by Tim Green
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“MY DAD AND I are pretty close,” Josh said.
He watched Coach Helle’s unblinking eyes as they drilled down on him. Coach Helle spoke softly. “And that’s a good thing. I’m just saying that I need to coach my way and you need to play my way, and I don’t want to get into it with your dad. Now, he and I spoke, and he’s on board, but I need you to be on board too.”
“Oh, well, if you talked to my dad and he’s good, I’m good.” Josh felt he had no choice.
“Super.” Coach Helle pointed at him. “You know, you’re as good as they said. I know you just got here, but what do you think about playing with us in this tournament we’ve got Sunday? It’s an overnight, but Tallahassee’s not far. I’d like to get you right into the lineup.”
Josh had mixed feelings. He wanted to dive right in, but they were supposed to move into their new apartment over the weekend. School began on Monday, and his father was already talking about a recruiting trip in the middle of the week. It was all happening so fast.
“I don’t want to pressure you.” Coach Helle held up his hands. “Just think about it. If you want to come, you can let me know tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Coach.” Josh followed him out of the dugout and saw his dad waiting in the parking lot.
Coach Helle waved to Josh’s dad but got into his own green pickup without stopping to talk.
“So? How’d it go?” his dad asked.
“Really well.” Josh told him about his hitting and didn’t mention anything Coach Helle had said to him. He did tell his dad about the weekend tournament in Tallahassee, though.
“Hey, that’s great.”
“But we’re moving into the new place, right?”
His dad steered out of the parking lot and onto the road. “Yeah, but that’s no big deal. The rental company will deliver the furniture, and your stuff and mine together won’t take any time to unload. No, you get things going with your team. That’s great, right? I mean, a team is like a bunch of instant friends.”
“Uh, yeah. That’s right.” Josh nodded to add support to his words even though only Declan had tried to be friends.
Josh didn’t hear his father’s phone ring, but because it was dark outside, when it lit up from its place on the charger cord, Josh saw it. His father snatched the phone and hit Ignore with a grunt of displeasure.
“Who is that?” Josh figured the noise his father made opened the door for a question.
“Nah. No one.” His father waved his hand. “I must have given my number out to a marketing company or something. I’m always getting sales calls on this thing.”
“Oh,” Josh said. “Yeah, that’s gotta be annoying.”
As he spoke, another call came in, and his father hit Ignore and then powered the phone right down. “Ridiculous.”
His father turned the music up, and they returned to their dorm room. Josh’s dad was in the shower when his own phone vibrated. It was Jaden, texting to see if he could talk. Josh dialed her number.
“Hi, Josh.”
“Hi,” he said.
Jaden paused as if she was waiting for him to say something more than hello back to her. “Josh, is everything okay?”
The tone of her voice sent his heart thumping. “Yeah, I think so. Why?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“YOUR MOM DIDN’T SAY anything to you?” Jaden asked.
Josh huffed. “Jaden, I have no idea what you’re even talking about! I haven’t talked to my mom yet. My dad and I have been really busy.”
“With your house.” Her voice was as sad as it was sorry.
“What about my house?” The shower water went off in the bathroom, and Josh tried to keep his voice down.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Benji told me not to call. Who listens to Benji, though, right?” Jaden said.
“Jaden! What are you talking about?”
“There’s a For Sale sign in your front yard. I thought you knew. I’m so stupid. I was worried, but then I thought maybe your mom is coming down there. Josh, I was thinking that somehow you might come back. I know your mom was mad at you but . . .”
“Wait. What For Sale sign?” Josh was sick. “What are you talking about? Not for my house. Not my mom’s house. It must be the neighbor.”
“I don’t know,” she said, “maybe. They hung it right on your fence, though, but maybe. It said they’re holding an auction. In two weeks.”
Josh’s father came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist.
“I gotta go. I’ll call you later.” Without waiting for a reply, Josh hung up the phone. “Dad, are we selling our house? I mean, is Mom? The house in Syracuse?”
Josh’s father didn’t have to say a word. By the sorry, angry, sad look on his face, Josh knew it was true.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
JOSH’S FATHER SAT DOWN on the edge of his bed. He looked at his hands to avoid looking at Josh. “It’s hard to explain everything. I’ve got a lot of pressure on me, right? I mean, this is a big move.”
“What’s that got to do with our house?” Josh couldn’t believe what he was hearing, this mealymouthed nonsense about the pressure his dad was under.
“Your mother doesn’t need a house that big, Josh.” His dad scratched his shoulder. “She wasn’t listening to anything I said, so I just stopped fighting with her about it, but I wasn’t going to keep paying for it.”
“What? You just stopped paying for our house? We live there!”
His dad looked around. “No, we don’t live there. We live here, and we’re going to move into one of those nice apartments with the water slide. I need a security deposit and the first month’s rent. I’ve gotta get furniture, and it costs money up front to send you to private school and have you on a new travel team.”
“Oh, yeah? And where is Mom going to go? And Laurel?” Josh tried not to scream, but he felt panic tightening like a thick rope around his neck.
