“Um.” Max shifted. “Yes.”
She tilted her head. “I’m sorry I told her. It just came up, you know? She’s my best friend. I don’t want to lie to her!” Her nose wrinkled up at the very thought.
“No, of course not!” Max said, wrinkling up his nose even more. “Just, um, don’t tell anyone else, okay?”
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about me,” she said.
Max smiled. Of course she wouldn’t tell. And if Molly told Jenny, Jenny was trustworthy too. And anyway, Molly wanted to hang out with him now. And that was worth anything.
Something changed in Max that day. For the first time in his life he was someone who was Someone, the sort of kid people noticed. In a Good Way. After all, if a girl like Molly believed he was the sort of kid who might have a baseball player for a dad, well, maybe that’s who he was.
It would be something to have a major-league baseball player for a dad. And not just any major-league baseball player. Beau Fletcher, one of the best alive. It would have been the best thing ever. When Max was little, TC Bear would’ve come to all his birthday parties, and all the kids would think the Twins’ mascot was his best friend. Beau would have taken Max to the ballpark all the time. Max would run around on the field, take grounders from the other players, drink Gatorade in the clubhouse, and tell all the kids in school about it the next day. Sometimes Max would bring his friends, too—but only sometimes. And his dad would go to his tennis matches whenever he could and cheer louder than all the other dads combined. And everyone would point and say, “That’s Beau Fletcher! Cheering for his son! Tennis is a real sport!” But they’d still play baseball sometimes. Beau would pick Max up from school sometimes, and they’d stay afterward on the fields in the back of the school and have a catch as dusk slowly fell—father and son, night after night, just like it was supposed to be.
As Max walked through the hallways that day, he could feel himself standing taller, walking assuredly like Logan and all the other kids who mattered. And the funny thing was, it worked. By the end of the day he could feel the crackle in the air as the kids around him noticed him, sense them make way as he walked past, hear the staccato whispers and see the fingers pointing—
Uh-oh.
“Hey!” A boy from his English class grabbed him on the shoulder. “Do you think your dad could come to school sometime to autograph? I have baseballs like you wouldn’t believe!”
“Um—” said Max.
“Man!” A girl with a unicorn on her shirt sidled alongside Max. “Your dad is, like, my favorite player of all time. I named all my gerbils after him. Do you think I could meet him sometime? I won’t be weird!”
“Uh—” said Max.
“Serena!” Logan was standing in front of him, grinning. “You were kidding when you said you couldn’t play, right? You gotta come to practice. Hey, think your dad might come? Give us some tips?”
And that’s what it was like as Max made his way through the throngs of adoring Beau Fletcher fans to his locker. He grabbed his jacket, then looked inside his locker as if it might be a very nice place to stay for a while.
“Hey!” Molly appeared behind him, looking very happy.
He stared at her, pale and shaking. “Everybody knows!” he whispered.
Molly let out an exasperated sigh. “Oh, Jenny! Gosh, she always does this! You can’t tell that girl anything!”
Max blinked at Molly. Everything inside him was blank, a pocket of nothingness floating in endless space.
“Don’t worry about it. Listen.” She leaned her head toward him, voice thick with excitement. “I want to meet him.”
“You do?”
“Please?” She put her small, pale hand on his arm. Max almost gasped. “He could help me with my changeup! We could just meet. You can do that, right?”
Max’s stomach was a pit of boiling tar, and all his innards were slowly descending into it. “Molly, he wants it to be a secret—”
“I know, but it’s just me. Tell him I’m the only female baseball pitcher in the sixth-grade tournament. Won’t he think that’s cool? Anyway, he must want to meet your friends. Doesn’t he?”
“Molly, um, he’s so busy, and—”
She looked at him, her eyes not exactly losing their glow but shifting a bit. “You mean you can’t set up a dinner with your own dad?” She blinked. “Why not?”
Max froze.
“Molly!” The word exploded out of his mouth. One breath. Two. Oh, god. “I lied,” he said finally.
She drew up. “What? What do you mean?”
