Strike Three, You're Dead

by Josh Berk

  I took a bite of the sandwich and blurted out “Can I use the computer?” through a mouthful of sticky peanut butter. “I want to see what they’re saying about the game online. And chat with the Mikes maybe. Nothing else. I swear!”

  “You know you aren’t allowed on the computer until school starts again.”

  “This is a special occasion!”

  She seemed to think about it for a second, but then she declared, “Rules are rules.” This is one of her favorite statements despite the fact that it doesn’t mean anything. Of course rules are rules. What else would they be? What can you say to someone whose big argument is that a thing is itself? That rules are actually not rules? That they’re what, then? Elves? “No, Mom. Rules are, in fact, elves.” Yeah. So I said nothing and kept chewing.

  “Besides,” she said, “I’m sure they’re saying the same exact things. You can get all the news you need here.” She was so wrong. The news on TV wasn’t the same thing. I had to get online, see what the real fans were saying. I had to get to Bedrosian’s Beard. To see what PhilzFan1 was saying.

  “I’m just going to go to bed early,” I said. She looked disappointed. Why did she want to hang out all of a sudden? I felt a little guilty not spending time with her. She was being nice. It was odd. And sort of sweet—she never really had time to spend with me. But at this particular moment, I had other things to do. I had a death to investigate. I owed it to RJ to find out the truth.

  I went to my room and fell into bed without getting changed. I lay there in the dark, trying to sleep, but questions were zooming through my mind like fastballs crossing the plate. Zoom! Did R. J. Weathers really have a heart attack? Whoosh! Is that possible for someone so young and so healthy? Whiz! Could it be possible that he was killed? Zip! Was that crazy PhilzFan1 somehow involved? I just knew something was up. But what? Gambling? Stalkers? All I wanted was to talk to the Mikes and see what the Internet had to say. How was I going to sleep? How was I going to lie there while RJ’s killer was possibly gloating online?

  I felt like a star player on the disabled list when he was needed for a clutch at bat. Like how the Phils’ best hitter, Rafael Boyar, was on the bench for tonight’s game. I really wanted to talk about this whole thing with the Mikes! And to use Mike’s computer! But how would I get over there?

  Thank you, Blaze O’Farrell. The hidden-ball trick! The hidden-ball trick is all about being two places at once. The ball appears to be in the pitcher’s glove when it actually is in the glove of the other player. Misdirection. All I had to do was appear to be in my bed while actually being somewhere else.

  I carefully crafted a fake Lenny under the sheets. I really did a good job, using a bunch of other shirts to fill out my pajama shirt and two pillows carefully positioned to look like legs. I even topped it off with a bit of Fuzzy Monkey above the covers, since Fuzzy had the same color hair as me. (Wait. Did I just admit that I still have stuffed animals? Whoops. Never mind. Moving on.) I stepped back to admire my handiwork. It looked pretty good. Hidden-ball-trick good.

  The next thing I had to do was to get my phone. It was confiscated each night, but I knew where my parents kept it. I just hoped I could get it from Dad’s nightstand without waking Mom or him up. I waited, lying in bed beside the fake Lenny until my Phillies clock blinked a red 11:00. I fell asleep a bunch of times but woke up with bad dreams of a grinning PhilzFan1. (This was weird, because I had no idea what he looked like.)

  Once it was eleven o’clock, I figured it was safe to sneak into the parents’ room and grab the phone. As quietly as an expert base stealer leading off first, I crept out of my room and down the dark hall. I heard the buzz-saw sound of Dad’s epic snore from the bedroom and knew I was safe. I held my breath and turned the doorknob. It gave the slightest creak, and I heard my parents rustling in their bed. I quickly darted back around the corner. My heart was pounding in my chest and I started to sweat. But it seemed like they were still asleep.

  We had lived in this house my whole life, and I knew where everything was like a veteran outfielder knows the nooks and crannies of his home stadium. I crawled—literally, crawled like a baby—across the floor. I found my way to Dad’s nightstand. I closed my eyes tight, like this might make me invisible. It didn’t matter if my eyes were open or closed. Either way it was the same—total darkness. Slowly, I opened the top drawer.

