Hit & Miss (5 page)

What puzzled him was Vijay. He laughed along with the rest of the boys, although he'd been the new kid once too. Derek was sure he still remembered. So what was going on with
him
?

The bell rang, and everyone started filing back toward the doors. “Well, I guess it's okay if he shows up,” Jeff said. “I just hope it doesn't wind up being a snobfest.”

When the bell rang to end the school day, Dave came over to Derek's desk with a big smile on his face.

“Hey, Derek,” he said. “You ready?”

“Huh? Ready for what?”

“Come with me. I've got a surprise for you.” Dave led him down the school's front steps and across the lawn, toward the hedge where the Mercedes had been waiting the other day.

“Hey, listen,” Derek said. “I've gotta catch the bus . . .”

“Just a second,” Dave insisted, not slowing down. Derek had no choice but to follow him.

They wound up in front of the Mercedes, just as Derek had expected. The driver, dressed in a dark suit and wearing his visored cap, was holding the rear door open.

“Hello there, young man,” he greeted Derek. “My name is Chase.” He gave a little nod of the head and offered his hand. “Chase Bradway.”

“Derek,” Derek answered, shaking the driver's hand. “Derek Jeter. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Bradway.”

“Just call me Chase. Everyone else does.” He gave Derek a tip of his cap and a smile.

“Go on,” Dave said. “Get in.”

“Huh? Oh!” Derek was completely taken by surprise. “Um, I don't know . . .”

Actually, he
did
know—or at any rate, he was pretty sure—that his parents would not approve of him getting into someone else's car without their knowing about it.

“It's okay. Chase is a really careful driver. He'll get us there safely.”

Oh well,
he thought.
What harm could it do?
Mount Royal Townhouses were only about half a mile away. He and Dave would just get to the Hill that much faster. They'd be waiting there when the bus dropped the other kids off.

Derek shrugged. “I've never ridden in a car like this before. It's practically a limo.”

“Ah, yeah.” Dave nodded with a smile—the first smile Derek had ever seen on his face. It looked like it belonged there, but it lasted only a second. “I remember when I thought it was a big deal. You can get used to anything, believe me.”

“I wouldn't mind getting used to it,” Derek said with a laugh, throwing caution to the wind as he got in and sat down on the plush leather seat. “I'd want to drive it myself, though.”

“Totally,” said Dave, sitting next to Derek. The driver shut the door and got in the front seat. Again Derek felt a pang of . . . of something. Was it remorse? Dread? His guilty conscience?

They rolled slowly past the front of the school building. Everyone stared at the car, with Derek in it, his face pressed to the window. He grinned and waved, but most of the kids just shook their heads in surprise.

“It's a 500 SEL,” Dave told him, patting the seat. “Soon as I'm old enough, I'm telling Chase to move over and let me drive this baby. Right, Chase?”

“Soon as you have a license,” said Chase. “And oh, by the way, Dave, I seem to recall that you have two more tests coming up this week—social studies and English—and I'm expecting you to leave plenty of time for studying today, as well as homework.”

“Okay, Chase,” Dave said, rolling his eyes and shooting
Derek a smile. “I'll get it done. No worries.”

“See that you do. And how are your grades, young man?” he asked Derek.

“Me? Oh, um, they're pretty good, I guess. Nineties most of the time.”

“Good man,” said Chase. “Keep it up.”

Derek was surprised that Chase had asked. But he knew his parents would have wanted to know the same thing about Dave. Except, Chase was Dave's
driver
, not his dad . . . . What was going on?

Suddenly Derek noticed that the street outside the car window was unfamiliar. “Hey!” he said. “I think we passed Mount Royal Townhouses.”

Dave smiled. “That's the other half of the surprise,” he told Derek. “We're going to my house!”

“What?”

“I know, but don't worry—you can call your parents when we get there and tell them where we are. And Chase will drive you right home to your door afterward.”

