"Levy-NewHorizons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Levy Robert J)

Then I let that ball drop. And I whizzed that bat around one-handed. And I
connected.

Or, rather, whatever mysterious force possessed me connected, and that ball took
off, not as a projectile takes off, but as a rocketship takes off, roaring at a
furious speed down the street in a line drive headed toward the receding figure
of Huge. In a flash, it was over his head, and just passing him as he ran
faster, faster building up a locomotive's momentum.

Then the entire world exploded. The sky opened up -- not like a door this time,
but more like a vast theater curtain pulled aside to reveal an immense,
unfathomable, star-drenched ocean. It was dizzying inexpressible, complex beyond
retelling. And into this incomprehensible panorama the distant figure of Huge
leapt. . .and disappeared.

The curtain snapped shut. The next thing I remember was the muggy night breeze
and the cicadas chirping. I stood there dazed.

Summer was officially over.

After Dad came home to stay, I spent a lot of time in my room reading --partly
to avoid him, partly to discover something in novels I no longer found in my
daily life now that Huge was gone. As a result of my bookish activities, I
learned that a story like this is supposed to have one of two endings.

In the first, I return to Burton Street day after day, to that vaunt lot,
looking for some sign of Huge, some trinket or memento of his being there,
something that proves we weren't all suffering from a kind of mass hysteria.
Well, I did go back to the lot, but I found nothing not even his tattered
blanket or the remnants of his few provisions.

In the other ending I come away from my experience having "learned a lesson," a
sudden understanding of how that magical-something-extra I've been looking for
was always in my own back yard after all. That didn't happen either. I still
wanted something more than the streets of Queens had to offer, and I was still
unsure what that was.

No, this story ends messily, in uncertainty, with a bunch of kids going back to
school to resume their normal day-to-day lives. As before, we hung out, we
fought, we smoked cigarettes in alleys, and, yes, we played stickball.

But no one ever mentioned Huge.

Me, I'm "all grown up" now, but no more satisfied with the world. I still wait
for something wonderful to happen. I know it probably won't. It's the child in
me that just won't let go, the part of me that still returns in the occasional
dream to Burton Street, to the night when it was just me and Huge playing fungo,
knocking fly balls down the street, tearing apart the fabric of reality with our
bare hands.