by Tim Green
The crowd was festive, and waitresses with steaming plates of calamari weaved in and out through the tables. In the background, Jalen’s dad’s favorite music—Andrea Bocelli’s singing—could be heard through the sound system. Jalen swelled with importance as he sat down next to JY. He wanted to discuss business, but with the noise and the excitement, it didn’t seem to be the right time or place.
Soon Masahiro Tanaka and Brett Gardner arrived, then CC Sabathia with his wife, and finally Daniel arrived and sat down next to Jalen, rounding out their table. A waitress brought drinks and a large platter of stuffed calamari swimming in red sauce, along with pasta and chicken dishes guests could eat family-style. JY led the way, serving Cat and her mom before filling his own plate.
Greta appeared, flushed with excitement. “Mr. Yager, the TV people want to know if they can bring their cameras in to get some shots.”
JY stood up. “Of course. Jalen, go get your dad, will you?”
Jalen slipped through the tables and into the kitchen. It surprised him to see his father not busy, but sitting in his office talking to a man in jeans and a dress shirt. The man had his phone out and was holding it like he was recording Jalen’s dad.
“Dad? Is everything okay?”
“Jalen!” His father sprang out of his seat and steered Jalen away from the office door. “What do you need?”
“Well, JY wants you out there for the TV people.” Jalen tried to see past his dad into the office. “Dad, who is that?”
His father sighed deeply and shook his head, obviously mystified. “Jalen, you not gonna believe this.”
Jalen’s heart froze. “Well, tell me.”
16
JALEN’S FATHER GLANCED OVER HIS shoulder toward the office. “That man in there, Jalen . . . he’s from the New York Times. He had the early dinner—I didn’t even know he was here—an’ he’s gonna do a restaurant review on Fabio’s Silver Liner.”
“Is it bad?” Jalen asked because of the look on his father’s face. “The review?”
His father’s eyebrows jumped over the rims of his small round glasses. “Bad? No, it’s not bad. It’s good! He loves my nonna’s food! That’s why I gotta finish talking to him, but I don’t wanna say no to Mr. JY an’ the TV, either.”
“Dad, just tell the New York Times guy. He’ll understand. He’ll wait. It’ll be a good part of the story that JY wants to help you and have you on TV.”
“But this is the thing,” Jalen’s dad whispered proudly. “This man, he’s not caring about JY and the Yankees players. He’s loving the food. It’s my dream come true, Jalen. The New York Times!”
“Well, let’s just ask him. Is he nice?”
“Yes!”
“Then he’ll be fine. Come on.”
Still, his dad was nervous, twisting his apron into a knot as he asked the reporter if he could wait just a few minutes while he did some TV with JY.
The reporter laughed easily. “Of course. I’ll wait right here, Fabio. Do the TV. They’re a lot less patient than us writers.”
Back in the restaurant, JY put an arm around Jalen and his dad as the cameramen began to record. Several reporters held out their microphones.
“This is the guy who does it all.” JY patted Fabio on the back. “Fabio makes the best Italian food I’ve ever had and—strange as it may sound—it’s this stuffed calamari he’s serving everyone tonight that’s responsible for getting me out of my slump.”
Jalen’s dad’s cheeks burned from the attention, but he cleared his throat and spoke in a strong voice. “I wanna welcome everyone to my place. This is my dream, to have the big restaurant that everybody wants to come and eat the food my nonna teach me how to cook back in Italy. Mr. JY, I thank you and all you teammates for coming tonight, and most of all I thank you for having the Silver Liner rebuilt in just a few days after the fire. You’re an angel to me an’ my boy.”
The two men shook hands, and JY took a selfie with Fabio on his phone before tweeting it out to his three-million-plus followers. Jalen’s dad returned to his office in the kitchen while the TV cameras shot some more video of JY and his teammates eating and joking with one another about the Cleveland pitching staff. In the midst of all the food and talking and laughter, Jalen found himself staring at the cameras and their small red lights.
