Somehow, Cody doubted that would happen. But he had a feeling he’d be hearing from the big guy soon enough.
And he didn’t think Dante would be saying “Nice game.”
“Get ready for a beat down, fat boy!” were the exact words out of Dante’s mouth the next time they met.
This was at 7:30 the next morning, right after Cody stepped off the school bus at York Middle. There might have been more to his cheery greeting, but it was hard to tell because the thug had him in a headlock now and was dragging him around in a circle and squeezing his ears, like WWE wrestlers do before they ram their opponent’s head into the turnbuckle.
“I’m sick of your big ugly mug!” Dante snarled, digging his elbows into Cody’s face. “Time to rearrange it!”
It had all happened so fast. One minute Cody was making his way to the school’s side entrance with all the other kids; the next minute someone grabbed him from behind.
For an instant, Cody got a whiff of incredibly bad breath—had the guy eaten sardines and pepperoni for breakfast?—before Dante spun him around and got him in the headlock.
By now a crowd of students had gathered to watch, apparently assuming a butt-whipping would be more interesting than, say, first-period Algebra or English.
“Isn’t it a little early for this?” Cody managed to gasp before Dante tightened his grip even more.
Cody knew that none of the kids forming a circle around them would be jumping in to help him. No, he was still the new kid after all these weeks.
Oh, sure, his social status at York Middle had improved slightly in the last month. For one thing, he had finally graduated from the nerd/misfit table at lunch and now sat with Willie and Connor and Jordy, who were considered three of the coolest kids in eighth grade. But none of his new buddies was around now. And Cody knew he still wasn’t exactly Mr. Popular with the rest of the student body.
Besides, even if someone was brave enough—or foolish enough—to intervene, that would be only the beginning of the kid’s problems. Because not only would he have to deal with Dante, he’d also eventually have to deal with the infamous Rottweiler Twins.
As Dante snarled and squeezed and whirled him around, Cody quickly considered his options. They seemed limited at best.
He could hope one of the teachers on bus duty would spot the knot of whooping kids and come over and break it up. But with all the buses already here—Cody’s was usually the last to arrive—most of the teachers had already gone inside to their homerooms.
Or he could hope the sky would crack open and a large lightning bolt would land at Dante’s feet, creating an enormous fissure in the ground that would swallow him. The way it was looking now, the odds of that happening were actually better than the odds of a teacher saving him.
“How’s the air down there, fat boy?” Dante was saying now. “Getting hard to breathe?”
It sure was. Whatever you do, Cody told himself, don’t let them see you cry. That would be disastrous. By lunchtime it would be all over the school. Did you see that fat kid blubbering when Dante whupped him this morning? The little baby couldn’t stop crying! Oh, that would be all he needed.
But the tears were coming—he could feel it. His face was hot and sweaty, and he thought his head was going to pop like a grape any minute. Not to mention that he was getting really dizzy from all this whirling around. Now it felt like he was going to hurl too.
Great. He’d be a crying, puking mess—what a nice image that would be.
“Can we…talk?” Cody croaked. But Dante just squeezed harder. Apparently that was his way of saying no.
Suddenly, the grip around Cody’s head loosened. He heard the big guy cry out, “Owww! Hey, that hurt!”
And now another voice cut through the din, a familiar voice shouting, “Let him go, you big goon! Or I’ll kick you again!”
Shaking free of Dante, Cody looked up, rubbing his eyes. It was Jessica. She was in a karate stance now, her right leg coiled to deliver another looping blow. She wore a red sweatshirt with the hood up, strands of blond hair cascading down each shoulder.
Between his dizziness and his blurred vision, Cody wondered for an instant if he was dreaming. Or maybe Jessica really was some kind of secret modern-day superhero. Mild-mannered, crab-picking eighth grader one moment, avenging crusader for truth and justice the next.
She was definitely in the avenging mode now. Her eyes were narrow slits, her face an angry mask. Cody couldn’t believe it was the same happy-go-lucky girl he had shot hoops with the day before.
