Conviction (9 page)

I think the way you know you love someone is how badly you take it when they’re suffering, and it guts me to think what he’s going through alone, to think of him powerless and lonely
and afraid. But at least I can do this for him: play the way he taught me. Get the win against Brantley. That’ll be how I keep him close, for now—that’s how I’ll show him I
was always listening, that I still need him, that I took it to heart all those times he told me baseball is the truest test of who you are.

I
n the two weeks before my dad’s preliminary hearing, we beat Bret Harte 4–1 and Ripon 5–2, and I throw my first shutout of the
season (6–0) against Waterford.

La Abra, who we’re slated to play May 12, takes all of their three, and Alex Reyes goes through a slump at the plate. I read through every pitch he sees.

At home, another toothbrush shows up next to mine in the bathroom, another towel on the bar. Trey buys a cheap (crappy) car from some guy off Craigslist, and the fridge fills up with stuff
I’m afraid to touch: tiny, see-through orange balls Trey says are fish eggs, dried mushrooms that look like dung. He’s on the phone a lot with his restaurant, and sometimes late at
night when I’m in bed already he goes out, God knows where, but at home he spends nearly all his time in the kitchen cooking, and when I get home from baseball every day, the whole house
smells like spices and something rich, like browned onions. He tastes things with a spoon, but he doesn’t eat much of it and he doesn’t offer any to me, and when I take out the trash, I
find whole meals’ worth of food dumped in the garbage can. I survive mostly on beef jerky and Kraft macaroni and cheese.

I’d like to tell him how much it means that he came back for me and that I miss how things used to be between us. I don’t, though; instead I straighten my side of the bathroom and
don’t track dirt rings from my cleats through the kitchen since I know he likes when things are neat, and read articles about food on Wikipedia, hoping maybe I can find something to say to
him he’d actually like talking about, and record cooking shows for him on the DVR. He doesn’t watch them, and doesn’t come to watch me pitch.

The morning after we play Waterford, I see Maddie at her locker as I’m on my way to Spanish, and I spend a good sixty seconds debating whether or not to go talk to her. We’ve had
exactly two recent interactions: I told her thanks for her e-mail and teased her about how she was going to be “Sincerely Maddie Stern” to me from now on, and then, when I asked her
what song it was, she told me she’d written it herself, and then I was so impressed I couldn’t think of anything to say at all except that I’d liked it a lot. And then I felt like
an ass the rest of the day for not telling her what it meant to me after she’d gone to all that trouble, and also for teasing her like that—because her e-mail felt protective, kind of,
like maybe she’d gotten nervous sending that song to me or reaching out to me at all, and the
Sincerely, Maddie Stern
and the way it was all businesslike was her way of not giving away
too much of herself. But then, two days ago, we were coming down the hallway at the same time near the end of lunch and she paused whatever story she was telling her friends and gave me this quick
smile that somehow, in a hallway full of people, felt like something private we’d shared. Although maybe I just told myself that because it was something I wanted.

I know I should watch who I talk to more than ever these days, that I’ve got no business anyway with a girl right now. But talking to Maddie feels like one thing still unwrecked by my
dad’s arrest, so I make up my mind and go over to her.

“Hey,” I say when she looks up. She’s wearing a button-up shirt with little dots on it and the top two buttons undone, and her skin is pale and soft-looking under the collar of
the shirt.

She says, “Hi, Braden.”

“I’ve had your song stuck in my head the whole day,” I say. “I was listening to it all last night.”

She closes her locker, balancing her books in her other arm. “Oh yeah?”

“I really like that part at the end, you know, where the chorus breaks off into something else? Where the tune changes?” I probably sound like an idiot—singing in church on key
is about the extent of my musical ability. “Hey, and Kevin told me they got you to join the worship team at youth group.” I reach for her books. “I can get those. Where you
headed?”

“Lit.” We start walking. Her elbow brushes against mine, and I veer myself just a little bit away from her and wait to see if it’ll happen again. It doesn’t. She says,
“Yeah, Jenna asked me to sing. I’ve been sneaking into the chapel after school when no one’s there to practice.”

“You what?”

“After school. It’s usually unlocked, so I let myself in and just…sing and play, I guess. Before everyone else gets there.”

“Breaking and entering, Stern? I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“It’s not like
that
.” She pauses. “Well, maybe don’t tell anyone.”

“I’m totally telling.”

She reaches out like she’s going to grab my arm, then at the last second—I’m disappointed—she catches herself. “Don’t you dare.”

I hold my grin until she smiles back, too. “That’s a pretty empty threat,” she says. “When was the last time you even went to youth group?”

“Touché.” So she’s noticed. “Yeah, I—not in a little while. Kevin’s been after me to go back.” I start to say I’ve been too busy, and then
I change my mind and tell her at least part of the truth, or at least more than I’ve said aloud to anyone else. “It’s felt weird ever since everything with my dad and
all.”

She makes a sympathetic expression. “Right. Of course. It must be really hard without your dad. You must be so worried.”

“Yeah.” I lift one shoulder, then let it drop again. “I miss him.”

She studies me a moment. I think she’s going to ask more about him, like most people have been doing, and I tense up a little bit, but then—I’m grateful—she changes the
subject. Maybe she could tell I didn’t want to talk about it. “When my grandma was dying, I didn’t feel like going to church for a long time either.”

