New Kid Read online

  “Just while I check the rest of the house. I have to know what we’re dealing with. Sit tight. I won’t be long.” The woodpile shifted a bit as his father stood.

  “How long?”

  “Twenty minutes. Just sit.”

  46

  Brock did as he was told. It was the longest twenty minutes in his life. Finally, he heard the cellar door being opened without any stealth at all.

  “Okay, Son,” his father called out as he descended the stairs. “We’re good.”

  The plywood slid even farther open and his dad motioned to him, but Brock was already on the move, happy to be out of the damp dark space.

  “I’m sorry. I saw someone at the airport. They didn’t see me, but I had to assume the worst,” his dad explained.

  “What’s the worst?” Brock followed his dad up the cellar stairs.

  “That’s not important now, is it?” His father went through the door leading into the living room.

  The lights were all on. Every curtain was drawn. Outside, he could see it had grown dark.

  “But why would you call me to the house?” Brock blurted out the question. “If someone was watching and listening, why would you bring me here? Couldn’t they get me?”

  “No one wants to ‘get’ you, Brock. You’re safe.” His father stepped up into the kitchen. “I’ll make us dinner. How about a couple Salisbury steaks?”

  “How can you say no one wants to get me? Why do we always have to run?”

  “I have to run.”

  “Why would they listen, bug our house?”

  “Brock . . . ,” his father warned, gritting his teeth.

  “Dad, I’m not a kid anymore.”

  His father stared at him for a moment, then took a deep breath. “There are other people they want too. If they listened, they might be able to find them as well. Once they knew, they’d . . . It wouldn’t be good. But, we’re fine. For now.”

  “For now.” Brock didn’t try to hide his bitterness. “The world could end tomorrow, you know.” His father opened the top door to the freezer freeing a little puff of cold white air. As his father grabbed the Salisbury steak, Brock slumped down in a chair at the kitchen table.

  “You want to sulk, go right ahead.” His father took out the two frozen dinners and slammed the door shut. “I’m sorry I scared you, but you think you have it tough? You have no idea.”

  Brock boiled inside and he couldn’t help spouting off. “Did you grow up without a mom?”

  His words sounded horrible, just floating there in the kitchen, and he felt like he had to say something else. “Without even being able to talk about her?”

  His father slammed the frozen dinners on the table with a bang. Brock jumped.

  “You didn’t know her. You didn’t lose her right out from in front of you! That was for me! That was my punishment.”

  Tears turned Brock’s vision into a kaleidoscope of angry dads.

  “And now, you cry.” His father sounded sad and disgusted at the same time, but Brock couldn’t help it. It hurt.

  He watched, sniffing quietly, as his father picked up the dinners and slid them into the oven.

  A crash from the garage made Brock jump up from his chair.

  His father moved like a panther, swift and smooth. In a blink he was in the living room with one hand on the door to the garage.

  In the other hand was his gun.

  47

  Brock’s dad flung open the door and pounced.

  A shriek echoed in the garage.

  “What the . . . ?” Brock’s dad sounded as confused as he did angry. “Who are you?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Nickerson.”

  Brock’s stomach clenched at the sound of Nagel’s voice.

  “I didn’t think you were home,” Nagel whimpered. “Brock’s my friend.”

  Brock rushed into the garage and flipped on the light. “Nagel! What are you doing?”

  Spilled out across the garage floor was the broken six-pack of beer cans.

  Nagel’s twisted face relaxed a bit. “It was just junk, right, Brock?”

  Brock noticed now that his father’s gun was nowhere in sight, and that was a relief.

  “Friend?” Brock’s dad had Nagel pinned to the concrete floor with a hand around his upper arm and he looked up at Brock in disbelief. “What junk?”

  “Nagel lives a couple blocks away.” Brock tried not to panic. “He’s in my homeroom. He stopped by when I was cleaning the garage. We kind of walked home together.”