This was it. This was his chance to come clean, to end this. And then he’d just be normal Max again, the kind of kid guys like Logan step on in the cafeteria, that girls like Molly never even think twice about. And this look she was giving him now—a little confused, a little hesitant, a little hurt, all because of something he’d done—no one would ever look at him this way again. He could write a poem about this look, if only he knew how to write a poem.
“I mean,” he said, “I let you think something that wasn’t true. Beau … my dad … he doesn’t know about me. That’s why we don’t have the same last name.”
Molly gaped. “Wow,” she finally breathed.
“I know,” he said, shaking his head with as much sincerity as he could muster. His lungs felt like they were about to crack into bits and puncture various vital organs. “They dated one summer. My mom was a lifeguard at the pool in college, you see. I guess they’d broken up by the time she found out she was pregnant. And by then he’d been drafted into the minors, and … my mom never told him. She raised me on her own.” His breath slowed a little. This was good. This sounded plausible. Max was pretty sure he’d seen something like it on CBS once.
“I’m sorry I lied to you,” he said, making his face as sincere as possible.
“It’s okay,” she said. “What matters is that you’re telling the truth now.”
Max could do nothing but nod.
“Does anyone know?” she whispered.
“No,” he said. “Mom told everyone my dad was some guy in Poughkeepsie. I believed it most of my life.”
“I can’t believe it!” Molly bit her lip. “Don’t you think he’d want … to know? I mean, if I had a son—”
Max just shrugged, as if this was the stuff of grown-ups and he could only wonder at it.
“I bet,” Molly said, her face so close her hair brushed against his arm, “if Beau Fletcher met you, he’d just know. He’d look in your eyes and see something. He’d know.”
There was something buzzing in Max’s ears now, and Molly sounded very faint. “Yeah. Maybe,” he said. That would be something, wouldn’t it? To look into your long-lost dad’s eyes and see recognition there.
“Oh, Max,” Molly said. She stared up at him. “Your story is incredible.” And with that, she slipped into his arms and gave him a squeeze, as quick and magical as a fairy blink. And then she was gone. But Max, he did not move, not for a long time.
Max went home and planned on spending the weekend in quiet contemplation. There was a chance that it was over—that Molly, out of the goodness of her heart, would tell everyone to stop talking about it so Max would not have to feel bad about the dad he never knew. It was the sort of thing she would do. Eventually, it would all die down—and if not, he’d just stay under his bed until college.
He was allowed to entertain this delusion for about twelve hours.
The next morning, he awoke to his mother knocking on his door. “Max,” she called. “Wake up. You have a visitor!”
A few minutes later, Max was downstairs to find Molly sitting in his living room, wearing a baseball cap and looking impatient.
“Come on,” she said. “You’re going to be late for practice!”
Max shook his head. “Molly, I told you, I don’t—”
Her eyes got big. She seemed to be trying to tell him something, and Max wished desperately he spoke girl. “Yes,” she said, voice full of portent. “You do.”
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He nodded. Like he could ever say no to Molly.
Max’s mom smiled. “Honey, are you playing baseball?”
“That’s right!” Molly said. “He tried to get out of it, but we thought he might have natural gifts.”
Max stopped. Had Molly hit those last words a little too hard? His mom seemed to be looking at her a little strangely, but just then turned and gave Max a smile. A few minutes later he was wearing sweats and sitting in the backseat of the Kinsman family’s SUV, Molly next to him.
“Molly, what—”
“Shhhh,” she whispered, pointing to her father, who was driving. “We’re not going to practice. Look!”
She held out a flyer. Max looked at it. And everything inside of him turned to goo. There were a lot of words, but only three stood out to him:
MEET BEAU FLETCHER
Max gagged.
“Can you believe it?” Molly whispered. “It’s a charity thing. My dad got tickets as an early birthday present. You get to get his autograph and everything!” She produced a baseball from her bag and held it out like an apple.
“Uh-huh,” Max said, very very very faintly.
