The Prince of Fenway Park by Julianna Baggott

Author:Julianna Baggott
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Past

OSCAR LAY DOWN ON HIS pallet of bases in the crawl space under the bulb attached to the wall. He could hear machinery overhead: the official grounds crew. It was morning, and so for the Cursed Creatures and for Oscar, it was time for bed. He’d been awake all night. He could hear some faint snores drifting up from the aunties’ hammocks below; and his father had tinkered for a while, sorting through various satchels of grass seed, but now was sound asleep.

Oscar was exhausted but couldn’t drift off. He picked up the miniature Fenway Park model and stared into the minifield, the cramped dugout. Game 3 was coming. Later that very day, the Red Sox players would be filling the real Fenway Park—the Yankees, too. It was almost time. The thought of the game itself going on as he’d be nestled below was almost too much to comprehend. The Red Sox, he thought, they need me, even though they don’t know that I exist.

He had to get to the Pooka at the spot below home plate at midnight. But how? How in the world would he be able to slip away from his father at just that hour without his father noticing and stopping him?

His mind felt blurry and useless. Before getting into bed, he’d slipped the Key to the Past into his new mitt and shoved the mitt under his pillow. Now he slipped his hand into the mitt just to make sure the key was still there.

The Key to the Past. He closed his eyes and let his mind float a bit. And that’s when the idea came to him: that the present is just a flimsy door between the past and future, and how quickly the future is pulled through that door to become the past. His father would be watching over him at midnight. But after midnight? The key, he thought, I can use the key to meet the Pooka once that moment is in the past. Is that what Auntie Gormley had meant when she’d signed that he would need the key, and looked at him so seriously?

He leaned over the edge of his pallet and looked down through the ceiling knotholes; and just as he expected, she was poised there, her chin up, her eyes waiting to meet his. She gave a smile. He smiled back.

She signed with her eyes: “You will come back to us in one piece. You’re going to save us.”

So she knew.

Now he could roll over and sleep.

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