by Tim Green
“Strike!”
Jalen stayed in the box. He knew he’d get more heat and down the middle. It came. He swung and nicked it foul into the backstop.
“Strike two!”
Jalen stepped out, then watched Chris, who took a moment, searched the bleachers to find where Cat was sitting, and flashed a smile. In that moment, Jalen knew exactly what he was going to get. Chris wanted to bean him with the first pitch because of the note on his back in school. Even if Cat had calmed him down, he wanted revenge, and now he intended to strike Jalen out in style, showing off for Cat . . . with his changeup.
And that was a pitch Jalen knew he could hit.
He stepped into the box.
Chris wound up.
In it came.
15
JALEN SMASHED IT.
He took off down the first base line but slowed to a jog halfway to the bag. That ball was gone. Jalen bit his lip to keep from laughing out loud. He wanted to impress Chris’s dad with his abilities, not stick out because he was some hot dog. He jogged the bases, crossed home plate, and accepted his teammates’ high fives. Daniel hugged him and lifted him and spun him around.
“I didn’t win the World Series,” Jalen said.
“No, but I bet you got yourself a spot on the Rockets!” Daniel knocked off Jalen’s cap to mess his hair. “He’ll probably pay you to join. Hot sauce!”
Jalen was happy, but he didn’t feel the certainty or the joy that Daniel felt. Daniel tended to get overexcited, but Jalen had spent a lifetime not having enough money for things. He’d wasted a lot of time hoping that somehow, something would happen that would let him get whatever it was he wanted anyway. So he knew firsthand that life just didn’t go that way, and he was far from certain it would go his way now.
They lost the game 17–1. Jalen had only one other at bat and punched a grounder down the first base line for a single, but he had a second double play as well as several other highlights in the field. When they shook hands, Chris ignored him. When Jalen looked hopefully into Coach Gamble’s face for a sign of respect, or even recognition, he got nothing at all. The enormous coach’s black eyes peered from beneath eyebrows that looked like electrocuted caterpillars, thick and wild. Black wires of hair sprouted from his nose and even from his ears. He lumbered past, muttering, “Good game,” but anyone could see that his mind was someplace a million miles away.
Doubt screwed Jalen’s stomach into a knot that remained only to tighten even more the next time he saw Coach Gamble’s face.
• • •
The coach showed up at the diner bright and early Saturday to finalize Jalen’s registration with the Rockets. It would be the first time the coach would hear about Jalen and Cat’s price-break plan. The strategy was to spring it on him and maybe get him to say yes. Now the idea didn’t seem so great, because Jalen felt certain that Coach Gamble had no love for surprises.
16
JALEN SQUIRMED UNDER THE GAZE of Coach Gamble’s eyes studying him. The coach’s thick, pale lips turned downward, making part of Jalen wish he’d never tried to join the man’s team in the first place.
The three of them—Jalen, his dad, and the coach—sat in the corner booth of the Silver Liner.
“Wait, you got the money, or you don’t got the money?” Coach Gamble raised the brim of his Rockets cap with a thumb to better assess Jalen’s dad now.
“Sure we got the money.” Jalen’s dad tapped two fingers on the stack of bills before pushing them a little closer to Coach Gamble across the table. “This is the money right here. Jalen, he work a long time to get this. The snow, she melt, and my son get all the golf balls in the woods. Then he sell the golf balls to pay you the money.”
Jalen felt a pang of guilt at the sound of the story he’d told to his father, explaining the money. He’d focused really hard on the part about selling “balls” and not saying what kind of balls but that he’d found them in the woods, which was also sort of true. Jalen didn’t lead his father anywhere close to the real truth in his explanation, but he hadn’t outright lied either.
“That’s a lot of golf balls, but this isn’t all the money you need, Mr. DeLuca.” Coach Gamble’s face was growing more sour by the second. “I don’t run a charity.”
“Who’s a charity?” It was Jalen’s dad’s turn to scowl. His back stiffened, and the wrinkles of his bald forehead were too numerous to count.
