“I know.”
“Sorry. I guess you still think the Bible is special.”
“It is. It may not have all the answers, and some of the answers it does have are totally wrong for our times, but I still think it’s a big piece of the puzzle.”
“Which puzzle?”
“The meaning of life and death. Why there’s a universe. Small stuff like that.”
She picked up the model-airplane box’s lid and studied the image. “So if the Rapture’s not really in the Bible, why do so many people believe in it?”
“It’s comforting, for the ones who think they’ll be Raptured. They have a ‘get out of earth free’ card while everyone they hate will be tormented. Plus it lets them live like there’s no tomorrow. Why worry about pollution if Jesus is coming to clean up our mess?”
“So you don’t think it’s true anymore.”
I didn’t answer right away, listening for the radio announcer to mention the score of the game I’d lost track of.
“Bottom of the sixth, it’s Dodgers three, Phils two. We’ll be back after these messages.” There was a brief musical interlude, then a commercial for a Rittenhouse Square dry cleaner.
I sat forward and picked up a piece of the jet engine. “I think we get the world we deserve. People who love get love back, and people who hate, or fear, they get those back too.”
“Huh. Which kind of person are you?”
“Both. We all are, at different times.” Like last week at Bailey’s when I was at my best and worst in the span of a few seconds. “But the Rapture—and the Rush, no matter how much Sophia talks about love—is about hate and fear. If those people are right, then I really want to be wrong.”
She chuckled. “Even if it means going to hell?”
I didn’t share her amusement. “If those people are right, then hell’s coming for us.”
• • •
I started doing math homework on the sly, with Mara’s help, but most of the day I couldn’t get away with risking discovery. So when I wasn’t working on the A-10 model, praying with my parents, or reading the books they’d given me, I spent my time listening to music and feeling sorry for myself. Bailey and baseball preoccupied my thoughts, until my hands ached with emptiness.
One month before the Rush, I texted Kane: I’m going crazy. I need you to do me a favor.
His reply came in less than a minute. Anything.
• • •
After all these years, my bedroom screen still slid open easily. The window frame was lined with security-system wires, deactivated since we couldn’t afford the service anymore.
I stuck my head out to check the escape route. It had rained earlier, so the roof was damp. I ducked back into my room and applied a dab of pine tar on each of my hands for a better grip.
From the roof I climbed halfway down our favorite red maple, which my dad hadn’t pruned last year. Then I slid out along another branch that extended past the range of the motion-sensing floodlight. I was heavier now than in my juvenile delinquent days, but so were the branches.
Once on the ground, I brushed the pieces of bark off my black jeans and black long-sleeved T-shirt, an updated version of my graffiti-boy ninja getup. Check me out, I’m the Man in Black. Johnny Cash would’ve been proud. I was, after all, doing this for love.
The community baseball field was a ten-minute jog from my house. Its chain-link fence was surrounded by woods on the first- and third-base sides. I rechecked Kane’s instructions in his text.
Bucket & screen behind 1B-side bleachers, under black tarp & sassafras bush. WATCH POISON IVY. He’d attached pictures of the two plants to the message so I wouldn’t get them mixed up.
Tucking the pitching screen under my arm, I carried the bucket of baseballs to the gate. It was unlocked, with a warning sign above the latch: NO DOGS ALLOWED.
I unfolded the four-foot-high black screen and set it at home plate. Orange reflective tape formed a square in the screen’s center to simulate the batter’s strike zone, and a long pocket lined the bottom to (theoretically) catch my pitches.
My pulse calmed as I ascended the mound with the bucket of balls. I was finally home.
In baseball, there’s a connection to the dirt that other sports lack. Standing at the plate or on the mound, you shimmy your feet, carve out your spot, find momentary stability on this tumultuous planet. And from that secure place, you draw power.
I warmed up for fifteen or twenty minutes, letting my arm get nice and loose from the shoulder down to my fingers. It’d been years since I’d practiced alone, with no one evaluating me but myself. By now I knew what felt right and what didn’t.
