After the game I found a giraffe in my locker. I wasn't surprised. Yesterday there was a crocodile, and the day before that a monkey. All three animals were made out of balloons. The giraffe was the best one yet, with orange spots colored onto the yellow balloons with a felt-tip pen.
I was a batboy for the Pine City Porcupines. Balloon Day was coming up at Pine City Park, so Spike, the Pines' junior mascot, was learning how to make balloon animals. Not many people knew Spike's secret identity, but I did. I knew that Abby, a girl from my class, was inside the porcupine suit. Abby told me she wanted to be able to make any balloon animal a kid asked for, even if it was something crazy like a possum or an armadillo.
"What did you get?" I asked Dylan. He was the other batboy.
"I don't know." He opened his locker and pulled out a tangled knot of balloons. "What do you think this is?"
"A spider?" I took it from him and made it crawl up the locker. "I guess Spike remembers the time you saved that spider in the visitors' dugout."
"Spider? No way," said Teddy "the Bear" Larrabee, the first baseman. He took the crazy balloon thing from Dylan and said, "It's a…it looks like, maybe a…" He turned it this way and that, trying to think of something.
"A rabbit?" I suggested.
"Yeah, that's it-a rabbit. Spike knows you have a pet rabbit," Teddy said to Dylan.
"A mutant rabbit with about nine ears, maybe," said Wayne Zane, the catcher.
Teddy glared at him. "It's a rabbit with a bunch of carrots in his mouth."
"Just sayin'," said Wayne.
Someone tapped my shoulder. I turned around and saw our boss, Wally. He was the Pines' clubhouse manager. He tugged on his mustache. "Chad, I need to talk to you. It's important." He looked worried, and that made me worry.
Wally didn't have an office, but he had a desk in the corner of the equipment room. We went there now.
"What's that for?" Wally pointed at my balloon giraffe. I'd forgotten I was holding it.
"Nothing," I said. I set it down, and there was a POP! Wally practically jumped out of his chair.
"Gabbagah!" he shouted.
"Sorry," I said. I had set one of the giraffe's legs down on a thumbtack.
"It just startled me," said Wally, giving the giraffe the evil eye.
The rest of the giraffe was slowly deflating. I grabbed some tape from the desk and made a bandage.
"Here's the thing," said Wally. "I can't be here next Saturday. I need you to take on some extra duties. I picked you over Dylan because you know more about baseball."
"What do I have to do?"
"Lots of stuff. Get here early on Friday and I'll walk you through it."
"OK. Sure."
"One thing you'll have to do is make coffee," Wally said. "Lance Panta?o is the starting pitcher."
"Right." I knew that Lance drank several cups of coffee before every game, especially when he was pitching. I had never used the big metal coffeemaker in the locker room. It looked complicated. When coffee was brewing, the whole machine whistled and rattled like it might blow up. But I didn't want Wally to know I was scared. "I can do that," I said. "No problem."
· · ·
"Did you ever figure out what that thing is?" I asked Dylan, pointing at his balloon animal. We were crossing the parking lot after work. The Pines were headed out on the road, so we had to load up the bus after the game. It had been a long day.
"Maybe it's a mosquito," Dylan said. He made the balloon thing fly, then landed it on his arm and made slurping sounds. "Spike knows I'm going camping this week at Otter Lake."
"Sounds like fun."
Dylan liked animals. He probably loved camping out-all that nature.
"It's great during the day," he said. "I get to go hiking and swim in the lake. I just don't like it at night. It gets so dark."
"Don't you have a lantern?"
"They don't make a lantern big enough for how dark it gets," Dylan replied. "There might be bears out there." He shuddered.
We got to the end of the parking lot, where we usually split up and headed home.
"Guess I'll see you next week," Dylan said.
"Don't get eaten by a bear," I told him.
"Don't even joke about that!"
· · ·
My giraffe was pretty much done for, even with my first aid. I kept it anyway, since it came from a friend. I set it next to the other balloon animals on my dresser. I didn't know why Abby kept giving me jungle animals, but they did look good together, even if the giraffe was the shortest one up there.
I thought about how Wally had reacted when the giraffe popped. He nearly jumped out of his chair, and the pop wasn't even all that loud. Maybe he was scared of balloons. Maybe that was why he was taking Balloon Day off. It was funny to think of a grizzled old guy like Wally being afraid of balloons, but people are afraid of all kinds of things. I once saw a neighbor shriek and run inside after seeing a caterpillar, and he was a grown man! Even Dylan had just told me he was afraid of the dark.
I was only scared of one thing, and it wasn't silly at all-I was afraid of that coffeemaker.
