19 October 2005 CATCH by Will Leitch, Penguin/Razorbill, December 2005, ISBN: 1-59514-069-7

"She takes a deep gulp from her beer and emits a tiny burp. 'Oops!'

" 'Four years of sitting in your room reading, and now you're out here with the common folk,' I say. 'What did inspire you to suddenly make the trip?'

" 'I would have come sooner,' she says, brushing her hair out of her face. 'You just never invited me.'

"I can't decide whether this is true or not. 'Well, if you had spent as much time out here as I have, you wouldn't have been valedictorian, that's for sure.'

" 'Whatever.' She shrugs. 'Besides, you're looking at this all wrong. Being here is studying--Socialization 101. I hear they have this booze thing going on at college, too.'

"I grin. 'Cheers to that!'

"We clink bottles again."

I remember as a little kid, back when I was just beginning to feel competent about my ability to read, back in the days of returnable beer bottles and of glass bottles of milk that the milkman would deliver before sunrise into that little gray-silver insulated box that sat out on the front steps, Mom helped me understand a slogan I found on a milk cap. I don't remember exactly what it said, just that it had something to do with going to college. That's the school you go to after high school, she explained. You go to junior high school, then high school, then college.

"I lean back on the hood of the car and look at the clear sky above us. The stars are brighter in Mattoon than anywhere else in the world.

" 'You probably won't get many nights like this in Champaign,' I say. 'And I doubt the campus cops are as big pushovers as Lieutenant Grierson.'

" 'That's probably true,' she says, leaning back next to me. 'It does seem a little easier to escape here.'

"Whatever Jessica's escaping from, I have no idea."

As the first-born grandson on Dad's side, I heard my grandfather Rex and my mom religiously repeat that "going to college" mantra until "high school-to-college" seemed as natural a progression as going from third grade to fourth. Mom hadn't had the opportunity to go to college, despite skipping two grades and graduating second in a large class. Meanwhile, Dad was lucky to have outlasted his third high school. I was going to be different from them and go right off to college like my oldest maternal cousin Tony, who'd already conquered two universities and was joining IBM just as I was heading into my freshman year of high school.

"I point out the Big Dipper. Jessica points out a constellation called Orion. I glance over at her, and for a moment I want to say things I haven't told anyone. About how I'm afraid to leave my friends. I want to tell her how I am king here, and there I would be just another faceless nobody. I want to tell her that college seems to have ruined my brother and I'm afraid it will ruin me.

"But I don't. I look at the stars and say, 'Yep.' And then Amy pukes again, and this night fades into the rest of them."

Despite a career that ended in the minors with a groin injury, Tim Temples' dad remains "the best baseball player this county ever saw." Tim's older brother Doug had been a high school pitcher with a good enough fastball to get him drafted in the 32nd round and offered a decent signing bonus. But Tim's mom had held fast to her conviction that Doug needed to go up to Champaign, take advantage of the four-year full athletic scholarship he'd been offered there, and hone his skills playing college ball. Now, after the four years of free college, Doug is no longer a ballplayer, is way out of shape, hasn't completed his degree, and seems volatile, bitter, and rudderless. What is Tim getting himself into by going to college up in Champaign?

CATCH by Will Leitch explores the days and nightmoves of Tim Temples' summer between high school and college. Tim, if not the star his dad and brother were, was nevertheless a pretty decent high school catcher, and is certainly known fondly to most everyone in town. He is going to spend these summer days before college picking up some money lugging cases of Lender's bagels (fresh off the line) over at the Kraft plant where many of his friends and fellow high school graduates will be settling into their new "careers" in the workforce.

"No I cannot forget where it is that I come from

I cannot forget the people who love me."

--John Mellencamp, "Small Town"

The small, southern Illinois town of Mattoon, plays a major role in these proceedings. While in real life there must be thousands of Mattoons across America, with the equivalent of its Hardee's where all the high school kids hang out in the parking lot late at night, the well-known secluded spot to go parking with a sweetheart, or the special little place to go be by one's self and think about the future, Will Leitch does an impeccable job of painting this particular community as a unique, all-by-itself small town. It's a place where Lieutenant Grierson lets the "good" kids he knows like Tim and Jessica get away with just about anything, and where everyone knows your name.

With the author having created such a memorable setting, we are well able to find Tim's frequent naivete to be credible and amusing, such as when he and Jessica head up to Champaign for the weekend to attend Freshman Orientation and he meets--for the first time in his life as far as he's concerned--someone who is Jewish as well as someone who is gay. And then there is Munesh, the student leader of Tim and Jessica's orientation group who is "a tall skinny Indian guy" with the "Buck Fush" sticker on his backpack:

" 'So, Munesh...wait, is that the right pronunciation of your name?' I say.

" 'Yep, that's it,' he says, chewing some leftover french fries the bartender gave us.

" 'So, um, where are you from?' I say. 'Like what's your homeland?'

" 'My homeland?' he says, smirking again. 'Uh, let's see...Chicago. Well, Naperville, actually, but I think you get my point. You're obviously from downstate.' Jessica laughs and Eric gleefully conveys my first-ever-Jew anecdote, cackling. I blush, but I laugh too. 'Sorry.'

" 'Oh, hey, not a big thing, man,' he says. 'Whole different universe out here. Wait until you start meeting'--his voice lowers to a sarcastic whisper--'the black people. They're just like us, except taller.'

" 'Yes,' Eric puts in. Shame they can't dance, though.'

"The table explodes with laughter, and Eric claps me on the shoulder. In that moment, I decide I do like him. And all told, I like being the butt of the joke. It's a refreshing change of pace."

In fact, Tim Temples will come to see the other side of any number of things in very important ways this summer. And as Tim undertakes this summer journey to discovery, Will Leitch's CATCH provides us an abundance of humor, tension, and truth each step of the way.

Richie Partington

http://richiespicks.com

BudNotBuddy@aol.com