Force Out (8 page)

Leah turned and faced him with a smile. She was so pretty it hurt, and her hair shone glossy and soft even in the spinning lights. She said something to him that he couldn't hear. The rhythm of the music was fast and wild, and from the corner of his eye he saw Zach slip out onto the floor and move to the music like it was plugged into his brain.

Joey forgot for a moment all about the tuna on his breath. He leaned close to Leah, thinking he could make some small talk while he waited for a slow song, and shouted, “What did you say?”

“I said,” she bellowed above the music, “let's dance!”

Joey knew there was a beat in there somewhere. He tried to nod his head with the thumping rhythm, but some of it got lost in the noise and he ended up with his arms going one way and his legs another.

“No!” Leah shouted to be heard, smiling patiently. “With the music, like this!”

Her shoulders swayed with the beat and her hips moved with opposite gyrations. Her arms seemed to float with the sound and her fingers softly snapped. It looked so easy and so smooth and he tried to snap his fingers, too, but he just felt stiff. Zach appeared, trying to help. He bopped along behind Leah, trying to give Joey some unseen instructions. Joey tried to follow him, but it was impossible.

He was a square peg in a round hole. A fish out of water. A bird that couldn't fly.

He forced a grin and did his best and prayed for the music to end, wobbling and snapping and ducking his head. It finally did end, and his feet mercifully planted themselves on the gym floor, side by side, where they were meant to be.

“Okay,” she said, and he followed her back to her group.

The other girls giggled, but she shushed them with a look, and Bryan Adams started to croon “Heaven” over the sound system. Leah turned to him and looked at the floor. She might have even blushed, but it was hard to tell in the light.

Behind her, Zach emerged from the throng of people and pointed at her, nodding at him to do it. Zach mouthed the words, “ASK HER!”

Joey started to reach out for her hand, to touch it, to maybe even take it and lead her onto the floor. The other girls watched, and in that instant he tried to read their faces and it was a big mistake.

One of them looked longingly. Two others seemed bitter, maybe with envy, he didn't know. The fourth had only scorn and that look was what did him in. The look said plain as day
He won't do it, he's chicken
.

Joey felt his stomach heave.

“Excuse me.” He didn't even know if Leah'd heard him, but it didn't matter. Joey sprinted for the exit, dashed down the hallway, and just made it to the glass door leading out into the courtyard by the cafeteria. He barreled through it before blowing half-digested tuna casserole all over the brick pavers. He choked and coughed, then spit as much of the acid as he could out of his mouth before he staggered through the weak light to a picnic table, sat on the bench, and held his head to keep it from exploding.

When the door clacked open, he didn't even look up.

“Bro, are you okay?”

Joey stared up at Zach and blinked away his tears of frustration and horror. “This is the crappiest day of my life.”

Zach sidestepped the mess, sat down next to him on the bench, and put a hand across his shoulders. “It's okay. Leah's fine. She got a laugh out of your dancing.”

“Great.”

“Well, bro . . .”

“I know.” Joey swatted his hand in the air. “It was pathetic. Why did I even come? Why did I say yes?”

“So she knows how much you care. That's the good part. I told her you wouldn't have done that for anyone. And you know what?”

Zach didn't speak until Joey looked at him. “She thinks that's cool.”

“Bull.”

“I'm telling you, she said it, not me. You're fine.”

“I smell like puke, and the scary thing is I don't think it's much worse than the tuna I smelled like before I puked.”

Zach peered at the spattered bricks. “Did you know some of the most expensive perfumes in the world are made of whale puke?”

“Funny.”

“I'm serious. It's called ambergris. Look it up, I kid you not. Come on, let's go get something for you to eat and get that taste out of your mouth. You'll feel better, then.”

Joey followed Zach back inside, then down the hallway, past the gym, and out the front entrance into the night. They stood just outside the cone of a streetlight, looking back at the school.

Zach raised an eyebrow. “Dark Owl Diner?”

