Todd Strasser - No Place

No one gets more than a few hours of rest. The next morning my fuzzy, sleep-deprived brain can’t seem to process nuance or transition. Two nights ago hunger kept me from getting a decent night’s sleep, but I managed to power through yesterday on adrenaline. Now, after a second sleepless night, the adrenaline’s dissipated and my thoughts have a fragmented quality. Life feels more like the separate slides of a PowerPoint presentation than a continuous live-action movie.

Outside it’s cold and rainy, a truly crappy day to spend cleaning up a decimated camp for homeless people. I want to get Dad alone and talk to him. I want to help at Dignityville, but Mom tells me to go to school.

In the hall my sleep-deprived brain feels like it’s lagging ten feet behind the rest of me. I look for Meg, but it’s not unusual for me to go a whole morning and not see her. As lunchtime approaches, in addition to dazed and wobbly, I start to feel apprehensive. Talia will be there. How do I face her, knowing what I know about her father? Knowing what I know about my father?

In the kitchen Lisa the lunch lady’s lips wrinkle sadly. “You okay, honey?”

No. I am so far from okay that I’m not even sure what the word means anymore.

But I shrug. “Guess so.” Then, because I don’t want to appear so gloomy, I force a smile. “We’re still here, right?”

Lisa smiles back. “That’s what counts.”

Does it?

I feel my pulse accelerate when I get my first look at the table. Noah and Tory are there, but Talia isn’t. Then I remember she said she and her mom were flying to the Northeast for a long weekend looking at colleges. That’s a relief. At least I won’t have to deal with the supreme awkwardness of facing her.

As I approach the table, the conversation softens to a whisper, then dies. Even though I know it’s because they don’t want to hurt my feelings, it still reminds me that I’m no longer part of their world. Today I can’t even pretend that Dignityville is my home. I’m the only one at the table who isn’t sure where he’s sleeping tonight, or when he’ll have his next meal. I know they’ll all continue to be generous and kind, but I can’t help thinking of Blanche DuBois and what she said about depending on the kindness of strangers. My friends have become strangers.

Noah stares at my shirt. With a jolt I realize why: I’m wearing the same clothes I wore yesterday… and slept in last night. The others must realize it too, because I feel them trying not to look. It’s unbelievable. I’ve gotten to the point where I make my own friends uncomfortable.

“Know what today is?” Noah finally asks, trying to sound cheerful.

I peer at him blankly. What can today possibly be?

He gives me a concerned look. “Two weeks until the Fall Classic… but listen, if you want to take a couple of days off?”

I can’t take more days off. Not if I want to be outstanding at the tournament. Not if I want to hold on to the only hope left for getting me and my family out of this mess. “I’ll be there this afternoon.”

Up goes a skeptical eyebrow. “You sure?”

“A man got to do what he got to do.” Rarely have those words felt as hollow as they do right now.

Noah nods uncertainly. “Okay, then. This is the final stretch. For the next two weeks we bump it up another notch.”

Two weeks… and I’m not even sure where I’ll be living then.

By the time school ends I’m having trouble walking a straight line. My body doesn’t want to practice; it wants to lie down in the hallway and go to sleep. But I can’t. I owe it to Noah to be there. I owe it to my parents.

It’s too cold and wet to go outside, so we use the indoor pitching mound in the gym.

A few miles away a bunch of homeless people have no choice but to be out in that cold and wet with no real idea of where they’re sleeping tonight.

Because Mr. Purcellen is worried about the value of his real estate.

The pitching mound is ten and a half inches high, made of AstroTurf, and slopes down in front. Standing on it, I rub a ball in my hands, feeling the seams and tiny irregularities in the scuffed surface that will make it fly through the air with its own unique path. And just as every baseball is slightly different, so is every human being. And like every pitch, every human will follow its own unique path.

To where?

Wearing his mask and chest protector, Noah squats down roughly sixty-two feet away. Above us the gym’s big duct fans whir and the halide lights hum.

“Ready,” he calls.

The ball feels rough in spots. Practice balls get scuffed. Life is about getting scuffed. The older we are, the more scuffed we get. Only some of us get scuffed more and sooner than others.

I’m so tired I swear I could close my eyes and go to sleep standing up.

“Ready?” Noah repeats.

Feeling light-headed, I put my foot on the rubber and look down at the ball in my hand. The red stitching, the cowhide. The game I’ve played my whole life. Above me the whirring fans grow louder and the lights seem brighter.

“Ready!”

With the ball nestled inside it, I lift my mitt in front of my face, and stare at Noah for the sign.

He starts to signal fastball.

Then he rises out of sight and gets replaced by something green.

It’s the AstroTurf, rushing toward me.

“Dan?” a voice calls from far away.

I open my eyes. Dark shapes hover against a bright background.

“Dan?”

I’m lying on my back. The shapes come into focus: Noah… Coach Buder… Zach… Tyler…

My face hurts. The floor under my back feels hard. Zach and Tyler are each holding one of my ankles so that my legs angle upward. “What happened?” I ask.

“You fainted.”

The pain in my face starts to localize to my right eye and one of my front teeth.

“How do you feel?” Buddha asks.

“Not sure.”

“Help him sit up.”

Hands prop me into a sitting position. My right eye throbs and it’s hard to see out of it. With the tip of my tongue, I feel a small gap where part of a tooth used to be. Buddha gives me a concerned look, but Noah, still wearing his chest protector, seems to be fighting off a grin.

“What’s so funny?”

“You look like someone kicked the crap out of you.”

“Try to get up?” Buddha asks.

“Okay.” Fainting isn’t a big deal. Guys get woozy and keel over now and then, especially during long practices on hot days. It’s happened to me a few times before, but usually on a grassy field where it doesn’t hurt as much.

The guys get me up to my feet, where for a moment I feel light-headed, but this time I bend over with my hands on my thighs and get my head down around knee level. Hands steady me while the blood rushes back to my brain.

When I slowly straighten up, the dizziness is mostly gone. Buddha, who’s seen this happen dozens of times, studies me. “Think you’re all right?”

“Yeah.”

He turns to the others. “Get him into the locker room and we’ll put a cold pack on that eye.”

Noah and Zach keep their hands on my elbows as they escort me into the locker room. When we pass a mirror, I catch a glimpse of myself with a swollen, black-and-blue eye, and a puffy, split lip. I pull my lips back and there’s a triangular gap where one of my front teeth has broken on the diagonal.

Great, now I’m one step closer to becoming one of those old, toothless guys at Dignityville.

Buddha arrives with a cold pack and I press it gingerly against my eye. Noah tells me how I swayed for a moment, then fell face-first off the mound, the mitt with the ball exactly at eye level.