Center Field Read online

  “Don’t start caring too much.” She looked away.

  He felt she was slipping away from him. He thought about getting out of the chair, reaching for her, but he felt suddenly shy. Better wait for her to come back. At her pace. He realized he was afraid of her, at least afraid of upsetting her, changing her mood. He finished his sandwich and drained the orange juice. He leaned back in the chair, trying not to let his mind get lost in the music.

  She finished her sandwich and turned toward him. Her eyes were dry. Steady.

  “That rack?” She pointed at the black metal apparatus in the corner. “When I feel bad, I hang upside down like a bat.”

  “That works?”

  “Most of the time. When it doesn’t, I have pills. Running used to do it for me. It got really bad when I had to stop.”

  “You should come bike riding with me. That clears my head.” As soon as he said it he was sorry because he knew where she would take it.

  “Unless someone tries to knock you off. We were just going to talk to you.” She looked down. “After he did it, I panicked and drove away.”

  “You don’t panic.”

  “I’m always trying not to panic.” She looked at him. “Sometimes I think I’m holding on by my fingers.”

  He struggled out of the sling chair and put his arms around her. “I can help you hold on.”

  She squeezed him tight. “What’s going to happen now?”

  “I don’t know about tomorrow,” he whispered into her ear, “but tonight’s a movie night.” After he said it, he thought it made sense. Something kind of normal.

  “What?” She pulled back and looked at him with a comical expression. “Movie night?”

  “We could go to a movie.”

  She smiled. “Like a date?”

  “Straight arrows go on dates.”

  “You can be funny, you know that?” Her voice had perked up. She pointed at the laptop. “I usually watch movies on that. Or edit what I’ve been shooting.”

  “The Social Issues Project? Or the one you said you’ll tell me about sometime?”

  “The Billy Budd contest.” She looked happy.

  “What?”

  “That little speech you made at the senior center about center field? I edited it with some shots of you and Billy in center field and sent it in.”

  “How could you do that?” He felt delighted and angry.

  “It’s easy with the software….”

  “Without telling me?” The anger faded at the look of hurt in her eyes.

  “I thought you’d like it. Then with everything that happened I forgot about it. I guess you didn’t win.”

  “Tomorrow night they announce the winner.” He felt icy prickles down his spine. This is my week.

  “Wouldn’t that be something,” she said. She wrapped her arms around him again. Something about the way she gripped him, he had the sense she was holding on.

  When she released him, he said, “Show it to me.”

  She shook her head. Now she looked shy. “I don’t want to jinx it.”

  “I’d like to see something you made.”

  She smiled at that. “What about movie night?”

  “We’ll have it here. We’ll get a pizza.”

  She laughed. Her fingers started flying over the keyboard and the screen filled with faces.

  THIRTY-TWO

  In the dream Dad was shaking him awake Sunday morning, yelling, “How could you not tell us?” and Mike was struggling to remember what he hadn’t told them.

  No dream. Mom was right behind, smiling. “I’m so proud of you.”

  “This is terrific, really terrific, Mike,” said Dad.

  He remembered to cover himself before he sat up. “Terrific?”

  “You kidding? Team captain? College sees that, you go to the top of the pile.”

  “Dinner tonight,” said Mom. “I’m defrosting steaks.”

  “If you want to come to the store, we could use…”

  “Homework,” Mike said. “Getting behind, all the games.”

  “Sure.”

  He was disappointed at how easily Dad gave in. To the team captain.

  Mom blew him a kiss at the door. “Breakfast’s waiting for you. Gotta run.”

  Ryan walked in before he finished eating. “Yo, Captain Mak.” Ryan poured himself a glass of orange juice, swallowed, and made a face. “Pulp.”

  “More nutrients. Seaweed’s good for you, too.”

  “You’re team captain, not team dietician.” He looked around. “Nobody home?”

  “I’m home, dipshit.”

