Lost Boy (21 page)

Ryder swung his bat a few times to warm up, then he put a token in the red metal box next to the plate and the pitching machine whirred to life.

“You look like you know what you're doing.” Mr. Starr spoke from where he sat, outside the cage.

“I haven't done it but it looks pretty obvious.” The light went green on the box and Ryder stepped up to the plate. The pitching machine spit out a ball. Ryder could only blink as it clanked into the backstop behind him.

“You didn't swing.” Mr. Starr let loose a squeak of a laugh. “
That
was pretty obvious.”

“The balls are yellow.” Ryder hit the pause button on the red box, crouched to pick up the ball from the concrete floor, and examined its dirty yellow surface. “And rubber.”

“Well, they get a lot of abuse. You don't want them falling apart on you, right?”

“I wonder if it hits any different.” Ryder was speaking to himself.

“A sphere is a sphere,” Mr. Starr commented.

Ryder pressed Start, stepped up to the plate again, and this time hammered the pitch right back at the machine.

“That looked like a pro.”

Ryder had to smile. He felt good and quickly got into a rhythm. Token after token he deposited into the machine and before they knew it, the red light went on, and he had no more tokens.

“How many do you think I hit out of those?” Ryder shouldered the bat and let himself out of the cage.

“You hit eighty-seven—that's if you include the nicks, the foul balls, and I gave you the benefit of the doubt on that first ball you let through.”

Ryder nodded and began rolling Mr. Starr's chair back toward the clubhouse.

“Let's ask and see what won it last year. I gotta believe eighty-seven could take the cake,” Mr. Starr said.

They asked. The man behind the cash register was busy and he glanced up at them, doing a double take before he forced his eyes away from Mr. Starr's frozen face. “Uh, well, there were three kids tied. They all hit ninety-nine, then we did a sudden death with the machine on big league speed. It only took four of those before there was only one guy left and he won.”

“Wait,” Ryder said, “
ninety-
nine?”

“Yeah. I get kids in here all the time. There's a knack to it, but I think it's mostly concentration. That's a lotta balls to hit, you know? Well, you do know because you just hit a hundred. How'd you do?”

“Uh, eighty-seven,” Ryder said.

“Ouch,” the man said.

Ryder looked at Mr. Starr. “Ouch is right.”

After a quick dinner, Ryder and Mr. Starr took the bus back to the hotel just as the moon peeked up over the shoulder of the stadium as if to keep watch. Ryder pushed the wheelchair up the street into the face of a hot and dusty breeze. Two dark figures walked along the other side of the street, mumbling to each other and drinking something from a paper bag. Ryder hurried along. By the time they got to the air-conditioned room, Mr. Starr looked exhausted.

Ryder helped Mr. Starr into bed before washing up himself and collapsing into the bed by the window. He lay there in the dark for a long while and could hear the sound of the traffic on I-85 even over the steady hum of the air-conditioning unit. Ryder sighed louder than he intended.

“Can't sleep?” Mr. Starr's voice rose up from the darkness like a ghost.

“Ninety-nine, that's all I can think of. That and I wish there was another way. Couldn't we just try and go to his house?”

“Maybe if you hadn't pulled your stunt at Yankee Stadium,” Mr. Starr snapped at Ryder. “We're on thin ice. If the police get a hold of us rolling around inside Country Club of the South, they won't just send us back to our hotel. They'll make some inquiries up in New York and they'll find out you're a fugitive.”

“I'm not a fugitive.” Ryder hated the sound of the word.

“Really? You're on paid leave?” Mr. Starr's voice hung in the darkness.

“Mr. Starr, Doyle says he'll get everything taken care of. This is all hard. Do you have to sound so crabby?”

The silence swelled all around him and Ryder began to regret his words.

“Tomorrow, I'll buy you a cupcake.” Mr. Starr sounded sweet, but Ryder could tell he was forcing it.

Ryder burst out laughing and Mr. Starr brayed like a donkey. They laughed themselves out until it grew quiet again and Mr. Starr sighed.

“Go to sleep, Ryder. Tomorrow? You're going to hit a hundred.”

“A hundred? How do you know?”

Mr. Starr sucked in some air, then yawned. “I just know. Our luck is bound to change. Now go to sleep.”

They got up early and had breakfast in the dining room off the hotel lobby. Ryder wasn't too hungry, but managed a bit of Raisin Bran and a glass of orange juice. Mr. Starr seemed like he was getting ready to attend a birthday party and he practically bubbled with confidence.

“I'm nervous.” Ryder made his confession as he wheeled Mr. Starr to the bus stop, the bat laid out over the handles of the wheelchair.

“Of course you are,” Mr. Starr said cheerfully. “You're supposed to be. That's going to help you win this thing. It's all going to happen, Ryder.”

“Mr. Starr?” Ryder stopped on the curb beneath the orange-and-blue-and-yellow MARTA sign.

“Yes?”

“I think I liked it better when you were crabby,” Ryder
said. “It makes me less nervous.”

“I don't care about you being nervous. I just told you that. You're supposed to be. Everything is riding on this.”

