Home Run Page 8

  “You seem pretty okay with all this.”

  Josh shrugged, wondering why the woman couldn’t get the handle down into her mini suitcase. “I didn’t know I had a choice.”

  His father looked at him sharply, then frowned. “I guess not. You’ll come visit. Or . . . who knows?”

  “Yeah,” Josh said, “who knows?”

  The older couple finally made it through. Josh heaved his backpack onto the belt and turned. His father hugged him, tighter than Josh could ever remember. “You be safe now, and take care of your little sister.”

  None of it even seemed real to Josh. A man with three little girls bumped into Josh’s dad as he laid a stroller on the belt, breaking up their hug.

  “Oh. Sorry,” said the man.

  “No, that’s fine.” Josh’s dad turned back to Josh. “I love you, buddy.”

  “I love you too, Dad.”

  Josh turned and escaped through the metal detector. He got his backpack and headed for the tram to Gate A. Before he turned the corner, he looked back. His dad stood like a giant, towering over the Disney tourists, serious and frozen, with something that might have been a tear traveling down his face.

  Josh waved quickly and bolted for the closing doors of the tram.

  He spent the next couple of hours reading his book and waiting until his plane was going to take off. Finally he boarded his direct flight, and a few hours later his mom picked him up in a borrowed car. She squeezed him and whispered, “I missed you.” Laurel squealed with delight and buried her face in his chest as he hugged her to him. They didn’t talk much on the short ride home. Laurel filled the silence, babbling with delight.

  Josh climbed the stairs, and it seemed a longer climb than usual. He set his trophy carefully back on the dresser top and unpacked the rest of his bag as the sounds of Laurel getting ready for bed pierced the thin walls. Josh used the bathroom while his mom read to his sister, then bumped his head getting into bed. His mom came in and sat on the edge of his bed in the dark, reaching for Josh’s hand and holding it tight.

  For some unknown reason, Josh began to cry, comfortable doing so in the darkness with only his mom there.

  “Why are you crying, Josh?” his mom asked.

  He took several breaths before the words would come out. “I . . . I . . . I just want us to be back to the way it was before.”

  She was quiet for some time before she smoothed his hair and sighed. “I know, Josh. But everything changes. That’s just life. And sometimes, when you expect it least, tomorrow turns out to be a better day.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “DUDE, YOU WERE BARELY gone.” Benji bit into his chocolate ice cream cone like it was an apple and chewed the same way.

  Jaden spun her cone, cleaning up the edge of her vanilla. “I’m glad you’re back. What’s up with the house?”

  Josh sat atop his bicycle, using one hand to balance against a chain-link fence and the other to tuck the last bit of his cone into his mouth. He crunched it down and swallowed. “Touch and go.”

  “Touch and go?” Benji swiped at the chocolate goo dribbling down his chin. “That sounds bad. Last touch and go I saw was my dad’s job at the engine plant. ‘Touch and go,’ he’d said. More like touch and going, going, gone.”

  “That has nothing to do with this.” Jaden scowled and swatted at him. The two of them sat on a picnic bench at Kustard King. Their bikes rested on stands beside the fence. The AC unit atop the building hummed its sound.

  “Everything has to do with everything.” Benji swatted her right back. “Haven’t you ever heard of Einstein’s theories, you wannabe brainiac?”

  “Just what theory are you talking about?” Jaden made a face, and Josh held back a laugh. Sometimes he was sure they enjoyed fighting.

  “The one about relatives.” Benji jutted out his chin. “It’s, like, everyone’s related. Like six degrees of relatives. Everyone on the whole planet. That means everything has to do with everything. It’s like one of those sayings . . . a motto . . . a slogan or something.”

  “You are just so mixed up.” Jaden looked at him sadly and licked her ice cream.

  “Josh knows what I mean, don’t you, Josh?”

  Josh looked up at the sun and blinked. He took a deep breath. It was warm, but bakery warm, not swamp-sizzling, sweat-monster warm like Florida. “I’m not sure, Benji, but I can’t focus. I keep thinking about that contest.”

