by Tim Green
“You’re fine!” Brock shouted. “You can do this, Dylan!”
The batter who was up smashed the next pitch. It looked like it might be gone and Brock’s spirits sank, but their right fielder made a jumping grab to snag the ball and secure the second out. The bad news was that the right fielder fell as he caught it. The runner on second tagged up, rounded third, and slid into home just beneath Charlie Pellicer’s mitt. The Knights had the lead, 1–0.
The next batter smashed a line drive directly over second base. Brock leaped at it, stretching. Because he was a lefty, he just caught it and landed with his glove held high in the air. Three outs and time to try to get something going on offense, but Liverpool was at the bottom of their order and the outcome looked as gloomy as the sky.
As Brock jogged into the dugout, he tasted something in the air.
Was it the coming rain?
Or, was it defeat?
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Mini Mustache was on the mound, grinning and strutting, ready to close out the game and take credit for the win. His father bellowed encouragement to him and clapped his hands like a string of firecrackers.
Mini struck out Liverpool’s last batter in the order in three pitches, but now they were at the top of the lineup. On a 3–2 count, the ump called a ball, sending a runner to first on a walk.
The Mustache went hog wild.
“That’s TERRIBLE!” He repeated it over and over until his face was purple.
The umpire appeared to ignore it, but on another 3–2 count, Mini threw a pitch that barely crossed below the top of the batter’s helmet. The Liverpool dugout erupted in cheers, only to have the umpire call a strike.
“That’s horrible!” Bella was on her feet.
“Come on, ump!” Brock couldn’t help himself either.
Coach remained expressionless. Only the blade of grass waggled in the corner of his mouth, chomped down now to half its original length.
Charlie Pellicer was up next. The Liverpool players shouted encouragement. Brock put on a helmet and got into the on-deck circle to swing his bat. He cringed at the sound of the first pitch and the umpire bellowing, “Strike!”
The second pitch Charlie swung at, but only nicked it foul into the backstop.
On the 0–2 count, Mini Mustache wound up and thumped Charlie with a wild pitch. The Liverpool team jumped up from the bench, and Brock took a step toward home plate.
“Throw him out!” Bella screamed.
Coach stood and grinned and sat her down. “Easy, girl.”
The ump looked at Coach, who was advancing toward home plate, expecting a battle.
Coach shrugged and put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “I’m sure it was an accident. You okay, Charlie?”
Charlie rubbed his back, but nodded and hobbled to first.
Brock started for the plate.
Coach stopped him halfway there. “Wait.”
Maybe it was the shouting. Maybe it was because he’d hit the last batter. Maybe it was because he was afraid of losing the game for his team. Whatever the reason, Mini Mustache called a conference with his father. They huddled on the mound for a minute before the real Mustache called out to the player in center field.
“Colton! Come on in!”
As the boy, Colton, jogged toward the mound, Brock recognized him for the biggest kid on the field, bigger than even him. Brock kept standing with Coach so Colton could warm up.
“Kid can’t be that good a pitcher.” Brock watched Colton talking to the Mustache on the mound.
“Get your mind ready,” Coach said. “He’s their top pitcher.”
“What?”
Coach nodded. “He pitched four innings yesterday. I’m sure they didn’t think they’d need him against us. His arm must be tired, but who doesn’t have five or six pitches in him?”
On cue, Colton wound up and delivered a burner across the plate. Colton grinned at the ump. “All set.”
Coach held Brock steady with his hands on either side of the batting helmet and looked into his eyes.
“Okay, Brock. This is it. It’s all you.”
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Brock took a deep breath, then a practice swing, then stepped into the box.
Colton’s mouth twisted up into a snarl, like this was somehow personal.
Brock hunkered down, bat back and quivering with anticipation.
Colton wound up and threw.
Brock swung.
POP!
“Strike one!”
The Knights cheered. Colton looked over at the Mustache and grinned.
Brock stepped out of the box to take another breath and another swing. The wind howled, blowing a sudden gust of grit into the air. Brock blinked and dropped the bat and wiped at his eye.
“You okay, son?” the umpire asked after a moment.
Brock pawed at his eye, blinking and tearing so that he could only see blurry shapes. “My eye. That dust.”
The ump stood and called Coach over. The wind kept blowing, hissing and nearly wailing through the backstop behind them. A fat raindrop spattered against Brock’s arm. Another hit his cheek. The umpire looked up and blinked.
The Mustache came out of his dugout. “Come on. Let’s finish this.”
“He’s got something in his eye,” the ump said.
Coach had Brock hold his head back, and Coach pulled down the lip of his lid and dabbed it with a handkerchief. “Better?”
Brock blinked and squeezed his eyes shut, pulling away.
“Oh, come on,” the Mustache grumbled.
“Listen, you—” Coach stepped toward the man, but the umpire separated them.
“I’m okay.” Brock pushed through them. “I’m fine.”
“You sure?” Coach asked.
“He said he was,” the Mustache said.
“Enough.” The ump pointed toward each dugout. “Both of you.”
