Force Out Read online

  “I’m sure you could win it without me. Even if you don’t, we’re both gonna make the all-stars. How could we not?”

  “You’re sure? How could we not?” Joey stared at him for a second in the darkness. “Cut it out, will you? You think I’d be out here doing this if it was a sure thing? The only sure thing is that there’s no sure thing. Who always says that?”

  Joey didn’t wait for the answer. “Your dad, that’s who.”

  “Okay by me.” Zach shrugged. “Trust me, I’m dying to play in the championship and get one of those monster trophies. We got so robbed last year. Remember Jake Tennison walking seven kids in the bottom of the sixth? Seven. Now we get to bring home the iron, thanks to my bro.”

  Joey climbed up on his bike. He and Zach called each other bro because they felt like brothers. “Okay, enough talk. See you in the morning, bro.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  They slapped another high five and rode off their separate ways.

  By the time Joey got back, the mist had turned to a thick fog and he was nice and wet. He snuck inside and upstairs, changing into a dry T-shirt and boxers before climbing into bed. Instead of falling right to sleep, Joey stared at the ceiling. Little pale green dinosaur shapes glowed down on him, plastic decorations from a time years ago when he couldn’t get enough of dinosaurs. He usually didn’t even see them, but how often did he lie awake in bed? Zach wouldn’t be lying awake, that was certain.

  Almost nothing bothered Zach, and in this case, his friend’s happy-go-lucky attitude made Joey even more uptight. All the possibilities that would enable Mr. Kratz to show up—frazzled but on time at the train station tomorrow morning at seven thirty, just in time for the field trip—played over and over in Joey’s mind. Finally, he got up and walked down the hall for a drink in the bathroom his family shared.

  The streetlight bled through the fog and the lacy white curtains enough for him to fill the glass without flipping the switch. He looked at himself in the mirrored medicine cabinet door, just a glance, then looked again, not at himself but at the door. It was ajar. Behind it were his parents’ things. Joey opened it and looked at the bottles of pills, razors, creams, pads, and tubes of makeup. He reached up and turned a pill bottle to the left ever so slightly, then closed the door tight.

  He stepped back and looked at the mirror. Now he couldn’t remember if the door had been slightly open before or shut tight. He opened it slightly again, bothered that he had to be so precise but knowing that, with his mother, he did. He left it as it was and turned to go.

  Martin’s bedroom door—his mom called the big old closet a nursery—was open and Joey peeked in. His little brother lay sprawled out on top of the covers with his head tilted back and his mouth wide-open, snoring softly. Joey crept to the end of the hall and peeked in on his parents, two silent mountains under their covers. He stood there, even when his mom stirred and sat up, blinking.

  “Joey? What’s wrong?”

  5

  Joey shifted his feet. The urge to tell her what he’d done swelled inside him. It wasn’t that he was exactly scared of his mom, but there was something about her presence. She was a sheriff’s deputy, tall, thick boned, and blond—people said he looked just like her—but her authority didn’t come from the badge; it came from the burning light in her eyes. The consequences of spilling the beans danced around in his head. He shut his mouth and regrouped.

  “Can’t sleep.”

  “Well, you’ve got a big game tomorrow, so you better try.” She lay back down and pulled the covers over her head with a snap.

  “Okay.” Joey turned and went to bed.

  Sometime much later, he nodded off.

  There was nothing he loved more than baseball.

  The smooth wood of the bat handle was made for his hands. He felt, gripping it tight, that it connected him to the rest of the universe like an astronaut’s tether in space. He swung the bat to loosen his limbs and felt the power stored up there, the charge of a storm cloud ready to burst down upon the earth with the noise and the vibration of a great thunderclap trailed by the burning smell of ozone from the heavens.

  Coach Barrett stood on the other side of the plate. Instead of his cap and Blue Jays uniform, he wore a suit and tie. “You have to score, Joey. You have to score for us to win. You have to score. Whatever you do, don’t get an out.”