  “Her contest?” Benji jagged a thumb toward Jaden.

  “No, the home run contest,” Josh said. “Winning a house. I mean, if that’s for real, it could solve a lot of my problems. What contest is Jaden in anyway?”

  “It’s the Young Journalist Award,” Jaden said. “You have to write a compelling story and get it published by November first to qualify. Then you just submit it and they pick the best one on November fifteenth, and you get a ten-thousand-dollar scholarship.”

  “Which is less likely than hitting a ball into a bathtub, I can tell you that,” Benji said.

  “Well, even if you’re right about this so-called home run derby, if it has to stay in the tub, that’s probably not even possible.” Jaden took a bit of ice cream. “On the other hand, someone will win the Young Journalist Award, and if I can get a good enough idea, there’s no reason it shouldn’t be me. I need something original, that’s all. And since I’ve already gotten some stories into the sports page at the Post-Standard, it probably should be something sports related. Maybe someone overcoming some incredible injury? Something like when you played with that cracked bone in your face. I’m just saying, Josh, if you get an idea.”

  “And if I get an idea?” Benji said.

  “I think a baseball landing in a bathtub is more likely than you getting an original idea,” Jaden said.

  Benji’s face turned red, but before he could hurl an insult, Josh cut him off. “It’s good to be home; that’s all I know.”

  “You miss your dad, though, I bet.” Jaden tilted her head at him.

  “Sure, but he’s gotta be on the road all the time,” Josh said. “What’s that about?”

  “College sports is serious stuff.” Benji’s words were barely understandable.

  “Benji?” Jaden smiled warmly at him. “Anyone ever mention to you that you shouldn’t talk with food in your mouth?”

  Benji jammed the rest of his cone into his mouth and crunched, ending with a loud gulp.

  “There, now my mouth is empty.” Benji stuck out his tongue. “Now I can talk in the presence of Your Highness . . . and I’m telling you to slap a clapper on your piehole.”

  “I hate to say it, but I actually missed you two,” Josh said.

  “Heavy hitters are like Siamese twins, dude,” Benji said. “You don’t just separate them. Bad things happen.”

  Josh looked at his phone and saw the time. “Come on. We gotta get home and change. I don’t want to be late to meet this new coach.”

  “Yeah.” Jaden hopped down and climbed up on her bike. “From everything I’ve heard, you do not want to be late for Aaron Swanson.”

  “Oh, boy.” Josh started to pedal.

  “Dude, wait up!” Benji dusted his hands and got on his bike too. “He’s not gonna mind if the heavy hitters show up fashionably late. We gotta let this Coach Swanson know who’s running the show.”

  “Are you serious?” Josh shot a glance back over his shoulder at Benji.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “KIND OF.” BENJI SOUNDED disappointed that Josh wasn’t going along with him.

  “Well, I for one am going to be on time.” Josh downshifted gears and raised his butt up off his seat to climb the hill on Sixth North Street. “I just hope this Aaron Swanson guy can do it. Get us some wins, I mean. The scouts don’t see you if you’re not in the championship games.”

  “He took his last Little League team to the state finals,” Jaden said, huffing.

  “Finals?” Benji said. “We blew through the finals, and we had a car dealer for a coach, not ev
en Josh’s dad. Little League is nothing to get excited about. Any justice in the world, we woulda won the whole World Series. That screwball Marcus.”

  “You can’t blame it on one person. C’mon, let’s leave that one alone.” Josh didn’t want to start talking about Diane and her son. “Let’s look ahead.”

  “Hey, take a right. Enough of this hill,” Benji huffed, turning without them.

  “Uh-uh.” Josh shook his head and kept going.

  “Why? C’mon!” Benji stopped his bike and howled. “What? You’re afraid of going by Bricktown?”

  “He’s just being smart, Lido,” Jaden said, drafting behind Josh. “You should try it sometime.”

  Benji muttered, but he got back up on his bike, chugged hard, and caught up with them. “I’m not afraid of Bricktown or anyone in it.”

  “You gotta have brains to be afraid,” Jaden said.

