JALEN LOOKED OUT THE BACKSEAT window at the darkness speeding past.
Cat’s mom’s Range Rover hit a bump in the road.
He tried to stay quiet, but occasionally he couldn’t help a muffled sniff. Tears spilled from his eyes at random moments when the jabs of pain were particularly sharp. Those came mostly when he thought of his mom. She was out there, somewhere, but now he might never know her, never get to make her proud enough to call him her son.
Even if JY paid him for tonight, he had to think that the Yankees player might cut the fee after getting the information on only one of his four at bats. Maybe he wouldn’t advance the Bronxville travel team fees for him and Daniel—or he’d stop payment for the detective. Jalen had no way of getting his hands on that kind of money until he was a pro ballplayer himself. He didn’t want to wait that long. He’d been so close . . . .
Daniel nudged him and whispered, “Hey, amigo, it’s gonna be okay. JY will get over it. Cat will figure something out and we’ll pick up right where we left off.”
Jalen couldn’t bring himself to answer. If he started talking, he knew what would come out. He’d blast Cat for what she’d done. Breaking JY’s trust by calling the wrong signal made the whole thing beyond fixing.
Daniel held his fist in the air, waiting for Jalen to bump it. Jalen turned back to the window, but that brought him no comfort. He knew how loyal Daniel was, and when he turned back, he wasn’t surprised to see his friend’s fist still hanging there in the air, lit by the feeble glow from the Range Rover’s instrument panel.
He gave Daniel’s fist a bump, then turned back to the dark outside.
When they pulled up to the Silver Liner, Cat’s mom asked, “Here, or could I take you to your house, Jalen?”
“This is good, thank you,” Jalen said. “I’ll go help my dad.”
He thanked Cat’s mom for everything, anxious to get away.
“Oh, you know I love helping you kids with all this baseball stuff,” she said, turning around in her seat. “It’s fun. And Daniel’s right about what he said—don’t you worry about James. He’ll come around.”
Jalen thanked her again and said good-bye without trying to address Cat, because she was huddled up in the front seat and in a mood.
As he watched them drive away, Jalen wondered if his own mom would be as kind and generous as Cat’s. He knew his dad wasn’t really expecting him to help this late at the diner, so, after the taillights disappeared, he headed down the gravel road.
He walked the dark, lonely path and climbed his front steps by feel, comforted by the familiar screech of the rusty hinges on the front door. Inside, he changed into shorts and a clean T-shirt to sleep in, then heated up some leftover lasagna because he realized he hadn’t eaten at the stadium and he was hungry. After he cleaned up, he got into bed with his book, hoping to fall asleep. He resisted the temptation to use his phone to see what people were saying on the sports sites or on social media about JY’s unlucky collapse and the Yankees loss.
He was grateful for a book he could get lost in, Throwback 07, a story about a young football player who time-traveled back to the days of Jim Thorpe to play on his team. He realized he had begun to doze when he heard his father come in through the front door.
“Jalen!”
“In here!” Jalen bolted upright and the book spilled to the floor.
His father appeared in the doorway to Jalen’s bedroom, his small round glasses foggy and his face flushed with emotion. “Did you hear?”
“Hear what?” Jalen couldn’t read his father’s face.
“About Mr. JY,” his father said. “On the Twitter. The people at the Silver Liner, they all talking about it, his tweet . . . .”
“His tweet about what?” Jalen had a sinking feeling, and he thought for a fleeting moment that he might just be having a bad dream.
“About you, Jalen,” his dad said. “About you and the Silver Liner . . .”