The Impossible Pitcher

by Charles Curtis

  He squinted at it in my hand.

  “I guess it’s meant to look like a bee, maybe in case someone spots it flying around?” He touched the broken back of it. “But what’s that for?”

  “If I didn’t break it, we’d have a better idea.”

  “Wait! What about your dad?”

  Duh. In the craziness of the last half-hour, my brain was cloudy. Kenny was right, but it meant I’d have to confess I’d been lying.

  “Yeah. Let’s go to my house. My mom’s picking me up.”

  Kenny nodded and took out a roll of athletic tape. He wrapped the bag of ice as best as he could around his leg and butt and pulled up his pants with a wince.

  Minutes later, we jumped into my parents’ black SUV.

  “How’d it go?” Mom asked from the front seat with a tone that indicated she knew something was up.

  “Awful. I’ll tell you and Dad about it when we get home. This is Kenny Lupino, though I’m sure you’re familiar with him.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Tooey … Ack.”

  “Karen. I heard my son nailed you with a pitch?”

  Mom’s security team (which included Coach Carson) didn’t miss anything.

  “Yeah, but not on purpose,” I responded quickly before Kenny could.

  “Either way, we’ll take care of that bruise for you.” She nodded in the rearview mirror to the bulging icepack.

  After exchanging some nervous chatter, we got out at my house. “Watch this,” I told Kenny as we headed for the front door. “I’m home.”

  “Voice identified as Ptuiac, Alexander,” the computerized voice squawked from the porch. “Welcome home.”

  The front door clicked and Kenny looked amazed. Mom rolled her eyes at me and we headed inside.

  “We’re going straight to the basement,” she said. I knew that didn’t just mean the basement, something that indicated to me she trusted him completely. We walked over to the door that led downstairs and Mom slid her hand to a space next to it, which lit up. The door clicked and descended.

  As we reached the basement filled with sawdust, power tools and a few old computers, I expected Mom to push a buzz saw hanging there and put her ear against the wall as I’d seen her and my dad do a dozen times. But in this case, she called out, “Karen Ptuiac,” touched something underneath a jigsaw, turned the crank on a nearby vise a few times and removed a plank from the table in the corner. The pipes in front of the hidden entrance to my parents’ underground base separated and the boiler disappeared as the lights illuminated down the long corridor.

  I heard a small “Whaaa?” out of Kenny as we walked.

  “We’ve had to increase security lately,” Mom remarked to me.

  When we reached the final door, it opened without her having to do anything. My dad greeted us.

  “Kenny, hi. Pleasure to finally meet you,” he said, pumping Kenny’s furry hand. Dad held up what looked like a wide metallic sleeve. “For your thigh.”

  The ninth grader looked at me nervously, so I nodded to him, telling him it was okay. Dad told us to turn around as I heard Kenny pulled his baseball pants down and the metal bandage snapped into place, whirring and clicking. Kenny let out a sigh of relief. A minute later—with his pants up—he joined me at the enormous table in the center of the room. Knots wound their way through my stomach as we sat down in front of my concerned parents. I started by carefully pulling the device out of my pocket and placing it on the table.

  I then went all the way back to the beginning, how I’d learned how to control my powers while being coached on pitching, the way it made me feel so special, how it drove me to lie and to treat my friends (and supposed enemies, with a nod to Kenny) terribly. Then I told them about the first stinging and the last one, which came courtesy of the thing that looked like a bee on the table in front of us.

  Mom and Dad didn’t say anything for a minute after I finished, but judging from the serious looks on their faces, it wasn’t good.

  “If this were any other situation and we were any other set of parents, you would be grounded for life.” Mom finally broke the silence. “But the unfortunate reality of what we’re dealing with here is that we’re this close to exposing the threat and the mole helping the enemy. Ironically, your careless and reckless actions actually helped draw everyone out.”