“Yeah,” Joey said. “I am kinda hungry.”

They cut through a neighborhood next to the school and came to the main road. From there it was about a mile to a strip mall, where the diner took up the end spot next to a tanning salon. Several dozen cars filled that end of the parking lot, and through the big glass window they could see lots of people. They pushed through the door into the busy diner and Zach grabbed Joey's arm, pulling him up short.

Zach angled his head toward the booths in the back. “Bro, look over there. Do you see what I see?”

Joey peered through the yellow light and the waitresses flitting to and fro. “It's Coach Barrett. So what?”

“Yeah, Coach Barrett with who?”

Joey looked hard and thought he recognized the man next to Coach Barrett but not the other man facing him. He had no idea who the three heads facing away from him were. “I don't know. Who?”

“Look hard. The guy next to him?”

“He looks familiar, but I don't know.”

“The Pirates coach? You see now? The other guy is the coach of the Cardinals, and the bald guy with his back to us coaches the A's.”

“So?” Joey slipped his arm free from Zach's grip. “They're having a coaches' meeting or something.”

“The meeting is tomorrow with the league president. I heard them talking about it, remember?”

“Yeah.” Joey studied the faces of the men. They looked jolly and Coach Barrett was telling a story. “That's what coach said to me, too.”

“So, why are they here?” Zach said.

The hostess asked if it was just the two of them and Zach requested a table in the farthest corner, away from the coaches. They ordered milk shakes and French fries and sat staring at the men, trying to read what was happening. Joey's stomach got tighter and tighter. The idea that his fate for the summer, and maybe his entire baseball career, was being decided over cheeseburgers, shakes, and coffee coiled itself around his brain like a python.

“They don't have any rosters or score books,” Joey said. “You'd think they'd have that if they were deciding on the all-stars.”

Zach narrowed his eyes at the group. “They're not doing that. They're up to something, though.”

“Something, like what?”

“I don't know. Just something.”

Just as the waitress brought Joey and Zach's shakes, the coaches all burst out laughing together and stood up. Everyone shook Coach Barrett's hand, he slapped their backs, and then they filtered out with Coach Barrett stopping at the cash register to pay the bill.

“Don't turn around.” Zach moved so the back of Joey's head blocked the coach's view of him. “He's looking.”

After a minute, Zach relaxed, and he watched through the front window as their coach went into the parking lot.

“They probably just got together to celebrate the end of the season.” Joey wanted to keep his thoughts positive. Zach sometimes liked to make a big deal out of things and see problems and mysteries where there were none, and that's what he told himself this was.

“Yeah,” Zach said, “probably.”

Joey could tell Zach didn't believe it. Joey would have preferred they argue. “Why did you have to even bring it up?”

“It was weird,” Zach said, “that's all. I wasn't bringing anything up.”

“And why didn't you want him to see us?”

Zach sipped his milk shake. “I'm sorry, man. I just had a weird feeling. I know you're book smart, but I'm people smart.”

“And I'm not?”

“You're way smarter than me in school, right?” Zach asked.

“I guess.”

“You are. It's no big deal. We are what we are and I can admit it. Why can't you admit I'm people smart? Look at me working this thing with Leah for you. I do it because you're my friend and it's easy for me.”

“Why did you have to bring Leah into this?”

“I'm just saying. Does everything have to be a fight?” Zach scratched his nose. “I know you stuck your neck out for me last night, and I'm sorry. Trust me—if I'd have known your mom was going to get on the case like this, I wouldn't have let you do it, but I wanted to win that game just like you and have us both playing on the all-stars and then who knows?”

“Center State select,” Joey said, sighing because now it seemed so far away that it was almost out of reach.

“Yeah. That.”

The waitress brought them two plates of fries. Joey had gravy on his and used his fork. Zach doused his plate with ketchup and dug in with his fingers. They ate in silence until Zach's phone buzzed. He read a text, then texted something back and it buzzed again right away.

“Well,” Zach said, smiling up at him, “at least this will make you happy.”

