Hero

by Mike Lupica

  Zach Harriman, feeling like the new troubleshooter in the family. Except the only trouble tonight was the kind he was making for himself if he got caught.

  Pat, one of the night doormen, with his big belly and big Irish accent, was at the security desk when Zach came through the lobby.

  “No elevator for ya, young Mr. H.?” he said.

  “Getting in shape for b-ball, Pat.”

  “And where might you be rushin’ off to, since I never see ya out by your lonesome at this time a night?”

  Zach said, “Homework emergency. Homework 911, Pat. Need to run over to the drugstore and get some school stuff or my English teacher is gonna kill me tomorrow.”

  Pat said, “You want me to walk with you? I can get Mickey at the back to cover for me a little while.”

  Zach made himself smile. “Pat,” he said. “I’m fourteen, not four.”

  “Just make sure you’re comin’ right back, boy-o,” Pat said. “I don’t want that Alba of yours readin’ me the riot act if she calls down wantin’ to know if I seen ya.”

  Zach banged him some fist.

  He walked for a long time, north on Fifth, knowing he had walked a mile when he came up on the Metropolitan Museum of Art—twenty blocks equaling roughly a mile in Manhattan.

  Zach crossed over to the west side of Fifth now, walked past the incredible entrance to the Met, lit like some kind of movie set.

  Zach found himself standing alone at an entrance to Central Park.

  He’d never even thought about going in there at night.

  Until this night.

  Until right now.

  And it was real night in there, not some movie set. There was the usual traffic noise behind him, because you got that in New York day or night. People weren’t kidding in the song when they said this was the city that never sleeps. But for Zach it was very quiet now, as quiet as the park in front of him.

  In or not?

  Yes or no?

  He felt like there was this fight going on inside him, Zach against Zach.

  He took a deep breath, let it out.

  And walked away. Turned and walked back across Fifth, not feeling as if he’d wimped out, just feeling as if he wasn’t ready. Which brought him back to the same question he’d taken out of the apartment with him and down the steps:

  Ready for what?

  Maybe Kate still knew him, but right now Zach felt as if he didn’t know himself anymore.

  He walked over to Madison, one block east from Fifth. Then down Madison for a while, usually one of his favorite walking streets in the whole city. Zach was surprised at how many people there were on the sidewalks at this time of night, even with Madison Avenue’s shops and stores closed hours ago.

  He crossed over to the east side of the block and walked past the Carlyle Hotel, heard singing from inside as the door opened, then heard applause. Zach Harriman, out in the grown-up world, the after-dark big-city world, knowing he should have felt some excitement about it.

  But he didn’t.

  He was walking faster now, heading north again, getting that feeling again, the one he was getting used to: the same one he’d felt the day his dad died, that he had to be somewhere.

  He just didn’t know where.

  It felt as if he was up at 90th and Madison in a blink. He took a left there and headed back toward Central Park, toward his favorite way in, the grand entrance at 90th and Fifth, the long stairway leading to the reservoir.

  Zach stopped at the base of the stairs. Feeling the urge to walk up them, not knowing why.

  Okay, where you going, dude?

  Still not quite sure.

  He was wearing his old New Balance gray sneakers. If it were daylight, he would go right up those stairs and start running, a mile and a half, probably do that in under ten minutes if he stepped on it. But he wasn’t there now to run laps. Nobody in his right mind ran the res alone at this time of night, unless they were begging to get mugged. Or worse.

  But he was sure now that this was where he’d been headed all along.

  Zach walked up the stairs.

  That was when he saw the guy.

  He was about thirty yards to Zach’s left. As dark as it was, Zach had no idea how he was able to see him. But he did see him, like he was wearing night-vision glasses.

  The guy was crouched in the bushes.

  Waiting for something, too. Or someone.

  Zach didn’t stare. He tried to act like he was invisible. But the guy wasn’t watching him, didn’t seem to know he’d been spotted. His attention was focused at the far turn, the one that took you into a long straightaway where you could really let it out if you’d run the res counterclockwise and the stairs were your finish line.

  There she was. A woman, ponytail bobbing along behind her. Running hard, as if this really was her finish line, maybe thinking she was safe running alone at this time of night because she could outrun anybody.

  The guy in the bushes, keeping low, inched out toward the track, still trying to be invisible.

  Watching the woman eat up the remaining distance between them. A hundred yards maybe.

  Less now.

  One of those bad things in the world about to happen to this woman, Zach was sure of it.

  And he was the only one around to stop it.

  He walked slowly toward the woman. When he got near where the guy was hiding, Zach stopped.

  He turned and looked right at him. The guy was in a knit cap and looked to be only a few years older than Zach. His eyes grew wide. Zach could tell he was holding something in his right hand behind him.

  He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do, how this was supposed to play out. Wasn’t sure, but wasn’t scared, either.

  It was the other guy who looked scared in that moment, as if Zach had somehow faced him down.

  As if the guy had seen something in him.

  The footsteps of the woman were close now. Then she said, “Excuse me,” because Zach was right in the middle of the track, blocking her way.