  And then Dad sat up and screamed. “Ahhhh!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I knew I was caught.

  Grounded. Supergrounded. Not just from the phone and the computer. From the Mikes. From the outside world. From life. Forever.

  I dived under the bed like a runner scrambling back to beat the tag at first base on a pickoff throw. I lay there, my face inches from the bedsprings. The side my mom was on almost reached the ground. It smelled just awful under there. I tried to inch over, but I was blocked in. My hand pressed against something hard and cool. What is it? My fingers found a grooved circular piece in the middle. I turned it and immediately recognized the sound. It sounded just like the lockers at school. A combination lock. Why does Dad have a locked metal box under his bed?

  I was sure that the next thing I heard would be Dad’s voice saying “What was that noise?” From there he would of course check my room, and only an idiot would fall for my hidden-ball trick with Fuzzy Monkey. Who did I think I was fooling?

  But the next thing I heard was Mom’s voice. Talking to Dad.

  “Bad dreams again, Jeff?”

  “Mr. Rucker’s heart stopped! Get the paddles!”

  “You’re at home, Jeff,” she calmly said. “You’re just having a bad dream.”

  “Where am I?” Dad asked in a groggy voice.

  “You’re at home, Jeff,” she said. “I’m here. It’s okay.”

  “Mr. Rucker …,” Dad said.

  “Mr. Rucker is in a better place, Jeff,” Mom said. I had the strong feeling that I shouldn’t be hearing this. Who was Mr. Rucker? A patient of Dad’s? Did something bad happen at work? Did Dad have to deal with people dying all the time? Was that why he wasn’t too upset about R. J. Weathers? Maybe that was his life—someone dies and you just get on with your day. You hope traffic isn’t too bad. Why didn’t he ever talk about this kind of stuff? I wouldn’t mind listening. I made a mental note to ask him, if I made it out from under that bed alive. I also made a note to figure out what locked secrets he had in that box.

  “Mr. Rucker …,” Dad said again, muttering. “Mr. Rucker …” And then he must have fallen back asleep because his snore picked up right where he had left off, sawing logs like an industrial chain saw. I wished I could tell if Mom was asleep or not, but I had no such clear signal. I decided to wait a few minutes. My thoughts were a scary jumble of Mr. Rucker and R. J. Weathers and PhilzFan1. Once it seemed safe, I crawled out from under the bed, scooting softly across the floor.

  The snoring continued. I seemed safe. I stayed low, arching my back to reach into the open nightstand while remaining out of view. My hand found the familiar form of my phone and I crawled backward, softly closing the door behind me. I stopped in the bathroom just so I’d have an excuse for the noise if they woke up. I looked at myself in the mirror. My face was white. Like I’d seen a ghost. I glanced at the phone. There were a bunch of texts waiting for me—including one from Mike just a few minutes ago.

  r u up?

  I wrote back:

  of course! u?

  I didn’t feel like trying to explain it all through texting, so I kept it simple:

  i m coming over

  He texted a quick response:

  window in back

  I knew what I had to do.

  I’d never sneaked out of the house before, but I had spent a lot of time thinking about it. Mainly in little-kid daydreams about what I’d do if there was a fire or a burglar in the house. The way I always knew I’d do it was simple: garage window. It was the only window in the house that didn’t have a screen. It was almost always closed and locked, but it was
easy to open from the inside. You just had to pop a lock, climb on the seat of the lawn mower, and hop out. I had actually tried it a few times when I was younger, practicing escaping from burglars, I guess. I always pictured them wearing those black masks that cover just the top part of your face. I was weird when I was little.…

  The first step was just to get down to the garage. Again, I felt like a base runner trying to steal second. There was an area of safety where you knew you could always get back to first. If I was in the living room and Mom woke up, I could say I couldn’t sleep. But there always had to be that point. The point of no return. You could no longer scamper back to the base, you just had to put your head down and go, go, go.