  Most of that was true, so Brock was able to hold his father’s gaze without looking down.

  “Beer?” His father wrinkled his brow and looked around at the scattered cans.

  “We found it when we were cleaning up,” Brock said, then stopped.

  “It’s not for me, Mr. Nickerson,” Nagel said. “My brother . . . he’s beating on me all the time and I knew he’d like it. I didn’t think anyone cared. Honest.”

  Brock’s dad rose up from the floor and set Nagel free. Nagel got up cautiously, unsure of what to do next.

  “You get home,” Brock’s dad said. “I don’t want Brock hanging around with . . . someone like you.”

  Nagel scrambled out the door like a captured rat set free. Brock stared after him. His father crossed the floor and pulled it shut before turning back to him.

  “It’s not easy to make friends, you know.” Brock’s anger suddenly returned.

  “Is this really the extent of your judgment?” his father growled right back as he stooped to pick up the wayward cans.

  “He’s not a bad kid.” Brock deflated a bit because he knew how bad things looked for Nagel, even in his own mind. Still, there was something . . . redeemable? Isn’t that what they said about empty soda cans? You could redeem them for a nickel. So, they did have value. Brock thought about him and Nagel, just sitting and watching a movie together.

  “You know how I feel about friends, anyway.” His father marched past him, tucked the beer cans on the bottom shelf, and walked back into the house.

  Brock followed. “Why do we do this? Who doesn’t have friends? Who doesn’t play baseball or have sleepovers? What about college? Can I go to college, or am I living at home then too? Ha! College, right. I bet you can’t fake my school records then anymore, can you? Change my name twice a year. So, what then?”

  His father spun on him and grabbed him by the shoulders. “What’s wrong with you? I’m trying to stay alive. What don’t you understand about that?”

  Maybe for the first time in his life, Brock held his father’s gaze, despite the danger, the anger, the pain. He spoke slowly, emphasizing each word. “I don’t understand any of it.”

  “You’re a kid, Brock.”

  “I’m not a kid. I’m . . . I’m almost a teenager, and I just ran home from Coach’s house like my pants were on fire. If I have to do things like that, then I want to know.”

  His father studied him for a moment, his mouth in a grim, straight line. “Sit down, Brock.”

  Brock sat on the couch. His father pulled up a chair in front of him and sat down too, placing a hand on each of his knees like he was getting ready to tell a whopper of a story. On his face he wore a twisted smile. “Did you ever hear the expression ‘be careful what you wish for’?”

  48

  Brock swallowed at the lump in his throat, but it wouldn’t go down.

  His father looked at the floor and took a deep breath before looking up again. “I have a very dangerous job.

  “Sometimes, people get killed.”

  “By you?” Brock asked.

  His father stared at him for a long time. Outside, a dog barked.

  “Yes.” His father spoke in a whisper. “And by others. It’s . . . very dangerous.”

  Brock’s heart raced in his chest. His head seemed to float up and away from his body. “Are you . . . are you a good guy, or a bad guy?”

  His father bit into his lower lip before he spoke. “There’s no such thing.”
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  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s not black and white. I stopped thinking about things like that a long time ago.”

  “That sounds like a bad guy.” Brock said the words almost as if to himself.

  “You said Nagel was a good kid, right?” his father asked.

  “He is. In a way.”

  “But he just tried to steal that beer.” His father narrowed his eyes.

  “We didn’t even want that old stuff.” Brock shifted in his seat.

  “So, it’s kind of a gray area, right?”

  Brock didn’t say anything. There was something about what his father was saying that rang true.

  “Life is a bunch of gray areas.” His father held out both hands, palms up.

  “But, you either work for criminals, or you work for the government.” Brock huffed because he didn’t like this.

  His father’s smile grew. “Or neither, or both. It’s hard to understand, isn’t it?”

  “Not if you tell me the truth,” Brock said.

