New Kid Read online

  DEDICATION

  To my mom and dad, who taught me to love books

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  About the Author

  Back Ads

  Books by Tim Green

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  Tommy knew from the beginning that this moment was going to be special, the kind that could change his life forever.

  Because Tommy Rust had hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the third to tie the game, it was only fitting that he would be the one to step up to the plate with bases loaded in the bottom of the final inning. Because he had hit the ball into the woods—farther than anyone had ever seen in the history of Hawthorn Creek Park Little League—everyone knew he was capable of another. A grand slam home run would give his team the four runs it needed to win. And because Drew Franchok was the best pitcher in the league and could actually throw a curveball—even though his father had prohibited it because of his age—it was only fitting that the count was 3–2 when Tommy stepped out of the box, spit on his hands, and swung the bat without a blink in his icy stare.

  Drew Franchok stared right back from atop the mound, and it was as if everyone at the park held his or her breath as Tommy scuffed the dust and stepped back into the box.

  “Do it, Drew, do it!” Drew’s father cupped his hands around his mouth and leaned into the metal mesh of the backstop. “I am giving you permission! You hear me? Win this thing!”

  Tommy was no dummy; he knew what that meant. But he also knew that unlike most twelve-year-olds, he could actually hit a curveball. So he wiggled his cleats down into the dirt, adjusting them for the incoming pitch.

  Drew wound up and in it came. Tommy saw the spin—he could do that too, see it—exactly the curveball he expected. He swung.

  CRACK.

  Tommy didn’t even drop his bat, but let it swing alongside as he took a slow, tentative step down the first base line. The ball was gone, but was it fair?

  It was close, and the umpire paused a moment, deciding what he had or hadn’t seen, before he shouted “Foul ball!” and pointed his finger toward the stands.

  The deflated feeling of such a near-hit only increased the tension of the situation.

  That’s when Tommy felt a strong hand grasp his shoulder.

  He turned and blinked and stuttered when he saw his father. “Tommy, come on. We’re going.

  “Now.”

  2

  “Mr. Rust?” Tommy’s coach, Mr. Jordanson, walked toward the batter’s box wearing a red Cardinals cap like the kids on his team, carrying his clipboard, with a chewed pencil tucked behind his ear. “Hey, what’s up? Is everything okay? What are you doing?”

  Tommy’s dad stood a bit over six feet tall. He had the walk and upright posture of a soldier. His crew cut had its first sprinkling of gray, but his jaw was rigid, his pale-green eyes alight, and the wrinkles around his mouth and eyes, Tommy knew, were from tension more than age. His father pointed at the coach.

  “Stop. No.”

  Coach Jordanson did as he was told, and that didn’t surprise Tommy. His father had a dark undercurrent of authority and Tommy wasn’t the only one who did what he said.

  “Tommy. Now.”

  “Yes, sir.” Tommy’s ears burned with embarrassment, not only because his father was out there in the middle of the ballpark, putting an end to the game, but because he—Tommy—was completely powerless to do anything about it. In his stomach, breakfast became a bucket of vomit. Only fear of his father kept him swallowing the burning brew back down as he was led by the arm with an iron grip to the edge of the backstop toward an opening in the fence.

  Tommy veered toward the dugout. “Dad, my glove.”

  He was just able to snag the glove from where he’d balanced it on the rail in front of the dugout. His father answered with a yank that left his shoulder numb, but Tommy knew better than to cry out.

  “Mr. Rust, please! It’s the championship!” Coach Jordanson’s cry came from the spot they’d left him in, weak and pleading as it traveled over the roofs of parked cars.

  Tommy’s dad said nothing until they reached his car and pointed. “In.”

  Tommy got into the passenger seat and set his bat and glove down in the back before he realized the engine was already running. He barely had time to put his seat belt on before his father slammed the car into gear. They rocketed out of the parking lot and onto the road, the engine whining under the stress of a flattened gas pedal. In no time, the speedometer read sixty-five. A white speed-limit sign for thirty flashed past in a blur. Tommy braced himself instinctively against the dashboard, and it served him well when his father spun the wheel in a screech of rubber before mashing the pedal again to go even faster down a curvy side road leading out of town.

  A long time passed heading east before they got out of Oklahoma, racing beneath a sign that welcomed them to Missouri. Every new mile of the road began to look exactly the same as the last: asphalt, power lines, and dirt farm fields sprouting new green beards. Tommy fell asleep for a while. When he woke they were in Ohio, and he needed to use the bathroom, but turned his mind to other things, knowing not to ask. He rested his head against the window and felt the steady beat of tires thumping seams in the road.

