by Mike Lupica
“It would make things a lot easier.”
They stopped talking now and rocked slowly in the swings, neither one of them wanting to talk just to talk. Ben could sit like this with Sam, the two of them watching a game in the McBains’ basement, and not feel as if they had to be having a nonstop conversation. Not with Coop. Never with Coop. If he had a thought inside his head, it just had to come out. Even if he wasn’t with you and he had a thought he wanted to share, he’d text it immediately.
Cooper Manley did not believe in holding anything back. Sometimes Ben thought Coop was afraid of quiet the way some kids were afraid of the dark.
It was Lily who finally spoke again.
“One thing Justin has to know is that you’re still going to be his friend,” she said. “That we’ll all be his friends no matter where he lives or goes to school.”
“He must know that already.”
“Tell him, anyway.”
“Telling me what to do again?”
“Absolutely!” Lily said.
“I’ll tell him when I see him at practice, it’s not something you tell a guy in a text.”
“Okay,” she said, “just don’t put it off.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t you ma’am me, McBain,” she said. “When’s your next practice?”
“Thursday.”
“Do it then.”
But Ben didn’t have to wait that long. When he came in for dinner after Lily had gone home, Beth McBain told him she’d invited Justin and his mom over for dinner the next night.
* * *
When they showed up Justin whispered to Ben, “Was this you?”
Ben shook his head. “A mom deal all the way, I swear.”
Ben’s dad did the cooking on the grill, steak and some kind of fish and even vegetables, even though Ben just thought grilling vegetables was a way of disguising them.
Once they sat down to dinner, Ben waited to see how long it would take for the subject of Mrs. Bard and Justin moving to Cameron would take. But mostly it was the two moms talking about summer, and how summer was supposed to be some kind of break from all the running around they did during the school year and then when summer did come around, they felt like they were moving faster than ever.
“Like somebody changed the speed on the treadmill without telling us,” Ben’s mom said.
Justin’s mom smiled. “That’s exactly how I feel these days: Going faster than ever, but going nowhere.”
Just to Cameron, Ben thought.
“I wouldn’t ever presume to give you advice,” Beth McBain said, “but when you get off the treadmill, just try to take things one step at a time.”
“My mom just says it a different way,” Marcy Bard said. “One foot in front of the other.”
There was a pause, as if nobody knew where to go with this next. Then Justin’s mom said, “Thanks for having my boy and me over tonight. Some of my friends act as if I’ve come down with something, even though all we’re doing is moving on to the next chapter of our lives.”
Justin was staring down at his plate as she said that, probably thinking it was the next chapter of a book he didn’t want to be reading.
Now his mom reached over and covered his hand with hers as she said, “I’ve put an awful lot on this guy. But I keep telling him we’ll get through it together. Right?”
“Right,” Justin said.
Still staring down at his plate.
“Justin knows that when we finally settle in Cameron, he’ll be surrounded by family,” Marcy Bard said. “It’s a good thing, he’s always been so close to his cousins.”
Was she trying to convince Justin of that, or herself?
“Plus,” she said, “I’m going to have to get back to work at some point, and there’s a wonderful opportunity that’s opened up back home.”
Justin gave a quick look at Ben, mouthing the word home.
His mom’s home, not his.
Then she was telling him about how she’d worked at a women’s clothing store in Cameron before she’d met Justin’s dad, had studied design in college in New York City before that, a place called Parsons School of Design.
“Not only is the store still there,” she said, “but it turns out my old boss is looking for a partner.”
“Well, that sounds wonderful,” Ben’s mom said.
Ben looked at Justin, pushing vegetables around on his plate, before he looked at Mrs. Bard and said, “Why don’t you just open a store here?” Ben was smiling as he said it, wanting to make sure the grown-ups at the table knew he wasn’t trying to be rude or disrespectful. “That way I don’t lose a teammate.” He looked at Justin again and said, “Or a friend.”
“Ben McBain!” his mom said.
But Ben saw his dad grinning at him from the other end of the dinner table. Maybe because one of Jeff McBain’s favorite expressions was about putting things on the table. And that is exactly what Ben had just done.
So he kept going.
“Our friend Coop was saying the other day,” Ben said, talking fast, “how he just wants to stay eleven forever, how he likes things just the way they are. And I’m not saying that Justin and I want to do that, right, J?”
Justin said, “Kind of looking forward to twelve right now, to tell you the truth.”
Ben said, “But even though I know you guys are going through some bad stuff, I just hate to see Justin have to give up so much good because of it.”
His mom turned to Justin’s mom and said, “We encourage Ben to be honest. But clearly he’s still learning to pick his spots.”
Mrs. Bard didn’t seem upset about what Ben had said, just looked at him and said, “Believe me when I tell you, Ben, I wish we could keep things exactly the same in Justin’s life. But we can’t.”
“And I think Ben understands that,” Ben’s mom said. “Don’t you, Ben?”
Stepping on his name so hard Ben half expected it to break.
“Mom,” he said, “you’re the one who always taught me that there’s nothing more important than being a good friend. Or having one. I just don’t want to lose a friend without a fight, that’s all I’m saying.”