“Guess we should all be getting along to class,” Jessica said evenly.
Dante seemed as stunned to see this blond, hooded vigilante as Cody was. He stared at her slack-jawed, rubbing his sore arm as he considered his next move. But Cody could see something else in his expression now too.
Was it fear? Humiliation? Or a combination of the two? Cody wasn’t sure, but he had seen that look on his face once before—on that first day of practice, after Dante had missed the first two ground balls Coach had hit his way.
For several seconds, Dante said nothing. Then his shoulders sagged, and he picked his backpack off the ground.
“Okay, okay,” he muttered, shoving Cody aside. “We’ll pick this up later, fat boy.”
Dante began pushing his way through the knot of kids. Then he turned, shot one last look at Cody, and sneered. “You won’t always have a girl around to protect you.”
As the rest of the kids wandered off to class—did they seem disappointed not to see someone get pounded?—Cody slumped against the wall to catch his breath.
He wasn’t sure what bothered him most now: how scared he’d been of Dante, or how relieved he’d been when Jessica came to his aid like some pint-sized Wonder Woman.
Where did she learn all that karate stuff? As he was being smothered in a headlock, he hadn’t seen the kick she’d landed on Dante. It must have been a beauty. The guy would probably be rubbing his bruise all day.
Just then, Jessica walked over and smiled and put an arm on his shoulder.
“Wisconsin Boy,” she said softly, “what in the world have you gotten yourself into?”
Cody watched Prince Fielder saunter from the Milwaukee Brewers’ dugout to the on-deck circle, holding his thick bat by the barrel and gazing around nonchalantly. At the plate, the Brewers’ Ryan Braun was digging in against Baltimore Orioles right-hander Jeremy Guthrie. But Cody couldn’t take his eyes off his idol, the Prince of Power himself.
It was two days later, a warm Sunday afternoon, and Cody was watching his first game at Camden Yards, the downtown home of the Orioles. His dad called it “the Taj Mahal of ballparks.” By Googling it Cody discovered that the Taj Mahal was a famous building in India. After reading that it was considered one of the most beautiful structures in the world, Cody understood what his dad meant.
Yes, Camden Yards was eye-popping. The grass was a deep, shimmering green—the greenest grass he’d ever seen—mowed in long, perfect diagonal rows. The reddish infield dirt looked as smooth as the felt on a pool table. Cody couldn’t imagine a ground ball ever taking a bad hop. And the imposing B&O Warehouse, with its brick facade, loomed behind the right-field stands. If you were a lefty slugger standing in the batter’s box, he thought, it must look close enough to touch.
Cody had been to Miller Park in Milwaukee to see the Brewers play lots of times—it was only forty minutes from his old house. But Camden Yards was even nicer. That the Orioles were playing the Brewers in a rare interleague matchup made the day even more special.
“Sorry I couldn’t get better seats,” Steve Parker said, grinning.
“Yeah, you gotta work on that,” Cody said, sipping his lemonade.
“Is this really the best you could do, Steve?” his mom added.
The seats had been a running joke between the three of them all afternoon. Because the fact was, they were sitting in section 36, right behind home plate, courtesy of one of his dad’s fellow detectives, who had season
tickets and knew Cody was a big Brewers fan.
Cody had never been this close to Prince Fielder before. What he loved about Prince more than anything was how he carried himself: at 260 pounds, he seemed totally at ease with his weight. On JockBio.com, Cody had read that as a kid, Fielder had even appeared in a McDonald’s triple cheeseburger commercial with his father, Cecil.
But Cody’s favorite story about Prince was this: When he played for the minor-league Nashville Sounds, the guy had to wear number 66. The jerseys were assigned according to size, and he couldn’t fit into anything smaller. The only bigger uniform the Sounds handed out that year was to their mascot, Ozzie the tiger, who wore number 68.
