Center Field

by Robert Lipsyte

  “Is it true?”

  He felt defensive. “I wasn’t pissed because he was Dominican.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” she said quickly, putting a long, slim hand on his arm. He was sorry when she took it away. “I remembered what you said about center field at the senior center. It was so poetic.”

  “Just babbling. I felt stupid.”

  “It was great.” She gave him a funny little smile. “I should send it to Billy Budd. He’d love it. Even Zack was blown away.”

  “Right.”

  “You know, Zack was embarrassed by what happened between you two. He’s not like that. He gets intense, but he’s not a total jerk. He just doesn’t have social skills. He really cares about what he’s doing.”

  He blurted, “You two, um, like going together?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not into that these days.”

  They wandered the East Village. Mike enjoyed just being with her, watching her quick, smooth movements as she spun in and out of crowds to shoot. He imagined the body under the warm-up suit. She shot an Indian family and black basketball players. A junkie started hassling her, backed off when Mike stepped between them. She looked grateful. Dumb jock bodyguard, he thought. Everybody needs one.

  They stopped at an outdoor café for coffee and cake. There were other couples. He felt like they were one.

  “How’s your ankle?”

  It took him a moment to remember his sore ankle. “It’s been okay. Your knee?”

  “I’m starting to put some weight on it. We should run.”

  “If I can keep up.”

  She wrote something on a piece of napkin and gave it to him. “Call me when you feel like running. Really just jogging for now.”

  She looked at her watch. “I better call Zack. We’re supposed to meet up about now, to go home. It’s his van, but he hates to drive in the city.”

  He nodded. He wasn’t ready for the day to end.

  “You said you’re meeting your sister, right?”

  He felt caught in the lie. “Right.” He paid the check. He hoped it wasn’t the only next time.

  “That was fun,” she said. She kissed him on the cheek before she jogged away. He couldn’t move until she was out of sight. He was confused. Is she coming on to me?

  He thought about calling Tiffany. Or just ringing her doorbell. She lived in a walk-up apartment with her daughter, Sophia, who was almost four. Mom had seen them a couple of weeks ago. She called the apartment a dump. But she had to admit that Tiffany, for once, seemed happy. She had a waitress job nearby and a friend who babysat. He liked Tiffany and Sophia, but he didn’t have much to say to them.

  He circled Tiffany’s block twice, trying to walk off the chunks of fat hardening in his stomach and decide whether or not to ring her bell. He knew she would be glad to see him, but then what? Be embarrassing. Somehow he knew Kat would ask him about his sister when he saw her again and he didn’t want to lie.

  The downstairs buzzer had an OUT OF ORDER sign and while he stared at the T. Semak label with its smiley face, a guy unlocked the lobby door and let him in. He walked up three flights of shabby stairs. Food and pot smells roiled his stomach, disturbing the fat chunks. He knocked on Tiffany’s door. He could hear the TV inside. Sounded like a kid’s cartoon.

  “Yeah? Who?” It didn’t sound like her. The peephole clicked open.

  “It’s Mike. I was just in the neighborhood….”

  “I recognize you.” The door opened and a squat person in a sweatshirt and jeans was grinning at him. Buzz-cut blond hair. He couldn’t tell if it was male or female. “The baseball brother, right? Your picture’s on her screensaver. I’m her friend, Arlene.” She grabbed his hand and pumped. Strong grip. “She’s working. Wanna come in?”

  “No, thanks, I gotta go. Just tell her I stopped by.”

  “Say hello to Sophia?”

  “Next time, I’ll come back.” He sidestepped down the hall, waving at Arlene until he got to the stairs, turned and hurried down. What’s wrong with you? You could’ve said hello to the kid. Then what? You afraid of Arlene? Probably wanted to talk ball. Bet she’s a Yankee fan, too.

  I just didn’t want to get out of the mood, he thought. I got Kat on my mind. That’s enough right now.

