Lost Boy (28 page)

Thomas Trent heard the cawing of his wife.

Ryder saw his eyes dart past and lock onto her hysterical tirade as she shouted and waved her arms and danced in place.

“No.” Trent handed the ball back to Ryder. “I can't. It's yours.”

“No.” Ryder swung his head from left to right and folded his arms, refusing to take it.

“That wasn't me,” Trent said.

“Liar! You said you
loved
her! You're a
liar
!”

“Take it.” Trent held it out to him, shaking it.

“No!” Ryder screamed.

“Thomas! Right now!”
The wife screamed louder.

Trent huffed and sidestepped Ryder with a glare. He wound up and fired the ball, pitching it at the granite wall of the skyscraper.

The ball exploded against the wall, cracking like a rifle shot.

Ryder spun and watched it drop to the concrete, where it lay like roadkill. He heard the car doors slam and the engine whine. Before he could move, the car was gone in a whoosh of hot air.

In a trance, Ryder walked over to the ball and picked it up.

The seam had split open and the brittle leather skin hung limp from the tightly bound wool strands within, brown and dusty and crumbling with rot. Ryder put it in his pocket anyway and walked in a daze, back into the building and up the elevator. He walked right into the law offices and back into the conference room where they all still remained. He sat down, but before anyone could speak, the phone on the conference table rang.

Leslie Spanko picked it up and talked in single words. “Yes . . . Mmm . . . No . . . Yes . . . Yes . . . Okay.”

Spanko hung up and looked at Mr. Starr. “The Trents are offering you ten thousand dollars.”

“For what?” Mr. Starr asked.

Leslie Spanko thought for a moment. “To end all this. To go away.”

Mr. Starr sucked on his tongue. “No. You can tell them we don't need ten thousand dollars. We need
two hundred thousand.
She can take that ten thousand and shove it right up her nose.”

“Mr. Starr . . .” Ryder was floating again. He'd felt like this so much in the past week that he began to hope it all really
was
a dream. He just needed to wake up.

But the feel of the desk's smooth surface beneath his sweaty
palms and the sniff from Gio as he and the nurse got up, leaving them alone with the lawyer, and the click of the latch on the door let Ryder know it wasn't a dream and he wasn't going to just wake up.

“No,” Mr. Starr said. “Get me out of here, Ryder. It's over.”

“But you said . . .”

“I said it's over!”

Mr. Starr's shriek was as hysterical and jolting as Brooke Trent's had been. Ryder got up and took hold of the chair. Leslie Spanko opened the door without speaking and escorted them to the elevator.

“I'm sorry,” the lawyer said with somber sincerity as she held the door so they could get in.

Then, the elevator doors closed on her face and they plummeted down.

They took a bus back to their hotel and packed their belongings. They headed to the train station and spent all afternoon there before getting on the Crescent line for New York City at 8:04 p.m. Mr. Starr didn't speak. Ryder kept quiet too. There was nothing to say.

Without a word, Ryder helped Mr. Starr from the bathroom into his bed, then tucked the destroyed baseball into his duffel bag, climbed into his own bunk, and fell asleep to the clacking sway of the train. In the morning they ate bagels wrapped in cellophane from the dining car and Ryder tore the metallic covers off of plastic containers of orange juice. Ryder then lay back in his bunk and stared out the window at the world sweeping by. He wondered several times whether or not he could get outside the train and simply jump when they crossed one of the bridges through the mountains of Virginia, but it was just
a thought. He never even got out of the bunk except to eat a sandwich in the afternoon and use the bathroom.

In New Jersey, the skyline of New York City suddenly appeared on the horizon and Ryder had no idea what he'd do when he got home besides go to the hospital and stare at his mom and pray for a miracle. He didn't believe in miracles. He'd never seen one and he didn't understand how people could believe in something—truly believe—if they hadn't seen it for themselves. Still, he'd try because it was all he had left. He wasn't even going to think about Doyle and the money he was trying to raise. Ryder knew now that Mr. Starr was right. Doyle wasn't for real even if he had a good heart. Doyle was a wild dreamer.

And Ryder didn't need wild dreams about FDNY fund-raising on Twitter. He needed a good old-fashioned the-doctors-have-never-seen-anything-like-it miracle.

He cried, too. A lot. He kept his face buried in the foam pillow so Mr. Starr didn't have to listen. He knew adults didn't want to hear that kind of thing and he appreciated everything Mr. Starr had done, even if he'd been wrong, even if they came up short.

It wasn't Mr. Starr's fault, after all. It was Ryder's alone. He replayed the moments over in the park, right before the accident, the things he'd been angry about: his mom pushing him to make friends, him using the excuse of being poor and not having a phone, her throwing her lowly job in his face, and him insulting her with the idea that he'd grow up and become someone like Thomas Trent. He now knew that meant valuing cars and houses more than people's lives.

