The Six: Complete Series (15 page)

Marie looked up to see Milo staring at her with unblinking eyes.

“Just stop it,” she said.

“Stop what?”

“You’re staring at me. Why are you doing that?”

Milo gestured around the room. “There’s something about this that doesn’t seem right.”

She wiped away a tear. “What are you talking about?”

He pointed at Simon who had fallen asleep in the corner. “Why, of all people, would they hurt your...”

“Niece. She’s my niece.”

“Your niece. There are plenty of girls out there who are just as famous as her. I mean I’ve heard of her, but she’s not like, anything special.”

She began to retreat to the darkness of her corner. “What is your point?”

“Why would they pick her? They knew you’d find out, I mean, that’s pretty obvious.”

Benjamin stepped away from the wall where he’d been standing for the last few days. Of them all, he seemed the least fazed by the whole situation. Except to be the strong arm of the law when one of them would act up, he hadn’t done a thing. He barely spoke, hardly moved, and ate the least of all of them. Despite all that, he looked like he’d stepped in from the rain before an important dinner, not like he’d been trapped in a dark room for weeks.

She knew there was a darkness to him. There was something he hid from all of them, but he wasn’t ready to tell her. He kept the pain, whatever it was, deeply hidden beneath a sympathetic shell.

“Milo, please.” Benjamin strutted to where Marie sat. As he bent down to face her at eye level, she saw his face in proper light for the first time in days.

“Did you—” She pointed to his bare chin. Milo had the stubbled week-old beard of an adolescent, as did Dennis before he was taken. But Benjamin’s face was clear.

“Did I what?” His eyes narrowed.

Milo’s eyes widened as he realized what she was talking about.

She shut her mouth and begged Milo with her eyes to do the same. To arouse suspicion was one thing. To flat-out accuse him of something was another.

Benjamin stroked his chin self-consciously then flipped the collar of his shirt in a fruitless attempt to disguise his tell. “Marie, I just wanted to say I’m very sorry for your loss,” he said. It took every ounce of willpower that she possessed to not jump back when he grabbed for her hands.

“Thank you,” she said through gritted teeth.

“My daughter,” he said with a mannered tone, “died a few years back. I know how hard...” His sentence trailed off as his eyes began to water. Instinctively, she squeezed his hand back to comfort, but now she didn’t know whether to believe him or not.

All she knew was that she wanted him to leave.

The driver, Eduardo, kept the partition down the rest of the trip. It was only done for show as it gave Dennis a straight-on view of his finger on the “kill button”, as he so affectionately called it. One more move like that and he wouldn’t even have the chance to save his own life.

They rounded a corner and Dennis could hear the sound of a school bell ringing and children running back into their classroom.

He felt his pulse pound in the back of his head. His son, his little boy, would be one of these kids in a few years. What these children were going to witness would damage them for years. He was about to be the cause of nightmares and years of therapy in the name of childhood trauma. After years of doing Make-a-Wish and hosting Kid’s Nights on the baseball field, this would be his legacy.

Eduardo suddenly stopped the car and Dennis, who had long ago unbuckled his seatbelt, hurtled into the back of the seat in front of him.

“Let me get out first,” Eduardo said. “I’m going in with you.”

“Won’t they think it’s strange?” he asked, fully knowing it would be stranger if he came in alone.

“You’re bringing your bodyguard with you. They told Kimball that you had a stalker and you don’t want to take any chances, ’specially with kids around,” Eduardo said.

They walked slowly to the front of the school, with Eduardo walking within punching distance of Dennis. He didn’t need a gun to intimidate. He had made quite the show of bringing the kill switch along and shoving it into his jacket pocket for easy access.

The person who
did
have a gun was Dennis. It wasn’t the first time he’d held a gun, not even close. For a year after he quit the majors, he’d been a cop. His uncle, his dad, and his younger brother had all been cops and it seemed like the inevitable next step for a C-level athletic star. He wasn’t anything special in most spheres but in the world of young guys who were knee-deep in fantasy leagues and baseball cards, he was the equivalent of Brad Pitt walking into a sorority house.

