Chapter 2
Hunter and I had a game: find the most unhinged thing on the internet and send it without context. I was deep into my third hour of searching when the algorithm handed me something with three million views and a comment section that had clearly lost the plot.
Thirty seconds of glorious, grainy footage shot inside O’Malley’s.
The first ten seconds caught a young man mid-stride, his broad shoulders cutting through a sea of bodies that stumbled to get out of his way.
The next ten were a blur of motion, ending with a fist connecting to some guy’s nose.
The final ten caught another guy getting face-fucked by an elbow he never saw coming.
The perpetrator turned to the camera with a smirk on his lips, and my lunch tried to crawl back up my throat.
Evan Brock.
The comments were a war zone.
King Shit!
Someone needs to put this dude down.
Man, his draft stock just went UP! idc
His arms tho
I scrolled past that last one twice, told myself I wasn’t lingering, and locked my phone, letting the campus wash over me.
Girls in oversized cardigans were watching a hacky sack circle.
Guys in letterman jackets tossed footballs back and forth.
Teachers in tweed suits and pencil skirts shuffled from building to building, dodging students demanding their grades be changed.
My phone buzzed.
Dad: My office. Now.
No please, or when you have a minute, son. Not even a bud.
The walk across campus gave me plenty of time to wonder what I could have possible done wrong. My grades were fine. I hadn’t missed a Sunday night dinner in weeks. I’d shown up to every game and dutifully ferried bats to the players.
So what could he possibly want?
The athletic complex sat on the west side of campus, funded by some esteemed alumnus whose name I couldn’t be bothered to remember.
I climbed the stairs to the second floor, past a water fountain someone had taped an OUT OF ORDER sign to, and a sun-bleached motivational poster.
The hallway to my dad’s office featured what I’d coined the gallery of ghosts. A timeline of Wildbrook baseball, told through fading black-and-white photos. And there, at the end of the hall, was the main exhibit—my dad, frozen in 1997, hoisting the state championship trophy above his head.
I’d grown up in the shadow of that photo, listening to the constant grumbling that every team he’d coached, and especially the son he’d raised, had failed to measure up.
I came to a stop outside the door with the brass plate that read HEAD COACH—RICHARD JENKINS.
I knocked once.
“In.”
My dad’s office was a museum to his life.
The conference championship trophy with the little gold batter frozen mid-swing sat on the corner of his desk.
On the shelves were binders organized by season and filled with his meticulous notes.
A framed, signed jersey from some guy he’d coached ten years ago.
The rectangular window behind the desk afforded a bird’s-eye view of the baseball field.
My father’s eyes were cast downward, scanning a piece of paper as if it held the answer to his worldly problems. Leaning forward surreptitiously, I realized it was the practice schedule for the next three weeks. “Sit down, Thomas.”
The chair across from him was ancient and rigid, specifically designed to make guests feel as though their tailbones were being compressed into a diamond.
Dad always said a soft chair was an invitation to laziness.
Of course, he never admitted his own ass was resting on a gel pad thanks to two decades of squatting behind home plate.
Taking a seat, I soaked in the familiar sight of my dad in profile, hunched over his paperwork, a pencil tucked behind his right ear.
He had the body of a lumberjack—barrel chest, thick arms, neck wider than most people’s thighs.
And if he ever smiled, it was a quick, suspicious flash of teeth.
The last time I’d witnessed it was after a walk-off home run three seasons ago.
It vanished as soon as he remembered there were photographers in the stands.
Meanwhile, I was thin and sharp-edged, with a nose that still bore the tiny bump from a Little League pitch that went rogue. A stiff breeze could snap me in half. His deep hazel eyes were the one thing he’d given me.
He took the pencil from behind his ear and wrote something in a looping, angry script on a sticky note before finally acknowledging my existence with a grunt. “Did you see the video?”
“Hard not to. I think it’s been on every phone between here and the dining hall.”
“Brock,” he said, shaking his head. “Two stitches on the kid he elbowed. The other one’s nose is shattered. Both their parents are lawyers.”
I did the math on that one and whistled. “Sounds expensive.”
My father’s jaw shifted, and my heart rate sped up. I’d spent my whole life learning to read him like a second language, and part of me still lit up when I witnessed the proof that I existed in there somewhere, that I registered. The other part of me knew that was a pathetic thing to feel.
“Thomas, your job right now is to listen.”
