Home Run: A Novel by Travis Thrasher

caught on tape. Over one million hits.”
    “Who doesn’t want to be on Cops ?”
    Helene was still looking for more, but Cory had seen enough.
    “Hey, when you look at it all at once like that, of course it looks bad. But I’m sure you’ll find a lot of videos where I’m sober and doing something good.”
    The computer snapped shut, and Helene picked it up. She wasn’t trying to shame him. Helene didn’t operate like that, not with Cory. She was probably just trying to show him what she was dealing with. She looked like she was already negotiating, trying to figure out the next move they should make.
    “You still have the condo in Miami?” Helene asked.
    What’s that have to do with anything? Is that where I need to spend my suspension?
    “Yeah, but did I tell you I popped the water bed?” Cory glanced at Clay the way one frat boy might look at another. “Floor’s a little warped now.”
    Clay gave him that adult look, the look that Cory hated, the kind that most adults seemed to inherit from their self-righteous and fun-bashing parents. The look that said Shame on you .
    Helene slipped the computer into her bag and checked her phone for a moment, answering a text or an email. Cory introduced Clay, but she wasn’t extremely interested. She found something in her bag and gave it to Cory. It was a boarding pass.
    “Here’s what you’re going to do. You’ll fly to Tulsa with your brother and make nice with the kid in Okmulgee while you’re there.”
    This wasn’t a round of brainstorming here. Helene spoke to him like a mother to her son.
    “Okmulgee? No.”
    She gave her polite but bullheaded smile. “Okmulgee, yes. We’ll arrange a very public apology to the kid—”
    “The kid has a name,” Clay said with a bit of an edge in his voice. “It’s Carlos.”
    Helene paused for a moment, the annoyed look filling her face, then stepped away while she continued to talk to Cory and ignore Clay.
    “Well, whoever he is, he’s getting a bag of goodies from the Grizzlies and a photo op with a celebrity. Then you can go chill on the beach for eight weeks.”
    She still doesn’t know that’s my nephew she’s talking about.
    He was about to argue with her, telling her there was no way he was going back home, not now. He’d promised himself he was never going back there.
    “One other thing,” Helene said. “The Grizzlies want proof you’re attending a twelve-step program.”
    “Twelve-step?”
    This was unbelievable.
    He accidentally hit a kid in the nose. It wasn’t like he ran over the kid with his car while intoxicated.
    The kid has a name.
    “The team wants you out of sight until you’ve completed eight weeks. So you do the press conference, then go to Miami and find some kind of program. A low-profile sort of thing.”
    Then what? There has to be a then, right?
    He waited. Helene wasn’t going to tell him anything else. There wasn’t any but this time.
    Cory sighed as she began walking toward the door. He wanted to ask her about an appeal process, and whether he could talk to the Grizzlies owner, and maybe a hundred other questions. But he knew she was done for the day.
    “Oh, and Cory?”
    Well, maybe not.
    “You’re writing a ten-thousand-dollar check to Young Life for the homer you screwed up.”
    “What?” Cory slumped onto the nearest couch and moaned in a way that sounded like he was dying.
    “I promise you,” Helene said, “you won’t feel a thing.”
    The door slammed shut, and she was gone as quickly as she had come.
    For a moment Cory just sat there, staring at the ceiling and wishing he didn’t feel anything. Clay didn’t speak.
    There really wasn’t anything more to say.

“That smile is dangerous,” a tenth-grade Emma teases.
    “I know. It’s like a James Bond kind of smile.”
    “No way.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You’re the farthest thing in the world from James Bond.”
    “But you just said—”
    “That your smile is dangerous.”
    “I don’t