  So he moved out of the way, turned and watched her run down the steps and across the drive and go right across Fifth Avenue with the light, into the lights of the city.

  When Zach looked back into the bushes, the guy was gone.

  9

  IF Alba or Kate knew he’d left the apartment that night, neither one of them ever mentioned it. And Zach certainly wasn’t going to bring it up, especially not to Kate. He wasn’t going to tell her that he’d not only gone in there alone, he’d gotten in the middle of a mugging or managed to scare off a perv or whatever it was he’d done.

  But whatever he had done, it had felt amazing.

  When he’d finally gotten into bed that night, it had taken him what felt like hours to get to sleep, that was how excited he was. How amped.

  Like he hadn’t just faced down his own fears, he’d finally put a face to the Bads and stared them down.

  Looked them in the eye and chased them off for once.

  He had to admit, he did think about going back the next night. And the night after that. But he’d stayed inside the apartment, kept himself busy at his computer. One time he even made it as far as the elevator, feeling those feelings coming up again like a bad moon rising, before he heard his mom, back from her trip by then, say, “Going somewhere?”

  Standing there between the foyer and the living room.

  Zach was quick enough on his feet to say, “I had a crucial Knicks question for Lenny, but then I remembered like a dope that he’s already gone home.”

  “How about you go back upstairs and focus on some school questions,” his mom said. “So maybe that B in history becomes the A that it ought to be.”

  She went back into the living room. Zach followed her, watched her grab her book off the coffee table and settle in on the couch.

  “But what if the B is happy being a B?” he said. “What if it turns out that it was an overachieving C before it shocked the world by becoming that B?”

  She
gave him one of those mother-of-all sighs.

  “Be gone,” she said, pointing up the stairs.

  “What if it’s that one B that’s making all the other B’s in the world so darn proud?” he said.

  “Go.”

  He went upstairs and worked on history for a while. When he was done, he went out on the balcony and stared out at the park, wishing his mom hadn’t caught him before he could sneak out. He thought about going back on his computer. But he wasn’t in the mood to be researching his dad tonight, reading about him instead of talking to him.

  He was missing him too much.

  That never stopped. That was something he couldn’t let go of, the way he couldn’t let go of his suspicions—his belief—that the accident wasn’t actually an accident. There were times when he wanted to talk about it with somebody, with his mom or Kate or somebody who wouldn’t look at him cross-eyed when he opened up about this stuff. But he hadn’t come up with anything beyond his own conspiracy theory.

  And the one time he had run it by Kate, she’d acted like she pitied him.

  Poor, sad, deluded Zach Harriman.

  As much as Kate Paredes loved being right, she was dead wrong about the crash that killed his dad, and one of these days Zach was going to prove it.

  And there was no way she understood him and his feelings, because Zach wasn’t close to understanding them himself.

  What did he understand on nights like this, clear as the lights of the city in front of him?

  His dad was never coming home.

  Zach would sit out on the balcony, and for a few minutes he would think this was like all the other missing-dad nights in his life. For a few minutes he would feel exactly the way he used to when his dad was away, and trick himself into thinking he was coming back next week.

  But then a much worse feeling would come in right behind it, like he’d been sucker-punched, and he’d remember all over again.

  His dad had promised to take him to a Knicks game soon. And over the Christmas break, he had promised they’d go skiing, just the two of them, up in Vermont. All those promises, and more, would never come true now. So that was the emptiest feeling of all.

  It was why what should have been good memories now felt like bad ones, because they hurt too much. When his dad used to surprise him and come back early from a trip—no e-mail, no call, no warning—there he’d be, waiting in front of the building when Zach got home from a practice, opening the door with a flourish like he was Lenny the doorman. And whatever age Zach Harriman was at the time, he’d drop his backpack like it was a bad habit and hug his father for all he was worth.

  It was as if his dad had some kind of sixth sense, would know exactly when Zach was walking home from Parker, the precise moment when he’d be coming down the street.

  Like there was this weird radar between them. And the next morning, without fail, no matter how jet-lagged his dad should have been, no matter where he’d flown in from, he’d walk Zach—and Kate—to school.

  Saying at the front door of Parker: “See you after school, kiddo.”

  “Swear?” Zach would say.

  “On more honor than a whole Boy Scout troop,” his dad would say. Before he’d add: “Where else would I be?”

  Though they both knew the answer to that one. The correct answer was he could end up almost anywhere, at a moment’s notice.

  There hadn’t been any notice when his dad was finally taken away from him forever. When he was just gone.

  The way the old Zach Harriman was gone for good, the one who never wanted to fight back.

  His dad used to go off and save the world?

  Lately his son just wanted to beat it up.

  Spence Warren wasn’t in love with the idea of having Zach Harriman as a teammate on the eighth-grade basketball team at the Parker School.

  But then Spence wasn’t in love with the idea of Zach sharing the same oxygen he breathed.

  Spence played center for Parker, not because he was all that much taller than the rest of the team, but because he was the strongest guy they had. He was also the best athlete on the team and he had a center’s mentality.

