by Tim Green
“Hello,” Yager said into the phone after a brief pause. “Well, it isn’t really an emergency . . . what? No, I can’t call back tomorrow.” The player looked at his phone, insulted. His tall frame cast a long shadow in the grass, and the frown on his face gave him a demonic look. “This is James Yager. I’ve got a kid I caught stealing. . . . Yeah, a kid. At my house . . . 4367 Old Post Road.”
Yager turned his dark, almond-shaped eyes on Jalen to size him up. “I don’t know. Ten? Twelve? Fourteen, I guess? What’s the difference? Look, I’ve got to get going first thing in the morning, and I’d like to get some sleep, but someone’s gotta come get this kid.”
“Press charges?” Yager raised an eyebrow at Jalen. “I guess so. He was stealing, right? . . . No, I said it’s not an emergency, but it can’t wait until tomorrow. . . . Okay, then it is an emergency. Call it what you want, lady. Just get a cop over here and take this kid, right? Okay. Good. Thanks.”
Jalen’s stomach churned and rolled. He swallowed down bile, desperate not to throw up.
Yager held up the phone. “So, that’s that, kid. You stay in there and don’t mess anything up. You don’t want to make this worse than it already is. Trust me.”
Yager pulled the door closed with a rattle and Jalen stood in the dark, frozen in terror. He tried to calm his breathing and imagine that it was all just a crazy bad dream. As his eyes adjusted to the faintest light filtering in through a window on the far side of the shed, he detected dark, heavy shapes of lawn equipment and what had to be a tractor sitting hunched on the floor. The window gave him an idea: escape.
He tried the door handle, turning it quietly only to find that the door had been locked from the outside. He skirted the equipment and reached up for the window. It was too high.
Heart thumping, he shoved a tire beneath it, then another, which he stacked on top. With three tires stacked, he climbed up and fumbled with the latch until he heard a metal bang behind him.
Jalen spun.
5
FEAR EXPLODED IN JALEN’S BRAIN.
The shed door was flung open, and a small light danced in the entryway.
Images of his father and the police and Yager’s stern warning cluttered his thoughts.
“Jalen?” Cat’s hushed call filled the shed.
“Cat?” Jalen climbed down from the tires and hurried across the shed, bumping his shin on something and crying out.
“Shh! Come on.” Cat waved her phone frantically, directing him outside.
Floodlights from above the garage doors now lit up this side of the house. On the ground were a crowbar and a broken lock. Jalen squinted in the light.
“Hey!” An angry shout came from the direction of the house. It was Yager.
Cat had Jalen’s arm, and she dragged him around the shed into the shadows. They slipped through the trees, with Cat leading. Her firm grip was a comfort to Jalen, and she seemed to know exactly where she was going.
“Hey!” The shout behind them was more distant now.
Jalen glanced back. The glow of lights from the house barely seeped through the woods now, and a nervous giggle bubbled from his throat. “We did it. You did it.”
They stopped, huffing. Cat looked at her phone. “It’s not over yet. Come on.”
She took off again, this time at a brisk march. Sticks and twigs snapped beneath them, muted by the blowing leaves above. They came to the stone wall and hugged it, keeping the wall to their right and the faint glow of Yager’s mansion to their left until they reached the spot where Daniel waited on the other side. Up and over they went.
Daniel’s dark eyes showed all their white. His voice was pitched high. “What the heck happened? Where’ve you been? I heard the dogs and the shouting, and then it’s been so quiet I thought you were . . . I don’t know. Hot sauce. Did you get them?”
Jalen shrugged the backpack off and unzipped it for his friends to see.
“Wow. You really did it.” Daniel reached in and held a ball up to study in the light of Cat’s phone. “Hot. Sauce.”
“Yeah.” Jalen didn’t feel as excited or joyful as he’d expected. Being held captive by the major league player and having then escaped still seemed impossible. “I did, but I better get going. I’ll be lucky if my dad’s not home already. What time is it, anyway?”