  “Okay.” Ryan lowered his voice. “It’s none of my business….” Ryan looked uncomfortable, his big open face twisted. Not like him, Mike thought, usually so direct. “Yeah, it’s my business. You’re my best friend. So. Guy in my fantasy league delivered an Everything Pie to Harrison Street and you came to the door and paid for it. Good tip. He saw a tall babe. Superbooty. I said, ‘No way,’ but he knows you.”

  “If it was a good tip it wasn’t me.” He looked away and kept eating.

  “C’mon, Mike, I’m trying to be your friend here. The twins were already pissed you invited Zack and Tigerbitch to their party. I had to lie like crazy for you last night. We all were going to Nearmont and when nobody could find you I said there was some more captain stuff you had to do.”

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “Cover your ass. Wouldn’t you do that if I was slipping around on Tori?”

  “Are you?”

  He grinned. “I will if you’ll cover my ass.”

  “You tell them?”

  “It always gets around.” The way he said it, Mike wondered if he had told Tori already. “What the hell are you doing? We’ve got a good thing going. How do you think you got home Friday night?”

  He shrugged. He was tired of Ryan.

  “Lori called Tori and me. We are your friends, man. Don’t do this.”

  “You finished?”

  “Over and out.” Ryan slammed down the glass, stood up, glowered, then sat down and grinned. “So who was she?”

  My best friend, thought Mike. I want to tell somebody. “Kat Herold.”

  “Yeah, right. C’mon, you can tell me.”

  “I just did.”

  Ryan blinked. “Tigerbitch?”

  “I don’t think…”

  “I guess she was a pussy for you.”

  “We’re done here,” said Mike. Just like the defense lawyers said it on Law & Order when the interrogation of their clients got too hot. He stood up.

  Ryan stood up just as quickly. “This is a big mistake.”

  “Go twirl.”

  Ryan was six-three, an inch taller and twenty pounds heavier, Mike thought, but I’m faster, probably stronger. Why am I processing this? He’s my best friend. I haven’t had a real fight with anybody since fifth grade. And I’ve never had a fight over a girl.

  Ryan shrugged. “I’m not going to tell anybody. I’ve got your back, man. Like always.” He walked to the door, turned, and said, “But it’s a big fucking mistake.”

  Mike almost called out to him, to try to explain. He let him go. How could he explain what he didn’t understand?

  He shut off his cell and let the house phone ring. He barely moved for hours. Throughout the Yankee doubleheader, announcers teased the winner of the A Day With Billy contest. Stay tuned for the postgame show.

  Once he would have creamed in his jeans thinking about the possibility of a day with Billy. Once? Just a little over three weeks ago. Not even a month since he pushed Zack. Now the best part of thinking about a day with Billy was that Kat had made the video. He felt warm and happy thinking about her. Yesterday was the best day of his life.

  He’d enjoyed watching her short films. She was good. Some of them were dazzlingly bright, skateboarders and old folks and computer geeks telling their stories over upbeat tunes. Others were dark, almost mysterious, shadows in graveyards and hospital corridors. He wondered how she fe
lt when she shot each one, but he didn’t ask. She showed him a rough edit of a series she was doing called A Year in the Life of Ridgedale High, a lot of quick cuts of kids and teachers in action, Dr. Ching at the laser board with a math problem, Coach Cody’s hand signals, even Tori filing in the front office.

  After they had watched for a while and eaten the pizza, he had reached for her. She pushed him away, shaking her head. “It’s not like that.”

  “Like what?” He felt more confused than hurt.

  “On demand. This afternoon was special. This would be just…routine.”

  There was something about that he could understand, even appreciate. When he kissed her cheek, she grabbed him and kissed his lips, hard.

  He drifted in and out of the game. He had barely slept last night. He dozed through several at bats at a time. Billy was having an okay day, nothing special. Billy seemed to save his best days for the postseason, when it counted, when everybody was watching. The Yankees won the first game and were ahead in the second when Mom came home. He felt lonely and disconnected. When the cat ran upstairs sensing food, he trudged after her.