They were in dangerous territory, as Jalen feared they would be, because his father would go without food or clothes rather than ask for charity.
“The fee is nine hundred ninety dollars, not five hundred.” Coach Gamble started to collect his paperwork and put it back into the open briefcase he’d laid out on the table. “Today is the last day of sign-ups. I’ve got two other kids wanting to join and only one spot left. I came here first because your son’s got some game, but it ain’t no charity.”
“No. She’s no charity.” Jalen’s father glowered and stood. “And nobody’s asking for no charity.”
Jalen watched his whole career crumbling in front of him. He’d never been certain about Cat’s hopeful price-break plan, but one of the things that had come out of several sleepless nights this past week was an alternate plan. It was a crazy scheme, but it was all he had, and he wasn’t going to go down without exhausting every possibility.
“Wait,” Jalen said.
They both looked at him like he’d lost his mind.
17
JALEN SET HIS JAW. “COACH Gamble, this is all my fault. I want to play on your team really, really bad, and I knew I didn’t have enough, but my dad has this diner and I know you buy a lot of food for the team, sandwiches for the bus rides, and . . . and I heard you do a party at the end of the season and, well . . . why couldn’t my dad do that stuff to make up the difference? He could probably save you money.”
Both men looked at Jalen in surprise. Jalen begged silently, staring hard into his father’s pale-blue eyes, which—even when he was mad—twinkled with kindness and laughter. There was a long, uncomfortable silence, but Jalen stayed strong, and finally his father’s scowl melted into a grin, and he put a hand on Jalen’s shoulder. “My son. How about my son? What do you think, Coach? I make you the food. You make-a me the baseball player. . . .”
Father and son turned to see how Coach Gamble would respond.
The coach’s face was like a glacier, cold and unmoving, and Jalen wasn’t hopeful. He could hear Coach Gamble’s heavy breathing, a slow wheeze moving in and out of his enormous nose.
Finally he licked his lips like a Saint Bernard and grumbled, “What kind of sandwiches?”
“What you like?” Jalen’s dad glowed with delight. “Eggplant parmesan? Prosciutto with melon? How about some nice salmon with capers and lemon and . . .”
“For sandwiches?” The coach reared back.
“Yes, is the best.” Jalen’s dad gave a nod of complete certainty.
Coach Gamble raised his thick eyebrows and gave a look around. “That’s what you serve in a place like this?”
Jalen’s father chuckled. “She’s the Silver Liner. Like in you pockets. She’s-a rich and she’s elegant.”
“Clouds have silver linings. This place says diner, which in my experience has sandwiches.”
“For people that like a diner, I got the eggs and the bacon and a cheeseburger make you mouth water.” Jalen’s dad brought his fingers to his lips. “And fries. And a shake. But people who know? They come for the homemade recipes from the nonna and sit in the back, where I got the dining room. Stuffed calamari. Steak Florentine. Fregnacce. Eggplant rollatini. Frutti di mare. And the pasta I make myself, every morning.”
“Can you just do like . . . ham and cheese?” Coach Gamble asked in a gruff voice. “Maybe some turkey? Normal stuff. You know, like Quiznos.”
Jalen watched the joy slip away from his father’s face. His dad had told him point blank one time that if Jalen ever ate a sandwich from Quiznos, it would be an insult to his ancestors. B
ut his father knew what was at stake, and he swallowed his pride. “Coach, you put my son on your team, and I make you any sandwiches you want.”
Coach Gamble digested that news for a few moments before continuing. “And the party . . . that could be just spaghetti and meatballs. Maybe a salad.”
“Coach, I cook you a feast.”
“No. Just spaghetti. Meatballs. Tomato sauce. Nothing fancy. Bread and butter. You can do that too, right?”
“I . . .” Jalen’s dad held up a finger. His mouth fell open, but no words came out until he regrouped and nodded vigorously. “I give you just what you want, Coach.”
“Good.” Coach Gamble stood up. “It’s a deal. Sign here. Sign here. Sign there.”