  I figured the point of no return was pretty much the threshold to the garage. I could always claim that I was downstairs for some reason or other, but why would I be in the garage after eleven o’clock at night? Once I stepped onto the concrete, I’d just have to run. I took a deep breath and did exactly that. I hopped through the door to the garage, hustled through the darkness to the window, popped it open, and squeezed out. I didn’t get stuck. I was free. I was in the night. I was running. I was rounding the bases. Except that I wasn’t headed for home. I was leaving it.

  Mike’s house wasn’t too far by bike, but it took forever to run there. I felt so suspicious-looking, sprinting down the dark streets. I was sure that a cop would stop to pick me up or a nosy neighbor would bust me. But there was no turning around. I just put my head down and sprinted as fast as I could until my legs burned and my heart felt like it was going to explode. I was like a slow, old backup catcher trying for an inside-the-park home run. It was just too much running.

  I made it to Mike’s house around midnight. The back window to his basement lair was open, just as he said it would be. I poked my head in and saw him sitting there, organizing his cards, memorizing the facts on the back. I was never so happy to see anyone in my life. Before I even said a word, he hissed, “Keep it down.” I guess my breathing was pretty loud.

  “I ran … gasp … the whole … gasp … way,” I said, trying to whisper. We had to keep quiet so his parents wouldn’t hear us.

  “I wouldn’t have guessed,” he said. “From the way you’re sweating and panting, I would have guessed you caught a ride over in your air-conditioned limo.” Normally he’d laugh at his own joke, but his face was dead serious. His brown eyes looked almost black.

  “Yeah,” I said, still gasping. “Good one.”

  “So what the heck happened? I can’t believe your inning got canceled! Did you get to meet anyone? Do you think they’ll have you back?”

  “Who cares about my inning?” I said. “Weathers is dead!”

  “I know, I know, I know,” Mike said. “It’s so messed up.”

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I said excitedly.

  Mike, apparently, was not. “Um, that the Phils are really going to have to make a trade for some pitching now?”

  “What?” I said. “No!”

  “Well, we really do need some more pitching if we’re going to—”

  “Mike,” I said, looking him straight in the eyes, “I don’t think RJ just died randomly. He looked totally fine when I saw him.”

  “Whoa, you met him?” Mike said, his voice excited and a little bit jealous. “Famosa too?”

  “No, only RJ came up to the booth. I did run into Don Guardo, though. I recorded him talking. But it’s Spanish. I have no idea what he was saying.”

  “Señora Cohan would be so disappointed,” Mike said.

  “Yeah,” I said, managing a laugh. “But, seriously—we need to find more out about what happened tonight. Something definitely went down. My dad thought so too. Well, he didn’t exactly say it, but he did say it was an odd case. And that he’ll try to get the report from the hospital. If it turns out that this was no accident … If someone did this to RJ, we know just who to look for.”

  “Who?” he asked.

  “PhilzFan1!” I said. “It’s gotta be … right?”

  “What? You really think that turd is in on this?” Mike said. He shook the mouse to wake up his computer. The Bedrosian’s Beard website appeared on the screen. The light cast an eerie glare through the dark basement. It was extremely late, but I felt very much awake. “I know he did say something about ‘drastic measures,’ but this is, like, really drastic.”

  “Let me on there,” I said.

  “No one touches my computer but me,” he said. “Don’t you see the sign?” He pointed to a sign he’d obviously typed up on said computer and printed out. In big, bold letters, it read: THIS COMPUTER IS FOR THE HANDS OF MICHAEL ANTHONY DINUZZO ONLY. VIOLATORS WILL BE EATEN BY A RABID YAK. Then there was a picture of an angry yak.

  “I thought that was just to keep Arianna away.” Her irrational fear of yaks was well known, the result of a zoo trip gone bad.

  “I’d love to help you out, Leonard,” Mike said. “But that yak is pretty dangerous.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine. You read it. Just tell me what it says, will ya?”

  “Lots and lots of posts tonight,” he said, cracking his knuckles.

  “I bet.”