Watching Prince take lazy practice swings at the plate now, the bat ending up high over his right shoulder on his perfect follow-through, Cody found himself smiling. His favorite poster of Prince—the one that dominated one wall of his basement—featured the Brewers slugger in an almost identical pose after blasting another mammoth home run. Thinking of his basement made Cody realize he was growing a little less homesick for Milwaukee each day. He was getting used to his new house, with its cozy backyard and big basement, the basement he had basically turned into his own baseball shrine, complete with photos of all the teams he’d been on and posters of his favorite major leaguers. He had even set up an indoor batting cage down there—well, for Wiffle Ball, anyway—complete with netting and a pitcher’s mound made of old couch cushions.
If only things were better at school, Cody thought. Especially with one particular classmate…
Thinking of Dante, Cody felt the familiar hollow pit in his stomach. Now it looked as if Dante would never leave him alone—unless Cody hired Jessica as his full-time bodyguard. Sure, that would look good. Already the other kids were mocking him for letting a girl come to his rescue. Still, he was totally in awe of Jessica’s courage. The way she had confronted Dante and refused to back down, even when he gave her that creepy Dante stare—Cody had never seen anything like it. Not outside of a Hollywood movie, anyway.
On the bus ride home from school that day, Jessica had explained that she had taken karate lessons since she was four years old. She loved it, she said, almost as much as baseball and softball. She was close to getting her black belt.
“My dad says I kick like a mule,” she had told Cody.
Remind me never to tick off this girl, Cody thought. Better not foul her too hard in hoops.
Yeah, good ol’ Jessica had definitely saved him from a beat down. That fact made it even harder for him to tell his parents about what was going on between him and Dante. Admit he was scared and a girl came to his rescue? Oh, no. Way, way too embarrassing.
Just then they heard a loud CRACK! and a roar went up from the crowd. Cody looked up just in time to see Prince drop his bat and admire his latest titanic blast, the ball soaring in the direction of the warehouse and landing out by the concession stands.
“All right, Prince!” Cody yelled, jumping from his seat and drawing annoyed looks from the Orioles fans around him.
Well, excuse me, Cody thought, sitting back down. Didn’t realize it was against the law to cheer for your team.
The rest of the game was exciting, with the Orioles eventually pulling out a 2–1 win thanks to home runs by Luke Scott and Adam Jones. But the minute it was over, Cody found himself worrying about Dante again. He was still brooding when he and his parents stopped at a restaurant across the street from the stadium.
Cody ordered a cheeseburger and told the waiter to hold the fries, even though they were about his favorite food in the whole world. But when the burger arrived, Cody took two bites and pushed his plate away, announcing he wasn’t very hungry after all.
Steve Parker put down his fork and studied his son.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “Tell us about Dante jumping you the other day.”
Cody’s eyes widened.
He was so busted.
Cody was tongue-tied and brain-locked all at once.
“But how did you…?” he finally blurted.
“Mr. Hoffman told us,” Steve Parker said. “Jessica came home from school with a bruised foot. She said it was from a karate kick. Her dad made her tell him what happened.”
Cody stared down at his plate. Now he had really lost his appetite—possibly forever. His dizzying ride on Dante’s Headlock Tilt-A-Whirl was about the last thing he wanted to discuss with his parents. But, judging by the expressions on their faces, there would be no changing the subject.
So Cody ran through the whole embarrassing story, starting with the competition at third base, Dante’s threats, and the evening he sent Cody on his swan dive through the gravel. Then Cody told them about this latest run-in with York Middle’s Bully of the Year candidate and Jessica’s heroic intervention, like she was some kind of new Karate Kid.
When he was through, his mom and dad looked at each other and shook their heads softly.
“Maybe in ten years or so, when she gets out of college, we can get Jessica to join the police force,” his dad said. “Sounds like a pretty brave girl.”
Cody nodded morosely. He poked idly at his burger and said quietly, “Way braver than I was.”
His mom patted his arm and said, “Tell us about this Dante.”
“For starters he’s big and mean, with long, stringy black hair,” Cody said. “Sort of like a young Professor Snape. You know, in the Harry Potter movies? Only uglier.”