Jalen’s dad signed and the coach gathered up his things before they all stood up. The two men shook hands, and Coach Gamble laid a big paw on Jalen’s shoulder. “I liked how you played Wednesday night. You played good, but you can be even better. That’s what it’ll take to be a Rocket.”
“I will, Coach.”
Coach Gamble pressed his lips tight with doubt. “Okay. We’ll see. We start Monday at the big field in Simon Park. The schedule’s in the materials I left you.”
Jalen knew there were two Little League play-off games today, with the championship tomorrow evening, so Monday made sense.
“Coach, good luck in the play-offs.” Jalen wanted to make a good impression, but the coach only snorted.
“We don’t need luck. Luck is for weaklings. Welcome to the Rockets.” With a short nod, he left them standing there.
18
AS JALEN AND HIS DAD watched the enormous man lumber out of the diner, Jalen’s dad put an arm around him and spoke in a whisper. “Welcome to baseball Rockets.”
Jalen worked hard all day in the kitchen, helping his dad, washing dishes, taking the garbage out to the Dumpster behind the train station. At first he seemed to be floating. His cheeks began to ache from the constant smile. He’d dreamed and hoped for so long that he could become a Rocket. He needed to be a Rocket. He couldn’t afford to miss the next and possibly most important step as a young player—the transition to the big field—if his dreams of baseball greatness were to be fulfilled. Still, he had never been entirely certain he would pull it off.
As the day wore on, though, he came back down to earth. The balloon of joy in his chest sprang a leak. And, late in the day, gravity seemed to be turned up to its highest level. It took a focused effort just to pick his feet up off the floor. Then, as he was washing out a sink his father had used to clean some octopus, a fire broke out on the stove.
“Mannaggia!”
Jalen hurried over, but by the time he got there, his dad already had the great burst of flames under control. Only a small pool of fire rolled across the stove top, still dangerous, but not alarming.
“Go back, Jalen!” his father shouted at him as he grabbed the big frying pan with both hands and shuffled over to the sink, where he cooled everything with water. Steam hissed as it escaped, and his father turned his bright-red face away from it, still holding on to the pan.
“Dad! Your arm.” Jalen reached for his father.
“No, no, she’s okay. She’s okay.” His father waved Jalen off, but he realized his dad wasn’t talking about the long, angry burn on his arm from the pan. He was talking about the octopus he’d saved from the fire.
Suddenly Jalen wanted to cry. Cry because he’d stolen and cry because he’d lied to his father, the man in front of him grinning with joy because he’d saved thirty dollars’ worth of food from the fire. His father glowed with goodness, kindness, love, honesty, and hard work. It made Jalen think of his mother, because surely he was more like her than his father, a person to sneak about and disappear without warning.
Thinking of his mother made him want to ask about his mother, but he just couldn’t do that. It wasn’t worth the look of discomfort on his father’s face. In times past, when the subject of his mother had come up, his father’s face would flicker with joy only to be quickly clouded over with visible pain. Whatever the story was, Jalen could only assume that a mother who’d leave her son was someone entirely undependable. Someone thinking of herself before others.
Jalen suddenly felt more than heavy. He felt sick because wasn’t that who he was? His story about the golf balls made him realize that maybe there would have been a way for him to get the money he needed to play without taking the baseballs. His father never would have done that. His father would have done it the honest way or not at all.
He remembered just last week when his father got angry with a waitress who bragged about selling the bronzino special, an expensive whitefish from the Mediterranean Sea, by telling the customer that the fish was freshly caught. Jalen’s dad had offered the fish special for several days already and he’d marched out into the diner to talk to the customer.
“She’s not fresh.” Jalen’s dad stood over the surprised customer. “The bronzino, she’s four days old. She’s good, but she’s not fresh.”
“Uh, okay.” The customer was a man in a wrinkled suit with a tie he’d loosened after a long day. “I’ll have a cheeseburger instead.”
A $7.99 cheeseburger instead of the $23.99 bronzino special.
That was his father.
• • •
“Jalen! Jalen!”