  As much of a total jamoke—another Dad word—as Spence could be everywhere else at Parker, he was a total jock once he got on the court or the playing field. That meant he wanted to win the game. And he knew that for their eighth-grade team to win, Zach’s outside shooting needed to be a part of it.

  It didn’t mean he ever gave Zach a total pass on the court. He’d still make his snarky comments when Zach screwed up a play or missed an open shot, make sure he’d do it in a way that ensured Zach would hear the insult and Coach Piowarski would not. But for the most part, the place where Spence had always tortured Zach the least was on a basketball court.

  Until today.

  Today Spence was messing with Zach’s head every chance he got, to the point where Zach thought it was ridiculous to even think about this in terms of practice. Because when it came to this kind of chop-busting, Spence didn’t need practice, he was practically in the Hall of Fame.

  Today he was showing Zach up every chance he could in front of the team, picking his spots like a champ, always managing to do it when Coach P. was looking the other way or talking to somebody else. As usual, Spence had this way of boring in on Zach at his lowest moments, and there had been plenty of those today, because he was totally off his game.

  He wasn’t off by a lot. But you didn’t have to be off by a lot to look like a complete scrub in basketball. He was just a step slow on defense, which meant giving up too many easy baskets and running into one screen after another, ending up on the floor. He ran the wrong way twice on one of their basic offensive plays, a play designed to get him an open shot from the corner. Instead of Spence hitting him with a quick pass out of the post, he wound up throwing the ball out of bounds, right past the spot where Zach was supposed to be. After the second time, he glared Zach all the way into the East River for causing another turnover.

  Coach P. had seen enough. He blew his whistle, told them to get a drink of water and then come back and see if they could run the play correctly. As Spence ran past Zach, he got into his ear and said, “Hey, is there any chance that if we fly the clue flag today, you might be able to salute it?”

  Zach didn’t even think of responding. When you were playing like a scrub, you weren’t allowed to do anything with trash talk except take it.

  Sometimes you even had to take it from the coach, who grinned at Zach as he said, “And this time, let’s not have some of us going the wrong way down a one-way street.”

  It never got better. Zach’s head and body just weren’t in the game. And now the blue team—the second unit—was beating Zach’s red team.

  The Reds were down by two points when Spence called a time-out with one minute to go in the fourth. David Epstein had just broken away from Zach for an easy layup. Spence knew what was riding on the last minute because everybody in the gym knew—the losing team had to run after the scrimmage was over. Not just run, but run suicides. One of the killer basketball drills of all time. Everybody on the baseline, running fifteen feet and touching the court, then sprinting back to the baseline. Then up to half-court, touching the floor there, coming back. Then the same deal, up to the other foul line, all the way back to the baseline. Finally to the other baseline, the full length of the court and back, with whatever legs and wind you had left.

  It was a bear of a drill anytime but much, much worse after you’d played the equivalent of a full game.

  In the huddle, Spence looked right at Zach and said, “You are not going to be the reason the rest of us have to run today.

  “Your girlfriend would be doing more for us today than you are,” Spence continued, red-faced. “Maybe we can get her out of play practice before we’re all on the baseline and Coach starts blowing his stupid whistle.”

  “Leave her out of it,” Zach said in a quiet voice, not even looking at him. “This one’s on me.”

  “H
ow ’bout you get on your man, freak boy,” Spence said, “and look like an actual starter for at least one minute today?”

  Zach knew he was right. And he did try as hard as he could during that last minute. Tried so hard that he forced a bullet pass into Spence that was too low and too hard to handle. The pass bounced off his knee and right into the blue center’s hands. He looked up and saw a wide-open David Epstein streaking toward the basket, completely uncovered.

  Last two points of the game.

  Coach P. blew his whistle and said, “Tragically, the reds must go and line up now, because apparently our second unit is stronger than our starters.”

  “Because of one guy?” Spence said.

  “Hey,” Coach said, “ you know my philosophy. It’s never one play that loses a game and it’s never one guy.”

  Spence made a point of getting next to Zach.

  “Sorry about comparing you to a girl,” he said under his breath. “’Cause if you think about it, that’s really, really insulting to girls.”

  Coach blew his whistle. And the red team ran. And ran some more.

  When they were finished, all of them totally gassed, Coach told Zach and Spence to pick up the balls.

  Sweet, Zach thought. More alone time with my best friend in the world.

  Spence picked up the balls, tossed them to Zach, who put them on the rolling rack. Neither one of them said anything until Zach said, “You take off, I’ll put them in the storage room.”

  He was nearly to the gym’s double doors when the ball Spence Warren whipped at him hit him on the back of his head.

  Zach stumbled forward into the rack of balls, which went bouncing away from him. When he wheeled around, the back of his head stinging like he’d been slapped, Spence had his hand up, the way guys in tennis did after they’d gotten a fluke winner off the top of the net.

  “Sorry,” Spence said, grinning at him. “Thought you were looking.”

  Fifteen minutes later Zach was looking.

  Looking for Spence.

  10

  ZACH took the stairs down to the front door of the school. But instead of walking down Madison in the direction of his apartment building, he walked over to Fifth Avenue, crossed the street and went into Central Park.