by Carl Deuker
I stopped. Was it a false alarm? Had I walked out on my team for nothing?
Mom had turned back and was approaching me. Before she reached me, her phone rang. She turned her back to me and covered one ear so she could take the call.
That’s when I heard the laughing. Not funny laughing, but mean laughing. Where was it coming from? I looked across the street and saw an alley I hadn’t noticed before. I looked back to Mom. She was still on the phone, her back to me.
I couldn’t wait.
A cement truck was rumbling down the street, but I raced across anyway. The driver laid on his horn, but I kept going until I reached the entrance to the alley. At first I had trouble seeing, but then my eyes adjusted to the gloom. At the bottom of the alley, three guys, hoodies up, were kicking at something. When I spotted Garrett’s black Subaru parked on the road at the far end of the alley, I knew what they were kicking.
“Stop it!” I screamed as I started toward them. One of the guys took a couple of steps toward me.
“You don’t want to come down here,” he shouted, waving something in his hand.
I kept moving forward. There were probably forty yards between us, about the distance from second base to home plate. In all the roar from the cars on the bridge, I could just make out the wailing of police sirens. The guy staring me down heard the sirens, too. “Yo!” he called over his shoulder, his arm pointing in the direction of the sirens. “Let’s roll!”
The guy turned back to face me. “I told you to stop!” he screamed. The sirens were louder, the police cars closing in.
Suddenly the guy turned and started running. Then all three them were running, heading down and out of the alley. When they reached the street, the first guy turned back. I heard pop . . . pop . . . pop, saw sparks on the ground, and felt a burning pain. I grabbed at my left leg. It was warm and wet—blood. I looked up to see a car speed away, heading east toward the Fremont district. Then I looked down again at my left thigh, at the blood staining my white baseball pants.
“Antonio!” Mom was racing down the alley toward my brother, who was curled in a ball, moaning. She stopped when she saw the blood on my hands and on my jersey. “Laz! What happened!”
“I think m-maybe I g-got shot,” I managed.
Mom took off her scarf and shoved it into my hand. “Sit down right there, right where you are. Press down. Hard. I’m going to check Antonio. Then I’ll be back.”
I nodded.
That’s when the bicyclists showed up: two women, at the top of the alley—neon green shirts, flashing white lights. “You need help down there?” one of them called.
* * *
What happened after that is hazy. I heard more sirens, saw a cop car, a second cop car, a medic aide car. I remember one of the bicyclists sitting next to me and the other one putting her coat around my shoulders. I heard Curtis telling me I was going to be okay, and then a paramedic was checking me. Down the alley, I could see another team of paramedics working on Antonio. He was lying flat on his back with a brace around his neck. I remember wondering whether that was a good or bad sign.
A gurney appeared. The paramedics helped me onto it and had me lie down. As they wheeled me to an ambulance, Mom ran her hand over my forehead and said something I couldn’t make out. The paramedics slid me into the back of the ambulance and closed the door. I couldn’t see Antonio. “Is my brother okay?” I asked, but no one answered.
Twelve
Ballard Hospital is three blocks from the Ballard Bridge, so I wasn’t in the ambulance more than a couple of minutes. The paramedics talked about starting an IV, but decided against it. “He’ll be in the ER before I find a vein,” the female paramedic said to her partner. Vomit came to the top of my throat, but I didn’t puke.
Once we reached the hospital, the paramedics wheeled me into an examining room and transferred me to something that was part bed and part table. A nurse with red glasses and red hair hooked up an IV; a thin man with a gray beard examined my leg.
“You’ve got a bullet stuck in your thigh,” he said, his voice angry. “But looking at how shallow that wound is, I’d say you got hit on a ricochet. A direct hit to your femoral artery and you could have bled to death before anyone reached you.”
“I saw s-sparks on the g-ground j-just before it hit me.”
He frowned. “Yeah? Well, those sparks may have saved your life. Now keep still and let me get this out of you.”
I lay back. They numbed my leg and then put up a screen so I couldn’t see anything, but I could sort of feel the doctor digging around. Finally he stopped. “You’ll go to x-ray next. A chunk of your leg is torn up, but your body will take care of that.”
