Conviction (3 page)

I realize the social worker said something else I didn’t hear. “Sorry,” I say. “Um, could you say that again?”

“What I’d like for us to do right now is to contact your brother and get the ball rolling so we can avoid having to transfer custody to the state.”

I try to imagine what it would feel like to ask Trey to come back here on a moment’s notice. I try to imagine what it would feel like for him to say no.

There’s a pounding on the door. The social worker and I glance up at the same time and see out the window what looks like—you have got to be kidding me—a news crew setting up
in front of my house.

The social worker flies off the couch and across the room and has the door open before I have time to react.

“If you don’t remove everything from this property
immediately
, I’ll have you arrested for trespassing and harassment of a minor,” I hear her yell at someone.
“Get out. Do not test me.
Get out
.” She slams the door so hard I feel it shake, and then she comes back, smooths her skirt, and sits back down.

The whole interaction took less than ten seconds. But in that quick flash of time while she was gone, something invisible happened, something that’s left me reeling. I rest my palms on my
knees and try to breathe.

I know I need God right now, more than I ever have in maybe my whole life, so while the social worker was gone I tried to pray:
Please let all this go away. Please tell me it’ll be over
soon.
The thing about prayer is it always feels like an act of faith—it forms some fragile new chamber in your heart, something empty and vulnerable that bleeds loneliness if God never
answers you. Most times he doesn’t. The Giants game with Trey and my dad was the only time in my life I was even sure he heard me. This time, though, when I prayed, I felt something
I’ve never felt before, some bright, distinct certainty that arrived fully formed and lit up and flashed right at me, and even though I try to tell myself it’s ridiculous, I’m
scared that was God speaking to me. I’m scared of what I think I heard him say.

“Now, then, Braden.” Melanie’s fake smile and calm
I’m-a-therapist
voice are back, like nothing ever happened. She reaches for her clipboard. “What’s
the best way for me to reach your brother?”

M
y dad doesn’t come back home that night, and he doesn’t call. And he doesn’t come home the next night, either, or the next. I
try to be patient, to ride things out—what else is there to do?—but I feel my helplessness grating me, rubbing me blistered and raw.

Reporters call, though, so many I learn to hang up as soon as they identify themselves, and a lawyer whose messages I delete along with all the rest. The story flashes out of the national news
cycle after a few days, a blip on the radar. At home, though, I can feel the news settling in, the way silt sinks down through water to coat and burrow into the lake bed, but in Ornette, at least,
people are on his side.

At school, people ask a lot of questions. Or, instead, they’ll do this thing where they’ll come up to me in the hallway or turn to me in class and say something like
My uncle is a
lawyer
, or
My parents always thought the cops there had it in for us
, or
I was watching this show the other day and there was a guy in it who got wrongfully accused
, and then
they’ll wait, expectantly, like they’ve gotten the lid off a bottle of something carbonated and now are waiting for it to come frothing out. I’ve always thought the people I go to
school with are generally decent—or maybe I’ve just been lucky; in a place like Ornette, when you’re really good at something, when people feel like they have some small stake in
your future just because they know you now, high school’s going to be pretty easy for you as long as you’re not ugly or completely socially incompetent. But aside from whatever happens
on the pitcher’s mound, I don’t hang my laundry where everyone can see it and I don’t know why anyone would expect me to now.

My dad’s always been pretty popular at church, I guess because people listening to you every morning on the radio makes them think you’re a part of their lives, and church families
come by with Pyrex dishes full of chicken pot pie casserole and enchiladas made with cream of mushroom soup, so many people I start drawing the shades and pretending I’m not home. It’s
exhausting putting on a polite smile and telling everyone
Thank you for the casserole
and
Thank you for praying
and
Yes, I’m fine
and
No, I haven’t heard from
him
; it makes me feel more alone, not less.

Three days after his arrest, someone spray-paints
KILLER
on a billboard advertising his show, right across his face. Chase Singer goes off about how it’s going to
be a bloodbath when we play La Abra this year, how I’ll need a bodyguard, and my catcher, Colin Sykes, smacks him and snaps, “Real sensitive. Maybe try shutting up,” and tells me
I have nothing to worry about, that I know they’re all behind me. Dutch Hammell tacks the schedule up in our dugout and circles the La Abra game—May 12—in red.

Five days after his arrest, when I’ve still heard nothing from him and I’m starting to wonder if they aren’t allowing him any contact, I go to the airport with Kevin Cortland
to pick up Trey. Kevin’s Trey’s best friend from way back, and also my Civics teacher at school and—Pastor Stan is his dad—one of the youth group leaders at church. Kevin
called as he was leaving to say I should come with him to the airport. One person, he said, wasn’t much of a homecoming brigade.

It’s nine at night and mostly empty in the baggage claim. There’s some TVs mounted on the walls, and every one of them seems to have the news on, so I don’t look. There’s
a college-age girl wearing this tight black shirt and nothing underneath who I’m ignoring because I want Trey to land safely and to not hate me for having to come here, and averting my eyes
is my tacit bargain with God. And, even though I’m trying not to see, there are three cops in tan-colored uniforms pacing by the security line.

“So,” Kevin says, deliberately casually, “some rough news about the proceedings this week, huh?”

He’s lasted longer than I expected, actually; the whole two hours here we talked mostly about baseball and some about school, and even though I could tell it was killing him, he
didn’t ask me a thing about my dad. I arrange my expression into something as neutral as possible and say, mildly, “Mm.”

“How have you been feeling about everything going on?”

