Baseball Great by Tim Green Read Free Book Online Page A

know where you are until the big boys behind bars are smacking you around and you’re crying for your momma.”
    Bart stood there, huffing at her.
    â€œJosh is my boyfriend,” Jaden said suddenly in her drawl. “He doesn’t want anything to do with Sheila. You can tell her that. You want to fight someone? Go fight with her, and tell her to stay away from Josh.”
    â€œThat’s bull crap,” Bart said, snarling.
    â€œGo ahead,” Jaden said, gritting her teeth. “You just touch me and see what happens to you. Wait till I tell my father you’re a racist, too. He’ll slap the cuffs on extra tight.”
    Bart lunged at Jaden but pulled back just before he touched her.
    Jaden never flinched.
    â€œYou think I’m scared of you ?” Jaden said, wrinkling up her face.
    Bart took a step back and said, “You better be, ’cause when I get you back, you ain’t gonna see me coming. There ain’t gonna be no cops, and there ain’t gonna be no witnesses.”
    Bart turned and started away before spinning around and walking backward as he spoke. “Both of you, you better watch your backs.”
    Bart kept going, now laughing demonically at them.
    Jaden just stood staring and shaking her head. “What a moron.”
    When Bart rounded the corner, Josh asked, “You think he’ll do it?”
    â€œDo what?”
    â€œGet us.”
    Jaden swatted the air, scooped up her cell phone, and said, “Come on. I don’t want to be late for my dad. If he comes out and I’m not there, he’ll walk home alone.”
    Josh hurried to catch up to her.
    â€œHe’s not really a cop, too, is he?” Josh asked, fallingin alongside her.
    Jaden furrowed her brow and glanced at him, shaking her head again.
    â€œNo,” she said. “Just a doctor.”
    â€œWell, you sounded pretty good,” Josh said.
    â€œI said you were my boyfriend, too,” Jaden said. “And we both know that’s bologna. Even if I wanted to—which I don’t—my father won’t let me date until I’m sixteen.”
    â€œThat’s good,” Josh said, his face suddenly burning. “I don’t mean because of me or anything. I mean that he cares about you like that.”
    â€œSpeaking of caring,” Jaden said, “your buddy Benji lit out like a cockroach.”
    â€œHe’s a good guy,” Josh said, looking over his shoulder in the direction Benji had disappeared. “He might have gone for help.”
    â€œWell, I sure didn’t hear any cavalry bugles,” Jaden said.
    â€œDoes your voice do that a lot?” he asked.
    â€œDo what?”
    â€œYou talk kind of southern when you’re excited,” he said.
    She shrugged without comment.
    They walked for a block in silence before Jaden said, “Don’t you know you could twist that moron up into a pretzel?”
    â€œWho, Bart?”
    â€œYeah,” Jaden said. “You’d kill him.”
    â€œHe’s a lot older than me,” Josh said.
    â€œSo he’s older,” Jaden said. “I’m glad you don’t want to fight—that’s for morons. But if it came down to it, you’d kill him, and you don’t even know it.”
    â€œI guess,” Josh said, straightening his back a little.
    â€œBut don’t worry,” Jaden said. “I’ve seen the type. He’s all talk. Here it is.”
    They had come to the big brick hospital that covered three city blocks. Before them stood the loading docks, a dark cavern of concrete cut into the side of the hill. Enormous garage doors stood in a row deep in the shadows beyond the raised platform, and a handful of Dumpsters had been crowded into the far corner of the blacktop below. Several cars had been nosed up along part of the concrete wall near the Dumpsters. One caught Josh’s eye.
    A sliver of light appeared, then grew into a rectangle from which