Boy Toy (40 page)

At least, that's what I tell myself in the moment it takes for the ump to call strike three. I don't feel much better about it, though.

The crowd, both benches, the players on the field—everyone catches their breath at the same moment. Then the Heat pumps his fist in the air as if he's just won the World Series, never mind that he's got two more outs to score before he can go home a winner.

The Brookdale crowd groans as one. On the Canterstown side, a cheer goes up.

I shrug and sling my bat over my shoulder as I amble back to the bench. Chris Weintraub walks past me, glaring at me as if I just goosed him.

"What was that, Mendel? What the fuck was
that?
" Coach hisses. He grabs me and pulls me to him as I near the bench. He doesn't care who can hear him—he just starts bawling me out in front of the team. And most of 'em look like they'd like to join him. "What the fuck were you thinking?"

I grab Kaltenbach by his shirt and pull him toward me.

"Fuck you, Coach," I whisper, just loud enough for him to hear. "You don't own me. You don't
control
me.
I'm
in charge, got it?
Got it?
"

I push him away from me and, trembling, make my way to the Gatorade. At the plate, Chris pops up to the second baseman. Two outs.

No one speaks. No one looks at me as I pour some Gatorade and chug it down. My heart's pounding and my stomach's a wreck.

Zik pushes past a couple of guys to catch up to me. "What the hell did you
do,
J? You could have hit that one!"

I can't look at him. I just can't.

"Tell me you couldn't." He's pleading. He grabs my sleeve and tugs. "Come on, man. Tell me you couldn't have hit it. Tell me you didn't just—"

A cry goes up from the crowd at the same time as a cheer: Ash Heggelman just line-drived to first. The game's over.

"Oh, Christ," Zik says, looking over at the field as the Sledgehammers jump all over each other in celebration. "Christ, man! This was
it!
"

I can't bear to tell Zik that I could have hit the ball. I drink my Gatorade.

"You ruined it!" He's near tears. I can't believe he cares
this
much about the stupid game. He hit a home run, for Christ's sake! He ought to be happy about that.

"You ruined it all!" And he shoves me once, then spins and runs away from me, from everyone.

The rest of the team files past me without looking, heading for the locker room. I realize that this is the end of my high school career. My final career numbers are a .502 batting average, an on-base percentage of .575, a slugging average of .876, and a .373 IPA. Can't be too upset with those numbers. And if Stanford's Graves is too afraid of me because of what Coach tells him or doesn't want me because I don't play defense ... Well, fine.

But I'll always keep a mental asterisk next to those numbers because I know that, yeah, I could have hit that ball. I could have knocked it out of the park.

The locker room is ... uncomfortable, to say the least. The place falls silent as I walk in, the last player to do so. Guys in towels, guys in the shower, guys getting dressed—they all stop whatever they're doing, whatever they're saying, and stare at me.

They don't know for sure. They
can't
know for sure. But they're pretty damn sure that I could have hit that pitch.

I don't say anything. I don't change or shower. I just grab my stuff from my locker and head back outside, all of those eyes pushing and pressing at my back as I go.

Rachel's waiting outside. She knows, better than anyone, maybe even better than Zik, that I could have hit that ball. And she can't understand why I didn't.

The hell of it is, I'm not sure I can explain it to her.

She hugs herself as if cold. "Josh."

"Yeah?"

She exhales, blowing her bangs around. "Nothing."

"Go ahead, Rache. Ask. Ask me." And I want her to. I'm angry. Not at her, but she's the only one around, the only one who'll talk to me, so there you go—she gets to be the recipient.

But she shakes her head. "Michelle's going to drive Zik to school for the next week or so."

A "week or so" takes us right up to graduation. "So that's it, then. End of the Four Musketeers? Again. I'm sure you'll be very happy with Zik and Michelle." I push past her and head for my car.

"Hey! Hey, asshole!" she yells, chasing after me. She's fast and unencumbered—it's no great feat for her to catch me. I don't stop walking.

She falls in beside me. "Stop being a dick, Josh. This isn't Michelle and Zik and me against you."

"Oh?"

"Zik's not going to Stanford," Rachel says. She takes my hands and gently turns me from the car, forcing me to look into her eyes. "No matter what school he goes to, it's going to be half an hour from here. He won't even live on campus—he'll have to commute. But if he could get into the league..."

I pull my hands back. "It's not my fault, Rache. I can't be responsible for everyone."

"No one's asking you to be."

"But everyone wants to know why I didn't hit that ball, don't they?"

She says nothing.

"Everyone wants to know. Everyone wants to know why Josh didn't take the South Brook Bobcats up on his shoulders one more time and run past the finish line, don't they? Well, tough shit. I'm through explaining myself."

She says something so quietly that I don't quite catch it. "What?" She shakes her head. "Come on, Rache. Tell me. What did you say?"

She shakes her hair out of her face and looks me dead in the eye. "I said that you're through explaining yourself because you've never been
able
to explain yourself in the first place."

Now I'm the one who says nothing. Because I'm afraid of what I might say.

"You'd rather wallow in your own guilt than figure out
why
you feel guilty, Josh. You'd rather assume everyone hates you or fears you than come right out and ask them and find out for sure. You can't handle confrontation. At
all
. You can't even—" She breaks off and chokes, looks away. She hugs herself and can't look up at me. "You can't even..." she whispers, "...can't even touch me without hating yourself. And me."

A flicker hits me, strong and powerful: I'm in Eve's apartment, staring at her wedding photo.

And then I'm back. I don't know which is worse—Rachel being wrong or Rachel being right.

I've found my keys. "Goodbye, Rachel."