  He walked all the way to Times Square and took a bus home. He turned on his cell. There were texts from Lori. He felt as though he had been cheating on her. She’d want to know about today. Not going to tell her about Katz’s for sure. His mind felt jumbled. What was he going to tell Cody? He didn’t care about the pukes, but he didn’t want Kat to get involved.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Mom and Dad had come home late from the new store on Saturday night and went back early Sunday morning, leaving him notes and food he couldn’t eat. He woke Sunday to his stomach churning. Was it still the strange meats at Katz’s or everything else? Kat. Center field. What was he going to tell Coach on Monday? It wasn’t just about ratting out Zack and the Cyber Club, it would be ratting out Kat.

  He wished he understood her. He needed to talk to her. Carefully, he opened the napkin she had written on. He had two false starts before he took a deep breath and punched her numbers.

  “Huh?” She sounded like she had been asleep.

  “I wake you?”

  She hung up.

  He called back.

  “Wha?” Asleep or drugged, he thought.

  “It’s Mike.”

  “Mike.”

  “I thought you might like to run. Take a break, clear your head.”

  There was a pause. “I was up all night. Editing. On deadline.”

  “The Social Issues Project?”

  “I’ll tell you sometime.” She sounded cold, far away. She hung up.

  Probably something for Zack. Something they didn’t trust him with knowing. He felt rejected. She didn’t sound at all like the girl he had been with yesterday. Had she changed her mind about a next time or had that kiss been a goodbye not a come-on? Hey, Mak, it’s not always about you. He remembered what Tori had said about mood swings. But maybe it was his call that had swung her mood into the toilet.

  He took a long bike ride to the community college track, the best in the county, and tested the ankle at different speeds. He ran backward and sideways. It seemed okay.

  On the way back he stopped at Andy’s house. As usual, Andy’s parents were glad to see him. They thought he was a good influence. They insisted he stay for dinner. He lied and said his parents were expecting him. Andy was in his room with the door locked. He opened it a crack when Mike pounded, then let him in quickly. He was watching a debate on C-Span.

  “I need to talk to you,” said Mike.

  “What about?” Andy switched to alert mode. He loved new information.

  “Coach is on my back. To spy on the Cyber Club. He wants evidence that they’re hacking into school files, that they’re doing stuff to undermine the administration.”

  “Are they?”

  “Sounds like it.”

  “Best thing I ever heard about them.”

  “I don’t know what to do.” As soon as he said it, he felt better. The churning slowed. Billy said that sometimes you need a friend to share your problems. It’s okay to ask for help.

  “You don’t owe those lefties anything.”

  “I’m not a snitch,” said Mike.

  “It’s not snitching, it’s counterterrorism. Jack Bauer in 24, best show on the tube.”

  “C’mon. You’re the guy calls Coach some kind of dictator.”

  “Sometimes you need one. You think Oscar’s the only illegal in school?”

  “Coach brought him in.” His stomach started churning again.

  “There you go,” said Andy. “Need I say more?”

  “You’re not making any sense. Whose side are you on?”

  “You got to play all sides. You think Oscar just kind of wandered into Ridgedale, ‘Hola, amigos, you got a béisbol team?’” Andy laughed to himself. “Cody recruited
him. Found him somewhere, got him set up. Maybe a job for a member of his family.”

  Mike thought of Ferdy. Had Coach talked to Dad about hiring him? Part of the deal they cut after he pushed Zack?

  Andy said, “So what was it the geeks were talking about?”

  “Something called On-High dot org. Kids from different schools sharing information.”

  “That would scare old Cody. And a lot of other people. Especially once the kids put up stuff they’ve hacked. The next terrorist attack is going to come from cyberspace.”

  “You heard of Ridgedalesucks dot com?”

  “Sure.” Andy flopped down at his desk and tapped on his laptop. Mike watched over his shoulder as Ridgedalesucks.com came up. It was a flashy website, but most of the columns and posts were attacks on individual teachers for being boring, giving low grades, or smelling bad. There were whiny complaints about fungi in the basement, rat feces in the cafeteria, and dangerous conditions in the chem lab. The sports column was mostly rants about jocks getting grades they didn’t deserve and acting like assholes in the hallway. There was an item about a star pitcher who might be taking steroids when he wasn’t busy getting drunk at his parties.