“But—”

“Quit worrying, okay? You can blame it on me. Tell them your new friend kidnapped you.” He laughed, and Derek couldn't help joining in.

Derek bit his lip. He didn't want to make things awkward for Dave. He knew it must have taken a big leap for Dave to put himself out there like this.

Derek didn't want to make it seem like he was inventing an excuse not to hang out with Dave either. It did seem like a harmless adventure, after all. And Dave had actually called Derek his friend!

Derek told himself he would just call his mom and dad when he got to Dave's house, and let them speak to Dave's parents.

He sat back and looked out the window as they wound down a curving road and through a patch of woods, and then emerged on the shore of a beautiful lake. There, across the lake, was a large house—you could even call it a mansion—with a sloping lawn leading down to the lakeshore.

“That's your house?” Derek said, openmouthed.

“Well, it's the corporation's, technically,” Dave said. “But we get to live there—at least until my mom gets transferred to some other place.”

“Which is how long?” Derek wondered.

Dave shrugged. “Who knows? We were in LA for five years. Before that, Hawaii for three. Before that, well . . . I was just a baby back then.”

Chase pulled the car to a stop in front of the house, then got out. He opened the car door for the boys, and they piled out. Derek realized his mouth was wide open as he stared at the gigantic stone house. It looked like a kind of castle from the Middle Ages or something.

“Come on in, and I'll show you around,” said Dave, waving
for Derek to follow him up the front steps to the huge oaken door under the stone archway. “It really is impressive.”

“Thanks, Mr. Bradway,” Derek said to the driver.

“You can call me Chase,” he corrected Derek. “And no need for thanks, young man. I'm just doing my job.” He gave Derek a smile and a nod, clapped Dave affectionately on the back, and said, “Don't forget about your homework. And those tests.”

“No, sir,” said Dave with a smile and a little salute. “Come on, Derek. Let me show you the house.”

Chase turned away and busied himself polishing the car's hood.

“What's with the salute?” Derek asked as they went up the marble steps to the front door.

“Oh. Chase is ex–Green Beret,” Dave explained. “Special Forces. He has these medals from the Vietnam War—you should see them.”

“Wow. That's pretty incredible. Is he, like, related to you or something?”

Dave laughed. “Sort of. Not really, but he might as well be. I see more of him than I do either of my folks.”

“Sure seems like it,” said Derek.

“He's officially my mom's driver. But he's really much more than that. He actually started out as the head of my dad's security detail.”

“Security detail?”

“Yeah. My dad's with something called the World Bank. He travels a lot, to different countries, so they gave him a security detail. But I guess he was worried about me and my mom being safe while he was overseas. So he asked Chase to stay with Mom and me. And he's been part of the family ever since.”

Derek realized that Dave's dad must have been really important to need his own security detail.

“Everyone had drivers in Beverly Hills, so I never really thought about it being weird or anything, until we moved to Kalamazoo.”

“Huh. Well, it's definitely not like that here,” said Derek. “I don't think there's one other person in this whole town who's got a driver, and not too many with a great big Mercedes, either.”

Dave opened the door and led Derek inside, where a grand marble hallway with ceilings three stories high greeted them.

“Wow,” Derek said.

“Yeah, I know,” Dave agreed. “It's amazing. Too bad it's not really ours. Technically the corporation owns it.”

Derek didn't reply. He was too busy gawking as Dave led him through the living rooms, kitchen, sunroom, and several other spaces, each more extravagant than the last.

“Everyone always tells me not to touch anything,” Dave said with a grin, touching an antique desk just to show he
could, and winking at Derek. “So I guess you'd better keep your paws off everything too.”

Derek laughed but made a mental note to be careful around all these expensive things. “Hey, listen, I'd better call home. My folks will want to check in with your parents.”

Dave blinked. “My parents? Oh, they're not here.”

“What?” Derek felt a knot develop suddenly in the pit of his stomach. He had just assumed that at least one of Dave's parents would be here to supervise them.