“Where are we meeting them?” Joey asked.

They had finished eating fries and were back out on the main road, trudging up the shoulder back toward the school. The summer night had begun to cool, but their brisk pace kept Joey from getting chilled. A fat moon beamed down on them, casting shadows in the dark spots between streetlights.

“The playground at the elementary school.” Zach walked with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his shorts. They both knew that once you left the dance, you couldn't go back in. It was a school rule.

“Isn't that kind of weird?” Joey asked.

“Where else do you want to go? We can sit on the swings.”

Joey had no other place he could think of, so he put his own hands in his pockets and stifled a yawn. Zach had bought gum at the cash register and told Joey to take two pieces. He chewed it in time to their footsteps, thinking that maybe he could work on the rhythm thing a bit. It had already been a roller-coaster day, and he sure wanted to end it going up, rather than plummeting down. This was his chance.

They passed by the school, and the steady muffled thump of the dance leaked out into the darkness. As they crossed the soccer field, the forms of the playground equipment began to materialize, lit by the moon and haze from a spotlight on the corner of the elementary school. Perched on the rope jungle gym, four dark figures came into view, clustered together halfway up the pyramid.

Joey and Zach stopped at the base.

“Hey.” Zach looked up. “What are you guys doing?”

“Hanging out.”

Joey was pretty sure it was Leah who spoke.

“Cool.” Zach said. “Us, too. Who wants to slide in the dark?”

Easy as pie, Zach had all six of them playing on the little kids' playground and laughing and joking. The girls screamed and yipped going down the slide. They played freeze tag. Before Joey knew it, he and Leah were sitting next to each other on the swings with Zach challenging the other three girls to a contest on the rings at the far side of the playground. Exactly how he did it, Joey didn't even know, so skilled and smooth was his friend.

Joey spoke the first words that came to his mind. “He's something.”

“Who?” Leah leaned back and swung gently with her feet tapping the wood chips below.

“Zach.”

“You should hear him talk about you,” she said. “He worships you.”

“I doubt that.”

“He says you're going to go to
Stanford
and then be a pro baseball player after that. Everyone knows you're the smartest kid in our grade.”

“I don't know if I'm the smartest.”

Leah laughed, and it was like a small flight of birds bursting toward the moon. “What? You want to hear me say it again?”

“No, I'm just saying.” Joey was thankful she couldn't see the color of his face in the shadows. “There's book smart and people smart.”

She turned her swing so that she no longer faced forward but directly at him. He turned his swing also and dared to touch his lower leg against hers. She didn't take it away, and the thrill of the contact poured through him like a molten liquid.

“Do you like baseball?” he asked.

“I love baseball.”

His insides twisted a bit. “I played like junk today.”

“Everyone has a bad day. Zach said you had twenty-seven home runs.”

Joey swelled with pride. “He has a better batting average.”

“Are you excited about the all-stars? I've got a lacrosse tournament on Saturday, but we have practice Sunday morning at Randall Park and I was just going to stay and watch you guys if you make it to the all-star championship game.”

The thrill of it was enough to overcome Joey's horror of not making the team. He
had
to make the team, didn't he? Zach said it. Didn't Coach Barrett say it was more likely than not? Of course he'd make it.

So, Joey said, “That would be great.”

Leah crossed her legs and hung her head so that the long hair hid her face. “I think people should be friends before they go out, don't you?”

Fear gripped Joey's heart. He tried to agree, but a strangled noise was the only thing that came out.

“What?” Leah looked puzzled.

Joey nodded fiercely. “Yes. You're right.”

She smiled. “So, we can be friends, right?”

The thrill of Leah's words carried Joey around like a magic carpet. He zoomed through space for the rest of the night. As he made his final preparations for bed, he stared at himself in the mirror for several minutes. He was dazed from the excitement of the day, good and bad, and light-headed from the lack of sleep. He tried to remember everything she'd said to make sure that it wasn't just a dream.