Safe at Home by Mike Lupica Page A

going.
    “I used to love baseball,” he said. “More than comics, more than anything. But it’s not fun anymore, and now I feel more lost than I ever have, because if I don’t at least belong on a baseball field,I don’t belong anywhere. And I
sure
don’t belong with my mom and dad. They don’t know what to make of me any more than I know what to make of them.”
    He stopped now, took a breath, closed his eyes, felt the heat and sting of the tears he’d been doing his best to hold back for a week.
    Just then he saw Mrs. Wright’s car coming up the drive from Frogtown Road.
    When Nick opened his eyes, he saw Gracie staring at him.
    “To be continued,” she said.
    She didn’t say anything on the ride home, just stared out the back window. Nick didn’t say anything, either. When they got out of the car, Nick, seeing that his parents weren’t home yet, started walking toward Gracie’s front door.
    But she stopped him.
    “Let’s go around back for a few minutes,” Gracie said.
    “Okay,” Nick said. “But why?”
    “Now there’s something
I
need to talk to
you
about.”
    “Sounds important.”
    “That’s why we need to go to the swings,” Gracie said.
    They walked around the side of her house and back to where the swings were, the place where they’d always done their best and most serious talking from the first day they’d known each other.
    Nick sat down first and said, “Okay, Miss Mysterious, what do you want to talk about?”
    “About how you’ve turned into the biggest baby I know.”
    She didn’t sit down in the swing next to his, the way she usually did when they were out here kicking things around. She just stood in front of him, hands on her hips, and let him have it.
    “I can’t figure out what’s worse,” Gracie said, “how dumb you’ve gotten about sports, or how
totally
dumb you are about your mom and dad.”
    “You don’t get it,” Nick said.
    “No,
you
don’t get it,” she said.
    “Get what?”
    “What an idiot you’ve turned into.”
    Nick felt the way you did when the other pitcher was coming with high heat.
    “Hold on—”
    “No,” Gracie said, “
you
hold on. I’ve been listening to you complain for weeks. Now you listen to me.”
    He did.
    “First question,” she said. “When did you become such an expert on being a parent? Seriously. You know how many kids we go to school with every single day who have parents who take no interest in anything they’re doing, either ’cause they’re too busy or just don’t want to be bothered? I’ll tell you how many, Captain: a lot.”
    In a quiet voice Nick said, “I didn’t say they don’t care.”
    “This isn’t about caring,” Gracie said. “My parents care about me. But do you see them showing up for all my lacrosse games? My dad hasn’t been to one yet.”
    Nick sat there.
    “It was a
pain
for your parents to get here for your game today, then have to leave the minute itwas over. But guess what? They were there. They made the effort. You know how I know that? I did this amazing thing—I talked to them. You should try it sometime.”
    “I do try talking to them. They’re just so mad different from me.”
    “Well boo
hoo
,” she said. “You think all parents aren’t that way? You don’t think all kids don’t think their parents are from Mars? How totally thick are you? You know what you need to do? Get your head out of your comic books once in a while and look at what you’ve got instead of whining about what you don’t have.”
    No stopping her now, no slowing her down. Nick waited for steam to come pouring out of her.
    All heat.
    “You ever hear the saying ‘you can pick your friends but not your family’? Well, guess what? Your family chose you. They could have picked anybody to be a luckier-than-any-foster-kid-in-the-world kid. And they chose
you
, Crandall. They’re trying to learn about baseball because of
you.
They’re trying to get you to be better in school—which, Earth to