  “Lots of theories about how Weathers died. Drugs. Heart attack. Here’s one that mentions poison!”

  “Whoa! PhilzFan1?”

  “Nah,” Mike said. “Some guy named BigJeltz-Machine posted it. He said that Weathers probably poisoned himself to avoid hearing the Philly Hillbilly rip him in the morning. It has lots of smileys after it. I guess he was just joking.”

  “Why do people keep joking? It’s really not funny!” I felt myself getting angry. “I know we just talked for a minute, but R. J. Weathers was the only ballplayer I’ve ever met. He was so cool. And now he’s gone?”

  “Keep your voice down,” Mike said. “If my parents wake up, you’re dead. Arianna’s room is right up there. She lives for getting me in trouble. It’s, like, her favorite hobby. She does two things—she collects glass unicorns and she gets me in trouble. This is what she does. Plus, she hates you.”

  “Why does she hate me so much?”

  “I don’t know, Lenny. She’s nine. Who knows why she does anything? Glass unicorns?”

  Mike scrolled through the pages and pages of posts. “Nothing new from PhilzFan1,” he said with a shrug. “His last post was early this morning. Yesterday morning, I mean. Man, it’s late! We better not get caught.”

  I checked the clock. Way past bedtime. Normally I’d be snoozing happily, dreaming of bunting my way on base. (Is it weird that in my dreams I’m always bunting for a hit instead of hitting a home run? Don’t answer that.) But even though it was late, I had no desire for sleep.

  “What did that last one say?” I asked, feeling my heart pound.

  Mike read PhilzFan1’s words out loud in a whisper: “ ‘I’m going to the game tonight. I got free tickets, so don’t give me grief for breaking the boycott. It should be fun to watch Weathers suck with the force of a thousand vacuum cleaners. And if you watch closely, I’ll have a little surprise in store for my followers. Stay tuned. Mwahahahahaha—’ ”

  “A surprise in store? That’s such a threat!” I said. “And he admitted that he was there tonight!” Could I really be onto something?

  Mike continued, “Mwa ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

  “Are you done?” I asked.

  Mike’s mouth turned into a small smile. “He wrote ha a lot of times,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I got that.”

  Mike went back to clicking the screen, scrolling and scrolling. “Man, there are a ton of posts tonight,” he said. “It’s flying by. Here’s one you’ll want me to read, I’m sure. It says, ‘WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?’ in all caps with a bunch of the words spelled wrong.”

  “What do they say really happened?”

  “Well, someone on here said they followed the ambulance leaving the game.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “I don’t know—people are nuts. Ma
ybe they wanted a picture with Weathers.”

  “After he was dead?”

  “More likely than asking for an autograph.”

  “I guess …”

  “Anyway, it said that the ambulance passed Center City Hospital and then the guy lost him.”

  “Where was it going?”

  “That’s the question.”

  “There are a lot of questions,” I said. “Don’t you see, Mike? Something weird happened. What if PhilzFan1 killed R. J. Weathers?”

  “Why? Because he had a bad game? And more importantly, how? RJ’s heart stopped. You can’t do that from the stands, no matter how good your seats are.”

  Mike had a point, but still. “The why is clearly because he was an insane stalker,” I said. “Now, for the how—”

  Then Mike’s computer beeped. I almost jumped out of my skin. “Calm down, Lenny,” he said. “I must have left a chat open from before. It’s from Other Mike.” I leaned over to read the screen, careful not to actually touch the computer. I’m sort of afraid of yaks too.

  Other Mike: Hear from Len?

  Mike: yeah, he’s here.

  Other Mike: What? Having a sleepover without me? Jerks.

  Mike: nah, he just came over.

  Other Mike: It’s superlate!

  Mike: what are you doing up so late yourself?

  Other Mike: Ah, can’t sleep. Saw you were on.

  Mike: yeah, me & len are trying to look up some stuff about what happened tonight.

  Other Mike: What happened?

  Mike: you didn’t hear? the baseball game Len was supposed to announce at? the pitcher died.