“Like I told you, Chase is sort of part of the family,” Dave explained. “He's always in charge of me whenever my parents are away.”

“Away?”

“Yeah, my mom's in London and my dad's in Singapore or someplace.”

“Wow . . . um, what does your mom do?” Derek asked.

“She works for an international computer company. ‘Executive vice president of media relations,' whatever that means,” Dave replied. “Now she's got the whole Midwest as her territory, so she's on the road half the time. My dad's away even more than that. I've got no brothers or sisters. So like I said, Chase and I are stuck with each other a lot of the time.”

“Wow.”

What else could Derek say? On the one hand Dave's
family sure sounded every bit as rich as all the kids imagined they were. On the other hand Derek felt a little sorry for him. It sounded like he didn't get to spend much time with his parents. Derek couldn't imagine living like that. He and his family were as close as—well, as
family
!

“Was it like that in California, too?” Derek asked.

“Nah, that's where my grandparents live, so they were over at the house whenever my folks went somewhere.”

“Ah.”

Derek wondered what he should do now. Probably ask to be driven home right away. But he didn't want to do that. That would make Dave think Derek was weird, or that Derek didn't like him or something. Which wasn't true at all. Derek was actually starting to think Dave was a pretty cool kid.

Maybe he should call home now and let his parents talk to Chase. But Derek quickly backed off that idea. They wouldn't understand about a driver being a substitute parent. Not unless he explained it to them first—and in person, not over the phone.

In the end Derek decided to tell them all about it when he got home, and let them talk to Chase afterward. It wasn't a good solution, but at this point he couldn't think of a better one.

“Come on, I'll show you my rooms,” Dave said.

“Rooms? There's more than one?” Derek couldn't
believe what he was seeing. If the other kids could see all this, they would think Dave was from another planet.

Dave might have been living the lifestyle of the rich and famous, but Derek could tell that he was down to earth. He was treating Derek like a
friend.
Like an
equal
.

“It's a mess,” Dave said. “Staff or no staff, my parents want me to clean my own room.”

“Mine too. My sister, Sharlee, and I have lots of chores around the house.”

“Yeah, but I have
two
rooms to clean. Come on in here.”

He led Derek through the actual bedroom—with its double bed, desk, mini electric car set, clothes all over the floor—into another large room, covered in green outdoor carpeting, with little humps built into it and a hole sunk into the middle.

“What's this?” Derek asked. “It looks like a miniature golf hole.”

“It
is
!” Dave said excitedly. “It's a putting green.”

“That's way cool,” Derek said, shaking his head in wonder. “I can't believe this. Was this here when you moved in?”

“No, my parents put it in for me.”

“Wow.”

“See . . . I'm really into golf.” Dave looked at Derek like he was sharing a big secret with him.

“
Golf?
Wow. I've never met anybody who was into golf before. I thought it was just for rich—” He quickly stopped himself. “Oh. Right.”

“Everybody in Beverly Hills plays. Even the kids. And my dad's into it big-time. Half his business trips are golf outings. He took me golfing from the age of four. I got my first set of clubs at six.”

“No way,” Derek said, astonished. “Aren't those—” He stopped himself before saying “expensive.”

“You want to try some putts?” Dave asked him.

“Sure.” Derek took a few putts, and sank one, but the rest were either too weak or too strong, or off to the side of the cup. “I'll bet you're way better at this stuff,” he said, handing the putter back to Dave.

Dave took it and proceeded to sink six straight putts. “I'm getting there,” he said with a grin—a real one this time, one that lasted at least five seconds.

“You should see the setup we've got out back,” he told Derek, laying the putter down and leading his guest back downstairs.

They went out the back door. To call it a backyard would not have been fair. What Derek was gazing at was more like a park. There was a tennis court, a swimming pool, and another putting green—this one made out of real grass.

There was also a big cage with netting on three sides. “What's that for?” Derek asked. “T-ball?” It reminded him of the nets at the batting cages where he went with his dad.