I concentrated on forcing my face muscles into a weak little smile. “That sounds great, Dad.”
Mom was beaming at me. “Oh, Will, we’re so proud of you. You set a challenge for yourself and rose to the occasion. You’re really turning into a responsible young man.”
Jeepers. Nobody had blinked an eye about my coming home and staying in the house alone after school. Nobody had even questioned where all of the food had come from, or how I had known what to do with it. And worst of all, they wanted me to do the whole thing again, twice a week. I wasn’t sure how I’d pull that one off, especially since my three wishes would be used up long before next Tuesday. Plus, even though I’ll deny this if anyone repeats it, the thought of being home alone scares me.
After dinner, when I went up to my room, the Great Lasorda was hovering in the air over my desk with his feet crossed over each other. I got the feeling he had been taking a nap, but his eyes opened when I came in. He said, “I trust that your dinner with the family went well?”
“I guess so,” I said.
“Excellent! That’s two wishes down, and one to go. With any luck I’ll be free by … I mean, you will have everything you’ve always wanted by Saturday.” He looked totally satisfied with himself as his eyes fluttered shut again.
I suddenly realized I wasn’t tired at all—my head was buzzing with all of the big changes that were happening. “Hey!” I said. “Do you want to play a game with me or something?”
His eyes snapped open. “Why would I want to do that, exactly?”
“I don’t know. Dodger always played with me, and I’m just kind of bored, so—”
“I am not bored, young William. I am tired. Although I know I look absolutely splendid for a six-thousand-year-old, even I need to get my beauty sleep. Plus, I have a brutal case of carpet-lag. And you will want me fresh in the morning, for when you are ready to make your third wish. Night-night, now!”
Wow, this guy had an attitude. But wait a minute: Wasn’t he here to serve me? “Uh, excuse me, Lasorda?”
This time he only opened one eye. “Please do not bother me again until sunrise, William. And by the way, you may call me ‘the Great Lasorda,’ or, if you must, simply ‘the Great.’ But never ‘Lasorda.’”
Okay, now I was getting annoyed. “Fine, then, the Great. Good night. And you can call me ‘Master.’”
“I can, but rest assured I won’t.” And with that, he closed his eyes for the last time and spun in midair to face the corner. Things weren’t turning out quite as I had planned. I did my homework, read some comic books, drew some pictures of Babe Ruth playing ball with a chimp on my sketch pad, and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and get ready for bed.
When my parents had said good night to me, I got myself all comfy under my covers and closed my eyes. And then I noticed a strange sound from the corner, like someone slowly cutting a piece of wood with a dull saw. Evidently, one of the things the Great Lasorda was great at was snoring.
In the morning when I woke up, the Great Lasorda was nowhere to be seen. For a few minutes, I tried to convince myself that the events of the day before had been a dream. In fact, while I was combing my hair in front of the mirror attached to the door of my closet, it even crossed my mind that everything that had happened since my last baseball game had been a dream. Maybe I imagined Dodger, I thought. Maybe it’s really just Sunday morning, and I’ll go downstairs and get ready to play my second-to-last game of the season.
There was a little brown speck on my reflection. I tried rubbing my cheek, but the speck wouldn’t come off. Duh, I thought, it’s not on my face. It’s on the mirror. My heart raced a bit as I reached out to touch the smudge on the glass. It smeared off of the mirror and onto my finger. I held the finger under my nose and sniffed.
Chocolate, with a little sour milk mixed in.
Dodger hadn’t been a dream. This was my life.
Downstairs, everyone was super-friendly and relaxed, which still struck me as unreal. I decided to try one more test, in case the part with Lasorda—sorry, the Great Lasorda—had been a dream. I got on my backpack with no coat—which I’ve always wanted to do—and grabbed a two-pack of Twinkies instead of my usual nutritious bag lunch. Twinkies? I thought. Since when do we have Twinkies in the house? Then I hugged my mom good-bye. She said, “No jacket, huh? Well, it is a glorious morning. And Twinkies for lunch? I suppose you deserve a nice treat after that wonderful dinner you made last night. Just don’t make this a habit, okay?”