“Yikes.”
“He’s older too. He looks like he shaves.”
“That would explain a few things,” his mom said.
“And he always looks ticked off. Like instead of saying hi, he wants to knee you in the groin.”
“Sounds like a charmer,” his mom said.
“He’s got two older brothers too,” Cody said. “Vincent and Nick.”
“Bet they have the same sweet personality.”
“The kids call them the Rottweiler Twins,” Cody said.
His mom nodded and said, “Because they’re so cute and fuzzy.”
“Mess with Dante,” Cody went on, “and they mess with you—only twenty times worse. That’s what all the kids say.”
“Great,” his mom said. She sipped her iced tea. “A nasty teenager with muscle behind him. Maybe your dad should get a jail cell ready right now.”
Steve Parker nodded, but remained quiet.
“But it’s funny,” Cody continued. “I’ve seen this look on his face. Like he’s scared, only he doesn’t want anyone to know.”
“Maybe he is scared,” Kate Parker said. “Everyone’s scared of something.”
The waitress arrived and began clearing the dishes. When she had finished and gone off to get the check, Cody’s dad leaned forward and clasped his hands together in front of him. He furrowed his brow and cleared his throat.
Cody recognized the body language right away: his dad was in full problem-solving mode. This is what policemen do; they take action. If a bad guy commits a crime, they think: How do we arrest him and throw him in jail? If an injustice has been committed, their first reaction is, how do we fix it?
“Okay,” he said quietly, “now it’s time to get Dante to leave you alone. And you have to be the one to do it. Agreed?”
Cody nodded. “That’s the part that’s scary,” he said.
“Yep, I remember the feeling,” his dad said. “If we called your principal or your teachers, it could get worse, not better. We need to try something else first. We just need a plan.…”
He stirred his coffee, seemingly lost in thought, and went on. “He’s bigger than you. And stronger too. So a physical confrontation might not be, um, wise.…”
“Not unless you want to see me in the emergency room,” Cody said mournfully.
“Jessica probably scared him ’cause she knew martial arts—or looked like she knew them, anyway,” his dad said. “But you say he’s seemed scared at other times.…Maybe we can work with that. The key is to find something that unsettles him. Like s
nakes did with Max Wheeler…”
“I have a feeling Dante eats snakes for breakfast,” Cody said. “Maybe for lunch and dinner too.”
“Unless we try something really radical…” his dad said suddenly.
He pulled a ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket and scribbled a couple of sentences on a napkin. Then he pushed the napkin in front of Cody.
Cody couldn’t believe what it said, so he read it twice. Then he passed it to his mom, who scanned it and burst out laughing.
“That’s the big plan?!” Cody said. “That’ll get Dante to leave me alone?!”
“I’ve seen it work before,” his dad said, grinning. “Sometimes you have to think outside the box.”
“OUTSIDE THE BOX?!” Cody almost shouted. “Dad, that’s outside the planet! No, that’s outside the entire universe!”
Then again, what did he have to lose? If he continued to let Dante torture him, he’d end up like one of those nerdy kids who went through life cringing and trying to disappear before someone said something mean to them or tripped them in the hallway or pushed them into a locker.
He stared down at the napkin again. It was the wackiest plan he had ever heard of.
“Okay,” he said. “But if this doesn’t work, it was nice knowing you both.”
Cody was surprised to be in a good mood when he arrived at Eddie Murray Field the next day for the game against the Tigers. For openers, he had gotten a 98 on his social studies test, with his teacher announcing that it was the highest mark in the class. Even better, Dante hadn’t popped out of a gym locker or burst from a storage closet to beat on him, which meant Cody hadn’t been forced to try out his so-called plan, which was probably going to result in his face being rearranged in any case.
As he changed into his spikes, he saw Dante off by himself down the third base line, stretching. When their eyes met, Dante scowled and quickly looked away. Yep, Cody thought, the big lug still loves me.
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