He had been an average cop, nothing spectacular but not terrible. It wasn’t until he tore his ACL, again, that he decided to quit so he could stay home with the baby. But, until then, he had been a great shot. Years of throwing a baseball with precise aim had given him amazing hand-eye coordination. He’d loved having a gun at his side, ready to take down the next bad guy that crossed his path. Now it felt like an albatross around his neck, one that bolted him to the ground.

Dennis clamped a hand over the pocket it sat in. It felt so obtrusive in his jacket and he felt that everyone could surely see it. He would take one step in the school and there would be a SWAT team ready to take him down.

As he walked into the school, he was hit by a familiar smell. School always had the same stench; that concoction of dirty shoes, bananas and craft supplies. It felt comfortable, like a memory he hadn't realized he’d been missing.

“You’re walking straight to the room. They’re waitin’ for you,” Eduardo said.

Dennis pointed to the principal’s office mere feet away. “Shouldn’t I check in or something?” He needed more time. He wasn’t ready to see this teacher just yet.

“You want your name on more shit in this school?”

The fewer people that saw his face, the better. “I understand.”

Eduardo pointed to the room to their right. It was covered in bright blue butcher paper with twenty-something little children’s face plastered across its face. They were happy with their missing front teeth and smirking grins. At the bottom was a handsome young man in a plaid sweater. There was a label on the bottom, in sparkling letters that said “Mr. Kimball’s Crusaders”.

Dennis placed a hand on the knob but he couldn’t turn it.

“Go,” Eduardo snapped.

His hand physically couldn’t open that door. He felt stuck against it. Mr. Kimball’s face looked up at him with hopefulness.

“I can’t,” he said.

Eduardo didn’t have to lay a hand on Dennis’ body. It took one look down at his pocket and back up. “I will.”

In video games, he would shoot innocent soldiers and sympathetic zombies just to move onto the next level. That’s all this was. This teacher was just the boss level and he had to defeat him to move on. If he beat this level, he got to see his son.

The only way out of this game was through Mr. Kimball.

The class all sat straight up and kept their eyes trained on the whiteboard. The teacher stood with his arm outstretched over the math problem he created.

He put the finishing touches on the five and spun on his heels to face the class. “Zoe, what do we think? What’s three times five?”

Dennis opened the door a little wider, just enough to see little Zoe’s face squint as she tried to conjure the answer.

“Twelve?” she said with trepidation.

Mr. Kimball smiled. “Real close. Try again.”

The kids were enamored by this energetic young guy who drew smiley faces on the board and wore bright tennis shoes. Dennis stood at the door and watched as the kids sat, transfixed, at a multiplication problem.

“Go in,” Eduardo said.

He took a deep breath. One more step and these children’s lives would never be the same. All he needed to do was separate himself. The guy who walked inside was not a new dad or respected athlete. He needed to walk in and get this done.

Dennis knocked on the side of the door. Half the class looked over and a few hyper boys pointed at the stranger. “Mr. Kimball! He’s here!”

Mr. Kimball put down the yardstick he had been using as a pointer and raced to the door. “You must be Dennis DiMarco.”

Eduardo pushed him inside. “Yes. Dennis... DiMarco. And you are...”

“Kimball. Christopher Kimball. So glad you could make it.”

Christopher stuck out his hand for a shake. The man was so happy, so purely excited. “Thanks,” he said. “I’m happy to be here.”

Dennis walked tentatively to the front of the room. “Kids,” Christopher said, “this is Dennis DiMarco. Can we say hi to Mr. DiMarco?”

In unison they greeted him. He forced a smile to his face as the sweet little girl with the long blonde braids waved at him.

Christopher wrote Dennis’ name on the board in big block letters. “Mr. DiMarco was a player on the San Francisco Giants for four years. He played first base and hit eighty-three home runs.”

There were rumblings of impressed kids throughout the room.

“He even caught a ball that was so close to going over that he ran all the way to the wall, and jumped straight up. And guess what? He did backflip right into a big fat guy with a yellow hat,” Christopher said, doing his best to act out the whole event. The class erupted in laughter.