Then she turned me around and shoved me along on my way.
At the bus stop, I realized I was freezing. Lizzie came along and ignored me completely. I mean, she wasn’t being angry or looking mean or anything. She just totally had no interest in my existence. I said, “Good morning, Lizzie.”
She looked at me like we hadn’t done this every morning for hundreds of school days in a row, and said, “Oh, I hadn’t noticed you standing there. Good morning, uh, Will? That is your name, right?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Practice Makes Perfectly Confused
WOW, LIZZIE BARELY EVEN KNEW who I was. So my second wish had come true, too, exactly as I’d asked for it.
In class, I kept sneaking glances over at Lizzie every few minutes, expecting to catch her looking at me. But she never was. At lunch, I sat alone at my table for two and ate my Twinkies. That took about two minutes, and I spent the rest of the time watching Lizzie sitting and laughing with a couple of girls from another class. A kid walked by with a banana, and I thought of Dodger. I hoped he was eating better in the lamp than I was in my cafeteria. After nothing but Twinkies, I was starving.
The whole afternoon went the same way, except Lizzie started catching me looking at her. I could only imagine what she was thinking, but it was probably a lot like what I had always thought when Lizzie stared at me. Which was some pretty mean stuff. So, by three o’clock, I was completely freaking out. But I still had this tiny bit of—okay, I admit it—hope that Lizzie might not have forgotten everything. On the way to the bus stop, I sort of edged my way over to her and asked, “Hey, are you going to be at my game tomorrow?”
She looked completely mystified. “What game? What in the world are you talking about, and why are you talking about it to me?”
Well, that settled it. I couldn’t sit through an entire bus ride with absolutely nobody who even noticed I was alive, so I decided that maybe walking home would clear my head. Usually my mom would be home on a Friday, and in my old life she would have had a cow if I hadn’t gotten off the bus with Amy at the end of the day. I knew things would be different in my new life, though.
Walking past the Little League field didn’t help to calm me down. I knew that there were only about twenty hours left until my big game, and I wished I had practiced more during the week. Before I had a chance to think too hard about it, I ran off the sidewalk and into the woods toward Dodger’s magical field. I could sort of see where the blue carpet had been and followed the path until I got to the blue clearing. Strangely, the field was still there, but it was almost completely overgrown with weeds. The wooden backstop was half-rotted and leaned over at a crazy angle. The whole diamond looked like nobody had been there in twenty years.
Pretty spooky.
I would have given anything to be able to get some practice in before the game. I wished—
ZAP! As soon as the beginning of a wish formed in my head, the Great Lasorda appeared in front of me. “Good day, William. You summoned me?”
I nodded. I supposed that, without meaning to, I had summoned him.
“And are you ready to make your third wish?” He was so eager to be finished with me, he was practically rubbing his hands together with glee. But I knew I had to be really, really careful with my third wish.
“Not quite yet, the Great. Hey, while we’re both here, how’s about we play some ball?”
The Great Lasorda looked vaguely nauseous, like the thought of playing ball was just too sickening to even consi
der. But then a crafty little gleam appeared in his eye, and he waved his hand casually in the direction of the field. Instantly, it was back in tip-top shape. Next he wrinkled his nose at me, and I found myself in a full baseball uniform, complete with a very new, very stiff glove and really tight cleats. Finally, he held up his arms, and with a blinding flash, he was transported to the pitcher’s mound, where he appeared in a flashy gold uniform that made him look like a cross between a major league baseball player and a circus clown.
Which seemed just about right.
I jogged onto the field, picked up a bat and batting helmet that were lying next to home plate, dropped my mitt, and stepped into the batter’s box. As I dug my cleats into the dirt, I thought, Wow, these things are tight. Then the Great Lasorda wound up and pitched a bullet right down the middle. I gave a feeble swing, but my timing was way off. A new ball magically appeared in the Great Lasorda’s hand, and he said, “You know, you could just wish to be a great baseball player. Honestly, you don’t seem to have much going for you on the field, and your game is tomorrow. I always say, why work when you can wish?”
