Ghost Time

where a lot of kids drink and get high on weekends. Look at this, he said, turning his high beams on this big gaping hole in the chain-link fence. Isn’t that beautiful? he said, staring at this blown-out hole the size of a baseball like it was a double rainbow.
    I could tell, just looking at him. I mean, you could see the numbers he was writing on the chalkboard of his brain, computing the pitch, velocity, angles of the baseball bat, writing the whole story of how a single ball tore a hole right through time and space. It turned him on, I could just tell, but it was a little violent, too, almost like he wanted to get his fingers in the gouge and tear it wide open. If the fence was made of flesh, you’d call it carnal, but it was exactly the same, the way his brain hummed, like something you feel in your gut, but deeper, between your legs, just looking at this hole. What are you thinking, Thee? heasked, catching me studying him, and I said, Guess someone hit a home run. Looks like it, he said, smiling, grabbing my hand. Except that no one’s played a game here all winter: I asked the groundskeeper. Then someone must’ve snuck in, I said, shrugging my shoulders.
    Cam goes, Thee, did I ever tell you about the bird in the bottle? And I shook my head no. It’s an old riddle, he said, and the riddle is this: There’s a bird trapped in a bottle. So how do you get the bird out of the bottle without harming either the bird or the bottle? And I thought about it, but shook my head, no idea. One day, I’ll figure it out, he said, reaching over, and I go, But that’s not the point is it? He didn’t answer, and he was so spaced out, staring at the hole in the fence, I actually wondered if we’d sit there all night.
    Finally, he said, You know, when I was a little kid, my dad took me to a baseball field, just like this one, near our old house. He brought a kid-size bat for me and this, you know, like, ancient baseball, he said, wrinkling his nose, wrapping his hand around an invisible baseball. It was so heavy and gnarly, he said, and then my dad told me it used to belong to his grandfather, my great grandfather. And that his father had taught him to swing with that same old baseball. Family tradition. So we got started with batting practice, and I kept missing and missing, and I was getting so frustrated, but my dad calmed me down, telling me that’s exactly how it was when his dad taught him. And he kept explaining the finer points of hitting, and then, out of the blue, I hit that damn ball so hard, I knocked it out of the field. I’m not kidding, he said, and I couldn’t say anything, because he nevertalked about his family, especially his dad. I just waited, hoping that wasn’t the end of it, and it wasn’t.
    I guess what I’m saying is that when I saw that hole in the fence, it reminded me of that time with my dad, and how, at some point when you’re a kid—like every kid in the world, you know, whatever it is, running or jumping or swimming, swinging a bat, at some point, you give it all you got. And when you connect, you honestly believe you are the fastest kid or the kid who jumps the highest or whatever. You are the best of all the kids in the entire world; no one is better, he said. The thing is, that has to be true for at least one kid, right? Some kid really is that kid, and I said, Is this leading back to you by any chance? He laughed, biting his tongue between his molars, and then he said, All I can say is—. This should be good, I said, and he said, We never found that baseball. I thought I’d done a terrible thing, but my dad, he… he was so proud, said it was the best swing he’d ever seen in his life. He said it was a tribute—I’ll never forget that. So, yeah, what I’m saying is that it’s hard to be the best kid in the world, and just as I reached to slap him, he grabbed my arm. I said, This is why you brought me out here at ten o’clock on a Sunday night, so I could feel your pain? And he said, You wanna feel something else, you’re saying? And I just locked my jaw, snatching my hand back, thinking, No, no, no, not gonna say it.
    But then I did. I said, You know, sometimes, I actually forget you’re a boy, and Cam said, Come again? And I said, No, really, there are times when you can go three, four hours without saying anything rude or crude, but then it just wells up inside you, doesn’t it, and you have to let it out. Come on, he said, cockinghis head toward his window and