Cat checked her phone before holding it up so they could all see: 12:37.
“Oh, wow. Daniel, get me back to the gates.” Jalen zipped the backpack and shouldered it.
“Did he see you?” Daniel’s eyes sparkled in the light of the phone.
“He caught me,” Jalen said. “Cat sprung me from his shed or barn or garage or whatever it was. Now come on. I’ve gotta go.”
Daniel nodded and started off down the trail, but turned and walked backward. “Wait. You met him? What was he like? Was he nice?”
“Daniel, he caught me stealing his baseballs.” Jalen threw his hands up toward the swaying trees. “How could he be nice?”
“Did he look old?”
Jalen glanced at Cat, who walked beside him, then answered Daniel. “He didn’t have gray hair or a cane, if that’s what you mean.”
“Thirty-five isn’t old,” Cat said.
“It is in sports.” Daniel kept walking backward.
“He was limping. Daniel, please.” Jalen clasped his hands. “We’ve got to move. My dad might already be home.”
Daniel’s face fell. He gave a serious little nod and took off at a jog. Jalen followed.
“What will you say?” Cat asked, chugging along right beside him. “If your father’s really back?”
“I have no idea.” Jalen felt a new surge of panic and picked up speed.
6
JALEN LEFT HIS FRIENDS AT the gates. On his way down Old Post Road into town, he saw a car turning his way. He ducked behind a thick tree and watched a police cruiser drive past. His heart felt like a bomb ready to go off. When the car was gone from sight, he took off at a full sprint, running like he was being chased, another flicker of shadow in a windswept night until he hit the railroad tracks and paused because he couldn’t go another step until he caught his breath.
The Silver Liner Diner was dark and empty.
With its lights on, it was a gem. The front of the restaurant was a real dining car from the defunct Hudson Railway. Its polished steel and sleek lines drew people’s attention, if not their business for lunch or dinner. Built onto the back was a bigger dining room and the kitchen that made the Silver Liner much more than a diner. As nice as the Silver Liner looked, it was on the wrong side of the tracks, and Jalen knew there was a long list of previous owners who’d run the restaurant into bankruptcy over and over again. His father always said that was because no one before had ever brought his work ethic to the place, or his love of food.
Jalen took off again, lungs burning and legs aching. He went straight down the tracks, praying his father was tired and moving slow. Past the station, he scrambled up a bank of weeds, climbed a rusty fence, fell, rolled, and popped up in a full run again. As he sprinted toward their house—the original tiny train station from the 1800s turned into cramped living quarters years ago after the new brick station had been built—he realized it too was dark. That meant his father was somewhere between the diner and home, walking on the path that circled the wetlands. Jalen’s shortcut down the tracks might have saved him. If his father was home and knew Jalen was missing, the lights would be burning. If he wasn’t home, he would be any second.
Jalen tiptoed up onto the back porch, used the single key he kept in his pants pocket, and eased the back door open. He heard the faint rattle of keys and saw his father’s shadow through the window of the front door. Jalen pulled the back door softly behind him and stepped into the bathroom, closing it just as the front door creaked open and the lights went on. Jalen heard his father’s footsteps heading for Jalen’s bedroom. He struggled out of his clothes and jammed them, along with his backpack, beneath the sink.
“Jalen?”
<
br /> Jalen cleared his throat and tried to sound sleepy. “In here.”
He plunked himself down on the toilet just as the door swung open and his father’s shadow appeared. Light from the hallway glinted off his shiny bald head and the wire-frame glasses he needed to see.
“Why are you here? In the dark?” His father’s Italian accent knew no bounds at home. In the diner, he tried to sound as American as he could, but at home his accent could get thick.
“I just woke up and . . . my stomach.” Jalen froze, silent and waiting to see if the story would float.
His father nodded slowly. Jalen couldn’t read his face in the shadow, but he’d heard the low growl that came from his father’s throat before.
Jalen knew his dad was boiling with anger.
