28 November 2006 7 DAYS AT THE HOT CORNER by Terry Trueman, Harper Tempest, February 2007, ISBN: 0-06-057494-1; Libr. ISBN: 0-06-057495-X

Imagine if you were suddenly witness to an accident, and the victim was potentially going to bleed to death, and you didn't have rubber gloves. Would you be willing to get that person's blood on your hands in order to save his or her life, or would your reaction be to stand helplessly by, for fear that you might contract AIDS from all that blood?

Do you have a problem with hugging a friend or relative who you know is gay?

Neither of these scenarios is specifically a conflict encountered in 7 DAYS AT THE HOT CORNER, but both are potential discussion questions that come to my mind while reflecting upon Terry Trueman's story of a high school third baseman who has previously thought that he knew just about everything there was to know about bad hops.

Scott Latimer is approaching the end of his senior year in high school. Scott is first and foremost a baseball player, and he considers the next few days to be pivotal to his future. Having closed out the regular season with an impressive and unprecedented consecutive win streak, his high school team is heading into a tournament at which there could well be the scouts watching who could make Scott's dreams of being drafted out of high school by a major league team come true.

But just hours before the first tournament game we meet Scott Latimer waiting in a funky orange vinyl chair in a public health clinic where he has secretly gone to get an HIV test. Travis, Scott's best friend since second grade has been kicked out of his parents' house and, for the time being, has come to live with Scott and his dad. Scott had no idea what caused the rift between Travis's parents and his best friend until Travis hands him the latest issue of the school paper with an article about an anonymous student who discusses why he is "coming out." And when this all begins sinking in, Scott suddenly recalls the incident six months earlier when Travis was bleeding profusely and Scott, without hesitation, got Travis's blood all over himself in the process of making sure that Travis didn't have significant injuries.

So now, when Scott feels that he should be focused on the most important baseball games of his baseball-obsessed life, he instead has to expend thought and emotion on how his best friend for the last decade could possibly be gay, and whether or not Scott himself might, in his own words, "be a dead man."

It sure doesn't help that Scott will have to wait for the next week until the results of the blood test are received by the clinic.

" 'Say you're the fag,' Floyd says.

" 'You're the fag!' a voice comes from the ground off to my left. It isn't Travis's voice but it's familiar. For a second I can't quite place it, but then the kid who has spoken gets up and I see that it's Zeke Willhelm.

"I ask the kid next to me, 'What's going on?'

" 'Every time that big guy hits that little guy, the big guy says, "Say you're the fag," and the little guy gives him the finger and says, "You're the fag." Then the big guy hits him again.' "

Meanwhile, the mystery of who the gay student at the high school might be is causing the sort of "witch hunt" around school that had me recalling that old episode of The Twilight Zone called "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street," a dark tale where all the neighbors begin accusing each other, amidst a rising spiral of violence, for a series of eerie, inexplicable occurrences.

7 DAYS AT THE HOT CORNER is topical, thought-provoking and, most of all, an absorbing read.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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