  “V for victory, Coach.” Joey held up his first two fingers and spread them wide like his smile.

  When he stepped to the plate, the pitcher and the other players stood like helpless pieces on a chessboard, immobile and small by comparison to his quick-limbed swing and towering size. Joey laughed—meaning it as a private celebration but unable to contain his confidence. The umpire and the catcher gazed up at him respectfully. Then came the pitch, rotating on its axis, big and slow like a planet. Joey had time to feel the itch of anticipation and to rear back with all his might and strike it solidly in the center, blasting it into center field.

  That’s when everything changed.

  He dropped the bat and started to run, but his legs felt like tubes of sand, heavy and unresponsive. He was nearly paralyzed. Because the ball was hit so far and so well, he somehow made it to first base even with his unresponsive legs. The crowd went absolutely wild and Joey waved up to them, even the tiny frantic figures in the upper decks. It seemed the whole world was watching and waiting for him to score the winning run.

  The next batter stepped up to the plate. It was Zach. Oh, Zach! With his quick swing and nimble, athletic form, he was made for baseball. Zach pointed his bat toward the left field fence and the crowd cheered him as well. Zach then pointed a finger at Joey. Joey gave him a V for victory, and they had a private moment between them. The first baseman said something Joey couldn’t understand, and before he knew it, the pitch was thrown. Zach hit the ball, but it dribbled up the middle of the diamond and the second baseman scooped it from the dirt.

  Joey ran, or he tried.

  His legs hung heavy and dead from his hips, worse than before.

  Every ounce of effort and energy he had, he poured into his legs and his arms, pumping for his very life because he had to get to second. He had to score. They had to win. In slow motion, he moved, one step, two. He began to sweat. The second baseman had the ball. He raised his foot to stomp on the bag. The stomp would end everything for Joey, not just this inning or this game. It would end his life, he knew that. It was the end of everything he knew. He had to score. He had to win, but there stood the second baseman. Joey looked back at first base. Maybe he could go back? No, Zach came running. Joey had to go forward. He had to advance. It was a force-out.

  Force. Out.

  Everything. Over.

  The horror of it made Joey fight forward, screaming as the second baseman’s foot came down with a stomp to cave the entire universe in on itself.

  Nothing he could do.

  6

  “Ahhhhh!” Joey tore the covers off and sat upright in the tangle of damp sheets.

  He took short, hard breaths, gulping air into his lungs, needing more oxygen to pump the dream from his system. It was awful. It was his dream, his baseball dream. It happened to him on a regular basis. He didn’t tell anyone about it, but from what he could gather on the internet about these kinds of things, it was born out of anxiety, the distress he stored up inside his mind about the need to succeed on the baseball diamond.

  The dream was a release valve for all the horror he kept tucked away in the back drawers of his mind. The horror of life without baseball, life after baseball, the day it would all come to an end. He never wanted it to end. Joey wanted to go on and on, high school, college, the pros, maybe even one of those senior leagues. He couldn’t imagine life without playing baseball, but in the dark shadows that specter lurked, and so . . . the dream.

  He lay for a long time in the dark, the dinosaurs still glowing, until finally, he turned on the light and cracked his book The Shortstop Who Knew Too Much. He yawned, then read
until he found himself going over and over the same sentence. The fifth time, he shut off the light and fell back to sleep.

  When his clock alarm went off at eight o’clock, it ripped him from a deep slumber. He forced his heavy limbs out of the bed and yawned. Exhaustion weighed him down, and he was miserable at the feeling and dreading the effect it might have on his performance.

  He removed his phone from its charger and powered it up, knowing that by now, the field trip either was going on as planned or not and that Zach surely would have texted him. The phone glowed and the screen changed and beeped.

  He had a new message and he opened it.

  7

  u did it!!!! ☺

  u shldv seen Mr K’s face

  when he finally got there

  train was PULLIN OUT

  lol!!! c u at the game!

  Joey did laugh out loud, and some of his weariness fell away. He texted Zach back.

  v for victory!

