“WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO say?” Jalen asked as they rode the elevator back down.
Yager shrugged. “I’m thinking.”
“I’d like it if you told them I’m . . . you know,” Jalen said, “a baseball genius.”
Glenda gave Jalen, then JY, a puzzled look.
JY turned away. When the elevator bell dinged, he let Glenda off before answering Jalen. “It’s lucky calamari.” He kept his voice low. “That’s it. Just luck. Got it? Nothing else. I need to get that contract extension signed.”
Jalen opened his mouth. “But—”
JY silenced him with a raised finger. “Shh. Think about this: it’ll help your father, this ‘lucky calamari’ thing. The focus will be on his restaurant, not you. We’ll promote the grand reopening tomorrow night, and people will swarm to the place for some lucky calamari. It’s about your dad, right? This whole thing? That’s what you said.”
Jalen looked at his friends, searching for answers. Seeing himself in their eyes, he knew what he had to do.
“Okay.” He couldn’t help feeling and sounding glum.
Glenda led them to the media room, where JY and Jalen stepped up onto a small stage and sat down side by side, facing a slew of camera lights and eager faces. The room exploded with questions until Glenda leaned into the microphones and held up her hand. “One at a time. One at a time. Mark, you first.”
A gel-haired young man wearing a tight suit cleared his throat and asked, “JY, can you tell us who the boy is exactly, and how he’s responsible for salvaging your career?”
JY smiled broadly and put a hand on Jalen’s shoulder. “This is Jalen DeLuca, he’s a fan, and he contacted me through some mutual friends.”
JY flicked his eyes toward the doorway, where Cat stood with her mom and Daniel.
“He told me he could help me out of my slump, that his dad had this amazing dish, this stuffed calamari that’d bring me luck. Now, I had a laugh over that, but then I got to thinking, the way things were headed, why not try it? His dad’s place is in Rockton, where I live, the Silver Liner Diner, right next to the train station. I like Italian food anyway, so I figured I’d give it a shot and then—bingo—I batted a thousand. Well, only a fool wouldn’t keep eating that lucky calamari, so I kept at it these last three nights and . . . well, you saw how it went.”
• • •
Again the room erupted in a storm of questions until Glenda repeated her call for order, then pointed to the blond woman from FOX. “Margaret?”
“Two nights ago, Jalen told me it was him.”
“I—” Jalen began to speak, but JY kicked him under the table. “I only meant we, my dad and me, because I help him in the kitchen.”
“And”—JY leaned into the microphones—“Jalen being able to come watch me play along with his friends was part of the deal. Torin, how about you? Two weeks ago I think you called me ‘washed up.’ How about now?”
The handsome gray-haired man who’d first called Jalen “Calamari Kid” blushed before he said, “Looked that way, but not anymore. You saved your career! How does that feel?”
“How does it feel?” JY leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His eyes filled, and it looked like he might spill a tear before he regained his composure. “It’s like that car crash that almost kills you and you pull over and you realize how close you came and you’re just flooded with . . . joy? Gratitude?
“Let me make something clear. I came up with the Yankees. I turned twos with Jeter and played behind Mo Rivera. I’m going to go out a Yankee, like they did.” Yager grinned. “It’s all good, especially with lucky calamari.”
The lights and the questions and the excitement dazed Jalen, so when Glenda ended it before the media was ready to stop, and he was shuffled out of the room, he couldn’t recall most of what had been said. On the car ride home, he realized how tired he was, too tired to celebrate, to chatter, to even notice the diner, repairs completed and slumbering in the dark in preparation for its big day. So when Cat’s mom dropped him off in front of his sagging house and he waved good-bye from the front porch, it seemed like the whole thing might have been a dream.
Inside, his father jumped up from his chair. The TV flickered on the wall.
“Jalen!” His father hugged him tight and kissed his cheeks. “I didn’t hear you coming. I was watching the TV, and I did not see the lights. You friends, they go? They don’t want something to eat?”
“No, Dad.”
“I see you on the TV!” His father pointed to the muted flat-screen. “They’re all talking about JY and about you.”
“Not the diner?”
“Oh yeah, they talk plenty about the diner, and they say tomorrow—the grand reopening—she’s gonna be like a rock concert! Everybody wanna be there. Everybody gonna be happy!” Jalen’s dad put his hands on either side of Jalen’s face and looked into his eyes, choking up just like JY had done at the press conference. “Jalen . . . is my dream coming true, and you’re the one who’s making it happen.”
Jalen hugged him hard and took a deep breath. “Dad, I’m so tired. I gotta get some sleep. Remember, we gotta be at the bus by six tomorrow morning.”
“What bus?”
“Dad, the tournament’s tomorrow. The Rockets?”
“Oh yeah! And I gotta get the sandwiches ready.” His dad slapped a hand against his bald scalp. “You go to bed. I’m gonna get everything ready, then make them in the morning so they fresh.”
Originally, Coach Gamble had agreed to take Jalen onto the travel team even though he only had half the thousand-dollar fee, so long as Jalen’s dad supplied sandwiches for the players when they traveled and catered the end-of-season banquet. But Cat—being the shrewd negotiator she was—had gotten JY to agree not only to tweet the Silver Liner into the limelight, but also to pay the rest of Jalen’s fee if Jalen helped him.
“Dad, JY paid Coach Gamble so you don’t have to make any sandwiches.”
“I know, but I wanna do that for the boys. They gonna love my sandwiches.”
Jalen knew better than to argue with his father about food, so he quickly took care of business in the bathroom before flopping down in the narrow bed in the corner of his tiny room. He set his alarm for five o’clock and reached for the light switch. When his eyes caught sight of the picture on his bureau, his fingers froze. His mother’s image—a beauty with big eyes, dark skin, and full red lips—smiled out into the room.
Without warning, Jalen choked up like his father and JY before him. Today had been one of the biggest days in his life, tomorrow would be another one, and with a kick that reminded him of the time he’d put a fork in the electric outlet, he suddenly missed her. He didn’t just miss her presence, having a mom to come home to who baked cookies or helped with science homework. He missed her from the inside out, as if suddenly aware of an enormous empty space in his chest that just wasn’t supposed to be.
He stared for quite some time at the picture, and she stared right back, and it was as if she was calling to him and he knew—deep down—that she wanted him to find her. Something had kept them apart, and he suspected that it wasn’t entirely her own doing and that she needed him to reach out. He just knew it.
And, as he switched off the light and shut his eyes, the only thing that allowed him to fall asleep was the promise that he’d find her.