In a voice so low that Ben wasn’t sure anybody at the table but him heard it, Justin said, “Same.”
“And we all love that about you,” Beth McBain said, “when it’s your fight. And this isn’t, dear.”
“But thank you for being so honest,” Mrs. Bard said.
“You’re welcome,” Ben said.
Then, because he couldn’t help himself — or maybe because he didn’t want to help himself — Ben said, “I’m just trying to figure out if you’re leaving because you have to or because you want to?”
And she said, “Maybe it’s a little bit of both.”
It was then that Ben’s mom put her hands together like she was putting a period at the end of a sentence — or maybe closing this chapter of tonight’s dinner — and said, “Who’s for homemade apple pie and ice cream?”
After the dessert plates had been cleared, Ben’s parents and Justin’s mom went into the living room for coffee. Probably relieved, Ben thought, to be ditching me.
Ben and Justin went up to Ben’s room.
“Wow,” Justin said as soon as the door was closed.
“Wow what?”
“I can’t believe the way you took it right to my mom.”
“Was that a bad thing?”
“Are you joking? It was awesome.”
“I meant every word I said.”
“You always do,” Justin said. “Thanks for trying.”
“I didn’t plan to. Once that stuff started coming out of my big mouth, it was like I couldn’t stop it. You think it helped at all?”
“No,” Justin said. “Nothing you can say, nothing I can say, nothing anybody can say.”
“But why can’t she have her own store here if she wants to have a store?”
“She says there are too many memories here, whatever that means.”
“What about your memories?” Ben said.
Then he was talking fast again, because it wasn’t the kind of stuff that guys liked to say to guys, telling Justin they were going to stay friends, no matter what, that Justin should not even try to get out of that.
When he finished Justin said, “Thanks for that, too.”
From downstairs they heard Justin’s mom calling him, telling him it was time to go home.
“Yeah,” Justin said, “home for a few more weeks.”
Ben didn’t say anything to that because he wasn’t sure there was anything to say to that, not in a home nobody was asking him to leave, a home that had both his parents living in it.
Ben said, “I’m the one who should be thanking you, from now till the end of the season, after the way you got me straightened out hitting.”
“You would’ve figured it out on your own,” Justin said.
“Don’t be so sure.”
“Come on,” Justin said, “you always figure out stuff in the end.”
“Not everything,” Ben said.
Wanting to add: Not for you.
Ben and Justin made a deal: From now on they’d try to focus on something they could do something about, which meant winning one more championship together if they could.
“Control what you can control” was the way Ben’s dad put it.
They couldn’t do anything about Justin moving. What they could do was win their league and qualify for the states.
Some places, Ben knew, had eleven- and twelve-year-olds in the same league. But the two ages were split up in the Butler County League. Next year, when they were all twelve, they’d get their shot to play their way out of their league and all the way to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and the Little League World Series, which only one Rockwell team had ever done in the history of the town.
It figured that this year the state tournament for eleven-year-olds was going to be played in Cameron.
“Great,” Justin said to Ben. “If we do win the states, I won’t even have to come back here. I’ll just stay in Cameron.”
“Let’s worry about that later,” Ben said, “and just do what Mr. Brown is always telling us to do. Enjoy the ride.”
“You’re right,” Justin said. “Every time I say I want to stop talking about moving I find a way to start talking about it all over again.”
They were stretching in the outfield grass at Highland Park before their game against Moreland. Deep into the season now, a 10–2 record, Ben couldn’t even remember their last loss, six games left in the regular season, still tied for first place. There were a couple more teams in the league for baseball than in the other sports, ten in all, Moreland being one of them. The top four made the playoffs, single elimination.
“Hey,” Coop said now to Justin, “I’ve got an idea.”
“Pay attention,” Sam said, “they don’t come along very often with him.”
“What are you talking about?” Coop said. “I’m full of ideas.”
Ben said, “I believe Sam meant good ones.”
“Ignore them,” Coop said to Justin. “My idea is that I’ll do the talking for both of us the rest of the season, and you just hit.”
“It won’t be hard,” Sam said, grinning. “You already do the talking for all of us.”
Meaning the Core Four.
“Just look at it this way, because the tournament is in Cameron, this time when you go there, we’ll all be going with you.”
They were going with their best pitching tonight. Three innings from Sam, two from Shawn, Ben for the sixth. The Moreland Tigers now had the same record as the Rams did, and had their own ace starting for them tonight, a kid named Kyle Rafalski. Because the Rams didn’t play Moreland in either football or basketball, and because this was their first game against Moreland as deep as they were into the season, this was going to be their first look at him.
“The intel on him,” Coop said as they were walking to the bench, “is that he’s given up one earned run all season.”
“Tell me you didn’t say that,” Sam said.
“I know,” Coop said. “A guy who can give up just one run in this league must be nasty.”
“I meant,” Sam said, “tell me you didn’t say ‘intel.’”
