The Prince of Fenway Park

Chapter One

The Future Condo Prince of Baltimore

The boy who would break the Curse didn't know that he was the boy who would break the Curse. He was just himself, Oscar, who, at this particular moment on this particular day, was watching his mother, who was standing beside her El Camino, caught in the dark exhaust fog at the end of the line of buses. The school day was over. It had been an awful day, the kind that is so awful that it blots out everything else. There was a bruise from a knuckle punch on Oscar's back that still throbbed, and that hadn't even been the worst of it.

Oscar knew about the Curse, of course. It seemed as if everyone was well aware of the Curse that fall, especially in Boston. But what everyone didn't know was that the Curse itself was so real and tangible that it could be held in someone's hand. It existed in a dusty golden box. What everyone didn't know was that the Curse was waiting for the boy who would break it.

Meanwhile, here was Oscar, his mother waving to him from her spot by the El Camino. It was a wild, flapping wave that embarrassed him, and then she slipped into the driver's seat and honked the horn. He was going to turn twelve the very next day, and so this meant he would go visit his father, who would be giving him one of his sad presents—something secondhand but made to look new: an old watch with a new, handmade wristband, a freshly washed Windbreaker with someone else's initials penned onto the tag. His father's presents always made Oscar feel terrible. He knew his father didn't ever have much money, but still Oscar hated having to pretend how happy he was about old watches and Windbreakers. It made him feel like a fake.

When Oscar opened the car door, he saw his suitcase wedged in between the front seat and the dash. It was an ancient suitcase—wheel-less and plaid, with a zipper and plastic handle. His mother had bought it at the Salvation Army the week before. He'd thought it was strange when she came home with it. He didn't need a suitcase. He never went anywhere. He and his mother lived in a steamy apartment in Hingham Centre above Dependable Cleaners, where his mother worked. He ate at Atlantic Bagel & Deli & Coffee Co., got his hair trimmed at Hingham Square Barber Shop, traveled daily to Hingham Middle School. The farthest he'd ever gone was the forty-five-minute trip to visit with his father in Boston each Thursday at Pizzeria Uno near Fenway Park.

"What's with the suitcase?" Oscar asked, trying to position his legs around it.

"You're going to stay with your father, just for a month or two. It'll all work out." She put on the car's blinker nonchalantly—as if this were a normal thing to say—and turned onto Main Street.

But it wasn't normal at all. Oscar had never spent the night at his father's place—had never even seen it. His parents had been divorced for as long as he could remember. Oscar stared at the suitcase as if it were the real problem. The suitcase seemed all wrong. He wanted to tell her he didn't like the idea of being shipped off and not told till the last minute—had his father actually agreed to this?—and that he was a little scared of the whole thing; but all that came out was a small complaint. "It's an old man's suitcase," he said.

His mother said, "Look. Nothing's perfect. But let me explain something about love."

Oscar didn't want to talk about love. He knew what she was going to go on about: Marty Glib, the Baltimore King of Condos. His mother had met him in an online chat room; and whenever she talked about him, she fiddled with the beads on her necklace. He'd come up on business a few times; and his mother had gone on dates with him, meeting in restaurants in Boston, so Oscar had never seen him. More importantly, Marty had never seen Oscar—did his mother arrange it that way on purpose?

Oscar caught his reflection in the side mirror. His own face sometimes surprised him—the fullness of his lips, his dark eyes, his small nose, his freckles on his dark skin, his tight, black hair. Oscar wondered if his mother had told Marty everything about Oscar, if his mother—a pale woman with straight, reddish hair—had mentioned that she had a mixed-race child. Oscar's parents had adopted him when he was a baby—a bald, creamy-colored baby. Oscar had always wondered if they'd really known that they'd adopted a mixed-race child or if it had sunk in slowly as Oscar grew up. He didn't doubt that they loved him—his mother in a jittery way, his father with a distracted sincerity. He just wasn't sure if they felt somehow tricked, and if they blamed him a little, as if he'd been the one to do the tricking. Now Oscar wondered if his mother was tricking Marty Glib, too.

The Prince of Fenway Park. Copyright © by Julianna Baggott . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from The Prince of Fenway Park by Julianna Baggott
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