He felt a jab in his ribs and realized that Cat had swapped seats with JY so he could sit next to her mom. “Ouch!”
“I asked you twice if you ever get tired of eating cephalopods.” Cat held up a white ring of squid on the end of her fork.
“You don’t like cephalopods?” Jalen joked, figuring her fancy word was what squids were called in science books. “You gotta get Dad’s stuffing with it and some sauce. I don’t eat just the fish part.”
“Well, I always like to take things down to their basic elements and see what’s going on beneath the surface, so . . .” She let the white ring drop into the sauce on her plate, mixed it around, and scooped it up with some stuffing before shoveling it into her mouth.
“I never get tired of it because we don’t eat it that much,” Jalen said. “That stuffing is filled with crabmeat. It’s expensive.”
“You won’t have to worry about that after tonight.” Cat looked around at the crowd. “This place is a gold mine.”
“Now it is, thanks to you.”
“I wasn’t fishing for compliments.” Cat took a sip of sparkling water. “Or cephalopods. Ha—get it, fishing?”
“I know, but the whole thing about JY tweeting and the lucky calamari,” Jalen said. “Even fixing up the diner after the fire . . . it was all you.”
“Only I can’t tell you what the next pitch is gonna be, so I guess we’re a good team.” Cat held out her fist, and Jalen bumped it.
Jalen leaned close so no one except Cat would hear. “I still feel bad about saying that stuff about JY and your mom being an item.”
“Well . . . ,” she said, angling her head over her shoulder to glance at her mom and JY laughing together, “Look, JY is awesome, and there’s really no love lost between me and my stepfather, but I hate to see her make things all complicated again.”
“You wouldn’t have to move very far,” Jalen said, kidding because JY’s mansion was just the other side of a big stone wall surrounding Cat’s stepfather’s estate.
“I don’t know if they’re going to end up together,” she said. “I don’t think anything’s going on, but I see the way she looks at him and him at her. And, if she does make a change, we have no idea how long JY will be in Rockton. That wasn’t a glowing reception he got from Foxx after the game. I’d say JY’s chances are fifty-fifty to stay with the Yankees, and I don’t know how he can do at the plate without you there calling the pitches.”
“Why wouldn’t I be there?”
“You’re not flying to Cleveland with the Yankees tomorrow, are you?”
Everything had been happening so fast and so intensely that Jalen hadn’t thought past the Silver Liner’s grand opening. “No, I guess not. We’ve got school Monday.”
“Right,” Cat said, “two more days of school. Then the Yankees are home against Houston. Then they go to Boston, then Baltimore. And what about the Rockets? You’ve got practices and games yourself. I don’t want to spoil the night for you, but the whole thing is a mess.”
“Then why did you?” Jalen asked.
“Why did I what?” Cat screwed up her face.
Jalen stared at her. “Spoil the night.”
“You can’t just bury your head in the sand, Jalen. This is real.”
“This is the biggest night of my father’s life.” Jalen waved his hand around at all the people.
“Which is why it’d be a shame to have the whole thing collapse after one big weekend,” Cat said.
“Why would it collapse?” Jalen snorted.
“People are fickle,” she said. “One minute you’re on top of the world, next minute you’re yesterday’s news. We need JY to keep batting a thousand—if not
every game, at least on a regular basis—and we need him to keep tweeting about the diner. That’s how you create a franchise. It takes a lot more than a big opening night.”
Jalen realized she was right. He hadn’t wanted to think about the big picture. It was complicated. He couldn’t imagine how all the pieces could possibly fit together, and he hadn’t even told Cat his plan about finding his mother.
“So, I’m guessing you’ve got an idea?” Jalen said.
Cat raised an eyebrow. “Don’t I always?”
17
JALEN HAD TO WAIT TO hear Cat’s plan until they were back at JY’s mansion.