  “That’s positive,” Mom added. She sighed and I saw tears form in her eyes. “But it means you have to stay in school … and that’s obviously going to put you in danger. There’s no other way to do it now. We’ll have extra security on both of you and the others, basically all our manpower.”

  My mouth went dry. I glanced at Kenny and, for the first time, I saw real fear on his face.

  “Luckily for all of us,” Mom continued, dabbing at her eyes, “that’s on Monday. But, Kenny, for your safety, you’ll stay with us for a couple of nights. We’ll make sure that’s fine with your parents.”

  “Mrs. Ptuiac,” he began.

  She held up a hand. “Karen.”

  “Karen, do my parents know about me?”

  “Minimally,” my dad cut in. “Your birth parents came to see us before you were born. But your mom and dad now got the message that they needed to move here to keep you safe.”

  “What was I brought in for?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Kenny glared. “I do.”

  “I’ll have to look at your file, but I believe it was a rare spinal condition that might have left you without the use of your legs.”

  Kenny turned chalk-white.

  “I’ll figure out what the device is by tomorrow,” Dad added, “and we’ll talk about what’s next. For now—and I know this is impossible—you two should relax until then.”

  It was around 5 p.m., so Kenny and I didn’t have too much time until dinner. We went back up to my house and played with the multitalented robot, chuckling at Kenny’s pitch that left it waving its “injured” catching hand. We had a good laugh over why its voice sounded like Peyton Manning’s. Then it was dinner courtesy of Morimoto, the automatic chef in our more-than-state-of-the-art kitchen. Dad had found time between projects to perfect the machine previously prone to errors, further impressing Kenny with a steak, spinach and potatoes he could swear were made by human hands.

  We headed upstairs to my room. When I got up there, my phone’s text message light blinked. When I opened my inbox, there were 13 messages in a group text between me, Kenny, Dex and Sophi.

  Sophi: A, u and Kenny ok? Heard something happened at game.

  Dex: We’re on lockdown right now. Dad told me we can’t leave house til your dad says it’s fine.

  Sophi: I just heard the same thing. I’m scared. Tell us everything’s ok.

  Sophi: ??????????????????

  Dex: I’m sure they’re ok. We’d know if they were in trouble.

  It went on like that for a while between my two friends and it was a relief to know they were worried about me, though I could imagine how terrified they were. I looked over at Kenny, who was scrolling through his texts. He looked up and smiled. “Let’s send ‘em a selfie.”

  He held up his phone and put a chiseled arm around me, snapping a pic of us both giving them thumbs up.

  Vvvvvvvv.

  Sophi: THANK GOD. What happened?!?! What’s going on?

  Dex: I don’t think we’re even allowed to call you. Glad you’re both ok.

  I tried thinking about how to summarize what had just happened when the intercom in my room crackled to life.

  “Shut the texting down, you two. You don’t know if someone’s intercepting any of this,” Mom said.

  Alex: Mom says no more texting. We’re fine. Talk to u Monday.

  “So they’re spying on us? Like they’ve been watching whole time?” Kenny asked.

  “For our own safety. Trust me. It’s really weird when you think about it but it’s kept us alive,” I replied. “C’mon, we need a d
istraction. You play Madden?”

  Like every other football-playing kid, he did. I didn’t say it out loud, but now that all the suspicion was out of the way, Kenny was really cool. It turned out his whole “bro” attitude was really him. A few hours later after he handed me loss after loss in Madden, a game I swore I was amazing at, we got ready for bed. He took a sleeping bag to the other side of the room and was all set for lights out earlier than expected (“It’s leftover from football season. Sleeping nine hours is so good for you”). But before I could call for the house’s computer to turn the lights off, I had one question.

  “One more football butt-kicking before bed?” he asked with a wolf grin.

  I shook my head. “You mind if I ask you something instead?”

  “Sure, man. Anything.”

  “You said to me that you were ‘told’ about us, how there were people like you with powers. Who was that?”

