7 Days at the Hot Corner Page 9

  As I park my truck and approach the building, there is one thought, one image that keeps playing over and over again in my head. Although I didn’t even think about it a single time this last week, with so much going on, right now I can’t stop remembering that young mother with her little boy who was here the day I got my blood drawn. She was real worried-looking, and her kid, who was totally unaware of what was happening, was wild and rambunctious, a little shortstop in the making. What’s gonna happen to those two if their results come back bad? I mean, I’ve got my parents, Trav, my teammates, and a whole world of support in my life. What happens to the thousands of moms and little kids all over the world who have nothing like the love I get every day, if their tests come back bad?

  The last time I was here and I saw that mom and her little kid, I said that seeing them creeped me out. That’s not how I feel anymore. No, thinking about them now, I just feel sad and worried.

  I get called into Dorothy’s office. As she’s telling me my results, something in her face, a kind of sadness just under her smile, makes me realize how it must be for her when she has to tell somebody the opposite news of what she’s telling me right now.

  I thank her for about the tenth time, and then I stand up to leave. Suddenly, without planning to do it, I reach over and hug her. She hugs me back, and it feels nice.

  I walk out a locked door and down a short hallway.

  When I get out the door to the outside, I run to my truck as fast as I can, almost tripping over a big bulge in the sidewalk where a tree root has pushed up and cracked the cement. I unlock my truck door, hop in, and peel out, my wheels throwing gravel up behind me as I race away. It takes me a couple of blocks to settle down and start breathing normally again.

  My seven days at the hot corner are finally over. Now all I’ve got to do is figure out what to do with the rest of my life.

  Two Months Later

  Graduation was cool. Flat hats tossed in the air, hugs all around, although all I got from Matty, I mean Matt Tompkins was an overly firm handshake and about half a smile.

  It’s been a lazy summer. The most exciting thing has been Zeke Willhelm making it to the final round of the half-pipe skateboarding competition in the X-Games (he placed third, winning a bronze medal). Every evening on the five-o’clock news for the whole week, Zeke got interviewed—he looked almost normal: short hair, actually close to a shaved head but at least a natural color; you might have thought he was completely average except for the truly incredible way he rode his skateboard and the pierced gold hoop he wore in his right eyebrow. I felt proud of him; who’d have thought that Zeke Willhelm would be our graduating class’s greatest jock?

  I’ve been trying to decide what to do with my life—community college or get a job? Dad’s given me the rest of July to take it easy and make my decision.

  This afternoon I go out to grab the mail, something I do most days. I don’t usually get much from our friendly postal delivery lady, other than junk about credit cards and my Baseball Weekly, which arrives most of the time on Fridays.

  But when I look in the mailbox today, there is a letter for me.

  I look at the return address on the envelope and I can’t believe my eyes, can’t believe what I’m seeing: It’s from the Minnesota Twins.

  I tear it open right away and read it.

  I’ve been selected in the baseball draft.

  I’m getting my shot at pro ball.

  Without moving from the mailbox, I read and reread the letter about twenty times. I’ll start in triple-A ball at the Twins’ club in upstate New York, the Rochester Red Wings, but first I actually get to join the big club for spring training next March in Arizona, the Cactus League!

  I can hardly believe it—I reread the letter another half dozen times.

  I can’t wait to call Travis, who has his own apartment now, so that he can help me celebrate!

  But the strangest thing is that I’m not even happier than I actually feel. Sure, I’m excited, and it’s great news but … I don’t know how to explain it … I feel happy … but …

  Playing baseball takes a certain amount of guts and skill. Remembering that simple fact is enough for me after everything that happened last May.

  Playing ball is a lot of fun, but I’m happy and lucky to be alive. I’m thankful for everything, not just baseball; I’m thankful for everything that happened during those seven days at the hot corner, and for what happens every day away from it too.

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks, as always, are due Toni Markiet, my wonderful editor at HarperCollins Children’s Books; her terrific assistants, Catherine Onder and Savina Kim; and the entire team, Phoebe Yeh et al. Thanks also to George Nicholson, Paul Rodeen, and Thaddeus Bower at Sterling Lord Literistic Inc. Thanks to various readers who helped me see the light in this story, including Stacie Wachholz and Stephanie Squicciarini. Thanks to Kelly Milner-Halls for helping with my web page and being a fellow writer, and to Crutch, Bill Egger, Ed Averett, Terry Davis, and Mikey Gurian.