After eating and taking pictures with fans in the dining room, the players all decided to finish the night by shooting some pool in JY’s man cave. Jalen was familiar with the large, dark-paneled room and its thick leather furniture. He’d been there on the day he proved to JY that he could really predict the next pitch in an MLB game. They’d watched a live game on the huge flat-screen. Jalen had been awed by all the framed photos of JY and famous people like President Obama, Peyton Manning, and Denzel Washington. JY had been awed by Jalen’s baseball genius.
Now they sat together in JY’s office, with its shelves lined with unread books. JY sat behind his desk, bending and unbending a paper clip. Jalen and Cat sat in chairs facing the desk, while Daniel and Cat’s mom took the couch. The rest of JY’s guests were already downstairs. Cat, however, had insisted on a formal meeting.
“So,” Cat said, “we’re here to talk about next steps and work out a deal with you and Jalen.”
“And you’re his agent, right?” JY sighed. “I know you’re going to drive a hard bargain. What is it?”
Cat narrowed her eyes, slowly nodding her head, assessing her adversary. “Originally, I was pretty set on ten thousand dollars per game along with a cell phone.”
Jalen’s mouth dropped. “Ten thou—”
Cat cut him off. “Stop. I’m handling this.”
Cat cleared her throat. “Look, I do think it’s worth ten, but we’re all friends, so I think we can do it for less. Maybe shave a few thousand.”
JY looked at Cat’s mom. “Is she for real?”
“I’m thinking she is,” Cat’s mom said. “She’s got that look.”
“She’s twelve years old,” JY said. “Don’t tell me you can’t control her.”
Cat’s mom shrugged. “I lost control about eight years ago. I fought it at first, but life’s too short. Her brother? He’ll FaceTime me to help pick which shirt to wear. This one is twelve going on twenty, so I’m just the driver in all this.”
“Yeah, the getaway driver. For a bank robbery.” JY laughed at his own joke, glanced at Jalen, then directed his attention to Cat. “Ain’t gonna happen.”
“Under your contract, you take home about eighty thousand a game.” Cat seemed unaffected. “You were about to make zero per game next year, until Jalen came along.”
“And I helped him.” JY pointed at Jalen but kept his eyes on Cat as he counted off on his fingers. “I didn’t press charges for breaking into my batting cage and stealing those baseballs. I paid his travel team fee. I talked his coach into letting him miss practice, and I’ve turned his dad’s place into a tourist attraction. That’s after I had a contractor practically rebuild the place in four days.”
“Yes,” Cat said, “that was fine to get this kicked off, but now we’re talking about moving forward. Jalen can change your career. He could change the destiny of an entire team.”
“What team?” JY blinked. “What are you talking about now?”
Cat tilted her head. “Well, it’s a marketable skill, predicting pitches. Why couldn’t he help an entire team? That’d be worth more than ten thousand a game, that’s for sure.”
Jalen nodded because that did make sense.
JY frowned. “You heard Jeffrey Foxx. That’s just not going to happen. He’s not going to admit that anyone can have a bigger impact on winning a title than he does—certainly not a kid like Jalen.”
“Who said it has to be the Yankees?” Cat puckered her lips. “Not that that’s what we want.”
JY looked at Cat’s mom again. “Oh yeah, this is great. Just great. Can you believe this?”
Cat’s mom shook her head and raised her hands helplessly.
JY sat back and huffed, then said, “Okay, listen. I’ve been thinking. Jalen has his own baseball to play, and he can’t travel across the country with me even if he didn’t. It’s not practical for him to be with me every game, and I’m hoping I won’t need him. I was in a slump, but I think I’m out of it now. I don’t have to bat a thousand every game, either. That’s just not happening, even if I do know every pitch.”
Jalen shook his head in disbelief. Was the whole thing over?
“So here’s my offer,” JY continued. “A couple times a week, five or six times a month, maybe, I use Jalen to keep my average up.”
JY looked directly at him now. “I give you five hundred dollars a game, and I keep eating at your dad’s place . . . say once a week with a tweet every other week. That’s worth a lot.”
Jalen opened his mouth to say yes, but Cat leaned over, grabbed his arm with one hand, and thumped her chest with the other. “I got this.”
