomas Trent!” Ryder howled and waved the note in the air, but the moment was broken.

  One of the security guards, an enormous man with a small, round head, began to wander over toward the fence with his eyes on Ryder.

  “Easy, kid.” The man with the dirty leather jacket and binder took another step back. “Get yourself a ticket and go inside. You might get him by the dugout. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, the players will sign things there.”

  “I don’t have a ticket!” Ryder’s voice sounded hysterical.

  “Scalp one. It’s the Braves, kid. You can probably get a nosebleed seat for twenty bucks.” The man tilted his head.

  “They took my money!” Ryder screamed in frustration at the man, startling himself because he couldn’t remember ever just screaming at anyone.

  “Hey. Kid.” The security guard barked at Ryder and kept coming his way. His unblinking eyes were locked on Ryder. It was trouble. Ryder backed up and turned and ran. When he looked back he saw the security guard talking into his radio. Ryder saw some police up ahead and—without thinking—he darted back across River Avenue. A car he didn’t see jammed on its brakes as he ran by, squealing sideways, its tires smoking and poisoning the air with burned rubber.

  Ryder bolted forward. Another car streaked past, blaring its horn. He made it to the far curb and shot right back down the street he’d been robbed on. Halfway down, he turned and saw no one was following him. There was a steady stream of fans now, but all going the other way, heading toward the stadium. Ryder leaned his back up against the concrete of the parking garage and felt everything crumple. His legs folded and he slumped down until he sat on the concrete with his back against the garage wall.

  He hung his head between his knees so no one could see him and began to sob, certain now that he had missed his chance to meet his father, but more important, the chance to save his mother’s life. He was no quiet hero. He was a chicken and a flop. He sat for five or ten minutes and cried himself out, aware that people were passing him, and that no one stopped. When he felt a kick against his sneaker, he flinched and looked up through blurry eyes.

  It was Orange.

  “Hey, you’re too old to be cryin’ about twenty dollars, boy. Twenty dollars is like three Happy Meals. Ain’t no big deal.” Orange grinned down at him like they were old friends.

  The rest of the gang circled around him.

  “Big baby,” Buddha muttered, and spit on the sidewalk.

  “Twenty bucks?” Ryder screamed up at them, possessed by hopelessness and despair. “I could’ve gotten a ticket for twenty bucks! You stole my money!”

  Ryder hopped to his feet and Attack Dog was on him, smothering his mouth with one hand and the other an iron lock on the back of his neck as the others crowded in, looking around and nervous, even though the stream of people going by all turned their heads the other way.

  “No, you don’t do that.” Orange spoke soft and calm and shook his head. “You wanna get into the stadium? That’s what you want?”

  Ryder glared at him and nodded and grunted a yes through Attack Dog’s hand.

  “Well, just say so.” Orange smiled at him, talking low, with his freckles mashing together at the seams of his dimpled smile. “We can get you in and you don’t need twenty bucks.”

  Attack Dog removed his hand from Ryder’s mouth and loosened the hold on his neck.

  “Okay?” Orange spoke quietly.

  “You got tickets?” Ryder asked.

  Orange snorted and smirked all around. “When you’re with us, you don’t need a ticket to get into Yankee Stadium. We got a VIP entrance.”

  The others laughed and exchanged knowing loo
ks. “Yeah.”

  “VIP?” Ryder wrinkled his forehead.

  “Not really VIP. It’s more like a tunnel.” Orange turned and began to walk the other way, against the flow of the crowd. “Come on.”

  “C’mon, kid.” Buddha gave him a light shove. “We’ll get you in.”

  “Yeah.” Attack Dog laughed. “We’re goin’ that way anyhow. You’re welcome to join.”

  Something didn’t feel right about this, and every bit of good sense told Ryder to turn and run, but he couldn’t. He stood frozen there on the sidewalk as the gang started up the street against the flow of the crowd, but then Orange stopped and winked at him and motioned his chin to follow.

  Ryder thought of the major league player inside that stadium—his father—and the pleasant look on his face when their eyes met across the parking lot. Following Orange and his gang was a huge risk, but if Ryder could just have one word with his father, hand him the baseball, and deliver that note, it had to be worth the chance.

  Orange turned away, and Ryder yelled, “Wait up!” as he started off after them.

  Just around the corner, a dirty and crumbling apartment building rose up above the storefronts on either side. They circled to the back of the building and went in through a rotten wood door. Ryder clutched the iron pipe railing as they descended into the dark. Where are we going? he thought to himself as the steps wavered beneath him. He followed the gang down into a basement that stank like nothing Ryder had ever smelled before. Toilet water gone bad mixed with puke and dog poop was all he could think of as he forced air from his throat up into his nose to keep the smell from getting in. Still, he could taste it as he breathed through his mouth. He had to breathe. The older boys in front of him talked and laughed like it was nothing, and he remembered learning in science class that if you smelled something long enough, you stopped smelling it at all.