7
“THAT CALAMARI, SHE’S NO GOOD.” Jalen’s father struck the wall. “I tell that fishmonger she’s not fresh, and he tell me yes, she’s a fresh, but now you stomach is no good, and I serve seven people that calamari tonight . . . mannaggia!”
Jalen flushed the toilet and stood at the same time, pulling up his underwear. “I think I’m okay now.”
“Mannaggia!” His father thumped the wall again.
Jalen knew the Italian curse word was a mild one, because he’d looked it up years ago. Still, it sounded bad the way his father said it, and he rarely said it unless something was wrong either with Jalen or the Silver Liner, and this time it was both. Jalen felt guilty about the fishmonger. The stuffed calamari his father had served him for dinner in the diner’s kitchen was delicious. But relief overcame his guilt because he was on his way to his bedroom now and had gotten out of some pretty tight spots tonight.
His father tucked Jalen into the narrow bed with a kiss on each cheek. Jalen lay still, listening to his father getting ready for bed. His eyes drifted to the top of his dresser, where a simple picture frame held the photograph of Jalen’s missing mother. He couldn’t make out the details in the dark, but he didn’t have to. He could see it with his eyes closed. She was dark-skinned and beautiful, with big round eyes, full red lips, and a dazzling smile. Sometimes his father would take the picture down and simply drink in the sight of her before sighing and returning it to what Jalen considered a place of honor beside his all-star baseball trophy.
It was strange that Jalen didn’t know more about her, but years ago he had concluded that that single picture seemed to be all his father could bear as the painful reminder of her absence. Jalen was convinced that was why it remained in his room instead of his father’s. This way, his father only had to see it when he chose to, not as a constant reminder. While the details were few, Jalen did know she was a singer who had the chance to chase her dream, but for some mysterious reason, part of the deal was that she had to leave Jalen and his dad behind. Every time Jalen thought he’d worked up the courage to ask more about her and what had happened, he froze.
Through the paper-thin walls, Jalen heard the shuffle of feet from his father’s room, then the sound of him lying down with a groan. The familiar squeal of bedsprings filled the darkness for a moment, and then everything was quiet. Only when he’d heard his father snoring for a good ten minutes did Jalen slip from bed and remove his clothes and backpack from beneath the sink. In the dark safety of his own bedroom, the baseballs now felt like gems from another planet. He put them out on the bed. Their value was so great—one thousand dollars—that Jalen’s fingers trembled. He’d never held something so precious in his own hands and had certainly never possessed anything so valuable.
Now all he had to do was convert them to cash. He knew how: eBay. They’d go fast.
Jalen put the baseballs into his one overnight duffel bag and zipped it up tight—it was the safest, most secure place he could think of. Slipping it under his bed, he lay back down, exhausted and ready to sleep.
He took a deep, relaxing breath, then realized something. If Yager told the police, which Jalen knew he would, all anyone had to do was watch for someone selling ten James Yager–signed batting cage balls on eBay. He had a thousand dollars’ worth of baseballs, but now he couldn’t sell them.
His eyes shot open.
Sleep was suddenly a million miles away.
8
THE NEXT MORNING JALEN SAT down on the bus next to Daniel.
“Man, you look like junk.” Daniel laid a hand on Jalen’s shoulder.
“That’s about right,” Jalen said. “I think I dropped off sometime between three and four.”
“Last night was insane.” Daniel winced at the memory. “All’s quiet this morning, though, and believe me, if there was any dirt flying, my mom would have it. Hey, I hope you’ll be ready for tonight with those baggy eyes.”
“Tonight.” Jalen rubbed his eyes and sighed. “I almost forgot.”
“How could you forget our last game?” Daniel’s eyes sparkled.
“We’re one and ten, Daniel. I’d rather forget this season. I mean, the Zappa Home Insurance Gators? Sounds like a disease. It was a disease.”
“Yeah, but you’re hitting .787, and I’ve got eight home runs.” Daniel was always the optimist. Where most people saw dog poop, Daniel saw fertilizer for flowers.