Brock kept blinking. It was better. He could see, but his eye kept blinking now. He gritted his teeth, though, and stepped into the batter’s box. Colton wound up and threw.
Brock let it go.
“Ball!”
Brock let the next two go as well and had a 3–1 count when he took a monster swing and connected.
The ball popped straight up.
The catcher whipped off his mask and scurried around like a rat in a maze, unable to see the ball against the twisting sky. He located it, dove, and barely missed it.
Brock realized he’d been holding his breath.
“You can do this, Brock!” Bella screamed from the dugout.
The team cheered for him.
He gripped the bat and took another practice swing. He envisioned connecting solidly with the ball, smashing it out of the park. Colton was hurting and on a 3–2 count, he knew he’d get a pitch he could hit.
“Hey. Ho!” The umpire stood up and moved toward Brock. “Excuse me. Who are you?”
Brock touched his own chest, totally bewildered until he realized the umpire wasn’t talking to him, but someone behind him.
Brock turned and gasped. “No.”
It was his dad.
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“We have to go. Right now.” Brock’s father took hold of his arm.
Brock’s insides turned to jelly. This was too bizarre. It couldn’t be happening, not here.
His father began to drag him.
Coach shot out of the dugout, Bella close behind him. “Mr. Nickerson! Wait! What are you doing?”
Brock’s dad, true to form, didn’t reply.
“Brock!”
Brock looked back at Bella. She looked like she might cry and it sent a jolt through him.
“No, Dad.” Brock ripped free from his father’s grip.
His father spun on him and glowered. “Do you know what you’ve done!” he yelled through gritted teeth.
“I haven’t done anything.” Brock fought back the tears.
His father reached for him, but Brock backed away.
“E-S-P-N? What were you thinking?” His
father was furious and he looked around, not at the coaches and players, but into the stands at the crowd, looking for some source of danger.
“I don’t care, Dad.” Brock kept backing away.
His father lunged for him.
“No!” Brock screamed. “No! I’m not going! You can’t make me!”
“I am your father.” His father’s mouth barely moved.
“No.” Brock backed all the way into the batter’s box. “I’m going to finish. This is it. This is everything anyway. You might as well let me finish. Then, I’ll go.”
Bella was crying because she seemed to know instinctively from the looks on Brock’s and his father’s faces that go really meant go. Brock’s father looked around, sneering at everyone, then planted himself just outside the backstop with his arms folded tight across his chest, surveying the stands and things beyond.
“Then go!” his father’s shout rang out, breaking the trance that everyone seemed to have fallen into.
“Okay,” the umpire said, “let’s play.”
Coach had to drag Bella with him.
“No, Brock. You can’t just go.” She spoke through a soft sob, barely loud enough for him to hear, but he heard.
Brock stepped up to the plate.
Colton’s face shifted from dumb disbelief at the scene into the cold malice Brock had seen before each of his other pitches. Brock wiggled his feet into the dirt, blinked his eyes to try and clear them, and reared back his bat.
Colton wound up and sent a hot pitch right down the middle, a bit on the high side. Maybe it was a ball. Maybe it was a strike.
It didn’t matter.
Brock swung.
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The bat cracked, but the ball got the worst of it.
Brock’s hands felt like concrete as he followed through on his swing, twisting around so that he momentarily lost sight of the ball.
It didn’t matter.
He knew by the feel.
That thing was gone.
Liverpool’s dugout went wild.
Brock rounded the bases, stepped on home plate, and went straight to Coach and Bella. They met him halfway to the dugout. He hugged them both. Bella gripped his back so tight, he could feel her fingers digging into his flesh. Coach was laughing, but Bella wasn’t. Hands clapped Brock on the back, his teammates all just wanting to touch him, to feel the magic.
Brock gave Coach a squeeze, then took Bella’s face in his hands and kissed her cheek, breaking away from the two of them. Eyes on them both, he backed up, ignoring his teammates. It was like three people in a storm on the deck of a sinking ship. They loved one another dearly and nothing or no one else mattered.
“Thank you, both.” Brock choked on the words and his vision was blurred by tears. “Thank you so much.”
The sky opened up. Rain fell suddenly in sheets. Thunder crackled without lightning.
“Brock!” she said.
“Good-bye.” Brock turned and pushed through the throng of players, the Knights and his own. Everyone was scrambling for cover.
His father was unaffected by the rain, but he gave Brock a disgusted look and shook his head. “Come on.”
Brock followed him this time.
The car engine was already running in the parking lot, as Brock knew it would be. He climbed in. His father slammed the driver’s-side door, flipped on the windshield wipers, and they took off like a spaceship hitting warp speed.
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His father didn’t speak, but Brock could practically smell his anger through the warm damp scent of rain-soaked clothes.
Brock knew it couldn’t be true, but when they crossed the state line into New York on Route 81 and he saw the sign saying SYRACUSE 67 MI, he knew they were heading . . . to their most recent house.
“I thought we were in a hurry.” Brock couldn’t keep the sarcasm from his voice.
His father shot him a glare. “You’re all grown up now, huh? You’re gonna back talk me?”