I got into a rhythm, fastball (two-seam and four-seam), changeup, knuckle curve, then started over. High and outside, low and away, straight down the middle. I didn’t count pitches, trusting my arm to tell me when it was tired.
Around 3 a.m., I’d just started working the inside of the plate when a car pulled into the parking lot. A heavyset guy got out with a dog, a large, rangy white mutt wearing a dark collar. It dragged its owner toward the ball field, huffing at the end of its leash.
When the man got to the gate, he saw me through the fence. “Oh. Sorry!” He started hurrying back toward his car, tugging the dog to join him.
I ran to the gate. “Wait, it’s okay! Come on in.”
“Are you sure? I’ll clean up after her, promise.” He held up a plastic grocery bag, his other hand gripping an object that glinted black in the moonlight.
I hesitated. That couldn’t be a gun. If he wanted to hurt me, why would he try to leave? But my mind couldn’t make sense of the shape.
I backed up toward the mound. The guy came through, latched the gate, then bent over and unfastened his dog’s leash. She ran in tight circles, sniffing the grass, stopped abruptly, and squatted. While she peed, her eyes examined me with vague interest.
The man saw my pitching net. “Oh, sorry.” He gave his close-cropped, sandy hair a self-conscious sweep of the hand. “I don’t want to mess up your practice. We can come back another time.”
“Like during the day when you’re not allowed inside?”
“Good point.” He dropped a can of tennis balls on the ground, and the dog started bouncing. “Lucy needs her exercise, that’s for sure. Problem is, my elbow’s been killing me since I turned forty last month, so I haven’t been able to throw for long. But I found this slingshot for dogs online.” He raised the black metal object that I’d imagined was a gun. “You load the ball,” he said, demonstrating, “hit this switch, and boom!” The tennis ball shot off into the night. Instead of chasing it, though, Lucy cringed and pulled her ears back. “She doesn’t like the snapping noise.”
I noticed the dog was staring at my right hand, which still held the baseball. “You want this?” I asked her.
She hustled over to the base of the mound and sat down, sharp and swift.
“That means ‘please,’ ” the guy said. “But you don’t want her slobbering all over your stuff.”
“No umpire’s here to call me on a spitball.” I stepped back onto the mound and launched the ball into center field. The dog shot off like she’d been fired from a cannon. “Wow, she’s fast.”
“The shelter said she might be part greyhound, part yellow lab.”
Lucy grabbed the ball in a one-hopper, spun on her heels, and raced back toward me. “Nice fielding.”
“You sure this is okay? You won’t hurt your arm?”
“Long tosses like this build strength,” I explained. “It’s not the distance or the number of throws that hurt you. It’s overthrowing when you’re tired or anxious. You lose your mechanics when you get desperate.” Lucy climbed the pitcher’s mound and dropped the ball right on the rubber. I threw it again, farther. “I could do this all night.”
“I appreciate it. That pup has more energy than she knows what to do with. If I don’t give her a good workout, she barks all day, gets me in trouble with the landlord.”
&nb
sp; “What about the dog parks?”
“They’re not open when I’m off work. This is the only place I’ve found.”
“So you’ve been here before.”
He scuffed his faded black sneakers against the grass. “A few times. Maybe a few dozen. I guess that makes me a hardened criminal.”
I laughed. “You and me both. If you don’t rat me out, I won’t rat you out.”
“Deal.” We fist-bumped on it. “Name’s Greg, by the way. I live over in St. Davids.”
“I’m David. Wayne. That’s where I live, I mean, not my last name.”
This time when Lucy returned the ball, I stepped off the mound so she wouldn’t claw up its dirt. Then I heaved a throw to right field. Watching her run in single-minded pursuit, I was swept through with an old familiar feeling: the joy of just following the ball.
After about fifteen minutes, Lucy started to tire, and wandered off to explore the outfield.
“Lots of grass to be sniffed,” the guy said. “You get back to work, okay?”
“Okay. And thank you.”
“For what?”