“You think we stand a chance against Chris Gamble and the A’s tonight?” Jalen studied his friend’s face.
Chris Gamble had a rubber arm, and his dad was the same coach they’d play for on the Rockton Rockets, a winner. Coach Gamble was a former single-A player for the Phillies, and he had been stacking his Little League teams since T-ball.
“Seriously,” Jalen said, “tell me the truth.”
With complete sincerity, Daniel nodded. “Bro, that’s why you play the game. If it was all about who did what before and numbers and all that, you’d never have to go out on the field. Everyone could just show up in uniform and shake hands and go home. What’s wrong with you?”
“How can you fight crazy?” Jalen was talking about their own coach, Mr. Winkman, who had no idea how to coach baseball. Coach Winkman decided batting order and what positions everyone would play by drawing numbers out of a hat. What made it even harder was that Jalen knew how they could be ten times better than they were. When he saw the game, it was like one of those big problems he remembered from an advanced math test they’d given him in school. All the numbers were spread out over a space the size of his hand, but they just came together in one big, beautiful picture in his mind. Jalen knew what their lineup should be. He knew who should play what position and why. He even knew the pitches the batters would get. It all just came to him, and it hurt not to be able to use it.
“Well, you’re batting cleanup tonight, and I’m five,” Daniel said.
“Which means we won’t get up until the second inning, and it’ll probably be the only time we bat until the bottom of the fifth.”
The bus pulled up outside the school, and they got off. Sun drenched the paving stones, and bright-green leaves danced on their stems above. Daniel marched alongside him and made a small O with his lips as he fished for something inside his backpack. “Someone could get hit by a pitch?”
“Come on, that’s our strategy?”
“Chris Gamble is a maniac.” Daniel stopped in the crowd of kids milling toward the front doors and held up a finger. “I’m going to do everything I can to win.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Psychological warfare.” Daniel reached into his pack again and held up a bright-pink Post-it note on his pointer finger.
“What?” Jalen hurried after him.
“Watch and learn, amigo. Watch and learn.”
9
CHRIS GAMBLE WAS NO ONE to mess around with. Even the eighth graders gave the bully space. He was big and barrel-chested, with arms so long his hands dangled by his knees. The hint of a mustache was already making itself known on his upper lip.
Daniel walked right up to him at his locker in the hall. “Ready for tonight?”
Chris ran his meaty hand over the bristles of his crew
cut. “Ready to club some seals.”
Chris’s mouth fell open so Jalen could see his pink tongue as he roared with laughter.
“Well, we’re gonna give it all we got.” Daniel offered the firm nod of a true competitor, patted Chris on the back, and headed on his way.
Jalen followed and leaned close to whisper. “What was that about? You think that scared him? Upset him? Are you trying to friend him to death?”
Daniel was counting, silently bobbing his head, mouthing the numbers. When he got to ten, he pivoted around on one heel and headed back down the hall. Up ahead, Chris’s giant form lumbered through the crowd like a ship through rowboats, but as he passed, people turned to watch and clamped their mouths to hold back laughter.
Jalen could now see the Post-it that Daniel had left behind on Chris’s back. He quickened his pace to read whatever Daniel had written that amused everyone so much, but was careful not to get too close. Finally he could make it out.
SORRY 4 THE SMELL
I JUST FARTED
Jalen looked around at all the delighted faces. He burst into a laugh that he was half a second too late to contain. He looked at Daniel, who saw his face and laughed out loud. It was like breaking a dam: one crack, and the entire hallway exploded with laughter. Daniel and Jalen high-fived with glee.
From the corner of his eye, Jalen saw Chris spin around and gape at his classmates. “What? What’s so funny?”
He spun around and around until one of his A’s teammates, Dirk Benning, snatched the Post-it from his back and showed it to him.
Chris roared, crumpled the note, and headed right for Jalen.
10
THE FIRST DAY JALEN EVER met Cat, she showed up just in the nick of time.