  “That’s Craig,” said Andy. “Probably true.”

  “Try Codywatch.”

  Coach in his camo filled the screen. It looked like a cell phone picture of the photo in his office. Up close, the hard, tough grin was intimidating. Underneath it read: “Who is this man?” There wasn’t much on the site yet, except Cody’s résumé on file with the school board and a call for information and opinions.

  “This is pretty pathetic for an underground site,” said Andy.

  “They’re just getting started,” said Mike.

  “You get to hang out with Tigerbitch?”

  Mike shook his head no. He wanted to talk about her, but not right now with Andy.

  On Monday he felt numb and nervous waiting for Cody to summon him out of class and grill him about Saturday. He still didn’t know what he was going to say. At lunch Lori barely talked to him. She pretended she couldn’t tear loose from her latest vampire novel. She’s rejecting me, too, he thought, but I don’t care. Tori and their mom had gone into the city to see a specialist about Tori’s sinus infection. It had made her too shaky to do their fire dance routine with its flaming sticks over the weekend. Their devil stick routine, which wasn’t as spectacular or dangerous, got them second place to a couple of girls they thought they should have beaten. Mike had the feeling that Lori was pissed at him for not answering her calls.

  Dr. Ching’s class worked through the equations to solve the bulldozer problem. The first one was the width of the field equals the time until the bulldozers first passed convoluted with the sum of the two bulldozers’ speed. It wasn’t that hard but Mike couldn’t focus. He watched the door for Cody. He thought, There is no one I can talk to.

  At practice the coaches reviewed the hitting clinic. It had been a good one. Mike felt left behind. Coach Cody never even looked at him. He spent most of the time working with Oscar on his follow-through. One of the pro coaches had brought it up at the clinic.

  After practice Mike lifted for an hour to drain off the energy buzzing in his body. By the time he rode out of the varsity lot, rain clouds had gathered, darkening the early evening.

  He was on a quiet side street with no sidewalks, riding close to tall bushes hiding the houses on the other side, when he sensed a car slowly coming up behind him. He held the bike steady to let it pass.

  He heard an angry curse and turned in time to see spiky black hair and a tattooed neck through the passenger window of a white van. The door opened and became a metal wall that slammed him off his bike. The van sped away.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  He scrambled up yelling, looking for a rock to throw. The van careened around a corner. By the time he untangled the bike from the bushes alongside the road and took off after the van, it was out of sight.

  Deep breaths. A dozen BillyBudds. He shivered all the way home. He’d fallen off his bike before, even been run off the road a couple of times. But this was different. This was personal.

  It had looked like Nick in the Cyber Express. Zack’s van. Why?

  And who was driving?

  His mind felt like a car engine being braked and accelerated at the same time, snarling, whirring, going nowhere.

  He didn’t know if he was glad or sorry no one was home. He didn’t want anyone to see he was still trembling, but he wanted someone to talk to.

  He fed the cat and changed her water for something normal to do. His right shoulder felt sore when he stretched his arm.

  What’s wrong with you, Mike? You’ve taken hard hits before. You’ve had your bell rung in football.

  That was different, he thought. That was a game.

  His hands stung from scrapes. He went into the bathroom to check his face, which was beginning to sting, too. A few long scratches on his right cheek. Good thing he’d been wearing his helmet.

  He nuked the dinner Mom had left and took it upstairs.

  Think this through.

  It had looked like the Cyber Express, looked like Nick. But it happened too fast to be sure of anything. Eyewitness accounts were often faulty on the crime shows. Where’s the evidence? And what was the motive? The sharp-faced, sexy cops and assistant DAs who looked like Kat always asked those questions.

  Kat. Would she know who was in the van? What was the big secret project she couldn’t talk about yesterday?