I gritted my teeth and said, “Just pitch the ball, Lasorda.”
He snapped, “That’s the Great Lasorda,” and threw the exact same pitch in the exact same spot.
This time I was ready. I smacked the ball straight back at him. He ducked and gave a panicky little yelp as my line drive went screaming into center field. Mr. Genie didn’t look so great that time, I thought.
After that, we settled into a rhythm. Ball after ball appeared in his hand, and each one came streaking to the plate. For some reason—maybe because I was so irritated with the Great Lasorda—I was hitting much better than usual. But after about twenty pitches, my heels were killing me.
The genie noticed. He walked about three-quarters of the way to home plate. With a sympathetic expression that made his face look like it was about to crack with the effort, he said, “Hey, I bet you wish those cleats were a little looser, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I—” My mouth snapped shut in horror. “HEY! You tried to trick me into using up my wish, didn’t you?”
He growled, “Just trying to make you comfortable, William,” turned, and marched back to the mound.
After about ten more pitches, the Great Lasorda started rubbing at his pitching shoulder. “All right, William,” he said. “I think it’s time for us to work on your fielding.” Then he waved one arm through the air and said, “Meet your new trainer: Rodger! Rodger is my most trusted assistant. He will take over now. I have had enough of this—this—manual labor! I am actually perspiring! Oh, the horror!” Suddenly, the Great Lasorda disappeared, and instantly reappeared at a table with a parasol over it, sipping some kind of pink slushy drink out of a coconut shell. I found myself standing at shortstop with the stiff glove on my left hand. Right where Lasorda had been, a blue chimp was at the plate holding a bat. For an instant, I thought it was Dodger. Then the chimp spoke, and I found out Dodger wasn’t the only blue chimp in town.
“Hello, greetings, good day, bonjour!” he said. “I am Rodger, your friendly neighborhood Replacement On-call Dispatch Genie, Emergency Reserve.”
This guy looked just like Dodger, only without the eye patch. Oh, and he was wearing a suit and tie, for some odd reason. I couldn’t believe this. How could there be a replacement for Dodger? “Uh, didn’t you forget the ‘third class’ part?”
The chimp looked down his nose at me like I had just insulted his mom. “Oh, William, please! I know that you are accustomed to working with my brother, Dodger. And, admittedly, Dodger is just about as third-class as they come. I assure you, however, that I am first-class all the way. First-class, top quality, pick of the litter—that’s me! I understand that my poor, undistinguished brother caused you quite a bit of trouble. Well, you needn’t have any worries about my performance or temperament. Despite any slight similarities in our appearances, we are opposites, antonyms, polar—”
I had to cut him off. First of all, I was getting mad. Just because Dodger had maybe fibbed a little and made a few mistakes didn’t mean that his own brother should be talking trash about him while he was stuck in a bottle somewhere, unable to defend himself.
“Okay, I get it,” I said through clenched teeth. “You’re not Dodger. Now can we play ball?”
“Yes, sure, of course, absolutely. I am ready to hit the ball, smack it, give it a knock, pound it out. I think you will find me to be quite skillful, expert, masterful—”
“Uh, Rodger? Has anybody ever told you you talk funny? Why do you keep saying the same thing over and over?”
“Oh, I am sorry about the repetition, redundancy, the beating of a dead horse. It’s just that I once spent several decades in a lamp with only a thesaurus to read, so sometimes—intermittently—now and again—that is to say, I occasionally find several ways to restate my point. Anyway, shall we get down to business, cut the chatter, skip the small talk?”
I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant, but I nodded.
Suddenly Rodger was hitting balls in my direction. I barely got my glove up for the first one, a tough chopper right at me. I charged the ball, but it went about half an inch over the top of my glove and banged right off the bruise on my forehead.
“You have to get your glove higher, raise it, lift it up,” Rodger shouted.