  Mom was in the kitchen. “Dad’ll be home soon.” She peered at him. “Everything okay? Captain, sir.”

  “Just a little tired.”

  “When did you get home last night?”

  “Really late.”

  “I thought the Burkises had a curfew during the girls’ competition season.” She laughed, then stopped as she looked at him. “You weren’t out with Lori.”

  He wanted to talk about Kat. “Remember the varsity dinner last year? The girl who won the female sophomore of the year award?”

  “Striking girl. Almost as tall as you.”

  “Her name’s Katherine Herold. They call her Kat.”

  “Did you and Lori break up?”

  Mistake. Would have done better emailing Catchergrrl or EmoBaller on the Buddsite than starting up with Mom. “No.”

  “Does she know about this?”

  “Maybe.”

  “But not from you.”

  “No.”

  “You’re my son, Mike, I’ll always stand by you, but this isn’t right. People deserve to know where they stand in a relationship. Are you going to break up with Lori?”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do.” He took a breath and thought BillyBudd three times. “But I know next time I’m not going to talk to you about it.” He went back downstairs.

  The second game was almost over. The Yankees were holding their lead. He waited until he heard his father’s heavy steps in the kitchen before he came back up. He could tell they’d been talking.

  Mom turned her back on Mike and Dad winked at him. “Mike’s got to work this out for himself, Sharon. We can’t meddle in his love life.”

  “It’s not love life, Scott, it’s life. It’s about being a decent human being.”

  When the phone rang, Mom snatched it up. She said something sharp and hung up with a clack. “Don’t you have your cell on, Mike? One of your friends.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Who knows? Said he was calling for Billy Budd.”

  The phone rang again. Without thinking, Mike reached across her and picked it up. “Hello.”

  “Michael Semak? Ridgedale High School?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Dave Petry here. I work with Billy Budd. He wants you to come to the Stadium on Thursday, about noon.”

  It sounded like a joke but the voice was unfamiliar. All he could think of to say was, “I have school.”

  “I think they’ll give you a day off for this. You’ve won the contest, Mike. A Day With Billy.” He kept talking, but now it sounded like an echo from a distance.

  Petry said that there would be another call from the Yankee public relations department and an email with instructions. He would be picked up at home on Thursday morning. He could bring one friend. Congratulations.

  Mom and Dad were staring at him. He put down the receiver. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Late Sunday night fielding messages from the Buddsite would have been more fun if he hadn’t paused every few minutes to check for a sign of life from Kat. Nothing. Where was she? He imagined his voice mails, text messages, emails piling up in that neat little bedroom. He visualized running over to her house, sneaking around the back, tapping on her window. But something held him back. Afraid of Tigerbitch? Maybe.

  The Buddsite was running Kat’s video in a continuous loop. The Billybuds had plenty to say. EmoBaller sent a list of questions to ask Billy in person, mostly about shifting your weight in the batter’s box. Catchergrrl wrote that Mike looked really cute on his winning video; he even looked a little like Billy. A couple of other girls linked to Facebook pictures of themselves.

  He had hated the video the first time he saw his face filling the screen and heard himself babbling away “everything’s there, spread out in front of you, and there’s a right answer and a wrong one, but you have to figure it out. You can’t fake it.” Who is that jerk running his mouth?

  The second time he watched it he began to relax. It wasn’t that bad. “Center field is like being on top of the world seeing everything, spread out in front of you, coming at you.”

  It wasn’t until the third viewing that he noticed that there were other people in the video besides himself, Zack and some of the other kids, old people from the senior center. The crazy old lady he’d been helping was smiling and nodding him on. Not so crazy. Entering the contest had been her idea. She had even coached him. He remembered she said, “Not so scrunchy,” when he closed his eyes to visualize center field.

  He thought, I had to watch this three times before I noticed anybody else in the video. Am I zoned in, or just a selfish, dumb jock?

