Baseball Great (14 page)

WHEN HIS DAD PICKED
him up for practice after school, Josh waited until they were halfway there before he asked, “Dad, how's that Nike deal working out?”

His father gave him a quick glance and, scowling, said, “Did your mother tell you? I asked her not to say anything.”

“She didn't say anything,” Josh said. “I was just talking about it at lunch with my friends.”

“I don't want to give it a jinx,” Josh's dad said, “but it looks like it's going to happen. They're going to have someone watching practice today.”

Josh beamed at his dad and said, “That's great. How come you don't look happy?”

His dad smiled, fought it back, then gave up and smiled again, shaking his head.

“It's just like it's almost too good to be true,” his dad said. “When I got let go…well, it was like something inside me died, Josh. It's hard to explain. I played baseball my whole life. It practically was my life, and I really didn't know if I was ever going to be happy doing anything again. Now this. It's still baseball; not playing, but everything I know about the game still matters. I just don't want to give it a jinx.”

“Being happy won't jinx it,” Josh said. “I'm glad I know.”

“Why'd you say it like that?” his father asked.

“Like what?” Josh said, part of him wanting to cry out that he wouldn't let the whole thing with Rocky ruin his father's dream.

“Like you can help make it happen?” his father said.

Josh pressed his lips together, then said, “I'm just happy, Dad. That's all. Maybe by doing good today I can help, right?”

“Sounds good,” his father said, pulling into the sports complex. “You go work hard. I've got a meeting at the vitamin store for Rocky.”

“You're not meeting the Nike guys?” Josh asked.

His father forced a smile and said, “That's not my place yet. This is still Rocky's deal. But I'll be back to pick you up after practice.”

Josh changed into his workout clothes and hit the
weight room.

As he finished a set of shoulder presses, Tucker sidled up to him and asked, “How you feeling?”

“Still sore from yesterday,” Josh said, massaging his legs.

“It'll take a few weeks,” Tucker said, lowering his voice but grinning big. “Then,
whoosh.
I told you, you'll take off like a rocket.”

Tucker gave him a friendly punch on the shoulder along with a wink before he stalked away.

At practice, Josh saw Rocky on the side, talking and joking with a man wearing a gold watch and a blue Nike sweat suit. But it was also Rocky who stopped practice, pulled on a glove, and walked out onto the field to instruct Josh on the way to drag his right foot across the bag on a double play.

“Look,” Rocky said, stepping toward first with his left foot as he caught the ball Moose threw to him, then dragging the right foot across the bag as he threw it to first. “You make tagging the bag just part of the throw. It saves half a second, and that's the difference between one out or making the double play. You try it.”

Josh looked over at the Nike guy and bit his lip. He wanted to ask Rocky why he was all of a sudden giving tips out on the field when all he usually cared about was Super Stax and gym candy. Of course, he kept his mouth shut and did as Rocky told him.

On the very next try, Rocky's technique worked. Moose hit a grounder to the second baseman. Josh darted for the bag. The second baseman fumbled the scoop, and the ball came late. Josh snagged the ball, dragged his foot, and rocketed the ball to first, beating the runner by a step.

Rocky stood with his thick arms folded across his chest, grinning. The Nike guy gave a low whistle, and Jonesy pulled his hand free from the glove, shaking it from the sting.

“Now, that's the way you play shortstop,” the Nike guy said.

“You mean, that's the way you coach a shortstop,” Rocky said, patting the Nike guy on the back until he returned Rocky's grin.

Josh walked back to his position, wondering if tonight would be the night he and Jaden wiped that grin right off of Rocky's face.

DURING DINNER LATER THAT
evening, Josh's father asked, “You take your Super Stax?”

“Not yet,” Josh said.

“What's wrong?” his father asked. “You don't like that banana, right?”

“No, it's okay,” Josh said.

“Well, take it,” his father said. “You need to take that stuff, Josh. You need every edge you can get. We talked about that. You look tired.”

“He's wearing himself out,” Josh's mom said. “He'll get to bed early tonight.”

“No!” Josh said, raising his voice more than he meant to and drawing stares from both his parents.

Laurel banged her sip cup on her tray and shouted, “No. No! No! No!”

“That's enough,” his mom said, reaching for his little sister.

“I just have a science project tonight I have to work on with Jaden, that's all,” Josh said.

“Science?” his dad said. “I've never seen so much science. What are they trying to do? Put a man on Mars?”

“Genetic predispositions,” Josh said.

“It's all the state testing,” his mom said to his dad.

His dad grumbled and took a bite of pot roast before attacking his pile of mashed potatoes and gravy, then abruptly pushing back from the table and disappearing upstairs, mumbling something about the bathroom.

“Just try to get done early,” his mom told him, getting up from the table and going to the counter where the can of Super Stax rested. “Here, I'll mix in some vanilla and it'll taste better.”

“Gee, Mom,” Josh said in a soft voice, “you're in on this, too? Do you really care about all this weight-lifting stuff?”