“Th-thanks,” I said.
He snorted. “You know how you can thank me? Don’t get shot. Don’t get stabbed. Don’t OD. That’s how you can thank me.”
Mom came while I was waiting for them to take me to the x-ray room. “The doctor says you’re going to be fine,” she whispered as she leaned in and kissed me. “Just a flesh wound. How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay. H-How’s Antonio?”
She started to speak, then choked up, then started again. “He’s bleeding inside. They need to operate. I’ll be with him for a while, but I’ll be back here to check on you, or Curtis will.”
A nurse came in. “They’re ready to take some pictures.”
Mom ruffled my hair and left.
The x-ray technician was a young guy. “You’re one lucky dude,” he said as he adjusted my leg under the machine. “If that bullet was a few inches over, you’d be singing in the girls’ choir—if you get what I mean.” He was grinning, but I’d already thought of that, and I didn’t think it was funny.
He wheeled me back into my room, told me a nurse would be coming by, and left. Around me, medical equipment hummed. I looked at the clock: it was 8:55. The voices in the hallway sounded farther and farther away.
I closed my eyes.
Thirteen
Curtis woke me. First thing, I asked about Antonio.
“They’re going to remove his spleen,” he said. “It’s not good, but these doctors know what they’re doing. You’ll stay here until he comes out of surgery, and then your mom or I will take you back to the apartment. A couple of hours. Maybe three. You can do that, right?”
I nodded.
Curtis stepped aside. Behind him was a man I hadn’t seen. “This is Detective Wasserman. He’s got questions for you. You’re grown up, so you do what you want, but here’s my advice. If Antonio screwed up, then he screwed up. If you screwed up, then you screwed up. Tell the truth, pay the bills, move on.”
After Curtis left, Detective Wasserman asked questions and I answered them. Garrett, his sister, Antonio, Dustin, the back fence, the Subaru—I told him everything. The only time he pushed me was when I said I didn’t know what the guys in the alley looked like. “Come on, Laz. White, black, Hispanic? Tall, short, fat, skinny? You must know something.”
“They were wearing h-hoodies. It was dark, and besides I wasn’t l-looking at them. I was looking at my brother. And then the one g-guy started r-running, and then they were all r-running, and then I g-got shot.”
He grunted. “So, you got nothing for me? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m n-not lying. I’d tell you if I knew.” I paused. “M-Maybe Antonio c-can tell you.”
He stared me down. “Maybe he can,” he said, and then put his notepad away. “Anything you want to ask me?”
I swallowed. “Will Antonio go to j-jail?”
Detective Wasserman shook his head. “By the time those guys got done with him, your brother had nothing. No drugs. No money. No phone. No wallet. Nothing. The guys who beat him took it all. So we’ve got nothing on him.” He pointed his finger at me and almost smiled. “But your brother didn’t get off, did he? And neither did you. Both of you could have died tonight. Don’t ever forget that.”
After he left, I lay back and stared at the ceiling. In biology
I’d learned something about the spleen, but I couldn’t remember what.
I watched the second hand go round and round the face of the wall clock. It reminded me of runners going from base to base. The championship game was over. I thought about texting Hadley to get the final score, but my cell phone was in my duffle bag, and that was tucked away in a corner of the Mariners dugout. My clothes and wallet were in the duffle, too. And I’d just dropped my new glove at the railing. Would anybody bother to bring my stuff back to Laurelhurst?
Fourteen
It was midnight when Mom finally came back. Antonio was out of surgery, and he was doing okay, but he’d have to remain at the hospital for a while. “Curtis will stay with him tonight. You and I will go to the apartment and come back in the morning, or at least I will.”
“I want to c-come b-back.”
“We’ll see how you feel.”
The nurses made me sit in a wheelchair in the lobby until Mom brought the Corolla to the front of the hospital. They also gave me crutches, though I could tell I wouldn’t need them for long. My leg was sore, nothing more.