  The smile disappeared and I immediately knew why the second he answered. He rubbed the back of his neck as if he was reliving it.

  “It was after the championship game and I was back on the field. This guy comes up to me and kneels, I thought he was someone from the grounds crew to tell me I had to leave. But he wasn’t. I don’t know who he was, but I remembered him wearing a baseball hat and a Griffins hoodie. At first he was trying to comfort me, I don’t remember what he said at that point, I was still too upset.

  “Then he said something like, ‘You knew something was different about that receiver who just caught game-winner, didn’t you?’ I mean, my head was in the game at that point and making that final stop, but there was a weird feeling that came over me when I saw Dex, like I was instinctively supposed to hate him, that wolves versus cats thing, I guess. I didn’t tell this dude any of that. He was like, ‘For the last few years, you’ve wondered how you suddenly got so strong, why your body is hairier than other boys’, why you can jump so high. You need to seek out answers from the receiver and his friend who threw that pass. They’ll help you find out who you are. Good luck.’ Before I could answer, he walked away.”

  Whoa. I had a suspicion who it might be: My old friend Patch the Stalker. That had to be who was chasing us. The problem was, this guy was wearing a hat.

  “You don’t remember anything else about him?” I asked hopefully.

  Kenny shook his head. “I wish I did. You think that could help us?”

  I shrugged. “I just don’t know. Whoever’s coming after us might be someone we’ve never seen before. Or it could be this guy I’ve seen in certain places. He’s got all black hair with a small patch of white.”

  “Wow, where’d you see him?”

  I recounted all of his appearances on my first date with Sophi and the time I’d seen him at the mall when we were attacked.

  “That’s nuts,” he said. “But I have no idea if the guy in the hat is him.”

  “I figured.”

  We were silent for a few seconds. “I guess we should try to sleep,” he said. I agreed, but I had so many more questions that couldn’t be answered.

  “Room? Lights off,” I said.

  The room plunged into darkness except for the faint glow from our front porch lights.

  “So cool,” I heard Kenny say.

  “Night, Kenny.”

  “G’night, dude.”

  I stared up at the ceiling and tried to figure out how we could find Kenny’s mystery man. The TV cameras were probably long gone after the miracle in the end zone. We could question the grounds crew members, but that might take a while to track them down. Even then, would any of them be able to describe his face?

  “Alex?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you scared?”

  I don’t think I’d been asked that question by anyone. My heart started pounding at the thought of what someone would do to me if I was caught.

  “Yeah. I am.”

  “Me too.”

  I don’t think I slept more than two hours the rest of the time. Judging from the rustling of the sleeping bag, I’m sure Kenny didn’t either.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  In the middle of Monday’s history class, I scribbled a doodle of a little bee with a glass case on its back. I replayed what Dad figured out on Sunday: the “bug,” as it turned out, was a device used to inject or remove something from a body. The glass in the back was a case for containment—that would explain why there was so much blood but barely a cut on my hand when I smacked it. Dad thought it had taken a blood sample from me. But had the device injected me with something the first time I was stung, something that would manipulate my powers? A body scan and a few other tests didn’t reveal anything.

  I’d already fallen asleep once in English class, knew I failed a Spanish pop quiz the minute I got it, and lazily sculpted my way through Art. That was the opposite of traveling between classes, where I practically ran from building to building, fearing someone would swoop out of nowhere and kidnap me.

  Then it hit me, like a Sophi lightning bolt. As my history teacher droned on about something, I reimagined the scene described by Kenny on Saturday night. Instead of thinking about it from what it looked like from his perspective, I started thinking about it from what it looked like from the stands. There’s Kenny on the field in the end zone, some groundskeepers milling around. Here comes a man in a Strange Country Day hoodie and a hat as he approaches Kenny—

  Wait a second. I’d seen the video of the play a million times from that perspective. There were multiple cameras up in the bleachers, including one that Coach Schmick used to film game tape for us to review later. But if we were all celebrating the championship win on the field and in the locker room long after the game was over, would the camera have kept running until someone came to turn it off?