  Always, I am indebted to my family—my sons Jesse and Sheehan, sister Cindy, and Garren—so many Eggers that my sales are always brisk, including our favorite fellow travelers Wally and Kathy, also Bill and Nora, Peggy and Neil, Judy and Bill, Kathy and Jim Rudolph, Aunt Kay and her wonderful kids … like I said, too many to name, but thanks to all of you.

  I’m bound to leave out someone, so I might as well leave out a lot of you and just give this inadequate group thank-you to all not mentioned who support me. But thanks especially to the schools and libraries that continue to so vigorously defend and support my work, and to John Cole and the National Book Festival for their support as well.

  Thanks finally to my readers.

  —TT

  About the Author

  Terry Trueman grew up in the northern suburbs of Seattle, Washington. He attended the University of Washington, where he received his BA in creative writing. He also has an MS in applied psychology and an MFA in creative writing, both from Eastern Washington University.

  Terry is also the author of CRUISE CONTROL, a companion novel to STUCK IN NEUTRAL and the sequel LIFE HAPPENS NEXT; HURRICANE; 7 DAYS AT THE HOT CORNER; NO RIGHT TURN; and INSIDE OUT. You can visit Terry online at www.terrytrueman.com, on Twitter, and on the Terry Trueman Fan Page on Facebook.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Q&A with Terry Trueman

  Cruise Control is a companion to Stuck in Neutral, telling Paul’s story. Why did you feel it was important to give readers more insight into Paul’s perspective?

  Well truthfully, I always wanted to write more about Shawn but, for a while, I worried about ruining that annoying ending of Stuck in Neutral, where the reader doesn’t know what happens to Shawn next. Antonia Markiet, my editor for Stuck in Neutral, suggested I write a companion novel, one told in the same time frame but from a different character’s point of view; I knew instantly I wanted to tell Paul’s story. When my son Sheehan was born I felt a lot of emotions and a major one was anger. Paul’s character is based on that anger, and I kind of needed to get it out, so I wrote Cruise Control. All my life I’ve had a terrible temper that’s only gotten a little better with age.

  Inside Out brings us inside the head of a boy with schizophrenia. Why did you write a novel about a character with this mental illness?

  Both Inside Out and No Right Turn are about devastating illnesses. I have a Master’s Degree in Applied Psychology and had worked in mental health and counseling facilities for a number of years. Then I lost a much-beloved stepson to schizophrenia: he killed himself at our home in October 1997. So both professionally and personally I have a big interest in stories about mental illness. Anybody can wake up one day and realize that they are not normal anymore—anyone! So I wrote these books to help readers understand how mental illness is a tragedy and a challenge, not a curse or some kind of punishment for anything.

  No Right Turn is
about a boy who is struggling in the wake of his father’s suicide. Is it hard for you to write about such heavy subjects? Oftentimes you hear that actors really take on the weight of their characters. Do you feel this way when you write yours?

  My stories are based on things that have happened to me in real life. Living through the losses and heartbreak associated with difficult and challenging moments is way harder than later using the material of those experiences to try and create understanding and compassion in readers. Usually by the time I’m writing a novel about something painful and hard, I’ve gained enough distance and perspective to approach the material with honesty and, hopefully, a certain level of fearlessness. You can’t write realistic fiction if you’re a chicken-butt. You have to take risks.

  7 Days at the Hot Corner is a book about baseball and friendship, as well as the discovery of homosexuality and all of the emotions that come with being different as a teen. Why did you put these themes together in the same novel?

  The truth is that when I saw how much crap gay teens were taking from their peers and classmates back at the time I wrote the book, it bugged me. I’m not gay myself but I know a lot of gay people, so I wrote this book to try and increase tolerance and understanding of homosexuality. Also, I’m a wannabe jock and if I could be great at any sport, I’d want it to be baseball! Why did I blend the two thoughts together? I have no idea. Even though 7 Days at the Hot Corner is my fifth novel, I actually started writing it the very same day I started writing Stuck in Neutral. But Stuck in Neutral bumped 7 Days out of the way on the second day of writing, and it took me all those years to get back to telling that story.

  Tell us about your inspiration for Hurricane, which is set in Honduras. Is it true that you once lived there?