Jalen was startled from his recollection by his father’s cry for help cleaning up the spilled grease that had spattered over everything within four feet of the stove, and he got down on his hands and knees, keeping his head down and wiping away a tear so as not to upset his dad.
All afternoon, people had dripped into the diner like a leaky faucet. There never was a surge of business that day, or any day Jalen ever knew about. His dad talked regularly about the need to advertise, but the problem was the cost. His father spent too much money at the market, insisting on buying only the very best ingredients. That meant—when business was slow, or people just didn’t order the specials—good food often went to waste, and it seemed his father could never quite catch up. Certainly he didn’t have the spare funds to invest in a radio or print ad campaign for the Silver Liner.
Jalen worked even harder than normal because he was going to Cat’s birthday dinner in the evening, and he wanted to do as much as he could if he was going to abandon his father on a Saturday night. It wasn’t going to be a grand party—like someone who only knew where Cat lived might expect. Her stepfather was very rigid when it came to spending money, especially on things for Cat. To hear her talk, you’d think she was no better off than Jalen or Daniel. Even though there were some things that let you know she was rich—like her up-to-date iPhone and her fancy bedroom and her swimming pool—there was a limit on all kinds of things that surprised Jalen. He knew Cat had a meager budget for clothes and school supplies, and the only books she was allowed had to be borrowed from the library. Still, Cat said her mom promised a “surprise.”
After saying good-bye to his dad, Jalen trudged down the gravel drive that led to their house, thinking about how none of it made sense. What good was having a big old mansion and a two-hundred-acre estate when your stepdaughter couldn’t buy a book? Jalen washed his face and hands before changing into his good clothes, a stiff white dress shirt with black slacks that barely reached his ankles. He tried on the dress shoes, but they didn’t come close to fitting.
With a sigh, he slipped on his broken-down sneakers and eyed the box of homemade cannoli on the kitchen counter. Cat had said absolutely no presents, but Jalen’s dad made him promise to bring the cannoli, so he picked up the box and set out, wondering what the big birthday surprise was. He picked up Daniel at the stables.
Daniel looked uncomfortable too, in a powder-blue button-down shirt and dress pants, but with deeply polished black shoes that fit his feet. Daniel nodded at the box under Jalen’s arm. “Cat said no presents. What’s that?”
“Just cannoli.” Jalen nodded at the clump of wildflowers in Daniel’s hand. “What’s that?�
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“Just flowers. Come on. I’ve been waiting. Cat’s mom told her that her birthday surprise would knock our socks off.”
“How could something free be so good?” Jalen asked under his breath as they circled the giant mansion to go in the back way. “You know her stepfather doesn’t let her mom spend any money.”
“I have no idea.” Daniel shrugged. “The guy is nuts.”
Jalen rang the bell, and they heard it sound inside like an electric buzzer. “And why would her present knock our socks off?”
Daniel licked his hand and smoothed down the hair on his head. “I have no idea about that, either. Her stepdad’s in London or something, so maybe her mom did spend money, but stop worrying about it, because we’re about to find out.”
The door swung open suddenly, and Cat’s face was aglow.
19
“WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU guys.” Cat waved them in. “My mom said she wasn’t going to show me what my surprise is until you were here. Come on. Jalen, you wiped your feet enough, come on.”
“I’m trying to be polite.” Jalen’s face warmed in embarrassment with the attention to his feet and sneakers.
“And my mom said no presents.”
“It’s just cannoli.” Jalen handed her the box. “Homemade.”
“Here.” Daniel handed her the clump of flowers. “These aren’t anything either. Just flowers.”
“You guys are awesome.” Cat’s eyes sparkled, and she took both the cannoli and the flowers, then led her friends around a corner, up some stairs, and down a long hallway to an enormous wood-paneled dining room complete with a crackling fire at one end. Silver glinted in the light of a hundred candles. On one end of a very long table, five places had been set with multiple forks, knives, and spoons.
A butler wearing a black bow tie stood as still as a statue but flicked his eyes at Daniel in silent warning when Cat’s mom entered the room.