  That would also mean I’d need to get the raw, uncut footage and not the “coach’s film” we were asked to download every week. I glanced at the clock. It was lunchtime in 12 minutes. I could dash out as soon as the bell rang, find Coach Schmick and see if he had the footage. If he did, I’d head to the computer lab and—

  “Mr. Ptuiac? Hello! The answer please?”

  There was nothing on the white board behind my history teacher, Mrs. Candelaria, so I couldn’t lean on my powers to help. I had to shrug. Sorry, I’m too busy trying to figure out how to save my life and keep my friends and family safe.

  “Perhaps a little less time spent in the playbook and more time in your textbook, Alexander,” she said, her students snickering in response.

  I sweated out the next 12 minutes and leaped up the second I heard the bell. I had exactly 45 minutes before Math. Hey, guess what? I could run there with some extra help.

  I reached the athletic center in two minutes thanks to a burst of POWER-aided running and dashed into the football offices to see if Schmick was there. If he wasn’t, I was hoping he was in the cafeteria.

  “Ptuiac! In my office, now.”

  I skidded to a stop. The voice of Coach Carson. Why didn’t I think of him first?

  “Coach, look, I don’t have time to explain—”

  He held up a hand and closed his door as I jogged in.

  “Whatever you have to do can wait. What the heck happened on Saturday? Your dad hasn’t filled me in yet.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to explain it all, including news from Sunday after Kenny and I woke up: My powers weirdly went haywire while pitching, right as I threw I got stung and accidently hit Kenny. I threw in what my dad had discovered about the “bee.”

  I finished with what Kenny told me and explained why I wanted to see the raw postgame footage.

  “Slow down. First off, I don’t even know if that footage exists, but I do know Coach Schmick is out until later. Second, you gotta calm down. We’ve got everything under control. Even if you happen to figure out who the enemy is, we’ll deal with the threat long before that. Go have lunch, go hang out with your friends, we’ll handle everything else.” />
  “Will you tell Coach Schmick I’m looking for him?”

  “Sure,” he said, escorting me out his door. “Go.”

  I still wasn’t satisfied. I checked the clock to see I’d already burned 12 precious minutes, probably too much time wasted to find Schmick and review the film if it had what I think it had. Then I remembered something else I had to do and where I’d find who I was looking for.

  Another burst of power-assisted running across campus got me to the Art building. I found the door for one of the sculpting rooms and touched the metal knob ever so slightly with the tip of my index finger. Unlike the last time I opened it a few months ago, I wasn’t instantaneously electrocuted into unconsciousness. I turned the knob.

  Just as I suspected, Sophi was there, quietly eating lunch and gazing out the window. The next thing I knew, I was on the receiving end of a squeeze that felt like it rearranged my internal organs.

  “I haven’t left the room almost the entire day, I’m too scared. How are we supposed to go to school when our lives are being threatened?”

  “I don’t know. But I think I’m on to whoever’s chasing us.”

  Again, I filled her in on everything as quickly as I could, including my talk with Coach Carson. She was particularly shocked at hearing about my powers going nuts on the mound and the double stinging.

  “I’m so sorry I ever doubted you. It sounds like we were all manipulated, especially you.”

  “I’m the one who should be sorry. This all made me paranoid and I got too wrapped up in my powers. Plus, I … I didn’t want to lose you.”

  “You should never think like that, even when I’m a little mad at you.”

  She kissed me, temporarily making me forget the danger we were in.

  “What do we do now?” she asked.

  “We’ve got Math class next and you’re coming with me. We try to act normal until I get a chance to talk to Coach Schmick. Unless we suddenly figure all this out and solve it by tonight, we go home and do it all over again tomorrow.”

  We. That reminded me …