  He brushed his teeth and changed into his uniform. Downstairs, his mother sat at the kitchen table reading the paper while his father made omelets. Even the scent of eggs, onions, ham, and butter cooking in the pan couldn’t overcome the permanent smell of glass cleaner and the floor cleaner his mom used to make their kitchen eternally spotless.

  “Ham and cheese?” His father pointed at Joey with the spatula. “You look tired.”

  “Just no onions, please. Couldn’t sleep.” Joey slumped down at the table and sipped the glass of orange juice waiting for him.

  Pork Chop, the orange cat, shrieked in the next room and blazed through the kitchen on his way to hide in the laundry room near the stairs. Martin, unseen, giggled uncontrollably.

  Joey’s mom looked out over the edge of her paper. “No, no, Marty. Leave kitty alone. I’m not gonna tell you again, sweetie pie. Hello, Joey. Ready for the big game?”

  Before he could answer, she was back behind the paper.

  “Why do you keep telling him you won’t tell him again, but you always do? I hope Pork Chop bites him.”

  The paper snapped down. “Good things happen to good people, Joey.”

  Joey hated when she said that. It made him think about sneaking out of the house and Mr. Kratz’s clamped fuel line. It hadn’t occurred to him before, but now he wondered if he might have committed some kind of a crime. As a police officer, his mother would know, but he wasn’t going there. Two years ago, he asked her about a “friend” who had some firecrackers and whether or not setting them off at the bus stop was a crime, and she marched him right up to his room and made him cough them up. She was too smart and too suspicious.

  “Guilty conscience?” His mother was staring at him.

  Joey forced a laugh and dodged her eyes. “For what?”

  “What were you doing last night wandering around?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. I told you.”

  His mother made a noise, nodded her head, and went back to the paper. “The truth always comes out.”

  She didn’t say it as a threat but as the way you’d observe the color of the sky. Joey looked at the paper and the top of her blond head, just visible above the headline about some baseball player’s $250 million contract extension. That’s where he wanted to be, the big leagues, the big money. Wasn’t what he’d done worth that? One day, maybe he’d look back on today and see it as the beginning of it all, and he could tell some writer from ESPN The Magazine that he was inspired by the sports headline his mother was reading at the breakfast table the day he won his first championship game.

  “Excuse me, buddy.”

  Joey looked up and removed his arms from the table so his father could slide the omelet out of the pan and onto his plate.

  “Thanks, Dad.” Joey ate in silence until Martin walked in with a fistful of cat poop dressed in clay chips from the litter box.

  “Here, Joey.” Martin slapped the cat poop onto the table next to Joey’s orange juice glass and laughed his head off.

  “Oh my gosh! Mom!” Joey leaped away from the table, choking and gagging vomit back down.

  His mom spoke in the happy singsong voice of a children’s TV show host. “No, no, Marty. Poopy is dirty. Let’s wash your handsies.”

  She took Martin by the wrist. “Come on, we’re going upstairs to change your clothesies. Joey, clean that up, okay? No, no litter box, Marty. Litter box no, no. Kitty poop bad.”

  Martin let their mom lead him by the wrist but not without looking back to wave at Joey with his pooped-up hand. Joey had to work hard not to gag as he pinched the poop in a napkin and buried it in the garbage can under the sink. Joey’s father held his nose and looked away, also squeamish over poop on the table. His father attacked the table with a spray cleaner, paper towels, and rubber gloves.

  Joey washed his hands thoroughly and returned to his seat. He looked down at his omelet, not hungry, and thinking that no sleep and no breakfast was a terrible combination for winning a championship. He forced himself to cut off a bite and chew it, then swallow. Steam curled up from the melted cheese, and a pink corner of ham poked free from the egg, which somehow mildly disgusted him. It went down, but not easily. He managed three more bites before giving up and putting his plate in the sink.