“It's important to your father, Josh,” she said, dumping a scoop of the powder into a big glass.

After dinner, Josh helped clean up, then wheeled his bike out of the garage and headed for the hospital. He sent Jaden a text to let her know he was on his way, and she met him on a corner two blocks away from the hospital. The orange sun behind him stretched his
shadow for nearly a block. Even though the evening started out warm enough, the shadows had a bite to them that made him think he should have worn more than just his navy blue Syracuse University sweatshirt and jeans. When he saw that Jaden was wearing a jeans jacket over her black hooded sweatshirt, he shivered, wishing he had worn one, too. She waved at him and swung the backpack off her shoulder. When Josh got down off his bike, she unzipped the backpack and removed the big red
PDR
.

“I marked the page,” she said, touching a sticky note and flipping open the book. “Wanted you to see for yourself.”

Josh followed Jaden's finger down the page to a picture of a pill that looked exactly like the ones Tucker had given him.

“Anadrol-17,” he said, reading it aloud, studying the picture. “That's it.”

“And here,” Jaden said, flipping to another section in the book and showing him where it said that Anadrol-17 was an anabolic steroid.

“I believed you,” Josh said.

“I know,” she said. “But sometimes I have a hard time believing it myself. I mean, this is the kind of stuff you read about but don't think people would actually do.”

“What about all those pro players?” Josh asked.

“Right,” she said. “Then you think, but that's the pros. We're talking fourteen-year-olds. So I did some research after school. Four percent of high school kids use steroids. You think, not a big number, right? Until you know that there's sixteen and a half million high school kids. That's more than half a million kids in this country using steroids. It makes the number of pro players look like a raindrop in Onondaga Lake.”

Josh held her gaze until she said, “Come on, let's go see if tonight's the night.”

JOSH LOOKED AT HIS
watch—it was just after seven—and asked, “You think it will be?”

“I was thinking about the last time,” Jaden said, beginning to walk. “There's a shift change at eight. That's probably why he was here then. Whoever's supplying him probably gets off the same time as my dad. Also, that day was a Thursday and it's Thursday today, so I think we've got a chance. If Coach Valentine is giving steroids to the whole team, he probably has to get more every week.”

Josh tucked his bike behind a ragged patch of bushes next to the sidewalk, and they began their mission. Small houses stood cramped along the street, lurking, aged and sullen, behind withering trees, and half-shaded windows. Josh and Jaden turned the corner
and scoped out the loading dock from across the street, walking down the hill and past the concrete cave without stopping until they got to the next corner.

“Where should we wait?” Josh asked. “Behind the Dumpsters?”

“It won't smell good,” Jaden said, “but I think it's the only place that's safe. Let's go in one at a time in case there's a security guard around or something. I'll go first.”

“I should go,” Josh said, taking hold of her shoulder. “If there's no place to hide and something goes wrong, I don't want you to get in trouble.”

“I know the docks better than you,” she said, slipping free, “and if anything happens, I can just say I'm there to meet my dad.”

“What happens if Rocky's there and your dad really comes out?” Josh asked.

“Don't worry,” she said. “I told my dad I couldn't meet him tonight, that I'd be at the library. I can stay and see what happens with Rocky if he's here and then get home after my dad.”

“I keep saying you're smart.”

Jaden touched his hand, smiling, and said, “So, I'll go. When I get set, I'll text you. Hoods up.”

Jaden flipped up her hood, hiding her face and hair. Josh did the same, then watched her cross the street and climb the hill toward the loading dock. He tensed
when a blue van turned the corner and chugged up the hill, slowing to turn into the loading dock area. Jaden barely looked at the van. When she got to the place where the loading area cut into the side of the hill, she took a quick right and, keeping to the edge of the retaining wall, quickly disappeared from sight into the cavelike entrance.

Five minutes seemed like five hours. The van emerged from the dock and chugged on up the hill. Before it disappeared, Josh got Jaden's text: “OK.”

Josh crossed the street and followed her path. When he reached the entrance, he took the quick right and walked between a guardrail and the concrete wall that grew higher as the loading area cut deeper into the hillside. The five large Dumpsters still stood in the corner, two with their backs to the loading area and three along the side wall. Josh scanned the area as he crept forward, ducking down when a man in a blue uniform emerged from an open garage door wheeling a big trash can.

As he eased forward, Josh heard the man tossing bags of garbage into one of the Dumpsters by the dock. He finished and wheeled the big can back into the garage and what must be the maintenance area. Then Josh saw Jaden peek her head out from between the second and third Dumpsters along the wall and wave frantically to him. He hurried to where she was,
ducking into the dark fissure between the two huge metal containers. The stink of garbage filled his nose. His heart thumped against his ribs. Jaden grasped his hand and held it tight.

“It's gonna be pitch-black in here in about twenty minutes,” Josh said in a whisper. “Are we gonna be able to see anything?”