I leave her there in the parking lot, her arms wrapped around herself, staring down at the pavement.

I park in the driveway and sit in the car for a minute or so, taking deep breaths and telling myself that I wasn't out of line with Rachel, that I didn't do anything wrong. I'm not sure I believe it, but I say it to myself enough that it starts to sound OK.

The house is quiet. I close the door slowly and silently, looking forward to ... I don't know. Lying in a dark, quiet room. By myself.

Mom and Dad don't even ask how the game went. Maybe they've forgotten about it. I don't know. Just to make the day absolutely perfect, they sit me down and—

We wanted to wait until you went off to college, but we felt that we had to...

—tell me that they're getting divorced.

I sort of sit there in shock. I don't know why—the writing's been on the wall for a million years. It shouldn't be that big a—
—and you should know that I've been—

And it gets better.

Mom's moving out next week.

Because.

Jesus.

Because she's been..."seeing someone."

"Seeing someone." That is, having an affair.

I should have guessed. I should have
known.
All those "trips to the mall." With "the girls." God, lies like Eve and I used to tell. I should have
known.

"I can't believe you two."

"Josh," Mom says, "I know you're upset, but—"

"Shut your fucking mouth," I say to my mother, calmly, like I say it all the time, and I can't believe I've said it, but I have, and I can't believe that she actually
does,
but she does, and she and Dad just sit there, shocked and silent and watching me like I could explode like a suicide bomber, and you know what? I probably could. I probably could.

"I thought you..." I stop. The calm has all run out of me—it's all gone now, and all that's left is a cold flame of rage. "I thought you two loved each other! What the hell are you doing?"

"Sometimes—"

"Shut up, Dad! And you!" I turn to Mom, who's gone pale and frozen. "I told you I loved her!" I scream it and lean in and Mom jumps back, terrified, and I don't blame her. "I told you I loved her and you said that I didn't know what love was!" I'm crying now, but I don't care. "You guys made me tell the police everything. You ruined everything and what the hell do
you
know about love?"

Mom finds her voice. "Josh, please, honey—"

"Don't call me 'honey'!
She
called
me
'honey'!"

And my vocabulary, my tongue, they just get overwhelmed and they can't keep up with my heart and my thoughts and my rage and I'm just blubbering, collapsing to the floor.

I'm ruined. It's in my blood—I'm broken. I'm fragmented. The flickers are proof of it. Who else goes through that? Zik can't escape his DNA ... and neither can I. I'm the child of a cheater and a loser. What am I supposed to expect from myself?

It's late. I'm lying in bed, the phone unplugged, the door shut. I don't want to talk to anyone. I don't want to hear from anyone. What I really want, deep down, is to open my door and see nothing but a black void there, a deathless, endless abyss. And I'll know then that the world has gone away and that I'll never have to worry about it or puzzle over it or deal with it again.

Lying here, I've figured out what the flickers are. They're my punishment. It's no coincidence that they started that day that I stood in Eve's bedroom, taking my first steps toward her, toward my sin, my downfall. The flickers are my past, constantly reignited, hammering at me from below and beneath and behind.

I went to Eve. After the Happy Trio incident, she wanted to end it, but I begged her to take me back; I allowed it all to happen. I encouraged it all to happen. And I am damned for that. Eternally shattered, trapped in a world that is neither earth nor afterlife. I'm surrounded and penetrated by the ghosts of my own culpability.

I've kept a few secrets from Dr. Kennedy. Just a few. I've never told him about the flickers, for example. I've never told
anyone
about the flickers. I don't want to be hooked up to machines and pumped full of drugs while a million doctors try to figure out what the hell is wrong with me. I've just learned how to live with them.

It's late—almost ten o'clock. I sit up in bed, restless. The house is silent. I flirt with the fantasy that the abyss
is
right outside my door, but I know that it's not true. I'm not that lucky.

The combination of hours and my parents' revelation make the ballgame seem a million years away. I feel like a dick for the way I talked to Rachel. I want to plug the phone back in and call her, but she probably wouldn't answer if she saw my number on Caller ID.

Rachel's not the only one I need to talk to. There's Zik. It doesn't matter how much of a bonehead he is. Zik has been my truest, most steadfast friend, and has never,
ever
questioned me about Eve. He deserves everything I can give him and more. And I disappointed him without explaining why. Not that I really understand it myself.

I close my eyes. I see the ball sail by again. It's not a flicker—it's worse because I can control it.

I am not only broken; I am also a piece of shit.

I drive over to Zik's house. Lights are still on inside. I ring the doorbell and brace myself.

Mr. Lorenz opens the door. He sneers when he sees me, which means absolutely nothing. He sneers
every
time he sees me; it's possible Zik hasn't said anything to him about the game.

"Whattaya want?" Mr. Lorenz asks, as if I'm a Jehovah's Witness or a kid selling magazine subscriptions and not the guy who's been his son's best friend for a million years.

"Is Zik home?" Duh. Asswipe.

He shouts "IKE!" over his shoulder and then walks away, leaving the front door open. This is the Lorenz family version of an invitation to enter.

I carefully make my way down the hallway toward Zik's room. I say "carefully" because I once accidentally turned a corner in Zik's house and saw his mom in just her skirt and bra, a sight I'm not at all eager to revisit.

Zik's door is closed and loud music pumps from within. He once told me that he blares his music so that he has an excuse not to listen to the rest of his family.

I knock, but nothing happens.

I knock again.

"Go away!" Zik shouts from within. Maybe he knows it's me. Maybe he's in there with Michelle?

Nah. Not a chance. Zik never brings Michelle to his house. He's too embarrassed by his parents, and who can blame him?