Labor Day by Joyce Maynard

he said. Get all your anger out, in a way that didn’t hurt anyone.
    What anger is that? I asked. I didn’t want it to be about me, something I’d done. I wanted him to like me, stay around. I already knew he liked my mother.
    Oh, you know, he said. Late-season Red Sox. Every year, around this time, they start screwing up.
    I didn’t think that was really it, but I didn’t say anything either.
    Speaking of baseball, he said. Where’s that glove of yours? After I help your mother with a few chores, what do you say we throw around the ball a little?
    Barry and I watched Fantastic Four, and Scooby-Doo . Normally my mother would never have let me watch so many cartoons, but this was a special situation. When Smurfs came on, I tried changing the channel to a less babyish show, but Barry started making a squealing noise, like a puppy when you step on its paw, so I let him watch that one. The show was just finishing when Frank came back down the stairs from wherever he’d been, helping my mother, to say he was in the mood for catch, how about it?
    I told him I was terrible at sports, but Frank told me not to say those words. If you act like something’s too hard, it will be, he said. You got to believe it’s possible.
    All those years in stir, he said. I never let myself believe I couldn’t get out. I just bided my time and thought positive. Looked for my opening. Made sure I’d be ready, when it came along.
    None of us had brought up the topic of the escape until this. It surprised me that Frank would talk about it.
    I didn’t know my appendix was going to be my ticket, he said. But I was ready for that window. I’d gone through it a million times already in my head. I’d worked out all my moves—the jump, and how to land it. I would have got it right, too, if there hadn’t been a stone under the grass, where I wasn’t counting on one. That’s what did my ankle in.
    I knew I’d need a hostage, he said. A particular type of person.
    He looked at my mother. My mother looked at him.
    Then again, he said, it’s an open question, which person is the captor here, which is the captive.
    He bent his head close to her ear and brushed her hair away, as if to speak directly into her brain. Maybe he thought I wouldn’t hear, or maybe he was just beyond caring.
    I am your prisoner, Adele, was what he said to her.

CHAPTER 10
    I THOUGHT WE’D JUST LEAVE B ARRY where he was, but Frank figured he’d enjoy watching, so he carried him outside and set him in a lawn chair, with the Red Sox cap on that he’d picked up for himself at Pricemart. We were far enough back from the road that no one could see us, besides Barry.
    It’s your job to root for your favorite team, my friend, Frank told him.
    Don’t get your hopes up, I told him. You never saw anyone suck at baseball worse than me. (Barry, maybe. But I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.)
    Want to run that by me again? Frank said. Didn’t you hear anything I told you about thinking positive?
    Oh right, I said. I’m going to be the greatest center fielder since Mickey Mantle.
    Mantle didn’t play center field, Frank said. But that’s the idea.
    Here was the odd thing. When Frank threw the ball, I caught it. After my mother came out, and we gave her my glove and told her to take the catcher position, I hit his pitches. Not all but more than normal. You might have thought he was just feeding me candy, but that didn’t even seem to be the case.
    He had stood beside me on the imaginary plate and placed my hands on the bat, repositioning the angle of my elbow and wrist, a little the way my mother did when she had taught me the fox-trot.
    See the ball, he said, under his breath, just before the pitch left his hand. I got so I was saying the words too, like they would bring me a hit. It seemed they did.
    If I had a whole season to work with you, he said, we could really get somewhere with your game.
    A lot of your problem was in your head. You see yourself screwing up, it’s