“Our eyes will adjust,” she said, looking ghostly in her dark, hooded sweatshirt.

“What about taking a picture of him getting the drugs?” Josh asked.

Jaden held up her cell phone and said, “It's got a flash.”

Josh nodded. Jaden reached into the hatch on the side of the Dumpster they faced and removed a flattened cardboard box. He followed her as she moved deeper into the space between the Dumpsters, stopping just before they reached the other side. She laid the cardboard down on the slimy blacktop and pointed to it before she sat down herself with her back to the Dumpster. Josh did the same, pulling his knees up tight and using them as a chin rest. From where they sat, they had a perfect view of the loading dock and any cars that pulled in to park.

Josh steadied his breathing and settled in to wait. The shadows lengthened and deepened, and soon everything outside the cones of light from the fixtures
dissolved into a murky soup. When the headlights from a car swung across the Dumpsters, they froze. The car rumbled down into the docks and came to a rest amid the handful of other cars parked against the concrete wall. Josh couldn't make out exactly what kind of car it was. He thought it was black, but it could have been dark blue. He knew it wasn't a big car.

The door opened, and someone got out—the shadow of a person too blurred to really see. Then the shape hopped up onto the loading dock and stood briefly under a cone of light before ducking into the shadows of the only open garage door. Josh didn't have to guess anymore.

He had no doubt that the man he saw was Rocky Valentine.

JOSH REACHED OUT AND
grasped Jaden's hand.

“That's him, right?” Jaden asked in the faintest whisper, her southern accent somehow more pronounced in the dark.

Josh nodded. They stood and pressed themselves against the Dumpster's cool metal side. Josh's fingers played across a thick rib of steel and gripped its edge as though wind from a hurricane might whisk him away. Jaden leaned toward him so that her lips brushed his ear.

“When he gets the drugs,” she said in words he had to strain to hear, “I'll jump out and take the picture. Then we run.”

Josh nodded but groped for her hand again and tightened his grip to get her attention. He moved his lips to
her ear, smelling the strawberry scent of her shampoo, and said, “If they come after us, we'll split up. We'll run down the hill. I'll keep going straight to distract them, and you take a right and head for home. We'll text each other when we're both safe.”

Her lips mashed against his ear, making him jump. “You think they'll chase us?”

He could hear the alarm in her voice. He tried to calm his breathing before he said, “No. I'm only saying in case.”

Jaden nodded and looked at her watch, pressing a button on the side of it to illuminate the numbers and show him it was just eight. As if on cue, the far door in the opposite corner of the loading dock swung open, stabbing the shadows with a spear of white light that disappeared when it closed. The door began to open and close constantly now as several of the hospital employees left through the back door, the same way Jaden's father did.

As they came out, the bright light behind them made it impossible to see their faces. One by one, they zipped around the closing door and descended the small set of stairs on the far side of the dock. One of them came close and climbed into a car parked along the dock, backing out and zipping away, tires crunching on the gritty pavement.

Josh loosened his grip on Jaden's hand. He leaned
in close again to whisper that Rocky might have snuck inside the hospital through the garage door and the maintenance area, but just as his lips brushed her ear, the far door swung open, and the figure that appeared walked right at them, toward the Dumpsters, and away from the stairs where everyone else had gone.

Jaden gripped his hand tight, then let go, removing her camera phone from her jacket pocket and edging toward the loading dock. The door swung shut, cutting off the bright light that kept the figure's face in the shadows, but whoever it was kept close to the garage doors, staying on the fringe of the lights from above. Josh took hold of the Dumpster's corner as Jaden snuck closer, nearly to the edge of the raised loading dock.

The figure moving toward the place where Rocky hid wore a long white lab coat and appeared to have a bag in one hand, although it was so dark Josh couldn't be certain. The sound of footsteps on the concrete came from the black hole of the garage where Rocky had disappeared. Josh saw movement in the shadows, and the figure in the white coat stopped in the darkness in front of another dark shape Josh knew to be Rocky Valentine.

Jaden found a foothold in the loading dock wall, grabbed the edge, and peeked her head over the lip of concrete. She raised her camera phone, and he saw her trying to line up the shapes, knowing she couldn't see
much more than he could and that it would be difficult to center the picture.

She'd get only one shot.

Rocky and whoever his supplier was would know that they'd been caught the instant the flash went off. Josh and Jaden would have to run, and if Rocky was as quick as he was strong, they'd have to run fast.

Josh sensed the tension in Jaden's body. He eased out from behind the Dumpsters and into the open space, crouched low and watching but ready to sprint. He could see the two figures talking and Rocky reaching for the bag. Their voices floated across the dark space in low tones. Suddenly Rocky's shape spun toward Jaden.

“Hey!” Rocky shouted.

The camera flash exploded, blasting Rocky and his accomplice with a light so white it blinded Josh. Before he could react, Jaden rocketed past him.

From the pitch-blackness, Rocky screamed with rage.

“Come back here!”