“How can I back talk you? You don’t talk.”
His father thumped the wheel as if the jury had rendered a decision in his favor. “You think I enjoy this?”
“I have no idea what you enjoy, Dad.” Brock sighed and leaned his head against the window.
“They saw you.”
“Great.” Brock could feel his blood boiling. “Who saw me, Dad? Who?”
“People who shouldn’t. I know. I have ways. They were heading for you.”
“Then why are we going . . . home?”
“There’s something I need.”
“You’re mad at me for wanting to hit a home run, but we can stick around for a locket?”
Brock’s father glared at him and the car began to drift off the road. The warning strips on the shoulder sounded off like an air horn. Brock’s fingers went instinctively into his ears and he braced for a crash. “DAD!”
His father swerved back onto the road, teeth clenched. “You opened my box?”
“I’m a kid, Dad. Remember? Kids find things.”
His dad paused. “It’s a chip,” he finally said.
“A what?”
“That locket. There’s a computer chip in it. Hundreds of numbers, bank accounts.”
“Well, I should have figured it wasn’t the picture of you and mom you’d risk your life for.”
“There’s only one thing I’ll risk my life for!” his father screamed into the windshield as though a gremlin sat doubting him on the hood of the car.
“A computer chip.” Brock’s voice was barely a mumble.
“No,” his father said clearly. “You.”
91
When they got close to their neighborhood, Brock’s dad pulled off Route 57 and into Nagel’s apartment complex. The rain had stopped.
“Where are we going?” Brock peered at the back of the unit where he knew Nagel lived. A dull yellow square of light seeped through the curtains of the glass doors in the back.
“Do you know how they get past the fences?” his father asked.
“What?”
“The fences. I know that buddy of yours comes back and forth like it’s an ant colony. Do you know how they get over or under or through the fences?”
Brock felt trapped. “Yes.”
“Good.” His father did a U-turn, then pulled their car over on the side of the road nearly brushing up against the row of tall poplar trees. “Show me. I need to scope out the house before I go in, and I don’t want anyone to see the car.”
Brock got out and found the white bucket behind a tree. He turned it upside down right up against their neighbor’s fence. He handed his father the string. “The fence is even on the top so you can just go right over. Use the string to pull the bucket over for when you come back.”
His father gripped the string, stepped up onto the bucket, and looked back to see that Brock was minding him. “You wait in the car.”
“And then, we go?” Brock asked.
“Yes.” His father pulled himself up atop the fence. “In the car. I’ll be right back.”
Brock did as he was told. His father disappeared over the fence and Brock sat in the darkness watching the street. Alone, his mind raced back and forth across the past two days, remembering all the good things: Barrett Malone. Making peace with Dylan. Coach’s glowing pride. The thrill of being a star on the mound.
And Bella.
Brock took a deep breath and sighed. The ache in his heart filled his eyes with tears and he sniffed in the silence of the dark car.
Suddenly, a tapping at the window beside his head made Brock jump in his seat.
When he turned, he cried out at the sight of a man’s face leering in at him.
“Open.” The man’s voice sounded distant through the glass, but he accentuated his word with another tap on the glass, and Brock looked down at its source.
In the man’s hand, tapping on the window, was a gun.
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Brock thought of all the things he could do.
He could dive f
or the driver’s side, whip open the door and run. He could duck down into the floor of the car and blow the horn. He could slide over, start the car, and try to race away.
Those things went through his mind as he obediently unlocked the door and opened it to keep the man from shooting him through the window. Brock was like a small animal under the gaze of a cobra. He’d read about that, how small animals would just freeze at the sight of the deadly creature, sealing their fate.
The man grabbed him roughly by the collar and pulled him from the car. A gasp escaped Brock’s throat. The man pushed Brock up against the car. After he stuffed the gun in his waistband, the man took out a thick roll of tape. With a swish and a snap, swish and snap, the man taped Brock’s hands behind his back, then plastered a piece across his mouth before opening the back door of the car and shoving him down onto the seat. The man was taping Brock’s ankles when Brock saw a shadow rise up behind him.
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THUNK.
The man’s eyes rolled up in his head. His back arched, then he dropped down on top of Brock’s legs like a fallen tree. Brock’s eyes widened at the sight of his father, gun in hand, as he pulled the unconscious man out of the car and dumped him in the grass.
Brock’s dad held a finger to his lips and Brock realized that he was sniffling and sobbing and making all sorts of noise, so he stopped. His father removed a small sharp knife from his pocket and quickly cut the tape away from Brock’s ankles and wrists.
“I’ll let you peel back the gag yourself.” His father spoke in a low whisper, quietly closed the door, and circled the car and climbed in.
Brock sat up and worked at the tape around his mouth.
His father caught his eye in the rearview mirror. “Good God, I’m so sorry, Son.”
He started the engine and eased away, checking the mirror and sweeping his eyes all around, looking for trouble. “We must have been followed from Princeton. I didn’t—I didn’t know they would come this close.” In one hand he still held his gun. When they reached the Hudgenses’ fence with the graffiti on it, his dad stopped the car.