Then he remembered pulling back from her, and her pulling him too, only she slipped and got hit by a car, breaking her ribs and leg and smashing her heart so that it would fail any day now and all he could do was watch and wait.

Everything went dark.

Ryder cried out.

The train whooshed through the tunnel beneath the Hudson River.

Ryder wondered what it would be like to have the tunnel collapse. They'd all be crushed by a million tons of water, concrete, and mud.

He wished for that. That was something that wouldn't take a miracle, just another tragedy, another human error in calculation, or driving . . . or a stupid angry response.

Ryder climbed down in the darkness and vomited his sandwich into the stainless steel bowl of their toilet.

“You okay?” Mr. Starr asked.

Ryder washed his face and hands and went back into their compartment. “You're talking to me now?”

“You yelled when we went in the tunnel. Why?”

Ryder didn't even want to get into it, but he felt obligated. “I was thinking about all the things, every little thing that I could have done different on that day.”

“The day of the accident?” Mr. Starr asked.

“I could have pushed instead of pulled. I could have made a joke instead of a jab. I could have . . . I don't know, not hit a home run.”

“Home run?”

Ryder sighed.

“Tell me about that. Tell me all the things leading up to when she got hurt.” Mr. Starr lay still. Even his eyes were motionless.

“Why?” Ryder asked.

“Just tell me.” Even his voice seemed not to move. “I think it'll help.”

Ryder did tell. He described that day, the park, his teammates and friends, hitting that home run, even falling in the muddy grass and looking up at the clouds with his mom. He wished so badly he could go back. Telling it didn't make him feel any better and he said so.

“I know,” Mr. Starr said. “I've been thinking about everything, too.”

“About how she's gonna die?”

The train groaned and swayed and thumped the tracks.

“Yes,” he said. “About how she's gonna die.”

They arrived at Penn Station, and Doyle picked them up. He helped Mr. Starr home and then took Ryder to the hospital.

Mr. Starr stayed in his apartment. Ryder and Doyle passed Ashleigh Love hurrying up the stairs with fresh supplies slung over her shoulder, fretting out loud about them being gone too long. Ryder said nothing, he just followed Doyle and climbed up into the passenger seat of Derek Raymer's truck that Doyle had on loan.

Doyle was talking, fast. Ryder had a hard time paying attention to all the Twitter fund-raising talk.

“How much?” Ryder asked, his heart stung by a faint pang of hope.

“Well, forty-seven thousand.” Doyle stopped at a light, glancing over at him with a worried look. “But, you know, we're just one huge retweet away from this thing exploding, right?”

Ryder sighed. “I don't even know what that means, Doyle.”

“A retweet.” Doyle turned the truck. “Like someone like Carlos Beltran or Eli Manning or maybe Michael Strahan or Diane Sawyer takes my tweet and then tweets it out to
their
followers. They have millions. Then all of a sudden, the money comes pouring in at a really fast rate.”

“So, all you need is a retweet.” Ryder couldn't help sounding bitter, almost bored.

Doyle nodded his head viciously, like a loyal dog.

They pulled up to the hospital and parked in the garage. They crossed the street and entered, people coming and going with no idea Ryder's mom was about to die. He hated them and their smiles and the one who held the door for them. He hated everyone and everything and each step closer to his mother's room he hated them more and his limbs got heavier and heavier.

The doctor was in there and the look on his face startled Ryder, heaping more fear onto his heart.

“How is she?” Doyle asked.

The doctor looked at Ryder, then Doyle
,
and spoke very low. “Her heartbeat is irregular and the pressure is starting to drop. Maybe a few more days. I'm sorry.”

The doctor went out. Doyle pulled out his phone and started to tweet, thumbs skipping over the screen in a blur, like he could somehow tweet her back to life. Doyle clenched his jaw so tight that the muscles in his cheek did a quiet dance. Ryder felt the tears coursing down his own cheeks again. He went to the bed and spread his arms over his mother, pressing his face into the hair piled around her neck. A sob tore free from his chest.

“Mommmmmm!”

Doyle let him cry for a while before he tapped him on the back and said they should probably go. Ryder was exhausted again and he let Doyle direct him out to the truck. He climbed the steps of their apartment building slowly. They met Ashleigh on the third floor, heading down at a slow, steady pace.

They seemed to startle her. “Oh, I better give you two my number. I don't think the night nurse is scheduled to come until tomorrow. You can call if you need me in the night.”

“The night?” Ryder asked. “What do you mean?”

Ashleigh nodded. “He's not good. I gave him some penicillin, but in his condition . . .”

“What's wrong?” Doyle asked.

She huffed. “I told him. You can't just go away without a nurse. He has a shunt in his intestines that has to be taken care of. The old fool. Must have hurt like I don't know what. He said he didn't have time for that. I don't believe that for a second.”

She stared at Ryder and he bit the edge of his lower lip because he had no idea Mr. Starr wasn't well or that he was in that kind of pain.