The Unwanted Read Free Page A

eyes swept the field, his smile faded.
    Beyond the fence, parked by the curb on Bay Street, was the old white pickup truck with CAVANAUGH FISH emblazoned in cobalt blue on its side. Leaning against the truck was his father, his arms folded over his chest, his head shaking slowly as he muttered something to the coach, who nodded in apparent agreement from his place just inside the fence.
    Eric’s heart sank. Why couldn’t his father have shown up half an hour before, when he’d put the ball over the left field fence? But that was the way it always seemed to happen: if he was going to make a mistake, his father was going to see it, and over dinner tonight Ed Cavanaugh would want to talk about it. Since this mistake had come on the baseball diamond, it meant that after dinner he and his father would be back here on the high school diamond, going through batting practice until the light got so bad neither of them could see. Even then Ed would insist on “just a couple more,” so Eric wouldn’t be able to get to his homework until after eight o’clock.
    Unless his father got drunk. That was always a possibility. But when his father was drunk, things were always even worse than when his father was sober.
    The coach’s whistle signaled an end to the practice session, and Eric, after waiting for Jeff Maynard to catch up with him, started toward the locker room, wondering if he should skip the four-thirty student council meeting. If he weren’t the president of the council, he wouldn’t even be thinking twice about it. The council, he knew, didn’t really mean anything at all. Being on it just gave him one more opportunity to have his picture in the yearbook, and gave his father one more thing to brag about when he was out getting drunk. But Eric
was
the president, and if he didn’t go, his dad would be sure to hear about it. Coach Simms would make sure of that. Then there would be a long speech about “living up to what I expect of you” to go with the extra batting practice.
    “That woulda been another homer if the bat hadn’t busted,” Jeff observed as he caught up. “How come you always hit those to me? You know I can’t catch ’em.”
    Eric’s grin came back, and his blue eyes sparkled with quick good humor. “You don’t care if you catch ’em or not. IfI hit ’em to you, I know I’m gonna get a base, and I know you’re not gonna worry about it.”
    Jeff shrugged his indifference, but his eyes clouded slightly. “Your dad saw what happened,” he said quietly. “You gonna get in trouble?”
    “I always do, don’t I?” Eric replied. He tried to make his voice sound as if his father’s wrath didn’t mean any more to him than a missed fly ball meant to Jeff. Except that Jeff had been his best friend almost as long as he could remember, and Jeff always seemed to know what was going on in his head, no matter what he said out loud. Now, he proved it once again.
    “Wanta cut the council meeting? If we did, we could get the trig assignment out of the way before you’ve gotta be home. Or we could cut the trig, too, and go down to the beach,” he added hopefully.
    Eric thought about it, then shook his head as he pulled open the heavy locker-room door and stepped inside. “Can’t. If I don’t get an A on the test next week, I won’t get an A in the course. And you know what that means.”
    Jeff rolled his eyes. “How would I know? And you don’t either, since you’ve never gotten anything
but
A’s. Besides, your dad won’t kill you, will he?”
    “I don’t—” Eric began, but was immediately cut off by the coach yelling at him from the equipment cage next to the showers.
    “That’s two bats this week, Cavanaugh! One more and you start paying for them! Got that?”
    “I didn’t mean—”
    Simms’s voice grew louder, and his words seemed to echo the lecture Eric heard from his father so often: “I don’t care about what you meant. All I care about is what you do!”
    Eric felt a sudden