“So, I think you should just tell him! Walk up to him and tell him who you are!” She looked at him expectantly. “You can do that, right?”
“Molly, I—I don’t know.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Max, come on. He’s a world-famous baseball player! He must have a kazillion dollars. He should be taking care of you and your mom! I mean, if he’s your dad … ”
“Molly,” he said, though his throat was closing in, “I-I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
Max opened his mouth and closed it like a goldfish.
“Yes, you can, Max. I know you don’t like to make trouble. But if not for you, then for your mom! Anyway, don’t you think he’d want to know about you? His son? Isn’t that fair to him? Give him a chance to do the right thing.”
Mouth opened. Mouth closed. And again.
“And if you don’t want to tell him,” she said, “I will … unless you can give me a good reason not to.”
Silence settled in the car then, thick like eternity.
“No,” said Max, voice like a strangled squirrel’s. Molly raised her eyebrows. Open. Close. Open. Close. “I’ll do it,” he said finally.
There was no way out of this, that was clear. She would hate him if she knew the truth. He would be a laughingstock. He would spend the rest of the year hanging by his underwear from the flagpole. Max had made his bed, now he’d have to strangle himself with the sheets. He turned and looked out of the window.
At best, Fletcher would just think Max was crazy. He would sign his baseball, wonder at this boy’s obvious brain damage. And move on.
And at worst, at worst, well—
Max closed his eyes for the rest of the car ride.
Molly’s father dropped them off at a hotel, and they walked in slowly. Molly was practically buzzing. Max felt like toxic sludge. His intestines kept looping in on themselves. She led him through the lobby into a big ballroom and to their place in line.
“You want to do this, right?” she asked as they got in line.
Max nodded weakly. The line might have taken six minutes or six days, Max wasn’t sure. Whatever it was, it wasn’t long enough, and soon Max and Molly were next in line to see the white-toothed, curly-haired, iron-jawed, big-eared pride of New Hartford, New York. Max had seen Beau Fletcher so many times on TV and on billboards and in the eyes of kids around him who thought maybe they could be great someday, too. And he’d always seemed like he only existed in two dimensions. But here Beau Fletcher was, a person. A very very large person, but a person nonetheless.
“You go first,” he said to Molly.
Molly nodded. “Second thoughts?” she whispered.
“No,” he said. “No. Definitely not.” After all, he told himself, she had a point. If Beau Fletcher had in fact been his dad, telling him would be the right thing to do. Definitely.
And then the usher urged her forward. And as soon as she was in front of Beau, her eyes lit up and a shy smile appeared on her face. “Hi,” Molly breathed to Beau. “You’re, like, my hero.”
And judging by the expression on her face, Max knew it was true. He was lucky his dad wasn’t some utility infielder.
Fletcher gave her a smile. “I’m flattered. You are …?”
“Molly,” she said, handing him a baseball. “To Molly.”
It must be something, Max thought, seeing the excitement flash in Molly’s eyes, to make people feel like this. Like they mattered.
“Any message?” Fletcher asked.
“Um, Strike ’em out?”
“You play softball, huh?”
Molly straightened. “No. Baseball.”
“Baseball!” Fletcher laughed, and flashed Molly a smile full of charm. “Do you throw like a girl?”
Molly blinked and took the baseball back. She stood there for a moment, staring at Fletcher. Something passed over her face. Then she turned to Max. “Batter up,” she said, her expression inert.
And that was it. There was no waiting anymore. Max stepped forward.
“Hello.” Beau Fletcher looked up at him with an automatic smile. He really was a large large man. He could probably crush Max with one arm. But he wouldn’t. Beau was a good guy, Max could see that now. Just because he was the greatest baseball player in the world didn’t automatically make him a jerk. “Um,” Fletcher said, and Max realized he was staring dumbly again. “Do you want me to sign something?”
Max thrust the baseball in his general direction. Beau Fletcher poised his pen, and in two blinks, the ball was signed in thick black ink. Molly poked Max in the ribs. “Do it,” she hissed.