18
“IF YOU SAY FIVE HUNDRED—WHICH I think is insulting—then I say nine thousand five hundred,” Cat said.
Jalen dug his fingers into the leather arms of his chair.
“Okay, I see where this is headed.” JY snapped the paper clip in two, smiled, and put his elbows on the desk. “We go back and forth and end up at five thousand, but that is not happening. Like I said, I feel like I’ve got my groove back anyway. Jalen was a big help, but I helped him, too, and now we can go our separate ways and part friends before you or I get upset about this.”
“But—” Jalen began to protest.
“No, I get it.” JY cut him off, holding his hand out at Jalen like a traffic cop. “Thanks, Cat, but I’m good. I got my groove back. It was a win for everyone, so let’s part friends.”
“Yeah, I hear you,” said Cat, “but it’ll change. You’ll be back, and I just want you to know the deal. Five hundred is not going to do it. No hard feelings on our side either.”
She stood up and extended her hand across the desk. “It’s just business.”
JY stood up too. He laughed and shook her hand. “Good. I’m glad we’re all okay. Now, you guys are all welcome to hang out. We can put on the ball game. I got plenty of sodas. Victoria? Can I get you one?”
“Jalen’s ready to fall on his face,” Cat said. “Can you take us home, Mom, then come back?”
“Of course I can take you. I’m tired myself.”
Jalen began to raise his hand in protest, but he let it drop. “Okay.”
Cat was right. He was absolutely exhausted, and the thought of his bed suddenly became irresistible. Aside from that, he sensed Cat wanted to talk to him about her strategy and what she thought would happen next.
At the door, JY shook Jalen’s hand. “Thanks, buddy. This was great. Good luck to you and your dad. And I’ll try to get in there and have some of that calamari anyway. Maybe tweet about it once in a while too. I don’t want you to think I’m sour.”
Jalen suddenly felt like crying, but he bit his cheek and said thanks and good-bye and got into the back of the Range Rover. He was cold and empty. Everything had changed in just a few moments. Everything he thought would happen was now ruined, and he was helpless to fix it. The spurt of publicity would end, and without any money for predicting pitches, he wouldn’t be able to pay for a detective.
The search for his mother would be impossible.
19
AS THEY DROVE DOWN OLD Post Road, Jalen tapped Cat on the shoulder.
“I wanted to keep helping him,” he said.
“Me too,” Daniel chimed in.
She turned to them. “I know. You will.”
“Cat?” Jalen pleaded with his eyes.
“Unf
ortunately for our friend, he’s going to be right back in his slump, so just relax,” she said. “When he gets back from Cleveland, he’ll be begging you to get to Yankee Stadium, and then ten grand a game won’t seem expensive at all.”
“But if he does well, it’s over,” Jalen said. “I’m finished.”
Cat shook her head. “No way does that happen. I’d bet everything I have.”
“What do you have?” Cat’s mom looked over at her.
“It’s just a saying,” Cat said. “Like, ‘If he bats a thousand, I’ll eat my hat.’ ”
“He’s not gonna have to bat a thousand,” Daniel said. “Anyone batting above .250 is legit. He’s still JY.”
“See?” Jalen pointed at Daniel.
“You can’t do it for five hundred dollars,” Cat said. “That’s not fair. He needs to appreciate what you can do, and he will. Just trust me. I can manage him.”
“You’re managing a future Baseball Hall of Famer?” Daniel raised his eyebrows.
“Who got him to call Coach Gamble?” Cat said. “Who got him to tweet about the Silver Liner? To pay the rest of Jalen’s fee?”
“That was all you, Cat,” Jalen said.
She lit up with a smile. “That’s right. You were gonna do all this in the beginning just to keep him from pressing charges over the baseballs we took. You saw your dad’s face tonight. I’m not bragging, but you guys have to trust my instincts.”
Jalen sighed and said, “Okay. You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s just hard to wait without knowing.”
“I’m sorry it’s that way,” she said. “But you know how you can just tell what the next pitch will be?”
“Yeah.”