  �
�What are you thinking about?” The low, sad sound of his father’s voice startled him, and he looked at his father’s face trying to figure if it had been some kind of a daydream. Only the briefest flick of his father’s eyes confirmed that it hadn’t, and Tommy swore he’d been in just this place at just this moment sometime before in his life. Maybe it had been another life, he wasn’t sure.

  “Just wondering if they finished the game.” Tommy was careful not to whine.

  “What’s the difference, really?” his father asked.

  Tommy knew how his father thought, and the question neither surprised nor disturbed Tommy. Tommy’s father wasn’t the same as other fathers, and neither was the life the two of them led together. He wasn’t complaining. Other boys admired his father in a way so that Tommy didn’t even have to brag about how smart or tough or rich he was. They trembled when Tommy’s father walked into a room without even knowing why.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” Tommy tried to sound brave and he fought back the sudden urge to cry, knowing it would never do.

  His father shrugged. Tommy wondered if that meant his father didn’t know or just that he wasn’t telling, and he thought about that for a long string of miles.

  His father cleared his throat, and Tommy sat waiting; it took several more miles for him to continue. “I thought I’d let you pick your own name this time. You’re old enough, I guess.”

  Tommy’s lips puckered as he fought back any emotion, wrestling his face back into the same kind of frozen mask his father wore, thankful that his father’s eyes hadn’t left the road. If he was old enough to pick his own name, certainly he was old enough not to cry. That’s what he told himself, even though what he really wanted to say was that he liked being Tommy Rust.

  Tommy Rust had a best friend named Luke Logan and a secret fort in the woods constructed with pallets of wood taken from alongside the Dumpsters in back of the Home Depot. Tommy Rust had an A average in school and was recently asked to join the junior honor society. Tommy Rust had a .415 batting average and had just been awarded a spot on the all-star team after the season. Tommy Rust had a pet turtle named BoBo who he knew better than to ask about.

  Tommy Rust even had a girl friend—not a girlfriend—but a friend who was a girl, Allie Bergman. She wore bright-colored sweaters that set off her long dark hair, which fell straight down past her shoulders. She liked reading and collecting fossils at the quarry and the California Angels, because of Albert Pujols. Everyone liked Allie, but Allie liked Tommy Rust most, which made some people mad. But Tommy didn’t care.

  Tommy gasped at the thought of never seeing her again, and he had to cover it up with a cough and a question. “What’s our last name?”

  “Nickerson.” The answer might have been made up on the spot, or planned out for months.

  Tommy thought back to when he was eight—a time when people called him Dean Prescott. He had loved WWE, and one wrestler in particular captured his attention—Brock Lesnar.

  “Brock?” Tommy said the name as a question because he knew from experience that his father had veto power over everything in his life.

  “Brock.” His father stared at the road for a time. “Brock Nickerson. That works.”

  Tommy . . . no, not Tommy, Brock. Brock Nickerson let out a sigh, glad for that part of it to be over. As the power lines rose and fell in an unending sweep outside the window, Brock wondered two things. First, he wondered if something inside him might not have died. The steaming rage he felt at the injustice of it all—of being pulled out of the championship game!—was gone. It was as if, given no alternative, he had simply yanked the plug on some important machine in one corner of his mind. He had a sense that whatever it was, it had changed him in a permanent way. The scary thing was that he didn’t think this was a good thing.

  The second thing he wondered was: Where on earth were they going now?

  3

  Liverpool, that’s where. Not Liverpool, England. There was another Liverpool in upstate New York, a collection of suburban homes slapped down beside a slate gray lake that had been named after a tribe from the great Iroquois nation. The Indians were gone now and smokestacks puked thick white clouds from across the lake in the neighboring community of Solvay.

  At the center of Liverpool was a hot dog stand, Heid’s Hotdogs. Brock and his father stopped. His father ordered the white ones with hot mustard, Coneys people called them. Brock ate the regular kind, red hots. He liked ketchup and a pickle to go with it. Cheese on his fries.

  For three days they lived in the Motel 6 and ate a lot of hot dogs. It took Mr. Nickerson—Brock was getting used to the name quicker than he imagined—that long to find a small house to rent on a street of houses packed together like teeth with a thin green gum of grass between them and the lip of the street. The Nickersons’ house was on the inside corner of a T intersection where two loops came together like a small “m.”

  It was home.

  4

  School was a seventeen-minute walk, not quite a mile. It stood waiting at the very end of Bayberry Circle, the U-shaped main artery of Brock’s new neighborhood. He got his schedule at the office from a sharp-faced secretary and wandered a bit before he found his homeroom. The bell rang as he crossed the threshold and the students all stared at him like he was a prisoner shuffling toward the hangman.