I put another ball in my glove, then hugged it against my chest. “For giving me someone to play with.”
CHAPTER 31
NOW
The vessel Sandy offers us is technically a boat, in that it floats and has the potential to contain a few people and their belongings.
“Where’s the motor?” I ask her, walking the length of the hull on the dock, which takes about two seconds.
“Here’s your motor.” She holds up an oar. “Put those biceps to good use.”
Due to a shortage of storage space, we load the boat with only the barest necessities: one tent, one sleeping bag, one blanket, a flashlight, matches, sunscreen, extra socks, a first aid kit, water purification tablets (since water itself is too heavy), and all the protein bars we can afford.
And a bag of hush puppies. I insisted.
Sandy draws us a rudimentary map of the lake, starring a few places along the way where the ground is level enough to camp. Then she circles our ultimate destination, Almost Heaven. Ezra was right: No roads lead there.
“You got about four hours of daylight left,” Sandy says as we step carefully into the boat. “You should make it a little less than halfway.” She unties the boat from the dock. “Good luck.”
We put on our life vests, and then, with some difficulty, we row out into the lake and face the right direction (with the pointy end leading the way—turns out, this is very important for efficiency). Sitting on the sternward seat, facing me, Mara pulls out a small purple paperback. “I can’t believe that worked.”
“What worked?” I ask her.
“Crying. I figured we’d tried reason, threats, even begging. The only option left was despair.”
I pause in my rowing. “You were faking those tears?”
“I was exaggerating. I felt sad and angry, but I can usually control my feelings around strangers. Then I remembered the scene from Wizard of Oz when Dorothy had gotten all the way to the palace and the guard wouldn’t let her through until she cried.” Mara flips through her book. “Maybe Sandy has a daughter my age, or maybe someone ditched her once. Anyway, we got this boat, for what it’s worth. I hope it’s worth a lot, because I feel sorta dirty for that embarrassing display I put on.”
“But what made you—”
“You’d said, ‘Toto, we’re not in suburbia anymore,’ so I guess I had Wizard of Oz on the brain.”
I take a brief rest, letting us cruise through the water. The crickets are already starting to chirp, signaling the approach of twilight.
Finally I ask her, “So am I the Scarecrow or the Tin Man? Don’t say the Cowardly Lion.”
“You did try to row us backward,” she points out, “so you could probably use a brain.”
I contemplate this for a moment. “And yet, I’m probably the only one between us who’s noticed a major logistical problem with this setup.”
“What’s that?”
“This boat only holds three people.”
Mara looks down at her seat, which could squeeze one more person, tops; then at my seat, where the only member of our family who could fit beside me would be Juno. Maybe Tod if he went on a diet.
“Well, the Scarecrow did turn out to be the smart one.”
CHAPTER 32
TWENTY-EIGHT (SUCKY) DAYS TO ONE (NOT-SO-SUCKY) DAY BEFORE THE RUSH
The Rapture books my parents forced on me took my usual slate of nightmares into a whole different realm of bizarreness. They also changed the way I viewed the daytime world. In the same way a cartoon cat would see a bird stroll by and imagine it to be a walking roasted turkey, I would look at the average person on the street and imagine them as skeletons or zombies. It was torture.
But every nonrainy night until the Rush, I went back to the ball field. I’d arrive at 2 a.m. for pitching practice, then at three o’clock Lucy and her dad would join me, and we would play. This is how I stayed in shape, kept my sanity, and felt a little less Abandoned.
On prom/Rush night, Mom and Dad didn’t come downstairs to see Mara and Sam off to the dance, so it was up to me to take pictures and pretend everything was normal.
Mara had Sam wait in the living room while she beckoned me into the kitchen. She retrieved Sam’s boutonniere from the refrigerator, along with a second plastic box, which she handed to me. “When I picked up my flowers, the florist said there was a second order for the last name Cooper. He brought these out.”
Bailey’s corsage. “Oh no, I forgot to cancel the order when I canceled the tux.”
“There’s no charge. I told them your girlfriend suddenly moved away.”