  He sent her a text. Wassup?

  His cell beeped almost immediately. It was Lori. She wanted him to call right away.

  It was a long, boring, one-sided conversation. Her words were slurred. She’d taken a pill to calm herself down. She was sorry she’d been so cranky at lunch, but she’d been bummed about Boston. Not being able to do the fire sticks routine had set back their schedule leading to the national championships. He knew she was as dedicated to twirling as he was to baseball, that she had always been willing to listen to him even though he never actually said that much. But he could barely concentrate. All he could think about was the white van. He felt sad that he didn’t want to talk to her about it. He was grateful when she started to mumble, realized she was falling asleep, apologized, said she loved him, and hung up before he had to say anything to her.

  He was calmer now. The shaking had stopped.

  He had more than a dozen texts and voice mails. None were from Kat. There were three missed calls from a blocked number. Just before he shut off his cell, he answered the fourth call from a blocked number. He thought he could hear breathing on the other end, but after the third time he said, “Hello?” the phone went dead. He thought it sounded like Kat’s breathing. That’s nuts, he thought. When have you listened to her breathe? You just want it to be her.

  Makes no sense. But it also makes no sense that Nick would door you.

  Billy Budd looked down at him from the poster and said, Get your mind into something else, young baller. It was in his book. Overanalysis can lead to paralysis.

  He found an old Law & Order he had only seen twice. His shoulder hurt and his ankle joined in. Excuse enough to take a Vic. He didn’t pay attention to the show. He knew who the murderer was. He watched the way the detectives barked at suspects, so sure of themselves, and the way the female district attorney whipped her dark hair. He was drifting off to sleep when he heard his parents come home.

  Usually, with a game that afternoon, he would have driven to school Tuesday morning. After a game, sweaty and beat, it was easier to jump in and take off than pedal home. But he didn’t want to give Nick or whoever the satisfaction that he’d been scared off his bike. Don’t mess with the Mak. What was he going to do when he caught up with the little bastard?

  Something felt different in the halls. It took him two periods to realize it was the way the geeks and freaks were looking at him. Usually they turned their heads and gave jocks space. Today they were glaring and muttering. Somebody bumped
him from behind on a stairway. When he got to his locker after the second period, he found a picture of a rat taped to the door.

  Zack and the Chinese kid were absent from his history class. Kat wasn’t in Social Issues. He looked for Nick. Nowhere. He had no idea what was going on until lunch.

  Ryan said, “I got your back, man.”

  Lori sat down next to him. “I can’t believe you let me go on and on last night, Mike.” She squeezed his thigh under the table. “Thank you so much for being there for me.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Ryan said, “If you ever answered your cell or read your texts….”

  “Mr. Cody shut down the Cyber Club yesterday afternoon,” said Tori. “Zack and everybody in the club are at the superintendent’s office.”

  “Why?”

  “Because somebody,” said Andy, looking at Mike, “finally had the balls to stand up to those pukes.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Before the game Coach Sherman said that Coach Cody was away on district business. Oscar was home with a sore hamstring. Mike Semak was starting in center field.

  Mike felt as though he had just come back from the flu, finally clearheaded and pain free after days of misery, but still a little weaker than normal. Center field somehow seemed different, smaller, the grass scrubbier. He was trapped in a box. Had something changed?

  He figured his first chance in the field would change it back, but it didn’t. An easy fly to short center he hardly had to move to catch. He squeezed it hard, afraid it would pop out of his glove.

  Over in left, Eric Nola shouted, “Way to go, Mak!” Nola was very happy to be back in the lineup. Mike looked over at Ryan, who threw him a fist. Mike thought, Did I look unsure of myself? Do they think I need encouragement to make a simple catch?

  He didn’t embarrass himself at bat, a walk and a single in four appearances, but he didn’t distinguish himself either. It was a long, sloppy game. The sophomore first baseman who had replaced Andy hit a home run with two on, and Willie Lockett with Kevin Park in relief managed to keep Valley Hills from ever closing the gap.