Moxie and the Art of Rule Breaking (25 page)

Ollie shot me a look.

“What if he expected me to come back for it if I said ‘sentimental’?” I told him when we finally got into the concourse. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“True,” he said, glum. “I just hate losing the only tool we brought.”

“Let’s get to our seats. We’ve got a while before we have to worry about tools.” Although it had been a couple of years since I’d been to a game—the last one was with Grumps and Nini, before Grumps’s Alzheimer’s had really kicked in—I couldn’t get into it. Instead, I was just impatient and antsy. I just wanted to get today over with—however it shook out.

Ollie, though, was Mr. Swivel-head…eyes on the concrete concourse, the green painted steel columns, the lines for food, the weird crawl spaces underneath the seats, the vendors selling Sox shirts, key chains, hats, and just about anything else you could imagine. I nudged him.

“What’re you looking at?”

“Everything. We’ll be invisible once this place empties out.”

I grinned.

We followed signs to the bleachers. All the new concession stands and construction underneath the section reinforced my idea that if the finial and ku had been hidden here, they were gone. Or we wouldn’t be able to find them without taking the Chilly Dog stand down. As soon as we got to the seats, Ollie pulled out his graph paper and started charting the park and everything we’d passed on our way in.

“Impressive!” I told him.

“Necessary,” he muttered.

The bleachers are smack in the middle of center field, and some sections have to be covered with a tarp during day games so the batter can more clearly see the ball. Our seats were closer to right field, a few rows back from the visitors’ bullpen.

Despite my stressed-out state, a tiny spark of excitement flared in me once we got settled. It was a perfect New England summer day—electric blue sky, sun blazing—and the park was filling up. We watched the players finishing their stretches and warm-ups and clear the field.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please rise as Boston’s best rocker, Steven Tyler from Aerosmith, sings our national anthem.”

I admit it—I squealed like Jolie Pearson and jumped out of my seat. I craned my neck to see him on the big screen, but also glimpsed him standing off to the side of home plate, just him and a microphone.

Steven didn’t disappoint—he threw in a few trademark wails and ya-ca-ca-ca-cas after “Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave…” At the end of the song, three military planes flew over the stadium, low and loud. Awesome.

Ollie nudged me. “We may as well enjoy it, huh?”

I nodded.

The Sox took the field and we got comfortable.

When the seventh inning stretch rolled around, I scanned the crowd. The Sox were up, 6-2 over the Jays, and the way the Blue Jays’ pitching was going, there was no risk of a loss.

With two outs left in the eighth, I could barely keep still. Ollie nudged me.

“Let’s go,” he said.

This was part of his plan: Get into the concourse before the stands started emptying, so we could avoid security.

There were a couple of food vendors still open, so we each grabbed a soda and a slice of pizza. Those, and the granola bars were it for the rest of the night. He showed me his map and pointed to our hiding places.

“This way,” Ollie said, munching on his slice. He pointed toward the right field box seats. “The wall’s lowest there.”

We poked around the souvenir tables and watched the
final Blue Jays out on a TV mounted near the women’s bathroom (final score: 9-2, Sox). Nini would be psyched. “Dirty Water” played over the loudspeakers, and the crowd started to leave.

Ollie and I followed the herd toward the exit, then doubled back and got into another group heading toward a different gate. My neck and arms were wound with tight cables, and I couldn’t even look at Ollie. My face was like a mask—one with a big, frozen “I’m a kid who just went to a baseball game” smile on it, but if I opened my mouth I was afraid I’d yurk.

“Crowd’s thinning,” Ollie muttered. “Phase two.”

We ducked into our respective bathrooms. I closed myself into the farthest stall from the “in” door—Fenway bathrooms have separate entrances and exits. Being alone was even more nerve-racking. What if I got caught?