  Yes, I lived in Honduras in the city of San Pedro Sula during the early 80s and loved the people and the lifestyle there. My Spanish is rough at best so the language barrier always got in my way. After returning to the United States, I lost contact with most of my Honduran friends so when Hurricane Mitch struck Honduras and Central America in October 1998, I decided to write a story that would show American teen readers how much more similar Honduran kids of the same age are to them, than they are different from them. It’s kind of an odd twist of fate or something like it that Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. gulf coast about the same year that this novel first came out, and the plight of people in New Orleans was very similar to that of the Honduran people during Hurricane Mitch.

  Shawn McDaniel’s body may not work the way most people’s do—he can’t walk, talk, or even wave hello. But his brain works perfectly, even though his family and friends don’t know it. Check out how he copes with his cerebral palsy in this excerpt from the sequel to Stuck in Neutral.

  Excerpt from Life Happens Next

  Here’s how I spin things in my head—some cool things about being me:

  1. I get a hot bath every day of my life and never have to lift a finger. The warm water gets squeezed over my body from the big sponge in my mom’s gentle, loving hands. And this bath is by far the most enjoyable physical sensation I ever feel.

  2. I have a perfect auditory memory, remembering everything I ever hear, which is totally cool. This ability has turned our TVs (and we have four of them!) into the greatest learning devices in the universe. I mean, who needs real life when you’ve got 110 cable stations? And I remember every show, from Cesar Millan’s The Dog Whisperer to Little League baseball to the love life of squids to “The bark beetle lays its eggs” to everything in between. In other words, I’m damned smart!

  3. Although I can’t tell anybody what kind of music I’d like to listen to, I love almost all the music that’s played around here (rap/hip-hop, R&B, Bach and Mozart, geezer R&R) so whatever’s on pretty much always makes me happy.

  4. My brother, Paul, King Jock, Straight-A Student, Tough Guy Supreme, slips me bites of his deluxe bacon double cheeseburgers every chance he gets. Somehow Paul knows that I, too, think God invented this food to make up for the fact that all of us have to die someday.

  5. My sister, Cindy, is a saint. She taught me to read by playing school with me when I was little, and to this day she never treats me bad—plus she has great taste in best friends, wink-wink-hubba-hubba!

  6. Although Mom has a master’s degree in English and could be a college teacher or have some other higher-paying job, she works from home so she can take care of me. If Cindy is a saint, think about what that makes my mom.

  7. I’ll never have to get a lousy part-time job like carrying people’s groceries to their cars in a supermarket parking lot or cleaning out toilets and mopping floors in some crummy restaurant.

  8. In fact, I’ll never have to get any job, which I figure is a good thing since work is a four-letter word …

  9.... so I’ll never have anybody bossing me around—I know this is partly a bad thing as I’ll never get to boss anybody else either, but I don’t think I’d like doing that anyway.

  10. I have a kickass name. Shawn McDaniel is really cool sounding when compared to a name like Elmer Ulysses Fudpucker or Isaac P. Freeley.

  11. I’m living in the most interesting time in all of history: medical science–wise, it is a miracle that a guy like me, with my so-called handicaps, could still even be alive.

  Okay, let’s make this 12 items:

  12. I am in love with Ally Williamson, the girl of my dreams, and while I’d love to find some way to make her fall in love with me too, at least I get to imagine that she’s mine all mine.

  Ah, what the heck, just for good luck let’s make it 13. I didn’t even mention my dream life yet. Did I say dream life? Hey, Ally, here I come!

  Other Works

  Also by

  TERRY TRUEMAN

  No Right Turn

  Inside Out

  Cruise Control

  Stuck in Neutral

  Credits

  Cover art © 2007 by ibid / Morton Shapiro

  Cover design by R. Hult

  Copyright

  HarperTempest is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  7 Days at the Hot Corner

  Copyright © 2007 by Terry Trueman

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  www.harperteen.com

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Trueman, Terry.

  7 days at the hot corner / by Terry Trueman.— 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Varsity baseball player Scott Latimer struggles with his own prejudices and those of others when his best friend reveals that he is gay.

  ISBN-10: 0-06-057494-1 (trade bdg.)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-06-057494-9 (trade bdg.)

  ISBN-10: 0-06-057495-X (lib. bdg.)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-06-057495-6 (lib. bdg.)

  EPub Edition © MAY 2012 ISBN 9780061958366

  [1. Baseball—Fiction. 2. Best friends—Fiction. 3. Friendship—Fiction. 4. Homosexuality—Fiction. 5. Interpersonal relations—Fiction.] I. Title. II. Title: Seven days at the hot corner.

  PZ7.T7813Ag 2007

  2006003706

  [Fic]—dc22

  CIP

  AC

  * * *

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  First Edition

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