  Brock ignored the looks and took an empty desk closest to the door, where he sat without a word as the teacher called roll.

  “Nickerson, Brock.”

  Brock stared at the blackboard for a moment before giving himself a mental kick. “Here.”

  The teacher gave him a funny look, but turned her attention to the doorway when a small kid wearing a black hoodie waltzed in.

  “Mr. Nagel? Seriously?”

  Nagel’s hazel eyes glared out at the teacher from beneath a thatch of dark hair and a pool of orange freckles. “Flat tire,” he said, shrugging.

  “The bus?” The teacher wrinkled her brow.

  “My sneaker.” Nagel grinned and mussed Brock’s hair as he sauntered down the aisle toward the back. “Hey, a new kid.”

  Brock swatted Nagel’s hand away and turned to watch him. Two desks back sat a girl with dark brown braids and small round glasses. She was reading a book, until Nagel picked a pencil up off her desk and snapped it in two with a nasty laugh. The girl looked up, blinked, and frowned, but said nothing and returned to her reading, like she was used to the taunting. Nagel slumped down in the back corner desk and stuck a finger up his nose. He saw Brock looking at him and flipped the middle finger of his free hand.

  Brock turned back to the front.

  Homeroom ended and he went from class to class, listening to mostly review sessions in preparation for final exams. It was like repeating a slice of past life for Brock, because he’d been winding down the last few days of school in Oklahoma, but up north they were about three weeks behind. At lunch, Brock saw the girl with braids—she’d answered to the name Bella Peppe during roll—sitting by herself. She looked up at him and smiled, and he almost sat down with her, but instead bought a slice of cheese pizza and found an empty seat in the corner by the garbage cans.

  After a quiet lunch, he went to gym class, where his new sneakers squeaked on the floor so that the teacher, Coach Hudgens, looked up from his attendance sheet to scowl. Brock stood a good four to six inches taller than the rest of his new classmates, so it surprised him to get suddenly shoved from behind.

  He staggered off the line and out onto the gym floor—sneakers yipping like small puppies—and fell flat on his face. Laughter echoed up into the steel beams above and the horsehair ropes, bouncing wildly off the wooden floor and bleachers like ball bearings spilled into a bowl. Burning with shame, Brock sprang up off the polished wood and turned to face his tormentor.

  He wasn’t surprised to see Ryan Nagel, the small boy with dark hair and freckles, chuckling. Brock now saw that he also had a gap between his front teeth to go with the chip on his shoulder. Nagel was
obviously a seasoned bully. Brock hated bullies and that they seemed as much a part of any school as homework.

  At that moment, everything about his life—his new life—came crashing down on him. Inspired by his wrestling namesake, and angry at the world, Brock turned and attacked the much smaller boy without hesitation. Nagel landed a quick jab to Brock’s nose on his way in. Brock saw stars. He heard a pop and tasted the warm flow of blood down the back of his throat.

  Brock smiled, because something twisted up tight inside him burst free like an old-fashioned clock spring with a lovely twang, never to be rewound again. He wrestled Nagel to the hardwood floor with a clunk, and did his best to pummel the other boy’s face. The thunk of Nagel’s hard little fist against the side of his head meant nothing to Brock. He only wanted to give back as good as he got. As he pummeled Nagel’s face he found himself thinking of his father and how angry it made him to always be the new kid.

  It seemed like forever before Coach Hudgens’s iron grip tore Brock free so that he dangled in the air above his foe. Nagel sprang up and went after Brock some more, but a stiff arm from the coach sent him reeling into the mats along the wall where he slumped down with a thud.

  Coach gave Brock a shake and some sense filled his brain.

  It was over.

  But really, things had just begun.

  5

  Coach Hudgens had to be north of sixty years old and he’d certainly let his gut go, so the strength in his arms surprised Brock. Brock supposed he should have known Coach Hudgens was no one to mess with just by the look on his face, worn down by age and angry about it. There was no surrender in Coach Hudgens’s dark-brown eyes, and the white hair around the edges of his reddish bald scalp was cut close. That look and the haircut reminded Brock of that same soldier quality his father possessed.

  Coach had Brock by the scruff of the neck, Nagel too, one in each hand. He steered the two of them over to the doorway into the second gym.

  “Miss Finks!” Coach Hudgens shouted. “Can you watch my class and yours? I’ve got to take these two yahoos to the office.”

  Miss Finks blinked at the three of them, then nodded her head, blew a whistle, and herded her girls into the boys’ gym. Coach Hudgens kept the forced march going, out the gym and through the maze of hallways. The smell of mouthwash strong enough to be medicine wafted down from behind Brock and he turned to sniff at the coach’s breath.