Stepping Up to the Plate

Title page-2

He’d skipped school before but never when he had detention. What would the school have to say when he didn’t show up at the door of that silent blue room by the first bell? Would they call his house? Would they add another day to his punishment? He wasn’t sure, and that uncertainty ate into his nerves until his stomach fluttered, his blood sang, and he jumped at every little sound. A creak in the floorboards, the squeal of the cabinet hinge, the clatter of a fork falling into the sink as he tried to take one of the cups off the dish rack to pour himself a drink. Twice he looked over his shoulder with a guilty start, sure his mother was standing behind him, the sad set of her mouth showing her disappointment.

In him.

Sixteen years old and where the hell was he anyway? Near the bottom of his class, half-flunked out of Geometry not because he was stupid like the other kids said but because he couldn’t focus on school. There was too much he’d rather be doing, too many things on his mind. He was wasting himself at the high school, he knew it, and if it wasn’t for baseball, he’d wash his hands of the whole thing. All of his friends were older, out of school already, living on their own with jobs that paid the rent and bought their smokes and gave them a few bucks here and there for something a little harder than tobacco and beer from time to time. He could do that, too. He was so ready to get on with his life and leave high school behind.

The morning of his birthday, the door to his mother’s bedroom stayed shut—Stacy kept glancing at it down the hall as he phoned his friend Lamar. His boyfriend really, since they got it on from time to time and Lamar like to say he gave good head, but they weren’t exclusive. Stacy could say the same thing about his friend Ange, too, or Colin. The four of them hung out all the time, on weekends mostly but sometimes during the week.

Ange and Lamar worked at the same car shop, a place downtown that mostly did oil changes and state inspections. Colin worked for the cable company and ran hot descramblers on the side when he could. He kept telling Stacy he could hook him up, they were always hiring installers. “Once you’re out of school, man,” Colin had told him, with a shrug and nod that assured him the job was in the bag. “They’d snatch a smart kid like you up in a heartbeat, I’m telling ya.”

Colin Bey was big and chubby, rounded at the edges like an overweight kid, with tiny little dreadlocks that looked terribly out of place framing his chunky cheeks. There was a reddish tinge to his dark skin, an almost ruddy color, that made him look like he was trying to catch his breath even when he was standing still. He wore glasses at work because he couldn’t see worth s**t, but whenever he saw Lamar or Ange, he whipped them off and tucked them into his pocket, then squinted at his friends to bring them into focus as they talked. The scrunched up look on his face pissed Stacy off for some reason he didn’t understand.

“I ain’t all that smart,” Stacy said at the time, kicking the ground. This was outside the body shop, the three of them passing a smoke, him and Ange and Colin—Lamar was a little ways off, fighting with the soda machine because it wouldn’t take his rumpled, oily dollar bill. The three of them watched their friend kick at the machine, angry like it wouldn’t take his money out of spite. Stacy couldn’t see himself working a job like Colin’s, eight to five all damn week, worse than school. “My grades suck.”

Ange waved that off. He was three years older than Stacy and damn near perfect in the younger boy’s eyes, though he’d never tell Lamar that. Ange was Hispanic and black mixed, his skin the summery color of damp beach sand. His eyes were dark and bright and piercing—he’d stare a long time at someone before answering, weighing what they said, so long sometimes that Stacy grew uncomfortable and wanted to apologize.

Tall, skinny, thin muscle strapped to lanky bones, wrapped in black tank-tops and dirty combat khakis—that was Angelo Echevarria. He wore his dark hair tied back with a bandanna that kept the oil and grease from the shop out of it. “Maybe you’re not book-smart,” he told Stacy in his soft, smoked-out voice, “but you’re smart where it counts. I know you sure as hell ain’t as stupid as you play to be.”

“I don’t—”

Ange cut him off. “Lamar may buy that s**t, and maybe you’re starting to believe it too, but you can’t lie to me.”

Stacy glared at the ground, kicking it viciously, to hide the way his friend’s comment warmed him up inside.