“Huh. That’s almost semi-true.”
“I know. Slick, huh?”
The cluster of roses and baby’s breath made me wonder how Bailey would’ve looked tonight, how her eyes would’ve shone in the light of the cheesy prom decorations. I wondered if she would’ve done her hair up like Mara’s, with little wisps on her cheeks and forehead, or if she would’ve worn it full and thick past her shoulders. I wondered how it would’ve looked in the pool and hot tub at Stephen Rice’s party.
“I’ll give these flowers to Mom for Mother’s Day tomorrow.”
“That’s nice. Maybe it’ll help her feel better.”
“Just please be home by two thirty. I don’t want to deal with Mom and Dad by myself when they realize the Rush isn’t happening.”
“I will, promise.” She put her hand on my arm. “Take care of them tonight, but don’t let them drive you crazy. Tomorrow, disaster recovery begins.”
I hoped she was right, but I feared that tomorrow would bring a whole new catastrophe.
• • •
After Mara and Sam left, Mom and Dad miraculously materialized for a family fun night, just the three of us. Mom made pizza from scratch, cooking the sauce sweet, the way I liked it. She had me knead the dough, a satisfying task for hands that hadn’t touched a girl in forty days. While the dough rose and the sauce simmered, we played the Proverbial Wisdom board game, then finally ate the pizza while watching A Christmas Carol.
Other than the unseasonal movie choice, the evening felt abnormally normal. The calm before the shitstorm.
I dozed off in the middle of the movie, just enough to get Scrooge’s hellacious journey jumbled up in my head, so that I dreamed of a black-robed Tiny Tim standing by the grave instead of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
“David.” Mom shook my shoulder. “We’re going to bed for a couple hours, so I suggest you do the same. We’ll set an alarm and wake you when it’s time.”
I looked at the clock through bleary eyes. Only eleven thirty. But thanks to my nightly jaunts to the ballpark, I’d slept terribly these last few weeks. The overdose of pizza had made my brain and body heavy.
Dad helped me to my feet and gave me a friendly pat on the back as he steered me toward the stairs. I offered him a ghost of a smile. Tomorrow it’ll all be ove
r, and Monday morning we’re calling a psychiatrist.
By the time I’d brushed my teeth, washed my face, and gotten in bed, I was nearly wide awake. I lay in the dark, listening to Johnny Cash’s At Folsom Prison album on my phone, thinking of where I’d be right now if I hadn’t made this bargain, until a renegade emo thought crossed my mind:
If the Rush does happen, I’ll never be alone again.
In the middle of “I Still Miss Someone,” my phone’s MP3 player paused as a message from Kane came in. He’d been texting me all evening with gossip about the other students at prom.
At SR’s party. Guess who’s here asking for you?
It could’ve been any of my teammates, or former classmates from Middle Merion Middle School, even Stephen Rice himself. I wasn’t in the mood to guess.
Who?
I’d barely hit send when the name came back.
Bailey.
• • •
Halfway out my bedroom window, dressed all in black, I was stopped by a sudden thought.
No, it’s not worth getting caught, I told myself.
But think of the look on Bailey’s face if I bring it, myself told I.
I groaned softly and shut the window, leaving it unlocked.
The upstairs hallway was silent and dark. I had about two hours before Mom and Dad’s alarm went off. I slunk downstairs, keeping close to the wall and avoiding the floor’s creaky spots.
The corsage box was still in the back of the fridge. I grabbed the bag and went to the back door. Now that I was already out of my room, I might as well leave the house the easy way. I shut off the backyard light, then turned the handle slowly, cringing as the paper bag rustled in my hand.
The flowers. Bailey. There was something else I needed from my room. Chances were good that my parents would discover I’d sneaked out. I could be grounded for sixty years, thus making this the de facto last night of my life.
I shut the door and went back upstairs.
The condoms were in my dresser’s squeakiest drawer, of course, because I am an idiot. I held my breath as I inched it open, lifting both sides of the drawer off their rollers.
This Side of Salvation Page 24