“Jeez, Mr. Starr.”

“Did you bring your baseball?” Mr. Starr asked.

“What? No.” Panic filled Ryder.

“Well, why not?”

“Because . . . I'm not going to see Thomas Trent at this thing.”

“No, but it's luck. It's an inspiration. Go get it.”

“The bus will be here.” Ryder's palms were sweating.

“Just go. You need that ball.” Mr. Starr wasn't kidding.

“Mr. Starr?” Ryder hollered back. He was already jogging down the sidewalk back toward the hotel.

“I'm fine!” Mr. Starr shouted.

Ryder crossed the street, burst into the hotel, scrambled to their room, and dug the baseball out of his bag. He flew out of the room and sprinted back down the street, circling the stadium to where the bus would stop. The woman at the front desk had told them that the buses weren't as regular on a day where there wasn't any game, so he had no idea if he'd miss it or not. Ryder's side hurt and his throat burned. He saw the bus appear and round the corner where the stop was. He found a new gear and ran even faster, clutching the ball tight. When the bus came into view, he saw it had its wheelchair ramp out, but Mr. Starr was half on and half off of it, toggling his control back and forth.

As Ryder approached, he could hear the bus driver's shouts for Mr. Starr to stop fooling around. In the huge rectangular
mirror up by the bus's front door Ryder could see the red, angry face of the driver looking back at Mr. Starr before he threw his hands in the air. Ryder huffed and gasped. He grabbed hold of the handles and pushed the chair up the ramp.

The driver shook his head and muttered and retracted the ramp before chugging on.

“You got it, right?” Mr. Starr asked.

Ryder couldn't speak, he only nodded and held up the ball.

“I hate when luck is necessary,” Mr. Starr said calmly. “But it is in most things. Catch your breath and take a seat. I want you fresh for this contest.”

Ryder did as he was instructed. They had to change buses at the Five Points station, but it wasn't more than an hour before they were rolling up the sidewalk along Peachtree Street to Baseball World. The parking lot was jammed and bright-colored balloons wobbled everywhere in the breeze, eager to tear away from the fencing, light posts, and clubhouse walls, none of them making it. Parents sandwiched their kids, baseball players all, most of whom wore their Little League uniforms as a point of pride. Ryder wished he had his team uniform, but he'd have to do his best in jeans and a T-shirt.

The worst thing, Ryder soon found out, was the wait. There were hundreds of kids. He got number 237 and found a place to sit. The steady sound of bats smacking balls in the cages worried away at Ryder's nerves. It was the sound of his undoing. Mr. Starr just sat, his eyes darting around at every player who crossed his field of vision, as if he were breaking them down, assessing their baseball skills.

Steadily, the numbers got called out over a loudspeaker.
During that time, Ryder stayed warm and loose by jumping up every few minutes, stretching, and lightly swinging the bat without too much power so as not to tire himself. It was a while, nearly two hours, but finally his turn came.

“Number 237 report to cage sixteen. Number 237, you're on deck in cage number sixteen.”

“Let's go,” Mr. Starr said. “This is it.”

They watched the boy in front of Ryder struggle along and end up with just a sixty-two. Even though the kid was one of hundreds of contestants, it was somehow a relief to Ryder to see someone so much worse than him. A contest official sat in a folding chair with an iPad. His gut spilled down over his belt and he wore a Braves visor on his balding head. He sighed heavily and scratched his neck before dragging his fingers over the iPad and calling Ryder's name.

“Okay,” Mr. Starr said, “let's go. Give me that ball to hold. Lock this thing up. I'm telling you, you're gonna get a clean hundred and win this thing outright.”

Ryder forced a laugh. He opened the cage door and stepped inside. Heavy black netting sagged above him like a spider's web. His mouth was dry, his limbs felt shaky. He reached through the doorway and dumped his signed baseball into Mr. Starr's lap then wiggled his fingers into the glove. He took a couple practice swings, stepped up to the plate, and nodded at the contest official.

“Okay,” the official said. “They come regular, so get reset quick after each pitch.”

Ryder nodded again. “Got it.”

The official pressed a button on the red metal box. The
light went green. The whirring machine clanked and clunked, then spit out a pitch.

Ryder thought about everything he had to do. He thought about Mr. Starr's confident cheer all morning and of the lucky baseball in Mr. Starr's lap.

He swung.

He missed.

The air in Ryder's lungs burst free, leaving him without any breath, oxygen-starved. He looked back at Mr. Starr through the cage.

“That's just one. You'll get the rest. You will.”

Ryder couldn't believe Mr. Starr's certainty. It meant very little to him now. Mr. Starr had been wrong about Ryder batting a perfect hundred. All around him popping sounds of baseballs being smacked filled the air. He took a breath and shook his head.

The light blinked green and the next pitch came before he was ready. He swung and missed.

“Hey!” Mr. Starr's bark startled everyone around them, especially Ryder and the official, who adjusted his collar and gave Mr. Starr a squinty glare. “You can
do
this! You
have
to! Do you
hear
me?”