  “Who says? That English teacher? Mrs. Ribble? Ribble Fribble Bibble Dribble. That’s what I call her,” Benji said.

  “She’s helping me with my Young Journalist Award submission, so you better watch your own piehole before I stuff it with a sock,” Jaden said. “Or a rock.”

  Josh just kept pedaling. “So, you need an idea?”

  “It can be published from September first right up until November first,” she said, “but every time I get something I think is going to be good, it just fizzles. I started to write about this linebacker from Fowler High School who walked onto the SU football team and now he’s leading the ACC in tackles, but things like that have happened before. I need a juicy story. That’s what I need. I mean, a scholarship for ten grand.”

  Benji could only whistle at that.

  Josh gave Jaden a wink. No matter how much she carried on, money wasn’t what it was about. She wanted the recognition this award would bring. Ever since he’d known her, Jaden had been working to become a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter.

  The sun was low in the sky. The tree-lined streets were busy with people returning home from work. Two kids sailed paper airplanes out the second-story window of their house as a big dog barked like a banshee down below, spinning in a frenzy of excitement. Josh sighed with contentment. This was exactly where he belonged.

  They dropped Benji off first. Josh came next.

  “Want me to ride you home?” He slowed his pedaling and wavered just before his driveway.

  “No. Thanks. You better get your stuff together,” Jaden said. “I’m serious about this Coach Swanson. He’s hard-core. Everyone says so. Used to be in the marines. I heard he was wounded in Iraq . . . or Afghanistan.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Jaden shrugged. “Who knows? You know how people like to talk.”

  “Well, see you in a few.” Josh turned into his driveway and hopped down off his bike. He watched her ride until she disappeared around the corner, then put his bike in the detached garage. His father’s old car, a gray Taurus, sat hunched over a flat rear tire. His mom now took the bus to work, and Josh was dependent on other people’s parents for rides, mostly Mrs. Lido. Even though she seemed happy to do it, Josh wished his mom would get the tire fixed. When he brought it up, his mom would only say that taking the bus saved her gas money. Josh hated talk like that, and he looked forward to the day he signed his first big baseball deal. It would be the last time anyone in his family talked about money, that was for sure.

  He marched into the house, intent on getting his stuff together so as not to make Mrs. Lido and Benji wait for a single second. Then he saw his mom’s face.

  Black eyeliner smudged the skin beneath her eyes, giving her a raccoon-like appearance. Rubbing had left the whites of her eyes pink and red. She sat staring at the mug of coffee before her on the kitchen table, but when he said “Mom?” she looked up in horror.

  “Well,” she said, her face crumpling, “people always say that when it rains it pours.”

  Josh reached out to touch her shoulder. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  HER EYES SHONE AT him with pain. “I lost my job, Josh.”

  “Mom?” Josh knew it was bad, even without the details.

  “Belly up,” she said. “They shut the whole business down. Janice’s husband cleaned out their bank account and disappeared. I should feel bad for her, but I feel so bad for me and us that I . . .”

  His mom started to cry, shaking from the effort of trying to hold it back. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, Mom.” Josh hugged her tight. He could hear his sister in the other room, watching a Barney DVD on the TV. Once those DVDs had belonged to Josh, so he knew the words before they were even spoken. Barney was always laughing, always happy and wanting everyone else to be that way too.

  After a few minutes, his mom gently pushed him away. “Okay, thanks. I’m okay now. Really. Don’t you worry. Everything will be fine.”

  She got up and began pulling things from the cupboard: flour, baking powder, raisins, cinnamon, and oatmeal. She sniffed and opened the fridge. “Hope I have enough butter. Don’t you have to get ready for practice? I thought we’d eat late tonight. I’m going to make some cookies, but can I fix anything to hold you over?”

  Josh was relieved to have something else to think about, to worry about, even if choosing a snack couldn’t stop the total meltdown of his family.

  “A ham sandwich?” he asked.

  “I’m an expert at ham sandwiches.” She smiled and set the butter down and reached into the fridge again. “Cheese?”

