Tim Green - The Big Time

"But," he said, "I…thought you didn't know about me?"

THE SMILE FLASHED BACKonto his father's face instantly.

"The idea of you," his father said, "of having a son. I told you. I always wanted that. That's all I meant, not that I knew you really existed. I thought a lot about having a son . Just the idea."

"Oh," Troy said.

Tate appeared, marching up onto the terrace and crossing her arms over her chest.

"How you two doing?" she asked, grabbing her soda from the table, cracking open the can with a hiss, and swigging some down. As she drank, she flashed a thumbs-up behind her back, a signal only Troy could see, that told him she'd done her job.

"Great," Troy's dad said, answering Tate's question. "One of those father-and-son talks."

"You want me to let you guys talk?" Tate asked. "I can."

"No, that's okay, Tate," Troy said. "We've got to get back anyway."

"You don't want to finish your sodas?" his dad asked.

"We can take them," Troy said, standing. "I know you've got things going on."

As if on cue, the glass doors slid open and someone Troy had never seen before, with tan skin and a pencil-thin mustache, stepped out onto the deck and shouted, "Edinger! We need you! The big man does!"

He disappeared back inside, and one of the guards from the front of the house came out, heading their way. Troy's dad gave him a sheepish look.

"Well," his dad said, "you're right about the business part of it. Okay, well, you two get back home. And, Troy, if I don't see you tomorrow, it's because your mom is being a crank and I might have to shoot back to Chicago quick to take care of some things, but don't worry. Everything will smooth out soon, and we'll be hanging out again. I'm not only your dad; I'm your lawyer. You can't go wrong."

Troy thought it sounded like his dad was trying to sell him a car, but he let Drew hug him before they stepped apart. The guard muttered to them that Luther had asked him to escort the kids to the front gate. Troy and Tate said good-bye to Troy's dad and followed the guard down a path that took them around the house instead of through it. When they reached the driveway, Troy looked back at the huge white mansion to see that two white stretch limos now waited in the glow of the lights right in front of the grand front steps leading to the door.

When the gates hummed open, Troy took Tate's arm and hurried her through. He said thanks to the guard, using all his determination not to break out into a full sprint and run away as fast as his legs would take him.

" I did it ," Tate said before they had even rounded the corner.

"Shhhh!" Troy said, clutching her arm as the gates swung slowly closed.

"You're hurting me," she said under her breath.

"Don't run," he said, glancing back as they rounded the corner beneath the glow of a street lamp. "Nothing suspicious."

"When can we?" Tate said as they reached the next stop sign and a bit of darkness, where they could take another turn.

Just then Troy glanced back again and saw a man beneath the streetlight, wearing a dark suit and holding a radio in one hand, sprinting their way.

"Now!" Troy said, and they took off.

TROY TOOK A RIGHTat the next stop sign and bolted in between a grassy stretch separating two big homes. Even in the dark he knew that the secret path he'd followed through the trees and underbrush behind the homes to get to Seth's place wasn't far. Tate kept up, but Troy could feel that the shadowy man-who remained frighteningly silent-was gaining on them. On a hunch, Troy broke through a line of shrubs, but when he came out the other side, he slammed full speed into a chain-link fence.

He recovered quickly and sprinted up the fence line and into a stand of pine trees, where the glow of a nearby pool let him see. The bushes swished behind him, and he heard the man crash into the fence just as he had. The undergrowth got suddenly thick and dark; Troy grabbed Tate by the arm and pulled her straight into it with him, the branches and brambles whipping their faces and cutting their hands.

Then it ended. They broke free into a swath of grass that bordered the concrete wall surrounding Cotton Wood. Troy sensed the spot and took a hard right. When he glanced back, he saw nothing of the man's dark shape. With his lungs on fire, he put his head down and ran even faster. The ladder wasn't too far.

When they reached it, Troy had to use all his inner strength and every lesson his mom had taught him not to just scramble up and drop down over the other side. Instead, the noble side of him won out, and he handed Tate up the ladder so she could climb up to the top of the wall. When she did, she looked down the way they'd come, and a muffled whine escaped her.

"Troy," she said, "hurry! He's coming!"

TROY NEVER LOOKED BACK ;he bolted up the ladder, spun, and grabbed it. The shadowy man closed in. Full speed he ran. The man grunted something that sounded like "ate." The sound sent a shiver through Troy.

"Stop!" the man shouted in a deep, husky voice.

Troy heaved the ladder up and over the wall and sent it crashing down the other side. Tate already hung from the edge of the wall by her fingertips, and she dropped down beside the ladder. Troy crouched down, too, aware of the man closing in. He gripped the rim of the wall as Tate had, then dropped to the ground with a thud.

Together they looked up at the top of the wall, listening silently as the man on the other side grunted for them to come back and scraped at the concrete as he leaped over and over again for the top of the wall, straining for a grip on its peak so he could finish the chase.

"Let's go," Troy said, not giving one hoot about the ladder lying in the brush.

He took Tate's hand and led her down toward the tracks, up and over them, and straight through the pine needle path toward his house.

"How'd you even do it, Tate?" he asked. "How'd you follow me in the first place. Even that guy-who moved like a doggone ninja-couldn't get over that wall. How did you?"

"Simple," Tate said, dusting her hands with a clip clap . "I climbed a tree."

"A tree?"

"There's a pine tree right up close to the outside of the wall," she said. "I shinnied up and climbed far enough onto a branch for it to droop right down over the wall. I only had to jump about six feet. It was easy."

Troy wiped some sweat from his brow and said, "I said it before, Tate, you're like a monkey."

"In a good way, right?" she said.

"Monkeys are cool," Troy said. "You planted the quarter?"

"I gave you the thumbs-up," she said.

"So, how'd you do it?" Troy asked, the glow of his house appearing through the trees. "You just asked for the bathroom and they all looked away?"

"I just pretended like I was a ditz," she said. "I kept talking. I told them the story about my aunt Mary Ann getting arrested for throwing paint on women walking down Park Avenue."

"What?" Troy said.

"She's with PETA," Tate said. "She's kind of nutty, but I figured, you know, that with all those dead animal skins, at least they'd think I had a point. So I'm telling the story, and I kneel down on that bear rug to explain how my aunt says you can see the pain on the animal's face even after it's stuffed, and I slip that quarter right into his mouth. You think it worked?"

Troy shook his head. "You're crazy. Yeah, I'm sure it worked. But something must have gone wrong. Otherwise, who was that guy?"

"Well," Tate said, hanging her head. "I tried, Troy. I'm sorry if I blew it."

Troy put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze.