Lost in the Sun (6 page)

Friday morning when Mr. Gorman asked me, “Am I going to like the kid I meet today?” I just shrugged and told him, “Neck cramp” and made my way up to the bleachers. I spent the whole period doodling Jared in a buffalo stampede in my Book of Thoughts. If Jared really had been smushed in a buffalo stampede, I thought, instead of hit with a hockey puck, probably everybody would like the kid they met today.

One thing I knew: Mr. Gorman hadn't called my mom to ask for any doctor's notes. I was certain about that, because if he had, Mom would've shouted my head off about it. Instead, he just kept adding checks to his clipboard.

I bet I had more “screw-up” check marks than any kid in the history of P.E.

•   •   •

That afternoon I had lunch with Fallon, just like I had the day before, too. It wasn't horrible. It was sunny outside, so we sat at one of the outdoor
tables, the ones with the built-in benches and the tops of grated metal.

“I still think you should come over and watch
Field of Dreams,
” Fallon said, for about the four hundredth time. “I bet you'd really like it.”

I didn't know what to say to that, so I didn't say anything. Instead, I poked a finger up through one of the holes in the metal grate of the table and bumped my tray up and down.
“Oooooh!”
I howled, like I was some kind of ghost. The Lunchtime Poltergeist or something. “The tray is
moooooving!
”

It was stupid, but Fallon laughed.

I had to admit, I sort of liked when Fallon laughed.

“Fine,” I said at last.

“Fine what?” Fallon asked.

“I'll watch your stupid movie.”

Her face lit up. “Really?” she squealed. Actually squealed.

“It's long, right?” I asked. “Like I wouldn't get home till at least five o'clock?”

“We could watch it as soon as we got to my place,” she said. “Not even make any snacks. If you need to get home early.”

“No, that's okay. Late is fine.”

Fallon grinned at me. “Great,” she said.

It was the first lunch we'd had together where she didn't bug me to draw any pictures.

•   •   •

I called Aaron from Fallon's house and told him I wasn't going to make dinner with Dad because I was working on a school project with a friend.

“You know, you're not the only person with other stuff going on in your life, Trent,” Aaron told me in his best fatherly voice. “But sometimes you have to do the
responsible
thing and show up when you promised you would.”

“I'm sorry you're missing a date with your girlfriend or whatever,” I said, sounding a whole lot like Doug when I said it—but that's what Aaron got for all his “responsible” talk. “If you're so upset about having to go to dinner, you should whine to Dad, not me.”

“You are being completely immat—” Aaron began. But I hung up on him before he could finish his sentence.

Fallon's mom wasn't home, only her dad. He was practically big enough for two people, though. He hardly even blinked at me when Fallon introduced me, just looked me up and down from the doorway with his arms crossed and said, “Mm-hmm.”

Fallon rolled her eyes at that. “Dad's a cop,” she told me, loud enough for her father to hear. “He likes to be intimidating.”

I gulped.

Fallon's dad worked the night shift, so she said he didn't start work until 11:00 p.m., and then he slept while she was at school. Which would explain why he was making eggs and coffee in the kitchen (glaring at me while he did it, I swear).

“We're going to watch a movie in here!” Fallon called to him, tugging me away from the phone in the kitchen. “Don't be weird, okay?” He grunted at her. Fallon started up the movie, and her dad finished cooking his eggs and then sat at the kitchen table to eat them without saying a word. I noticed he had a good eye on us where we were sitting
on the couch, through the partition between the kitchen and the living room.

I bet Fallon's dad made an excellent cop.

We didn't so much watch
Field of Dreams
as chatter all the way through it. Well,
Fallon
chattered, bouncing up from the couch every two minutes or so to tell me something interesting. (I mean, something
she
thought was interesting. Sometimes it was an interesting thing, other times not so much.)

“There!” she said, pausing the movie. She ran over to the TV. Her fluffy white dog, Squillo, who'd been sleeping on the couch, jumped up too and started yipping. “You see that? The time on the scoreboard? It says eight forty-one, right?”

I had to squint to see it, because the clock on the scoreboard was so tiny. But Fallon was right. “Yep,” I said. (This was one of the not-very-interesting things.) “Eight forty-one.”

“Okay, watch this.” She unpaused the movie and let it play forward while Squillo ran around in excited circles. Fallon's dad was still pretend-reading his tablet in the next room over—the world's slowest eater of eggs. I tried to focus on the movie.

The shot cut away, to the main character, Ray, and the writer he drags to the game with him, sitting in the stands. Then a second later it cut back to the scoreboard. Fallon paused the movie again. “Look!” she shouted. She was bouncing, hard as Doug. “Boom!”

Squillo yipped.

I squinted. It took me a second to see what she was talking about, but after a bit I spotted it. “The clock says ten thirty,” I told her. I was
kind of impressed with myself for figuring it out, actually, even though I never would've noticed it in a million years if Fallon hadn't made me look for it.

Fallon grinned at me. “Right? The clock changed two whole hours in a split second. Total continuity error.”

I didn't know what a “continuity error” was, but I wasn't about to ask.

“A continuity error is when something doesn't line up from one shot to another,” Fallon told me. Like she thought she could read my mind or whatever. She plopped back next to me on the couch, and Squillo followed her and settled down between us. Fallon started the movie up again. “Like clocks flipping back and forth,” she went on, “or if a guy's wearing a hat, and then the next time you see him, he's not. Movies have all sorts of stuff like that. It's awesome. Wait, there's another one coming up that's great.”

I raised my eyebrows at her. “How many times have you seen this movie?” I asked.

“
Field of Dreams
?” she said.

“No,
Transformers Four.
”

Fallon laughed. “I don't know. A couple times, maybe. I'm really good at spotting this stuff. I'm training myself to be a script supervisor in Hollywood.” She scratched Squillo behind the ears. “That's my dream job. It's the person who keeps track of every single take, and what all the actors are wearing, and what the set looks like, and the lighting and everything, and makes sure there are no errors at all.” Squillo rolled onto his belly, and Fallon began scratching him there, his paws up in the air like he was really enjoying himself. “I'm going to be amazing at it.”

I snorted. Leave it to Fallon Little to go and declare herself amazing before she'd even started something.

But I had to admit she might be right.

“Okay, this one's good,” she told me a few minutes later. “Look, you see how the ground is super wet right as Ray and Terence are leaving Fenway Park? Like it's just been raining?”

I leaned forward on the couch. I was pretty sure I knew where she was going. “Only they were just at the game, and it hadn't been raining at all,” I said.

“Exactly!” Fallon cried. She looked like she was real proud of me or something.

I guess I was a little proud of me, too.

“You'd think
someone
would've noticed that,” I said.

Fallon tucked her hands behind her head. “It's 'cause they didn't have me as their script supervisor,” she said.

I didn't think
Field of Dreams
was the hands-down incredible movie that my mom was always claiming it was. Actually, the plot was a little silly (ghosts playing baseball—I mean, come on). And if you thought about it too hard, it didn't make much sense. But it was
way
less scary than I'd thought it was when I was six.

About two-thirds of the way through, Fallon declared that it was time for a snack, so we got up to make popcorn while Squillo stayed zonked out on the couch, making tiny doggie snores. Fallon's dad was still at the kitchen table, reading his tablet, and pretended to ignore us. But a giant, intimidating cop dad can only be so invisible. Fallon pretty much ignored him back, though, so I did too.

“You like the movie so far?” Fallon asked, watching through the
window of the microwave as the popcorn popped. It had that amazing fake buttery smell, and my mouth watered. “Grab a bowl from that cupboard, will you? A big one.”

I opened the cupboard and pulled out a mixing bowl. Handed it to Fallon. “Yeah,” I said. “It's pretty good.”

“I love Moonlight Graham,” Fallon said. “He's my favorite.” And right there in the kitchen, in front of the buzzing microwave, she launched into one of the scenes we'd just watched, where the main farmer guy tracks down an ancient white-haired old ballplayer and asks him what he'd wish for, if he could wish for anything.

“‘That's what I'd wish for,'”
Fallon said. Her voice was dropped low, just like the actor in the movie. Gravelly, like an old man.
“‘A chance to squint at a sky so blue that it hurts your eyes just to look at it. To feel the tingle in your arms as you connect with the ball.'”
She even had the exact hand movements down that the guy did in the movie, the perfect rise and fall of his voice.
“‘To run the bases, stretch your double into a triple. And flop, face-first, into third. Wrap your arms around the bag.'”
I swear, for a second she wasn't Fallon Little, the girl with the big brown eyes and the dark pink scar. For a second she really was that white-haired old man.
“‘That's my wish, Ray Kinsella,'”
she finished.
“‘That's my wish.'”

That's when the microwave beeped—perfect timing.

“Whoa,” I said as Fallon pulled the popcorn out with the tips of two fingers to avoid the steam.

“Whoa, what?” she said, not even turning around. But I could see her smiling, just a little, as she tugged open the bag and dumped
the popcorn into the bowl. It was sort of annoying, really, asking what when you knew full well.

But I told her anyway. Maybe it was her giant cop of a dad. Maybe it was the smell of the popcorn. Maybe I was just feeling nice.

“That was really good,” I told her. “You're really good.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Fallon replied as she handed me the bowl of popcorn. But that smile was still there, I could see it. Even if a tiny smidgen of it was tucked into her scar. “I've got a thing for movies,” she said. “I told you. Want to finish?”

I nodded.

The rest of the movie wasn't bad either. I even found my very own continuity error, when a hot dog is flying out of its bun in one shot, and then when it lands on the ground, it's back inside. (Well, I only found it because Fallon told me there was something coming up, so I should keep my eyes peeled. But it still counted.)

I almost forgot the main reason I'd gone over there until Fallon asked me, “Hey, you want to stay for dinner? Dad's a really good cook. Aren't you, Dad?”

From the kitchen, I heard her father grunt.

I checked the clock. It said 5:05.

“I should probably go home,” I said. I kind of did want to stay for dinner, since I was pretty sure whatever Fallon's dad whipped up was going to be better than cereal, which is what I was probably going to end up eating. But the Dodgers were playing the Giants at 7:00, and my mom was coming home early to watch it. Anyway, I was going to be in enough hot water as it was, what with skipping dinner with Dad again.
Better not push it. “This was, um, fun, though,” I said. And I wasn't even lying.

Fallon grinned at me. “We should do it again,” she told me. “We've got tons more baseball movies. A million, even. We could start a whole club.”

“I don't know about that,” I said. Fallon wasn't the worst, but I wasn't sure I wanted to be her best friend or anything.

She didn't seem to hear me. “You going to be at the store this weekend?” she asked me. “Maybe I can stop by and we'll plan.”

“Um,” I said. This weekend was supposed to be a Dad weekend. I guess Kari had run out of excuses for not having us over at their apartment anymore, now that the room was remodeled. But I'd rather work a million free shifts at Kitch'N'Thingz than spend one night there. “Sure. I mean, I don't know. I mean, we'll see.”

Fallon laughed and held open her front door for me. “Bye, Trent Zimmerman,” she told me.

“Bye,” I said.

She shut the door behind me, and I pedaled home, thinking how Fallon Little was about the weirdest person I'd ever met.

And how, if I was being honest with myself, I didn't really mind so much.

•   •   •

When Aaron pulled into the driveway, I was sitting on the front porch, waiting for him.

“Did you tell Dad?” I called to him, leaping to my feet as he opened his door. “About my project?”

Aaron didn't answer till he was all the way up the stairs. Then he slugged me in the arm on his way into the house. “You owe me big, little brother,” he said.

Doug followed the two of us into the house like a puppy. “Dad was real mad,” he told me. “He said if you aren't ready to go when he picks the two of us up tomorrow morning, you're going to be in awful big trouble. Oh, also, Dad said we could practice games for the company picnic, if it's not raining.”