  His father pounded a fist on the coffee table. “Brock, I’ve always told you the truth. Don’t you dare say I haven’t.”

  “Okay.” The word drifted away like a wisp of cloud.

  “We move and change our names to hide. If my enemies found me, they’d try to follow me—like I said—to try and find more of the people I’m with. Once they did that, they’d kill me. They might . . . I don’t know what they’d do with you. I wouldn’t want to find out.” He sighed.

  “I know all this,” Brock said.

  “When your mother was killed . . . murdered, by my enemies, I was able to get ahold of a substantial amount of money.”

  “Like, how much?” Brock asked.

  His father paused. “Millions. A fortune. But some of it, most, I couldn’t access. I still can’t get at it. If I could figure out a safe way to do that, we’d have no problems, believe me. We could move to Switzerland or Australia or Argentina and just . . . disappear. Forever.”

  “I don’t want to go to any of those places.”

  “It doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s too dangerous. They’re watching those accounts. I know it. So, I had some money and I had to figure out a way to keep us hidden, and just keep you safe. Early on, I spent most of my time with you, raising you. Reading to you. Teaching you to swim. I was like a stay-at-home dad. Remember those days?”

  Brock couldn’t help the warm feeling, because even though they were cloaked in the fog of early childhood, he had many dreamlike memories of just him and his dad, and danger was never a part of their lives.

  “Then, about the time you started going to school, the money began to run out. I knew I was going to have to do something. You understand?” his father asked.

  “Go back to work,” Brock said. “Kill more people.”

  His father shook his head. “It’s not about killing people, Brock. It’s hiding people. It’s rescuing people. It’s protecting people. Sometimes the safest thing to do is to . . . neutralize the other side.”

  “Murder.” The word slipped from Brock’s tongue.

  49

  Somewhere outside, probably on Route 57, an emergency vehicle’s siren wailed. Brock could just barely hear it, and he wondered if his father did too.

  “What’s murder?” Brock’s father raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? What’s murder? Tell me.”

  “When you kill someone illegally.”

  “Can you kill someone legally?” his father asked.

  “In a war.”

  “Both sides?”

  “Our side,” Brock said. “The good side.”

  His father snorted. “What if you grew up in Italy during World War II, and the Americans rolled into your village with tanks and guns and your government forced you to be in the army and the Americans shot at you, then you shot back and killed one. That’s murder?”

  Brock scrunched up his forehead. “Well, no. But . . .”

  “What about self-defense?” his father asked. “That’s legal, right?”

  “Yes, if someone is going to kill you and you kill them first, that’s okay.”

  “Good,” his father said. “That’s why I say neutralize.”

  “Everyone you ever killed was because they were going to kill you?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  “In a way? Everything you say is—”

  “Fuzzy, right?” “Yes.” Brock scowled.

  His father stood and tousled his hair. “Let me take out those dinners. This is enough for now, okay?”

  “Why didn’t you just get another job?” Brock asked.

  His father stopped and turned. “We are who we are, Brock. Some people are plumbers, others are politicians. Everyone has to be who they are.”

  Brock felt like someone had plugged him into the wall. His body shook with a current of nervousness. He wanted so bad to ask more, to ask about his mother, but his father was already in the kitchen, turning the oven off and sliding their dinners out with the help of a baking mitt. Still, he sensed that he had a token to spend with his dad, like he hadn’t fully cashed in on the advantage he had gained by being so bold. The question was, how would he use it?

  He could ask for more information, and maybe get something solid about his mom, and that would be a comfort. Maybe.

  There was something else, though. Something he wanted very badly, and if he used the opportunity right now, this minute, he just might get it. Maybe.

  Brock got up and followed his dad into the kitchen. He didn’t sit down, but instead leaned against the counter, so that when his dad stood up from the oven they were almost face to face.

  “What, Brock?” His father’s tone was neutral, and Brock wavered in his certainty that he still had some favor left to be granted.