As Mom drove over Phinney Ridge toward Aurora Avenue, I asked her what the spleen did. She gave a small shake of her head. “It filters the blood. Infections will be a big deal for Antonio for the rest of his life, but the doctor said that if you’ve got to lose something, the spleen is better than almost anything else.”
After that, she went quiet. I leaned my head against the cool glass as the miles clicked away.
Once we were in the apartment, she pointed to Antonio’s room. “Sleep in there. He must have clothes that’ll fit you. Sweatpants, at least. Tomorrow we’ll get your stuff from those people and get you moved back in here.”
“What about the r-rules—”
“Don’t worry about that. Right now, the thing you need to do is sleep.”
Minutes later, I was lying on Antonio’s bed, totally exhausted but somehow wide-awake. Lights from passing cars danced across the ceiling. If I moved my leg a little, it hurt a lot, so I lay flat on my back, thinking first about Antonio and then about the baseball game. I wanted Laurelhurst to win. I wanted Coach Vereen to get his title and Mr. Thurman to see Ian holding the trophy. I wanted Hadley to be part of a championship team. I wanted the kids at Laurelhurst to remember all the games I did pitch, not the one game I walked away from.
Then I remembered: Mom kept her laptop on a table by the sofa.
I could get the score.
As I wriggled out of bed, my leg started throbbing. I hopped out to the front room, opened up the Seattle Times webpage, clicked Prep Sports, and then Baseball. The page went blank for a split second before the headline appeared.
Gonzaga Prep Takes State Title
Defeats Laurelhurst 13–10
By Clay Pearson
It took a while for the words to sink in. Ian had a home run and a double. Jay had two doubles and three RBI. Hadley threw out a base stealer and scored a run.
But the pitching?
Eight walks. Eleven hits. Two home runs. Four doubles.
There was no way Gonzaga’s hitters would have pounded me like that. No way in the world. I’d have beaten them. I’d have led Laurelhurst to the title. I’d have made the fairy tale come true, and everyone at Laurelhurst knew it. Andrew Robosky was the losing pitcher, but I was the reason we lost.
I was about to log off when I saw, in tiny print just below the box score, one final paragraph.
The Seattle Times has learned that Laurelhurst’s star pitcher, 19-year-old Laz Weathers, suffered a gunshot wound Friday night in an incident in Ballard. A seventeen-year-old companion of Weathers (the Seattle Times does not publish the names of juveniles) was hospitalized with serious injuries incurred in the same incident. Seattle Police Department’s Drug/Gang Unit is investigating.
I dragged myself back to Antonio’s room and lay down on his bed, my head swimming. Sometime in the night, the shakiness gave way to exhaustion, and I fell asleep.
Fifteen
When I awoke, my mother was moving about in the kitchen. I dressed quickly and hobbled out to join her. “How’s the leg?” she asked.
“It hurts, b-but it already hurts less. Any word on Antonio?”
She was adding milk to a cup of steaming coffee. “He’s still in the intensive care unit,” she said, not looking up. “Curtis is at the hospital. I’m going after I finish this. You feel up to coming?”
“Yeah.”
She motioned with her head toward the refrigerator. “There’s milk and cereal. Eat something.”
I filled a bowl with Wheaties and poured milk over the top. When I sat down at the table, she put her coffee down. “Sorry about your game.” She sipped her coffee and waited. I didn’t answer. There was nothing to say.
“Laz, call those people you’ve been living with. Tell them you’ll be moving out.” She paused. “Do you have your phone with you?”
I shook my head. “It’s in my d-duffle bag, and that’s at the ballpark.”
She got her cell from her purse and slid it to me. “Use mine.”
I opened up her phone and then stopped. “I don’t know the n-number.”
We looked at each other, and then her eyes flashed. “I’ve got their phone number,” she said. “The woman—Catherine—she gave me her business card that day we dropped you off.”
Mom took out her wallet, rooted through some cards, and handed one to me. Then she took her coffee to the sofa as I punched in the numbers. Mrs. Thurman answered on the second ring, her voice filled with concern. “Are you all right? We read in the newspaper—”
“I’m f-fine,” I said, and then, without stuttering too much, I managed to explain that the doctor said I’d be back to normal within a month. After a pause, I told her that I’d be moving back with my mom.