I also wondered when my mom would start to worry about me. The fireworks were at ten, and she’d know the T would be crowded. Once she decided it was too late, though, she’d get her crazy on. The thought was comforting. No matter what happened tonight, if I was late, my mom would come looking for me.

A couple of times, the bathroom door banged open. I balanced on the toilet seat and waited, heart in my mouth. Twice the visitors flushed and left (ew—
Wash your hands!
I wanted to shout), but the third time the banging door was accompanied by a squeaking noise that must have been a mop bucket. I breathed through my mouth and listened hard.

Okay Moxie, okay
…I told myself.
They’re gonna clean the stalls too.

Sure enough, a couple of minutes later, I heard the first stall door bang open and a wet mop slop to the floor.

Door number two:
Bang! Slop! Swish!

I was in the sixth stall. There was an exit door almost diagonally in front of me. I took a deep breath…

Bang!
Stall door number three opened, as well as number six. Without looking at anything but my escape route, I raced out of the bathroom.

“Stop!” yelled a woman’s voice. Heart in my mouth, I pounded through the concourse and headed straight for the dim space under the seats.

I squinched in as tight as I could, totally exposed but in deep shadow, heart slamming so hard, I thought it was going to explode. I held my breath, listening for the woman who yelled at me, but there was no sound. The concrete step-like seat risers from the section above me dug into my back, and my nose stayed inches from the gnarly floor—
how does it get so sticky and filthy when no one walks over here?
I focused on that, instead of the woman in the bathroom, who was probably calling her supervisor about me.

I pulled a knit cap out of my bag and stuffed my low ponytail into it. A few minutes later, the cleaner from the women’s bathroom passed by, pushing her squeaky mop bucket in front of her. I died a thousand deaths, hoping she wouldn’t see me. But she went by without a word. Some
time after that, I spotted another cleaner leaving the men’s room.

Ollie and I had agreed to meet in the storage area under box 92—one section over from where I was now. Although I could hear voices and loud noises—clattering/clacking…maybe they were cleaning the concession stands?—I didn’t see anyone else. Slowly, I scooted along on my scabbed hands and knees, trying to keep to the shadows. I had to cross the access ramp to one of the boxes, which put me totally into the open. I had never felt so exposed, and was convinced Fenway security was going to tackle me the second I stood up.

Finally, I was under section 92—exactly where I was supposed to meet Ollie.

Only Ollie wasn’t there.

I lay in the crawl space, feeling the panic rise in me like flood waters. At what point should I go look for him? Worst of all was not knowing how much time had passed—I hadn’t thought to put on a watch (okay, not that I even
have
a watch to put on…but I could’ve looked for one in my mom’s room or something) since my cell phone screen was busted.

From my uncomfortable, filthy spot, I spotted a sliver of light around the edge of the nearest entrance gate’s big garage doors. Not that that helped much. It wouldn’t get dark until close to 8:30.

Well, I couldn’t stay here forever. With or without Ollie, I had to finish this.

Just as I was getting ready to slip out from my hiding spot, a dark blur sprinted across the concourse and slid in across from me.

Ollie.

Our faces were inches apart. The sunburn was beginning to show on his cheeks and—yuck—I could smell his pizza breath. He was panting pretty hard. I hoped he wouldn’t sneeze.

“Where were you?” I whispered, relieved. He put his finger over his lips to shush me and shook his head.

He pointed at the access ramp to box 92, then back to himself and to me, and made “running fingers” on the ground between us: We were going to make a break for it.

He held up a closed fist. We listened, but there was no way to tell if the voices that floated on the air were from people on Van Ness Street outside, or in the concourse. He raised his fingers:

One.

I stuck my palms to the ground, under my shoulders, and curled my toes—getting in push-up position.

Two.

Deep breath.

Three.

I sprang up and saw stars—I forgot that the spot we were hiding in had such a low-angled ceiling, and I cracked my head right on the edge of the risers above me. I staggered out from the storage space, not caring if anyone saw me.