“Right.” I sat up straighter. “Sorry.”
He pulled a roster sheet out of a folder and slid it across the desk toward me. Evan’s name was third from the top, circled in red pen. “Starting this week, you’re going to be his roommate on the road.”
I waited for the punchline, but the silence stretching between us confirmed there wasn’t one. “I’m sorry—what?”
“You heard me.”
“I’m the batboy.”
“Which makes you a member of this team, whether you like it or not. You ride the bus, you stay in the hotel, you get a room. Now, you share a room.”
“Dad.” I shifted forward in the chair. “There are nineteen other guys on the team. Pick one of them. Pair him up with Caldwell—Caldwell’s a senior, Caldwell has a fiancée.”
“Caldwell’s pitching Friday and Saturday. He needs sleep.”
“Then a relief guy. Or one of the assistants. I’m sure Coach Petrie would love—”
Dad held up his large hand in the air, effectively shutting me up. “Petrie is with me, Thomas. You know this.”
I focused on keeping my hands loose in my lap, even as acid churned in my stomach. Ever since Mom left when I was a kid, it’d been the two of us—Jenkins and Jenkins—against the world. If anyone should have been rooming with the coach on the road, it was his son.
Hell, I used to dream about it. Back when I was eight, and my world was the view through a backstop’s chain-link fence. I thought I could earn my way onto a road trip if I learned the signs. If I kept my glove down. If I swung for the fences.
The fantasy always ended the same—the two of us in a Motel 6 that smelled of pepperoni and cardboard. I’d fall asleep to the hum of the window unit or the glow of SportsCenter on the TV, convinced I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
But that was a thousand years ago.
The silence ballooned. Questions burned in my throat—why not me, why never me? Why was I only ever good enough to fetch equipment, never to share a room with you?
I straightened my spine, forcing my shoulders back. “Sure, put the delinquent in the same room as the batboy. What could possibly go wrong?”
The words were out before I could stop them. Dad’s eyes narrowed a fraction, and a familiar cold dread washed over me. I’d poked the bear.
He pushed the printout closer, the red circle around Evan’s name a bloody warning.
“What about Reed?” I tried. “Or Williams? Or even Max?”
He shook his head. “Reed talks too much. Williams parties. Max gets homesick and calls his mother for over an hour every night.”
“So I’m the ideal candidate because I have the social life of a houseplant?”
“You have no reason to leave the room,” he said with a shrug that sent a fresh spike of bile up my throat.
He’d taken my insult and confirmed it as a job requirement.
“That’s why you’re the ‘ideal’ candidate.
Evan stays in, stays sober, and shows up ready to play.
That’s all that matters. I’m not losing a first-round draft pick to a bar fight. ”
“I’m a babysitter.”
“You’re a roommate.”
“With a curfew enforcement clause.”
His only answer was a stare and a furrowed brow.
“He’s not going to like this,” I said.
“He doesn’t have to.”
“He’s going to hate it.”
“Then he can hate it from inside the hotel room.”
I tried one more time. I didn’t know why. Hope was a stupid thing that didn’t take hints. “Dad. There has to be someone better suited for this than me. Please.”
He blinked, and the plea vanished into thin air. “Bus leaves Friday at six a.m. Pack for three nights. Bring a sketchpad or whatever.”
The whatever was the final twist of the knife. The one thing that was mine, the one world he couldn’t coach or critique, had been dismissed with a verbal shrug.
He picked the pencil back up. The conversation, as far as he was concerned, was over.
I made it to the door, put my hand on the frame, and stopped.
I didn’t turn around. I lingered in the half-light, yearning for a Thanks for doing this, kiddo. I know it’s a lot to ask. Or, if he didn’t want to use his words, a simple grunt. All I got was the scratch of his pencil on paper.
Closing the door behind me, I pulled out my phone and went through my emails for the season schedule the team manager had sent us at the top of the season.
Florida Atlantic, which would no doubt be humid and awful. UNC Wilmington, where there was too much sand. Coastal Carolina had even more sand.
Liberty. James Madison. William & Mary.
And lastly, Rutgers.
Seven series away. Three games each.
Fuck.
Twenty-one nights in a room with Evan Brock—the asset my father clearly thought was worth more than his own son. Listening to him breathe in the next bed over. Praying he didn’t decide my face would look better caved in.
I leaned my head against the cinder block wall and asked God for an intervention. Preferably in the form of a bat to the head.