“They can get an apartment like us, Josh.” His father sounded calm and reasonable, almost comforting. “There’s nothing wrong with living in an apartment. You don’t have to worry about repairs. I lived in an apartment until I was fourteen. Plenty of people do.”
Josh tried to catch his breath. “Dad, it’s Mom and Laurel. They can’t just live anywhere.”
“Josh, I tried to get her to come down here. You heard me.”
“She’s got her job, and she had a house,” Josh said.
“Maybe now, without the house, she’ll think about coming down.”
“Is that why you did it?” Josh couldn’t believe it.
“No.” His father shook his head violently. “I’d like her to move down so you and Laurel and she could spend time together, but she’s not an easy woman, Josh.”
“She’s not easy? This is Mom’s fault? She wasn’t the one who got a girlfriend, Dad. That was you.”
“Hey, mister. Watch your tone of voice with me.” His father’s face clouded over fast. His voice turned deep with the threat of a storm. “Where are you going?”
Josh was on his feet, phone in his hand. “I have to get out for a minute. I have to think.”
“Fine,” his father said. “You go think. That’s how your mother handles things. I’m a doer, Josh. That was always part of the problem with me and your mother.”
“Maybe that’s part of my problem too, Dad. I’m not a doer, right? Maybe I’m like her. I guess I am.” Josh flung the door open and tried not to slam it behind him, because he knew that would risk his father coming down on him like a brick building. He marched up the hallway, past a room with an open door where three college students sat on a bed playing cards with country-western music twanging in the background. Josh couldn’t wait to be in college—or in the minors, taken in the MLB draft after high school. Anywhere, just to be on his own and away from his parents.
Outside he found a bench beneath a big oak tree sunken in shadows cast by the light from the lampposts, which stood like sentries a
long the walking paths. He slumped down and took out his phone. Emotions swirled in his brain. Part of him was furious with his mom for sending him away. Another felt horrible, like he was personally responsible for her losing her house as well as her family. Wasn’t baseball something they’d fought about too?
His father was intent on Josh becoming a major leaguer, something he hadn’t quite been able to do but something he felt Josh was destined for. His mother, on the other hand, nagged constantly about the importance of school. Once she even went so far as to tell Josh that she didn’t want him to end up like his father. As if that was something so bad? The idea burned Josh from the inside out.
Still, almost as if his fingers could think for themselves, he dialed his mom’s cell number.
She answered right away. “Josh?”
“Mom?” he said. “What’s happening? Dad’s making you sell the house? He can’t do that, can he? Can we stop him?”
The line went silent for a moment. He heard his mom take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It’s the bank that’s making me sell it, Josh. He stopped making the payments. . . .” Her voice sharpened. “There is a way to make him, though. Oh, I don’t know, Josh. I don’t want to put you in the middle of it.”
“I am in the middle of it, Mom. How? How can we stop it?”
“Well, I’ll tell you, Josh, but you may not like what you have to do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
JOSH STOOD UP AND put his hand on the tree’s rough bark, steadying himself against the immovable mass of the old tree.
His mother’s voice was strained. “It’s long and it’s complicated, but the agreement your father and I have with custody of you kids says that he has to pay a certain amount of child support for you and a certain amount for Laurel. Do you understand?”
“No,” Josh said. “What are you talking about?”
“If you live with me, your father—by law—has to pay me more money,” she said.
“Enough to keep the house?” Josh asked.
“Enough to have a chance of keeping it. Without you and the support money, there’s just no way. I already spoke to the bank. They’re not going to wait. Your father has been making promises to the bank and breaking them for a while. The extra money we had from his Nike contract he already spent on that car and other stupid things. I asked Gran to help. She said she will, but only if I get you back and force your father to pay the full support.”
“Force him?” Josh gripped the hair on top of his head. “What do you mean?”
“The court won’t let him get behind on child support. They’ll issue a judgment, and it’ll come right out of his paycheck. Don’t worry about that part, Josh.” She hesitated. “Will you come back?”
“I thought you couldn’t control me?”
“Oh, Josh. I’m confused. I’m sorry, honey. Come back. I need you.” His mother sounded almost out of breath. “Laurel wants you here, Josh. She misses you. I do too.”
“How?” Josh paced the brick walkway, one hand still clenching his hair, the other pressing the phone to his ear.
“That’s my boy, Josh.” He could feel his mom’s relief. “Your father can take you to the airport and get you a ticket. He will. He has to. He can’t take you out of state unless I agree, and I’m taking back my agreement.”
“You can do that?”
“Josh, the bank put up a sign on the fence. They’re going to auction our home. I can do whatever I have to do to stop it. I will do whatever I have to.” Her voice turned mean, and Josh quaked at the thought of telling his father he wanted to go back. He’d never felt so torn in his life.
“Can I just go?” Josh said.
“What do you mean, honey?” his mother asked.
“He’s gonna be mad, Mom.”
“You let me talk to him, Josh. He’ll behave.”