Somehow, I kept from crying out, but my eyes watered and vision blurred from the pain. I gritted my teeth and reached around to the back of my head. A blinding flash of hot pain seared across my scalp. I hissed.

“C’mon, Moxie!” Ollie grabbed my hand and tugged me onto the ramp and into the seats. My legs were such jelly, I could barely stand up straight. I collapsed into a second-row aisle seat, not even worrying that we were in the middle of a crazy illegal activity.

I rested my head against the chair in front of me, closed my eyes, and took deep breaths through my mouth. Nausea rippled through me.

“Dude, Moxie,” Ollie said, voice low. “I think you took a chunk of concrete off the stadium when you jackrabbitted out of there.”

He was trying to make me smile, but the axe-like pain in my head destroyed my sense of humor. My noggin
killed.

When I didn’t respond, he fussed with the zipper on his backpack and rummaged inside. He pressed a bottle of water into my hand, lid off.

Slowly, I tilted my head—the park spun a little, but settled—and took a sip. Two or three sips later, the pain was more manageable and the sensation that I’d fall off the seat if I didn’t hang on went away. I finally looked around. The sky was that deep gold of summer before sunset, and shadows reached across the field, darkening home plate and stretching beyond second base.

Fenway during a game is pretty impressive—when it’s packed with fans, you can feel the excitement in the air—but when it’s empty, well, it’s spooky. The seats are folded and silent, the lights out in the press box, the infield covered like a dead person wrapped up…I shuddered.

“It’s waiting for something,” Ollie said.

I nodded, sending new bolts of pain into my head. That was totally it. “Yeah. Like the ghosts of anyone who ever came to a game.”

We sat quietly for a minute.

“You okay to move?”

“I think so. Where to next?”

He pointed to right field wall at the seats in front of us. “We climb over, stay right at the edge of the wall, and get into the visitors’ bullpen. There’s a bathroom in there.”

Did he have to go?

“Okay.” I gripped the back of the seat in front of me and willed myself not to get dizzy when I stood. It didn’t work. The park spun, but settled and held. Ollie’s face was concerned.

“I’m okay,” I repeated. The back of my head felt funny, though.

I stepped into the aisle, Ollie behind me, and we scooted into the front row. It was less than a four-foot drop from the top of the wall to the warning track. Ollie did it easily, and had I not beaned my brains on a hundred-year-old concrete riser, I would have too. Instead, I sat on the wall, flipped onto my belly, and awkwardly lowered myself to the ground. I was pretty sure that when the right fielder stood there, the ground didn’t dip and sway like he was at sea. I kept my right hand against the pads lining the wall and followed Ollie around the perimeter of the outfield.

He reached the bullpen, unlatched the door, and tugged, but it didn’t budge.

“Crud!”

“I got it.” I reached over the door and fiddled with the
inside
latch. It swung open and we scooted in, then sank against the
wall, backs to the outfield, where we hopefully wouldn’t be spotted.

Again,
I reminded myself. Although it seemed like the cleaner had chosen not to report me.

I brought my fingers to the back of my head, and they sank into a spongy wetness on my cap. When I took them away, they were dark with blood.

Awesome. Bleeding head wound on top of trespassing and all kinds of illegal activity,
I thought. I decided not to tell Ollie. But we needed to get out of here, fast.

“Time check?”

He took out his cell phone. “Nearly eight,” he said. “Hungry?”

I shook my head, stars of pain dancing across my vision. “Nope. You?”

Instead of responding, he dug into a granola bar. I tilted my head back and closed my eyes.

“Why are you doing this for me, Ols?”

“Doing what?” he asked. Peanut butter and chocolate wafted toward me.

“Breaking and entering. Hiding stolen property. Accessorizing.”

“Accessorizing?” He laughed. “I don’t think that’s what you mean.”

“You know what I mean.” Throbbing blobs of color floated across my eyelids. I was getting sleepy.