  The fourth time he began to appreciate what a terrific job Kat had done, smoothly intercutting all their faces with shots of Mike talking, shots of him and Billy in the outfield. Balls dropped out of the sky and into their gloves. “Just you and the ball.” Kat had shaped it into something. She was talented. He’d like to tell her.

  Where was she?

  He heard a coughing muffler in the driveway. Oscar’s back for breakfast, he thought. Must be coming back to school. Would Coach give Oscar center field back? Somehow, the thought didn’t hurt like it used to. Got a lot of other things going.

  But it was Hector standing in the kitchen, apologizing to Mom and Dad for disturbing them. Hector had never been in the house before. Mike had never had much to do with Hector.

  Mom said, “Would you take Hector upstairs? He’s come to get Oscar’s things.”

  Hector grinned at the cello in a corner of Scotty’s room. “You play that?”

  “It’s my brother’s.”

  “I used to play. In middle school? The orchestra? Loved it, man.”

  He had never thought of Hector beyond second base. I don’t really know anybody. “Where’s Oscar?”

  “Had to leave town.” Hector seemed to know what he was looking for. He picked up Oscar’s little blue duffel bag where Mike had dropped it at the foot of the bed.

  “Is he coming back?”

  Hector shrugged.

  “C’mon, man, what’s going on?”

  Hector held up his hands. “He got screwed up, okay?”

  “I know that, the buscones ripped him off….”

  “How you know that?” Hector squinted up at him.

  “He told me. The contract stuff. Your dad, his uncle. Coming here to try to hook on with another pro team.”

  Hector nodded. “Yeah. He liked you. Said you had game. He tell you about Coach?”

  “He said Coach was taking care of his papers.”

  “Yeah, he took care of it.” Hector made a sour face. “Left him on base, man, just left him hanging.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When the Immigration started nosing around, Coach said Oscar had lied to him, gave him a phony birth certificate and a fals
e address. Like he didn’t know Oscar was twenty and lived in New York.”

  Mike’s stomach turned over. “What are we going to do?”

  “Play ball, man. What else?” Hector hoisted the duffel bag and went downstairs.

  Walking into school, he felt different, as if he had come back changed from a great adventure. But everything else seemed the same. Biggest weekend of my life, he thought, Captain, Kat, Billy, life-altering events. He was pleased and uneasy when Coach Cody pulled him out of homeroom and led him to his office. Pleased that at least somebody acknowledges that something happened. Uneasy because he wanted to ask Coach about Oscar and about the Cyber Club.

  Coach closed the door behind them. He sat behind his desk, let Mike stand. “Been thinking about what it means to be captain?”

  “A little.”

  “You’ve got two main jobs. Number one is to act as liaison between me and the team. You let me know what the team is thinking, especially what they don’t want me to know, so I can make good decisions for them. You tracking?”

  He nodded. Now he wants me to nark on the team. Be his mole. Nothing changes.

  “Number two is to lead by example. You don’t need to make speeches. You have to show everybody how to give their all, to put the team ahead of themselves. It’s about work ethic and stepping up when the road gets rocky. You can do that. I think you’re capable of becoming a great captain.”

  “I’ll try.” He felt disappointed. That’s all?

  “I’m counting on it. It’s why I picked you. Any questions?”

  Why I picked you? I thought the seniors on the team picked me.

  “What’s with Oscar?”

  Coach Cody sighed, took off his Ridgedale cap, and rubbed a hand over his scalp. There was a scratchy sound. Mike noticed the coach’s head wasn’t as smooth and shiny as usual. Didn’t shave it today. He looked tired around the eyes.

  “Kid’s caught up in some nasty business. I don’t know if I can help him.”

  “Because he’s illegal?” said Mike.

  Coach said, “Oscar was a hot prospect a couple of years ago in the Dominican Republic and he signed with a Major League team. The local Dominican scout who signed him took most of the bonus money. The club knew about it, but that’s the way the Major League teams do business down there. Instead of paying the scout themselves, they look the other way when they steal money from the boys.