Even Justin laughed. Ben thought he seemed better tonight than usual, maybe just because it was a big game for them, against a good team, first place on the line even if there was still a lot of season left. The stands on the Rockwell side of the field, first-base side, were full, the weather was great.
All baseball tonight.
Ben said to Justin, “You ready?”
“I want to play well tonight,” he said.
“You always do,” Ben said.
“But especially tonight,” Justin said, and then pointed to the stands and said, “Check out the top row.”
Ben stopped and looked up there and saw both of Justin’s parents, sitting together for the first time all season.
“Cool,” Ben said.
“I don’t know why it makes me feel good,” Justin said. “But it does.”
Ben said, “Don’t worry, we got this.”
Ben himself had been on a rip since the Parkerville game, now thinking of himself as having an off night when he only got one hit, usually getting at least two. After all the overthinking and worrying he’d done after getting drilled by Robbie, the game felt easy to him again, he was back to being what he’d always prided himself on being in baseball, from the time they took the ball off the tee:
A tough out.
And maybe, because of what it had taken him to get here, he was a tougher out than ever.
Sam breezed through the top of the first with two strikeouts before he faced Kyle Rafalski, who worked him to a full count before hitting a very long foul ball over the fence in left. Couple of feet from being a home run. Maybe it would have bothered somebody else. Not Sam. He was so good at sports, all sports, it was like he was always looking for new challenges, because they were new ways for him to make sports fun.
Sometimes Ben would watch him and think that Sam was playing a whole different game within the one everybody else was playing, just to keep himself entertained. So after what had been a pretty epic foul ball, Sam just got a new ball from the ump, turned, and looked at Ben at short as he rubbed up the ball. Smiling at him.
Like this was big fun now.
Turned around and blew a fastball past Kyle Rafalski for strike three to end the top of the first.
When they got back to the bench Ben said to Sam, “We spent all that time before the game about wanting to see what Kyle’s got. Only he can’t possibly have what you’ve got.”
“Hated to have to work that hard in the top of the first,” he said. “But that foul ball annoyed me.”
“Remind me never to annoy you,” Ben said.
“Go get a hit and annoy him.”
Kyle Rafalski threw as hard as anybody they’d seen this season, but didn’t have the best control, maybe that’s why nobody could hit off him, he made you stay loose. He kept throwing one screamer after another to Ben, Ben taking every one, working the count full himself, thinking he already should have walked after he felt Kyle had missed with a 2-2 pitch the home plate ump decided to call a strike.
But when he did get a fastball down the middle on 3-2, Ben hit a hard grounder between short and third for a clean single into left.
Darrelle popped out to first on the first pitch he saw from Kyle, but then Sam doubled down the left-field line, Mr. Brown holding Ben at third. Justin followed that by hitting a ball so hard right up the middle that it was past Kyle Rafalski before he could even get his glove up.
It was 2–0, Rams.
For some reason Ben found himself looking up at Justin’s parents, both of them standing and clapping, his dad pointing to Justin out at second base. Then Ben’s eyes found his own mom, standing with Lily, cheering for him.
Ben thinking in that moment that he was even luckier than he k
new.
Was he ever.
It turned out to be a great game.
The Tigers finally tied it with two runs off Shawn in the fourth. The Rams went ahead in the bottom of the inning, Coop hitting his first home run of the season. When he got back to the bench he said to Justin, “Oh, so that’s what it feels like being you.”
Tigers came back with another run off Shawn, a two-out error from Darrelle at third, what should have been the third out, a one-hopper to him right near the third-base bag that he just dropped making the transfer from his glove. But then the Rams tied them again in the bottom of the fifth, Ben singling home Cal with a two-out single to center.
So it was 4–4 going into the sixth, Mr. Brown already having told Ben that he was pitching two innings if they went to extra innings, the rule in the Butler County League being that they only played one extra inning before the game was called a tie.
“It won’t go to the seventh, Coach,” Ben said. “We’re winning this in our last ups.”
“Which I guess means that you’re going to keep the game at 4–4.”
“Well, yeah,” Ben said.
He knew Kyle Rafalski was scheduled to hit fourth in the inning, which meant that the only way he got any more swings tonight — he had singled off Sam and then doubled off Shawn — was if the Tigers got a base runner. Which they did when Darrelle, who’d moved over to short when Ben came in to pitch, made another error, throwing error this time, with one out.
The kid stole second while Ben was in the process of striking out the Tigers’ catcher.
Two outs, Ben against Kyle, go-ahead run on second. Coop called time, came jogging out to the mound.
“If we get behind, a walk wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world here,” Coop said. “The next guy up? I know he’s batting cleanup, but the guy’s a total fraud. He couldn’t catch up with Sam’s fastball, so he’s not gonna catch up with yours.”
“Nice chatting with you,” Ben said, grinning at him.
“I’m not saying you’re gonna get behind,” Coop said. “But if you do, I say we pitch around this guy.”
Now Ben didn’t say anything, both of them hearing the ump say, “Let’s wrap this up, gentlemen.”
Coop looked at Ben, grinning himself now. “We’re going right after him, aren’t we?”