CHAPTER 15

I drove home, knowing Dad wouldn’t be there, and packed a few things. Then I called Lisa.

“Hey, Lisa,” I said when she answered, “I need a favor.”

“Name it,” she said.

“I need a place to hang out for awhile. Do you have a spare room?”

“Sure, you can use the guest room. What’s up?”

“Same old. Baseball. My dad. I’ll tell you more when I get there.”

Lisa’s place wasn’t a villa, but it was nice. Her mom was Pop Mancini’s youngest daughter who, like most of the family, went into the family business. But Lisa’s mom had also gone to medical school and wound up as a psychiatrist. Being a psychiatrist in Vegas is like being a blanket salesperson in Alaska. There’s a need.

Lisa came to the door when I rang and welcomed me in. “Is this okay with your parents?” I asked.

“They’re out of town till next weekend,” she said, “but they’d be cool. I’ll show you your room.”

After I got settled we sat down in the rec room and played some video games. Lisa didn’t ask any questions; she knew I’d talk when I was ready. And I did, after an hour or so. I told her about my argument with Dad, his blackmailing me and the team, the Yankee scouts—everything.

“I just want to get away,” I said. “From him and his expectations.”

Lisa was quiet for a minute. “So,” she asked, “is it really baseball you hate, or is it the way it’s turned into something about your dad?”

“Wow,” I said, and smiled at her. “How soon until you join your mom’s practice?”

She laughed. “Really, Trip, maybe it’s not baseball you want to get away from after all. Maybe your dad is just too involved for it to be fun anymore.”

I thought about today’s game and how great I’d felt when we’d won. Lisa was right. It wasn’t the sport. When I thought about quitting, I was really thinking about how great it would be to not have to measure up to anyone’s dreams but mine.

Lisa went on. “What’s your plan? I mean, you can’t really change your name and work construction in Canada. Sooner or later your dad will come looking for you. You’ll have to go back.”

“You’re right, Li. I don’t have a plan. I think I just need some oxygen for a while.”

“We have oxygen here,” she laughed. “Stay as long as you like. I do have another guest tonight, though.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“It’s all right. The more the merrier. Plus you’ve met her.”

That’s how, later that night, I came to be sharing pizza and ice cream and movies with Lisa and Zoey. Dad had started calling around six, but I turned off my phone. And he wouldn’t find me here; he didn’t know anything about Lisa.

 

. . .

It was great. For four or five hours, past midnight, no one said the word baseball. And Zoey turned out to be almost as funny as Lisa. I laughed a lot that night. At some point we said good night—Zoey was sharing Lisa’s room—and I went to the guest room for the best sleep I could remember.

The next morning I went out to their pool and swam some laps. We had a practice scheduled for that day, but I had no plans to go. After swimming, I cleaned up and wandered out to the kitchen, where Lisa and Zoey were cooking bacon and eggs and giggling.

“Hey, Trip,” Lisa said. “Zoey dreamed about you.”

The sixteen-year-old blushed and punched her friend in the arm. “Lisa!”

Lisa laughed hard. “Tell him about it.”

Zoey rolled her eyes. “Actually,” she was talking to me now, “it was kind of weird. You were singing that song your dad wrote—the one you sang at my party?—and then your dad came up and started singing too.”

“I’ll bet we made beautiful music,” I said kind of sarcastically.

“No! You had different styles and you sounded terrible together. And you kept looking at each other like ‘Stop already!’ And you said, ‘I was singing first,’ and he said, ‘I wrote the song.’ I thought you were going to fight.”

“What happened?”

“Dunno. I woke up.”

Lisa was smirking. “Zoey, I think you may be a psychic. You are definitely in touch with the energy around here.”

We ate breakfast. I checked my phone. There were lots of missed calls from Dad. I didn’t want him to have a heart attack worrying, so I texted him. Spent the night with friends. I’m fine.

OK, he texted back, see you at practice.

I didn’t answer.

 

. . .

Lisa and Zoey were planning to go to the mall that morning. I passed on their invitation. I thought I’d just chill by the pool, play games, whatever. I felt like I was on vacation—a vacation I’d needed for a couple of years.

The girls had been gone for just half an hour when the front doorbell rang. I looked out through a window and the old sick feeling started again. It was Pop Mancini.