Lost Boy by Tim Green Page B

the dark space. He bumped his way through a maze of boxes stacked from the floor to as high as he could reach and realized he’d entered a storage room. He felt his way forward and to the left, in the direction of the room the players had emerged from. When he reached a wall, he didn’t have to go far before he felt the cold metal of another door. He put his ear to it and could clearly hear the sound of men talking and joking. It had to be the locker room. Every so often, there would be the bang of a door. He suspected it had to be the one that led out into the hall.
    Ryder knew for certain the players’ lockers must be just beyond this door. He felt the handle and turned it carefully. It was unlocked.
    His legs trembled and sweat broke out on his upper lip as he listened to the sound of the locker room emptying out. He had to pee now, more than he’d ever had to before in his life. He grabbed his own face and squeezed it, unable to believe he was hiding in a storage closet outside a players’ clubhouse in Yankee Stadium. It seemed impossible.
    When the talking finally stopped on the other side and the last voices faded through the banging door, Ryder turned the knob and peered into the clubhouse. In front of him were all the lockers, and he knew by the colors of the travel bags lying around on the bottoms of the big open lockers that this was theBraves’ visiting locker room. Off to his right were the showers, toilets, and sinks. Ryder thought for a moment about dashing in, finding Thomas Trent’s locker, dropping the note, and bolting out of here.
    The excitement of that possibility, though, made his urge to use the bathroom so great he thought he’d explode before he took ten steps, so instead he dashed into a stall and took care of business. He was zipping up his pants when he heard someone cough behind him, then footsteps clacking along the bathroom floor tiles.
    Ryder froze, then realized, as the footsteps kept getting nearer, that his feet would be seen beneath the stall door. He climbed up onto the toilet, stood on the rim of the bowl, and tried not to even breathe. The steps stopped two doors down and whoever it was rattled the knob and swung open the door.
    â€œAhhh! Whew! Oh, that stinks !” The man, talking to himself, slammed the stall door shut.
    Now, his footsteps moved up the line of doors, past the one next to Ryder’s and stopping right outside his door. He could see the tips of the man’s cleats and guessed that one of the players must have returned to use the bathroom. Ryder stared at the door and bit into his lip to keep from crying out. His legs began to shake again, this time so violently that he realized he might slip right off the rim of the bowl.
    The knob rattled and turned. Ryder wondered if he could reach across the open space and flick the lock. He braced his hand against the wall and started to lean. It was his only chance.
    But even as he reached for the latch with his other hand, a crack of light appeared in the door and it began to sneak open.

A foot of open space gaped in front of Ryder. He could see the edge of the player’s body and the left arm of his uniform, but the door stopped before it reached his face.
    â€œNo. Too close. Aw, that smell is terrible.” The door swung shut again and the player went into the next stall over.
    Ryder sniffed the air and realized now that there was a bad smell coming from a few stalls down.
    A belt buckle clinked against the floor in the stall next to Ryder as the player’s pants dropped down around his feet. The feet turned around and the player sat down. Ryder stood like a statue, so scared he couldn’t even feel his legs.
    Thankfully, the player was in a hurry, so it wasn’t long before the toilet flushed, the belt jingled up, the door creaked open, and footsteps clacked across the tile floor and faded around the corner. When the locker room door banged in thenext room, Ryder hopped