“Ooh,” the Great Lasorda said. “Don’t you wish the webbing on that glove were slightly bigger?”
“Nice try,” I grunted. “Just keep hitting, Rodger.”
“Is that a wish?” the genie asked.
“No, it’s an order,” I said.
The Great Lasorda smirked, and Rodger got ready to send another ball my way.
For someone wearing a suit and tie, Rodger was a shockingly hard hitter. At first, almost everything that came off his bat whacked off my shin, or bonked my chest, or bounced out of the brand-new glove. Watching from the sideline, the Great Lasorda offered several times to just make me a baseball star and be done with it. But the more the genie tried to make me quit, the more determined I was to stick it out. I imagined I had an eye patch on one eye and got back into my defensive stance.
Rodger was pretty chatty. As we played, he kept up a constant stream of synonym-filled advice. At first I started getting irritated, but then I thought, Well, I’d be talking up a storm, too, if I’d just spent years and years all alone in a tiny space. That made me feel kind of bad about sending Dodger back, so I tried to concentrate on my fielding.
Then, in the middle of a play, as if he had been reading my mind, Rodger said, “Don’t worry about sending my brother back, by the way. This has been happening, going on, occurring for two thousand years. Dodger always hopes, wishes, believes that he will meet a client who values friendship over greed, but of course it never happens.”
I got distracted wondering what Rodger meant, and the baseball whacked off the palm of my mitt and into the outfield. As I slipped off my glove, rubbed my bruised hand, and trudged into the grass to retrieve the ball, Rodger continued. “Poor Dodger, with his silly litter test. He really believes that just because someone picks up some trash, that makes the person special, exceptional, outstanding.”
Hey, wait a minute, I thought. The litter test works! Doesn’t it? Well, except for Lizzie. Unless … well, unless Lizzie really is special.
See, that’s why you should never mix thinking with baseball. It’s just too confusing. I threw the ball back to Rodger, and he smacked it back at me. Right when I was about to catch it on the fly, Rodger said, “I keep waiting for my brother to learn that every single human being on earth would always rather have three wishes than free him from his life of—”
I stopped in my tracks, and the baseball whizzed past my right ear into the grass. “What do you mean, free him? What do my three wishes have to do with—”
The Great Lasorda cut me off. “Rodger, William, I think that’s quite enough chitchat out there. Now, get back to work! That is, unless William is ready t
o make his last wish.”
We got back to work. In fact, Rodger made me go all the way out to right field and hit me a ton of long fly balls, until I could barely even see through all the sweat that was running down into my eyes. It was brutal, and it meant I was too far away to ask what he meant about freeing Dodger.
After maybe half an hour of nonstop fielding, I was starting to get a handle on the ball. I was also starting to get some hideous blisters on my glove hand and both feet. When the Great Lasorda finally told Rodger to call it a day, the chimp jogged all the way out to me and put one arm around my shoulder. His dress shirt had pulled up and out, so that when he raised his arm, I couldn’t help but notice a flash of orange-and-white waistband sticking out from the top of his suit pants. Ha! It looked like Rodger and Dodger had something in common, after all. Rodger said, “Excellent practice, William! You really know how to work, struggle, grind it out, stick with it—”
I interrupted. I didn’t have much time. “Rodger, what was that whole thing about greed and freeing Dodger?”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s not my place to say. I can tell you this, though, since you brought it up: Your friend Dodger had an argument with the Great Lasorda ages and ages ago. Dodger insisted that a human, a special human, would be willing to give up three wishes in exchange for one true friend. The genie said that no human would agree to give up even one wish just to get a friend. So they made a bet: If Dodger can find a person who is willing to give up a wish in order to have him as a friend, a buddy, a pal, an amigo—”
“Ahem,” I said. We were getting pretty close to the Great Lasorda, who was giving me an intense glare.
Rodger looked startled. “Oh, sorry. If Dodger can find one person—one true-blue friend—who is willing to give up a wish in order to be his buddy, then the Great Lasorda has to set him free. As if that will ever happen.”
Dodger and Me Page 8