  He took a deep breath and opened his mouth to speak, still uncertain exactly what his question was going to be.

  50

  “You take chances, right?” Brock said.

  His father set the dinners down on two placemats at the kitchen table. “Yeah, that’d be right.”

  “Because we can’t just live in some trailer in the woods. You go out and do things that have risk because you want us to live at least a partly normal life,” Brock said.

  His father peeled off the aluminum covers and flinched at the steam. The warm smell of gravy filled the kitchen. “That’s what I’ve been telling you. It’s not easy.”

  “And, you can’t be a postman or a carpenter because we all have to be what we’re meant to be, right?”

  His father put the baking mitt back into the drawer by the stove. “What are you getting at, Son?”

  Brock braced himself. “I’m a baseball player.”

  His father blinked and smiled like it was a joke. “You’re not bad, but you can’t be a baseball player. You can only play baseball.”

  “Barrett Malone isn’t a baseball player?” Brock asked.

  “Barrett Malone has two Cy Young awards.” His father’s smile grew even more. “But even he’ll have to do something else one of these days.”

  “He won’t have to do anything else if he doesn’t want to,” Brock said.

  “Okay, I still don’t see where this is going.”

  “I’m a baseball player, Dad.” Brock stared at his father until the smile faded from his face. “I want to play with Coach Hudgens. He’s teaching me how to pitch and I’m good. I want to travel with the team. You’ll know where I am all the time, Dad. You can’t keep me in a box.”

  His father turned and opened the refrigerator. “Do you want milk or iced tea?”

  “Milk.” Brock took two glasses out of the cupboard and two sets of silverware from the drawer and set them on the table. He knew his father was thinking about it, and he knew not to push. They sat down at the table. Salisbury steak was the last thing Brock wanted—especially after he’d eaten at Coach’s house—but this wasn’t the time to complain. He used the side of his fork to break off a piece of meat, swabbed up some potat
oes, and shoveled it in.

  Chewing, he watched his father cut off a piece of his steak. He held the hunk of meat halfway to his mouth, then pointed it at Brock. “I see what you’re saying, Brock. Let me check out Coach Hudgens and we’ll see.”

  Brock swallowed his mouthful of food, nearly choked on it, and had to wash it down with a gulp of milk. “What do you mean, check him out?”

  “First, I need to meet him.” His father chewed. “Then, if I get a good feeling, like he’s someone I can trust, someone I can work with, I’ll ask around.”

  “He’s fine, Dad.”

  “Probably is.” His father took another bite. “But I’ll make that determination. You’re the guy who says that Nagel is a good kid, remember?”

  “So, when do you want to do this?” Brock remembered that Coach had drunk a few beers as soon as they had walked into his house. Brock had no way of knowing how far gone Coach was now. “Talk to him, I mean?”

  Brock’s dad shrugged with another bite halfway to his mouth. “May as well go right now. When we’re finished.”

  51

  Brock took another bite, chewed, and swallowed, then drank some milk. “Um, maybe not tonight.”

  “No?” His dad raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”

  “Well, they’ve got company. I was over there to do some throwing, and his niece was there.” Brock couldn’t help admiring how good he was at crafting the truth.

  “Okay. Maybe talk to him tomorrow in school. Tell him I’ll come over with you when you go there to throw. Sound good?”

  “Perfect.” Brock wasn’t exactly sure how he’d broach the subject of drinking with Coach, but he knew he’d have to if he wanted even a prayer of a chance to be allowed to travel with the team. He made a mental note to get home from school and talk to Mrs. Hudgens before Coach got home. Teachers always had to stay an extra forty minutes for the activity period, so he knew he’d have time.

  After dinner, Brock and his father watched a Yankees game on TV until it was time for bed. They sat next to each other on the couch, and Brock’s dad slung his arm around Brock’s shoulders every so often, pulling him tight. CC Sabathia threw a two-hitter and David Robertson closed out the win against the Orioles.