Josh looked back at the dorm building. Hidden in the bushes beneath its ground-floor windows, a dozen spotlights lit the bricks and the painted white trim. It was enormous and solid, like a fortress. Josh just wanted to run. He felt more and more tied up, like a fishing line twisted and looped and knotted beyond repair.
“I don’t know.” His voice sounded distant. The shaggy tree above swallowed everything but the sound of the crickets.
“Just come home, Josh. You’ll be able to sort things out better here.”
“If I want to come back to Florida, can I?” Josh didn’t want to cut off any escape routes, and he thought his father might let him leave more easily if there was a chance he might return.
“Of course,” his mom answered, almost too fast. “If your father is willing to make the house payments and you feel like it’s the best thing for you, Josh, I won’t keep you from doing that. I won’t want you to go, but I won’t stop you. Just come back. I know you’ll feel better with Jaden and Benji to talk to.”
Josh almost asked his mother how she knew that’s what he’d been thinking but stopped himself. He had to be careful. With the state his parents were in, Josh needed to keep his cards close to the vest and play them very carefully. Hadn’t his dad just said that he was glad Josh ran away? Now he knew why. This was getting really crazy.
“Okay. Dad might let me go then.”
“Josh, he has to let you go. The police will take you if he doesn’t.”
“Police?”
“It’s not going to happen. He won’t let it. He can’t. He’s got this new, precious job. He can’t afford to have trouble before he even gets started. Trust me.”
“Okay.” The thought of his friends, his home, his school, and his baseball team was too much. “But you gotta do it. Not me. I’m not telling him. I’ll just go along. Okay? Can you do that?”
“Yes, as long as you want to come, I’ll tell him he has to send you home. I’ll take the heat.”
“Should I just go back inside?” Josh asked.
“Yes. You can tell him as much or as little as you like. You can tell him to call me, or I’ll just ring him up myself. Do you want me to wait and do it when you’re there, or should I call now? Where are you?”
“Just outside, on a bench, under some trees.”
“It’s your call,” she said.
“Okay,” he said, “let me go back in. I’ll tell him you were saying some stuff, but I didn’t understand and I told you to talk to him about it.”
“I’ll give you ten minutes,” she said. “I love you, Josh.”
“I love you too, Mom.” Josh hung up. He spent a few more minutes walking outside, thinking, before returning to the dorm room. It had only been a few days, and his whole life had fallen apart. And now, just when things were starting to settle down here in Florida, his house was being sold. He thought back to that home run derby. Maybe when he got back to Syracuse, he could still do it.
His father lay in the bed propped up on his pillow, working on his laptop. He looked over the tops of his glasses. “Feel better?”
Josh sat on the bed and focused on untying his shoes. “I don’t know. I talked to Mom. She was talking kind of crazy. I’m not sure what she was even saying.”
“Crazy, like what?” His father set his laptop down and sat up straight.
Josh shrugged.
His father’s phone rang. He answered. “Laura? What’s going on?”
Josh held his breath.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
IT WASN’T EASY, BUT it wasn’t as hard as Josh worried it might be. Whatever his mom said, his father kept his cool. He answered with a lot of low yeses and nos. It was as if his mom had everything all mapped out, and she simply boxed his dad into some kind of corner.
When he hung up, Josh winced, waiting for fireworks.
His father took a deep, deep breath, then let it out slow. “Josh, I’m sorry about all this. I really am, but it looks like you’ve got to go back. You’ll be able to visit me. That’s a good thing.”
Josh looked across the small room into his father’s eyes and knew that whatever she said, his mother hadn’t gi
ven him away.
“I’ll do what you guys need me to do.” Josh spoke quietly, almost in a whisper.
His father lay back and shut off the light. “Get some sleep, Josh. Tomorrow I’m taking you to the airport.”
He couldn’t help asking himself over and over why life couldn’t just go back to what it had been before. He remembered all the fights his parents had. He thought nothing could be worse.
He’d been wrong.
The red numbers on the clock blinked 12:41 a.m. at him. No way did Josh think he’d ever sleep, but he did. He was exhausted, not from the baseball practice, but from worry and fright and sadness and confusion.
In the morning, his dad’s sour face confirmed that the whole thing hadn’t been a dream.
Although his flight wouldn’t take off for a few hours, Josh stood waiting with his duffel bag until his father finished dressing and said, “Let’s go.” His dad was gruff, but without being mean. “Don’t forget your baseball stuff.”
Josh had forgotten his equipment bag, maybe kind of on purpose. As he hoisted the bag, the bats clattered softly inside, making Josh remember the hundreds of practices he’d had with his dad over the past five years. That would now end, and he and his father looked at each other over the sound, both of them knowing. His dad threw his chin toward the front door and left the room.
Josh followed.
They listened to the satellite radio’s classic rock station all the way to Orlando airport. After parking the car, Josh’s dad went in with him, bought a ticket, checked his bags, and waited in the security line. Families with little kids sported mouse ears, princess wands, and duck lips. There was only a gray-haired couple left in front of them when Josh’s father spoke.