I say, “Fine.” Which isn’t exactly accurate, obviously. What I’ve been feeling is a low-grade terror, like kindling, ready to leap into flame. Although one good thing did
happen yesterday: Maddie Stern, whose family moved here from Bakersfield over the summer, came up to me when I was at my locker. Right on cue, in spite of all the ways my mind was frayed and
short-circuiting, I got that tingling feeling I always do when I pass her in the halls or when I see her at church. We talk sometimes in youth group and in class, and, if I’m being honest,
I’ve been pretty into her since the first day I saw her at school. She stood out in the classroom like she was backlit, not just because she was the new girl or the only Asian person in it or
whatever, but because she’s beautiful in a way that makes you want to keep staring, a way where, before you even know it, you’re picturing what it would be like to kiss her. I
wouldn’t quite call us friends, though, and so I was surprised yesterday when she asked me for my e-mail. When I got home after school, she’d sent a message:
Dear Braden, I’m
sorry about the accident you were in. This is a song that made me think of you. Sincerely, Maddie Stern.
Underneath she’d typed her phone number. When I hit play, Maddie’s voice
filled the room. It was a song I didn’t know, but something about the way the notes rose and fell and hovered, the way they kept ratcheting up like they were leading somewhere and then just
hung in the air, made me think she knows something about what it’s like to miss someone, and what it’s like when your world bottoms out.

Not that I told her that, because it’s not the kind of thing I’d normally say to someone, and it’s possible she just felt bad for me. Anyway, maybe I should feel guilty
thinking about a girl right now. I should just be thinking about my dad.

“Your dad’s got quite the support network,” Kevin says now. “My dad just forwarded me an e-mail about listeners holding an online prayer vigil.”

“Ah.” I got the e-mail, too. Every week, Pastor Stan sends out prayer requests to the whole church mailing list, and this week’s started with:
Please pray for strength,
peace, and deliverance for the Raynor family.
“A guy’s on the radio every morning, people feel like they know him, I guess.”

“Sure.” Kevin leans forward. “It’s a lot to take in, Braden. You know, it’s not even my dad, and it still hit me pretty hard to hear—”

“So how’s your kid, Mr. C?” He blinks at the interruption, but I say, “How old’s she now again?”

“Ah—Ellie’s eighteen months. But I’d really—”

“Yeah? What’s she like now?”

“Well, she’s—she’s talking now. A lot.”

“Yeah? Good for her.”

He drags his thumb against a leather key chain on his key ring. It’s the kind with different clock faces—New York, San Francisco—and a compass. Then, kind of resignedly, he
says, “Guess what her first word was.”

I’m not in a guessing mood. But he waits, so finally I say, “Mom.”

“Guess again.”

“Ball.”

“Not even close.”

I sigh. People start trickling through the gate, but the screen’s still saying twenty minutes before Trey arrives. “I don’t know, Kevin. Heritage. Constitution.
Homework.”

He smiles. “You wish, don’t you? It was
shark
.”

The cops have split up, all three at different gates. If one of them snapped right now—just lost it, with no warning—and drew a gun, what would everyone do? I read some of the hate
mail my dad’s been getting in his e-mail; I guess some people think he should’ve just sat there and let himself be threatened, maybe killed. “
Shark
, huh.”

“It was pretty awesome—I won’t lie.”

I give what maybe, barely, passes for a laugh. I can feel Kevin watching me, and after a while he says, mildly, “It’ll be nice to have Trey around again.”

“Yep.”

“I’ve missed that guy.”

“I’ll bet you have.”

His raises his eyebrows at that one, but if he thought I was being rude, he doesn’t say it. (I was, actually; I should’ve backed off that
you.
) Instead he says, “You
know, I think he’s glad to be coming back.”

I make a sound like,
Heh.

“You don’t think so?”

“I think he must’ve been banking on the social worker being hot.” I remember her yelling at the news crew. “Or maybe she just scared the—”

“Oh, give him more credit than that, Braden. He can’t wait to see you.”

Kevin’s the kind of guy who’d say that just because he’s nice, but I hope that part, at least, is true. I’m nervous as hell to see Trey. I don’t even know what
I’ll say to him. I still haven’t heard a word from him, and God knows how the conversation went with the social worker. It’s not lost on me that he ignored all my calls and texts
the night my dad got arrested, and I’m scared he’ll blame me for having to come back here. I’m scared he’ll think I ruined his life.

Kevin fiddles with his key chain some more. Then he says, more quietly, “Look, Braden, it’s a lot for anyone to be dealing with. And what they’ve been saying this week about
the DA’s decision is just—if you feel like you need to talk about—”

“I’m going to get something from the vending machines.” Before he can finish his sentence I get up so fast that for a second it feels like there’s cotton balls inside my
head. “You want anything, Mr. C? I’ll go get you a drink.”

I get water for myself and Cokes for Trey and Kevin, and then I pretend to still be looking at the vending machine so Kevin can’t ask me anything else. The airport’s
quiet, but it’s still better than home, where your thoughts stretch out huge like shadows and tower across the whole room.

Nothing was supposed to go like this. I’m supposed to be focusing on pitching. After we won State last year, I felt good about it for about a month, and then however bad I wanted to win
before I wanted it twice as much because now I have to prove it wasn’t a fluke and prove my worth to anyone who ever doubted it. Right now I should be worrying about how we’re going to
beat Brantley, not worrying about my dad locked up with a bunch of criminals in a cell or about my brother getting dragged back here because of me. I’ve always held out hope that Trey and my
dad would patch things up someday—that’s what God promised me, wasn’t it?—but I also always thought it would be something I did that would make Trey come back. That
I’d get drafted and he’d think,
Hey, maybe I should take a break from holing myself up with groceries all the time and go watch Braden play pro ball
, or that he’d just wake
up one morning and realize he missed me, the same way I’ve felt about him all these years. It wasn’t supposed to be a social worker calling to guilt him with a bunch of documents and
legal warnings.