It’s not like that, but I say, “When was that?”

“It was before we moved here. She had Alzheimer’s and didn’t remember me at the end, and whenever I’d go visit her, she kept asking who that ‘Oriental’ girl
was. I guess I was kind of mad at God.”

“I’m sorry. That’s pretty awful coming from someone you love.”

“It was.” I have my eyes fixed on the hallway in front of us so they don’t stray too low and make me look like a creep, but I can feel her studying me. “I wouldn’t
blame you if you were furious with God.”

I’m not, exactly—there’s a lot of things I feel, but that’s not one of them—but it’s not a conversation I want to have either way. Chase and Dutch walk by
then and see me with Maddie, and a huge, syrupy grin spreads over Chase’s lips. I shoot him a look that means,
Not now
. It’s not like I have trouble finding dates to school
dances, but I’ve never let anything go much further than that, and so every time the guys see me so much as talking to a girl they think it’s completely hilarious to make jokes about
how that’s basically the equivalent of me getting to third base. Sure enough, Chase thrusts his hips back and forth and mouths something I don’t catch. If it weren’t in front of
Maddie, I’d flip him off; I plan to nail him later with a pitch or something instead. To Maddie, I say, “Mm.”

She doesn’t press it. “You said your brother was coming back to stay a while, didn’t you? Is he here already?”

I didn’t tell her that, which means she must have asked someone—sometime, when I wasn’t around, she was thinking of me. “Yeah, he got back last Friday.”

“I heard he doesn’t come back here very much?”

“He’s pretty busy. It’s been years since he’s been here, actually.”

“Are you guys close?”

“What? Yeah.” I glance around to make sure no one else overhears. “Hey, Maddie—you have younger siblings, right?”

“My sisters.”

“If you were all set up somewhere else and something happened and you had to move back for them, would you hate them?”

“Would I
hate
them? Braden, your brother doesn’t hate you. Why would you even think that?”

I shouldn’t have been so direct. “Yeah, no, I know. But things just feel kind of different with him than they used to, so I don’t know.”

“Maybe he’s nervous. He doesn’t live here, right? It has to be weird coming back and your little brother’s all different and more grown up than whenever you last saw
him.”

“My brother doesn’t get nervous about stuff like that.”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

I half laugh; I can’t tell if she’s serious or not. We’re almost to her classroom now; I can feel her attention shifting, and I get that empty feeling you get late at night
when a movie you’re watching is about to end. And then, as we go past the vending machines, she bumps one, stumbles, and brushes against me as I reach out to steady her. Touching her feels
like a bulb sparking in my chest.

“Whoa there, Stern,” I say as her face turns pink. “Go easy on that vending machine, would you?” I dodge when she tries to elbow me. “It’s been good to me all
these years.”

It’s not particularly great, as jokes go, but it makes her laugh anyway. And it’s funny about that laugh—it makes me feel a kind of calm I haven’t felt much these days,
like something twisting and then settling inside me. I smile back at her.

I wish more things felt like this.

T
rey’s gone when I get home that night from practice, which is unusual enough to spark a flame of panic; when you don’t know what made
someone leave once, you also don’t know what might make him do it again. I try to relax when I see all his stuff’s still laid out in the kitchen. There’s no way he’d take
off without his knives and pans.

He gets home around nine that night when I’m at the kitchen table going over Brantley’s schedule, looking for a game I can go scout out. He’s carrying a shoe box in his
hands.

“Hey,” he says, like he has no idea I’ve been sitting here worrying about where the hell he went off to. Probably he doesn’t; I know it’s not like he does the same
for me. “You want to see something?”

It’s unlike him to seem this happy, and it makes my worry seem like an overreaction. I say, dryly, “Is it shoes?”

“Funny.” He sets the box down carefully on the table. “Look, but be careful. Open the lid just a little bit.”

Before I can open the lid, I hear something rustling inside and then a chirping sound, which I wasn’t expecting at all. When I look inside, it’s birds. They’re gray and green
with shining black eyes and tan beaks, and they’re tiny—you could cup all four in your palms.

“They’re nice,” I say. “But random. Why’d you decide all of a sudden to get pet birds?”

“
Pet
birds, Braden?” The corners of his mouth push up. “Those aren’t pets.”

“What are they, then?”

“They’re ortolans.”

Looks like birds to me. “I see.”

“They’re songbirds. You get them in France, but they’re illegal everywhere to eat.”

“You
eat
them?”

“If you can find them. I couldn’t even find them in Brooklyn. I couldn’t believe it when I found out I could get them here. Guy in a warehouse out in Alameda gets them shipped
in on the black market. Hundred bucks apiece.”

I expect him to tell me he’s kidding, but I don’t think he is. “Why would you pay that much to illegally eat birds?”

“They’re not just
birds
.”

“If you say so.” I peek inside the box again, and they make a tiny bird stampede toward the sliver of light. “They’re so small, though. They’re, like, two
bites.”

“You keep them in a box with millet and figs, and you force-feed them until they’re”—he sets the box down on the table and holds his hands apart to
indicate—“about four times as big. All fat. Then when they’re big enough, you drown them in really good brandy and roast them. You eat them whole, bones and all. It should take
you fifteen, twenty minutes to eat.” Then he adds, “You eat them with a napkin over your head.”