Todd Strasser - No Place

I feel sick picturing Aubrey on the ground getting bashed with a baseball bat, flailing to protect himself, accidentally catching a strand of the attacker’s beads with his fingers. But wait. “How do you know the beads were from the fight? Maybe someone dropped them weeks ago.”

Detective French gives me an impatient look like she wishes I’d keep my mouth shut. But Meg cocks her head alertly as if she wants to know the answer too. The detective explains: “There was blood in the parking lot. The beads weren’t under it. They were on it.”

“So?” Meg asks with a puzzled expression.

“Like the cherry on top of a sundae?”

Thanks to the graphic description, Meg starts to cry again. I put my arm around her. Detective French closes her iPad, says she’s sorry about what happened to Aubrey, and thanks Meg for her time. She stands up and hands me a card. “In case she thinks of anything, or just wants to talk.”

Meg’s sobs trickle into whimpers. The minutes creep past. A guy staggers in, assisted by a friend, his hand wrapped in a T-shirt bright red with blood. They’re immediately sent through the double doors into the emergency room. Meanwhile the texting mother dispatches her little girl to get a bag of chips from the vending machine.

Finally the blond doctor comes out. Meg and I get to our feet. The doctor looks grim. “His condition is critical. He’s in a coma.”

Meg gasps and grabs my hand for support.

“Everything depends on the next twenty-four hours. If we can get past that, the neurologists can run tests.”

“So you don’t even know if…?” Meg trails off as if she can’t speak the words.

The doctor shakes her head. “We’ll know tomorrow. You should go home now.”

“But…”

“There’s nothing you can do here,” the doctor repeats, and gives me the same commanding look as before. This time it says, Take her home.

I lead Meg outside. Rain pours down in a dull roar and we stand under the canopy, chilled by the cold, wet mist. Meg begins to cry again; I just want to get her back to Dignityville before anything else bad happens.

And my stupid phone won’t stop vibrating.

It was never easy with Talia. The second you said something she didn’t like, she had five different ways of letting you know. Since I knew she wasn’t going to like what I had to say about Thanksgiving, I waited until the last moment—lunch was over and we were leaving the cafeteria.

“You know the Fall Classic Tournament over Thanksgiving?” I said as we walked out into the hall. “I got invited.”

The corners of Talia’s mouth drooped. “You said you’d go away with us.”

“No, you said I’d go away with you. I said I wasn’t sure.”

Her eyebrows dipped. “You don’t want to go to Hilton Head?”

“Tal, don’t do this. You know I want to go, but there’ll be pro scouts at the tournament. Guys get drafted straight out of high school all the time.”

Talia stopped in the middle of the hall and widened her eyes. “And not go to Rice?”

“Come on.” I took her hand. My next class was on the other side of the building. Talia allowed herself to be coaxed along, and we passed a bunch of kids at a table who were asking people to sign up for some march on Washington.

“So now you’re saying you’re not going to college?” Talia repeated the question she already knew the answer to.

“I didn’t say that. I said—”

“Hey, Dan,” a voice interrupted us. Like a guide giving a college tour, a kid from the sign-up table started walking backward in front of Talia and me. He had long, ratty, brown hair. “How about signing up?”

“For?” I asked.

He pointed at a poster on the wall.

Talia pulled my hand. It was her turn to coax me away. “Dan, we were talking.”

“Who do you think politicians really serve?” asked the ratty-haired kid. “The rich people and corporations who pay for their election campaigns, or the rest of us?”

“Dan.” Talia tugged impatiently.

I let myself be pulled away.

“Think about it, Dan ,” the kid called behind me.

“Who was that?” Talia asked as we continued down the hall.

“Don’t know.”

“He knew your name.”

“Lots of people know my name.”

“He sounded like he knew you.”

“They do that to get your attention.”

“What do I have to do to get your attention?” she asked.

I squeezed her hand. “You always have my attention.”

Not that she gave me much choice.

“Then please explain what’s going on. First you say you’re not going to Hilton Head. Now you’re not going to college?” Talia loved to spin everything toward the dramatic.

“I’m going to Rice,” I said patiently. “The letter of intent’s supposed to come in a few weeks. The deal is basically done. But in the extremely unlikely case that I pitch lights out at the tournament, and some major-league team actually wants to sign me straight out of high school? Rice would let me go.”

“And you’d really do that? Even after that coach arranged for your work study and stipend?” Talia asked. Was it any surprise that Legally Blonde was still one of her favorite movies? Only, unlike Elle Woods, Talia didn’t start with the ditz thing and then wait until law school to discover she had brains. Talia displayed lawyer smarts whenever it suited her.

“He wouldn’t be happy, but he’d understand,” I tried to explain. “It’s all about the big show. He knows that.”

I can’t say I was sorry when we reached the corner in the hall where each day we parted after lunch. As if she suddenly no longer cared about Thanksgiving or baseball, Talia smiled, all white teeth and lip gloss. “See you at eight? Carrie’s party?”

Now I understood. She knew I didn’t want to go to that party, but there was no way I could refuse after saying no to her family’s Thanksgiving trip. Getting me to the party was probably what the whole Thanksgiving argument had been about in the first place. I may have been considered an exceptional high school athlete, but once again I’d been totally outclassed by a girl who stood five feet two inches and barely weighed 100 pounds.

“We don’t have to stay at the party that long,” Talia assured me with a winning smile.

Defeated, I sighed. “Sure.”

She stretched up and kissed me on the cheek. “Good boy.”

In baseball the pitcher and catcher together are called the battery, which is kind of strange since when they’re pitching and catching, neither is batting. It’s the tightest unit on the field. Outfielders and infielders have to work together to turn plays, but no two guys have to be more in sync than the battery. Noah Williams and I had been a battery for so long that we were beyond in sync. We didn’t only finish each other’s sentences, we sometimes started them.

“Want to hit the studio? Buzzuka Joe’s coming in,” he said in the car after we finished working out in the school weight room that afternoon. Noah’s older brother Derek had a recording studio in Burlington. While not exactly a hotbed of musical talent, the small city ten miles west of Median provided just enough homegrown bands, radio commercials, and public service announcements to keep Derek in business. Friday afternoons were reserved for local acts, and sometimes Noah and I would hang out and watch the recording sessions.