“Um, Mr. Fletcher,” gasped Max. Beau glanced up at him. “… I, um … I’m your son.”
Behind him, Molly exhaled. Beau Fletcher sat slowly back in his chair.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m your son. Um. You don’t know about me, but—my mom—um …”
Fletcher drew back and eyed Max for a moment. His eyes narrowed. “Look, kid,” he said, leaning in, “I’m pretty sure that’s not true.” He articulated each word carefully.
Max tried to speak the truth with his eyes. I know. I know. But play along, okay? Please? Beau Fletcher was a good man, the kind of man who inspired people, who made them feel like they mattered. This sort of thing happened with kids and professional baseball players all the time. They had a connection. The baseball player looked the kid in the eye and saw the wish in his heart—hit a home run for me, come visit me in the hospital, pretend to be my dad….
Beau Fletcher did look Max in the eye. And he leaned in. And Max leaned in, too, because he could do nothing else.
Beau said something to Max in a low voice, and it took Max a minute to process the words, because Beau was not playing along. Beau said something baseball players are never, ever supposed to say to kids.
Max stared. Tears burned his eyes. And then Molly pushed next to him. “What did you just say to him?” she spat.
“Are you in on this, too?” Fletcher said.
“I used to look up to you,” Molly said. “You were my hero.”
Fletcher stood up a little. “I don’t know who put you kids up to this.” Behind them, people began to murmur. And Max, Max could not move at all.
“What’s wrong with you?” Molly continued. “You’re on commercials for milk! And you’re nothing but a jerk!” She pounded on the table.
“Hey”—Fletcher looked around—“keep it down.”
Yeah, Max thought. Keep it—
“This is your son!” she proclaimed.
Silence, all around. And stares, from every direction. The usher stood dumbly, as if none of his usher training had prepared him for this.
Molly straightened and looked around. “That’s right,” she said to the crowd loudly. “This is his son, Maximilian Funk from New Hartford, NY. His mom raised him
all by herself. And Beau Fletcher won’t even acknowledge him.”
And then two security guards appeared next to them and grabbed both their arms. And then they were being hauled out of the room. Max caught one last glance at Beau Fletcher, who was watching them go.
Then they were outside of the hotel; the security guards yelled at them for a while. Molly’s big green eyes looked so confused, and Max wanted to help her, protect her; but he could not because this was all his fault.
And then they were alone, and silence settled around them like dust. And tears rolled down Max’s cheeks. And he turned to Molly and began to speak.
“Molly, Molly, look. I’m sorry. I can’t take it anymore. I lied. I lied about the whole thing. I just wanted to impress you. I wanted you to like me. It got out of hand. I’m so sorry. You’re so tough and brave and amazing and—”
He couldn’t go on. Molly was staring at him coolly. Her Catwoman eyes looked suddenly as if they might be capable of terrible things.
“I’m so sorry,” he said again.
And then one corner of Molly’s mouth drew up. “Oh, Max,” she said, her voice suddenly feline. “I knew you were lying the whole time.”
“Wha—?”
“It’s the stupidest story I’ve ever heard.”
“Then what …?”
“Because you expected me to believe it. I wanted to see how far you’d go. How stupid you thought I really was. Turns out pretty stupid. Why, because I’m a girl? Or because I’m good at baseball? Or both?”
“No, I—”
She tossed her red hair, and it looked like fire. “You’re just like everyone else. All you care about is being cool. Nobody cares what a person’s really like.”
“No, no, that’s not—”
“And besides”—Molly took a step closer. She stared him down. Max could not move—“now you’ll never ever say you throw like a girl again.” Her eyes narrowed. She leaned in and hissed, “You wish you threw like a girl.”
Max stared. His mouth hung open. Molly seemed six feet tall all of a sudden, and her eyes took your secrets from you. And Max felt what it was like to step into the batter’s box and see her staring at you, to look into those eyes as she probed you for your weaknesses. And he knew without a doubt that he, like every sixth grader in the city who would face her that season, had just struck out.