  His father looked up from the egg-white spinach omelet he was cooking for Joey’s mom and watched his creation hit the trash. “Don’t worry. I understand. I’m not hungry now either.”

  “I swear, he’s a mental case.” Joey spoke low in case his mom came back into the kitchen.

  “He does act a little like your uncle.”

  “Is that why mom babies him so much?”

  Martin was named after his mom’s dead brother, and the similarities between them often generated remarks and—in his mom’s case—tears. Although, from what Joey could tell, his uncle Martin—whom he’d never known—was a kind and timid soul and his little brother was nothing of the sort. But the red hair, big round face, and bright blue eyes reminded his mother of the much younger brother she adored.

  “I think she babies him because he’s the baby.”

  “I thought when I was three I was already helping clear the table.”

  His father set the spatula down on the counter and gave Joey’s shoulder a soft punch. “You’ve always been ahead of your age. Look at how you play baseball.”

  Joey felt a hot bun of pride in his chest.

  The sound of his mother’s voice chilled it quickly.

  “Joey. Do you want to tell me about this?”

  Joey turned to see his mom standing in the entrance to the kitchen, arms folded, and a serious scowl on her face.

  His mother spoke in her singsong voice. “I said to myself, ‘This medicine cabinet was closed, now it’s open. Who’d open it? What did he want?’”

  She unfolded her arms and revealed a small prescription pill bottle that he knew came from the left side of the medicine chest. He recognized it, because he’d been into it. It was the secret ingredient he’d crushed up into the meatballs he’d fed Daisy, feeling entirely clever.

  “Don’t look at me that way.” A storm brewed in her icy blue eyes and her long blond hair made her look like some woman Viking warrior. “I had five; now there’s only four. You better tell me right this second, Joseph.

  “Did you take one of my pills?”

  8

  There was a time to bend the truth, and even a time to lie when you really had to. Now was the time for bending. He had to fall on his sword and give her something to react to. A denial would be the most foolish thing on the planet. A full confession? That just wasn’t going to happen. And, while he might have been too stupid to remember whether he’d found the cabinet door slightly ajar or tightly shut, he wasn’t stupid enough to spill the beans and give her the whole story.

  He took a quick breath, kept his chin up and, with his mind still processing the information and sifting through the possibilities, he said, “I took one.”

  “You took one? You just took one?” Her face twisted in disbelief
. “My medicine for a migraine, a prescription drug, and you took one?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  His mom threw a fierce glance at Joey’s father, as if he were somehow part of the problem. “Of course you’re sorry. Who wouldn’t be sorry for committing a crime?”

  The answer came to him. It wasn’t perfect, but it just might save him. “Mom, I couldn’t sleep. I had to get to sleep. Today’s the championship.”

  The $250 million headline ran through his mind, but that was a stretch too far to get into now. He knew he had to be short, to the point, and convincing, because his mom would give him a chance to explain—she was a fair person—but he better make it good because she was also a cop.

  “If we win, Mom, Coach Barrett gets to name two players to the all-star team—it’s automatic.” He spoke fast, using his hands for emphasis. “If we win today, Zach and me will both get spots on the all-star team. Then we’ll get to try out for the Center State select team. I know we will. We’re the best players around. Mom, if I make that, I get to travel around the entire world this summer. Europe, Asia, Australia, even South America, and you know you always say that traveling and seeing other places and people is such an important part of education and you always talk about how you traveled with the national volleyball team and all those stories and . . .”

  That was it. His time was up and he knew it by her look. Now she’d think about it and make a decision. It was one of those cruel moments in life where so many good things could go his way if only another person would make a small, harmless decision in his favor. He thought about everything he’d done, the clever and even a little dangerous plan of sabotaging Mr. Kratz’s pickup and how the plan had actually worked! And now, because he had left the medicine cabinet open half an inch, she might take it all away. It was awful, and he tried in vain to read her face.

  Finally, she took a breath and let it out through her nose. That meant nothing either way to him, but she opened her mouth and he knew he was about to get the verdict.