  “Yes, please.” Josh ran upstairs for his glove, then retrieved his baseball cleats from the shoe rack and took down his equipment bag from its hook. “Jaden says this coach is hard-core. That he won a medal in Afghanistan.”

  “What?” His mom spun around with a butter knife in her hand.

  “I mean,” Josh said, “he was a soldier. He’s supposed to be hard-core. I guess we’re lucky the team got someone so quick, right?”

  His mom finished slathering two slices of white bread with mayonnaise. “There’re plenty of people who want to coach the Titans. I give your father credit for that. It’s a franchise. I heard the board had two dozen applications.”

  “I’m surprised they didn’t give it to Coach Moose. Everyone loves him.” Josh was so glad not to be talking about his mom losing her job that the words just spilled silly from his lips.

  His mom tossed some ham slices on the bread, then peeled a piece of cheese off the slab she’d taken from the fridge. “He didn’t want it.”

  “Why?” Josh asked.

  His mom looked at him. “Some people don’t want to be the focus of attention. Coach Moose likes being an assistant.”

  Josh processed that quickly, knowing that somewhere in her words was a trap having to do with his father, so he simply said, “Oh.”

  “Sit,” his mom said. “You’ve got a minute.”

  Josh sat at the kitchen table.

  “I knew Coach Swanson had served in the military.” His mom put the sandwich together and slapped it down on the table atop a napkin. “That doesn’t mean he’s going to be unreasonably tough.”

  “What if he is?” Josh scooped up the sandwich and took a bite.

  “Whatever he’s like, he protected our country.” She poured him a glass of milk and set that down. “So we owe him our thanks, and you should give him every chance before you jump to conclusions.”

  Josh digested that as he chewed. A horn honked from the driveway. He jumped up and kissed his mom and made for the door with the half-eaten sandwich in his hand. When he got into the car, Benji spun around in the front seat and looked at the sandwich with interest.

  “Want some?” Josh offered what amounted to two remaining bites.

  “If you’re not gonna eat it,” Benji said, reaching for it.

  “Sure,” Josh said.

  “Benji, you ate two peanut butter and jellies at home.” Benji’s mom shook her head, and the big pile of blond hair stacked on top of her head wavered like a Jell-O m
old.

  “This is ham, Mom.” Benji stuffed it into his mouth but kept talking. “Animal protein. It’s the food of heavy hitters.”

  Benji’s mom squeezed her lips tight. “Ham’s expensive, Benji, but we do all right.”

  Benji grinned and winked at Josh.

  Josh’s stomach sank. He couldn’t worry about not having ham. His family might not even have a house.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  JOSH MADE ROOM FOR Jaden in the backseat. He’d taken it as a good sign that Coach Swanson kept Jaden on the team email list. He hoped it wasn’t just an oversight and that the coach really wanted Jaden to continue to record stats for the team. Josh hoped the new coach would keep everything the same as it had been under his dad but knew that some things were bound to change. Not many coaches had a background in baseball like Josh’s father.

  “Hey, Benji,” Josh said as they neared the school parking lot. “That contest you were talking about? What was the name of that company? I want to look that up online later.”

  Benji spun around. “Don’t you believe me?”

  “Of course,” Josh said. “I just want to read the rules about how you qualify and the stuff about the bathtub and make sure this thing is for real.”

  “You can win that thing, dude. I’m telling you.” Benji nodded vigorously. “Yeah, it’s as real as the nose on my face.”

  Jaden reached out and tugged his nose. “Yup, that’s real.”

  “Dude!” Benji swatted her away. “Don’t touch the merchandise! You don’t just walk into a museum and start touching things.”

  “Museum? We’re in your mom’s car,” Jaden said.

  “Yeah, but this is fine art.” Benji pointed to his nose. “Like the Mona Lisa or that David statue.”

  “How many dingers do you have to hit during fall ball to qualify?” Josh asked as they headed to the field, his mind again on the contest.

  “Dude, twenty, but you can do that,” Benji said. “We play like thirty games this fall. That’s nothing for you, blasting twenty round-trippers.”