“I understand,” she said. “We’re going to Suncadia Resort today. All of us. We need to get away. I’ll have Ian box up your belongings and put everything on the front porch, toward the maple tree. If you could drop the house key into the mail slot, that’d be great. And, Laz, Ian brought your duffle back from the ballpark, so you don’t have to worry about retrieving that. It’ll be on the porch with everything else.”
Thirty minutes later I was standing by Antonio’s hospital bed. His face was puffy, his eyes black slits. Even his ears were swollen. I listened as the doctor, a tall woman with short black hair and a thin face, told Mom that Antonio had come through the surgery okay, but he was still in bad shape. “Bruised kidney . . . Bruised liver . . . Concussion.”
The list went on and on. “We’re going to keep him here so we can monitor him closely.”
After the doctor left, we pulled up chairs and sat close to Antonio’s bed. Occasionally he mumbled something. His eyes would shut for a while, and then he’d open them and mumble something else.
Around noon, Mom told Curtis to go back to the apartment. “You need sleep.” Then she looked at me. “Do you think those people have your stuff ready?”
“Yeah.”
“What people? What stuff?” Curtis asked.
Antonio moaned.
“Laz will explain,” Mom whispered.
* * *
I was nervous about being alone in the car with Curtis, afraid he’d blame me for what had happened. But it was the opposite. “You saved my son’s life,” he said as we drove toward Laurelhurst. “If you hadn’t left that game, those punks would have beaten him to death. I owe you. I’ll always owe you.”
The boxes and my duffle bag were right where Mrs. Thurman said they’d be. Ian had retrieved my new baseball glove, too. He’d put it on top of the duffle, so it was the first thing I saw. Curtis loaded all my stuff into the truck; he wouldn’t let me help. “I hope we get out of here without getting stopped by the police,” he said, only half joking, as he backed out of the Thurmans’ driveway. “Package theft and all that. My pickup doesn’t exactly fit the neighborhood profile.”
He relaxed when we were out of Laurelhu
rst and headed to Aurora Avenue, which is when I got nervous. Would the Woodacres manager kick them out when he found I was living there?
“I’ll start looking for a p-place to live,” I said when we reached the apartment and Curtis was carrying my stuff inside. “I know I c-can’t stay here.”
He yawned. “Don’t sweat it. The manager likes us; he’ll cut us some slack. I’d say you’ve got until August first. Maybe September first.” He raised his arms above his head and yawned again. “I’m going to crash and then head back to the hospital this afternoon. You need anything?”
I shook my head.
He went into the bedroom and closed the door.
Once I was alone, I went through my boxes. I didn’t unpack—there was no place to put anything—but I did some organizing. At the bottom of the last box, I felt something metallic: the laptop. I opened it and found a note from Mrs. Thurman. “Keep this, Laz. It’s no good to us sitting in a closet.”
My cell had a bunch of messages, but only five percent of battery life remained. I connected my phone to Antonio’s charger, which was plugged into the one outlet in his room, and then sat with my back against the wall. I was scheduled to work that day, so I called Mr. Matsui.
“The newspaper says you got shot,” he said as soon as he heard my voice. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. I got hit on a r-ricochet, so it’s not l-like I was shot shot. I can’t w-work today, b-but I should be able to w-work n-next weekend.”
There was a pause. “Laz, I don’t want trouble here. Just a few more weeks and we’re closed for good. If some gang is after you . . .”
“Nobody’s after m-me. There won’t b-be any tr-trouble.”
Another pause. “I don’t know, Laz. For right now, I think you should just stay away. I’ll call you if things change.”
After I disconnected, I stared at my cell phone. It was one o’clock on Saturday afternoon. Eighteen hours earlier I’d been standing on the mound at a major-league ballpark, on the verge of a professional baseball career. And what had happened since then? I’d walked out on my team, been shot in an alley, lost my room at the Thurmans, and now I’d lost my job, too.