“Did you catch it?” the little blonde girl asked as the hilarity died down.

Dennis had forgotten his epic catch in the Cardinals game. He’d just about broken his shoulder when he ran into that guy’s knee. “I did. I caught it.”

“Wow,” the girl said.

Christopher slapped Dennis on the arm. “Wow, is right. Mr. DiMarco was a great player. Eh, check it out guys.” He ran to his computer and an image popped up on the projector. It was a faded Polaroid. Dennis recognized his dingy white uniform with his arm wrapped around a young teenager.

“Shit,” he muttered. It was Christopher with the same black glasses and wide smile.

“You remember?” Christopher said. He began to laugh. “Of course you don’t.”

“Is that you, Mr. Kimball?” one of the kids asked.

Dennis looked back at the picture. It could have been from any time. He took tons of fan photos, even long after he stopped playing. Most of the guys hated interacting with the fans, but it had always been his favorite part. Everyone who came up to him loved the game and just wanted to get close to the action. Christopher looked like another one of those passionate kids who ran up to him with a baseball to sign and a dream of playing pro someday.

Christopher walked up to the projected picture and pointed to the grey sweatshirt he wore. “I wore that sweatshirt to every game. If I wore it, the Giants won. I was so scared to not wear it but oh, boy, it smelled!” The kids laughed again.

“Anyway, Mr. DiMarco always hung out after the games and signed autographs and stuff which was really cool. So I go up to him and tell him all about my sweatshirt and its magic powers. He thought it was really funny and told me to never forget it. Then he took out a sharpie and signed the tag on the inside.”

“Did it stop being lucky?” One of the girls asked.

“No way,” Christopher said. “It got even luckier. They almost got to the World Series that year.”

Sweatshirt kid. A small part of his brain remembered the kid with the sweatshirt.

No one much talked about his baseball days. It was just the dedicated Giant’s fan that even remembered him. “Man,” he said, “what a small world.”

Christopher jumped up on his desk and let his feet dangle over the side. “So, Mr. DiMarco, you want to talk to the kids for a little bit? Tell them what it was like to play in the big leagues? I bet some of these tee-ball players want to know all about it.”

Dennis stood frozen in the front of the room, helpless in front of these innocent eyes. After he retired, he had jumped at the chance to go to schools and talk to kids about the good old days. He would enchant them with tales of home runs that landed in the river and the time he'd caught a fly ball with one hand, even after a bee stung him in the eye. Those were the moments that he cherished more than any champagne shower in the locker room.

But, after today, his legacy and everything he had ever worked for would be as faded as that Polaroid on the projector.

"Oh, I don't know," Dennis said. "What do you guys want to hear about?"

Hands shot up from all sides of the room. Christopher still sat with his feet bopping about like an over-excited kindergartner waiting for his birthday cake. "You're real popular. We had a dentist in the other day and it was like pulling teeth to get them ask anything."

Dennis forced a laugh. He chose the first kid he saw, a sturdy boy with a blunt bowl cut. "Um, so, like, what is it like hitting a homerun? I almost hit one, one time, but some other kid caught it."

"A home run.... well it's very cool." He had no words. All the stories had escaped his mind. Dennis could feel the glare of Eduardo behind him with his finger settled comfortably over the button. The longer that he stood in this classroom and let the children get a good look at his face, the harder it would be to leave.

"Didn't you break a record?" Christopher asked.

The teacher certainly knew a lot about his career. In the long term, Dennis had been a mediocre player. He only had a high home run count because, in the four years he played, the team focused on pitching during the years he was there, and he got played more often than most strong hitters would. His record wasn't going down in any encyclopedia. If it hadn't been for the viral car commercials he did a few years back, no one would have remembered him.

His record was obscure at best. "Yeah, it was average distance at home," he said quietly just to make sure that the teacher realized how random the comment had been.

Christopher pointed to the board where the multiplication still sat undone. "Yesterday we were doing averages. I had the kids figure out your record, all on their own. Took a while to get all the info, but I remembered a lot of those runs. I was right there for most of them," Christopher said.