Athlete vs. Mathlete: Double Dribble (7 page)

The ref blew his whistle, and it was go time!

It felt really good to be back in the game, and the second
I got the ball, I took off for the net. But I got blocked so I passed to Nate, who was totally ready for it.

Take that, Twinvaders!

Teamwork had nothing to do with DNA.

Nate took a shot, but the ball bounced off the rim.

“Good try,” I said, as we ran back down the court. “We'll get another chance.”

And we did. Right after West Slope scored, we were heading back toward their net to answer their two points with two of our own.

Paul passed me the ball, then I swerved around the guy guarding me and dribbled around another.

I was in the zone, like we were filming a Nike commercial or something.

I thought about the new guys and their smooth, perfect moves. I thought about those alley-oops and no-look passes.

And that gave me an idea.

The rest of the Pioneers and I were “in tune,” too, weren't we? We had plenty of practices and games under our belts.

And the winning streak was ours.
We
were the ones who'd earned it.

I couldn't wait for the crowd to see exactly how good we were, so I dribbled a second longer, then whipped the ball over to Russ. It was my first ever no-look pass, and I waited for the cheering to start.

But I heard something else, instead.

“
Oof!
”

I turned to see the ball bounce out of bounds while Russ rubbed his head and bent to pick up his glasses.

Oops.

No one was cheering. In fact, they were all just staring at me.

“What was that?” Paul demanded.

“A no-look pass?” I said, wincing. “Sorry, Russ.”

“Why no-look?” my brother asked, then shook his head, probably realizing he sounded like Tarzan. “I mean, why didn't you look?”

Because I thought it would be cool probably wasn't the best answer.

I glanced at the bench and saw the brothers shaking their heads while Coach Baxter's mouth hung open.

I looked back at Russ. “I thought you'd know it was coming.”

“How?”

Duh. He was the one who brought up all the “in tune” stuff, not me.

“Maybe give him a little heads-up next time,” Nate muttered. “Geez, Owen.”

“Are you okay to play?” the ref asked.

Russ nodded. “I'm fine.”

West Slope had the ball, and the first thing they did after the whistle was score.

From that moment on, it seemed like every move I made
was the wrong one. My passes were crummy, my shots were lame, and my dribbling was like … Russ's.

“I'm open!” I shouted, when he had the ball.

The rest of the Pioneers could tell I was having a rough game, but Russ didn't let that stop him. He passed it way too high, and when I jumped up to get it, I bumped into a West Slope player and landed hard on my tailbone.

Just what I needed.

I got back on my feet, knowing I had to get my head away from the Twinvaders and back in the game.

But it was tough.

Even when we made a good play—like when Paul stole the ball and passed to Nate, who was in the perfect position to score … and did—it just wasn't the same as watching the Matthews twins play. Our moves didn't have their wow factor.

And I wanted the wow. Big-time.

If the first game with the Matthews twins wasn't enough of an eye-opener, my math class had me bug-eyed.

Mr. Hollis was in the middle of a fairly complicated word problem involving multiple cars, cities, and driving distances. While I took notes, I glanced over at Nitu, who was a bona-fide math whiz, and smiled when I saw that her calculations almost filled an entire page in her notebook.

Nitu was always at least two steps ahead of me when it came to numbers, and that was saying something.

I turned back to my page and continued taking notes. All I heard around me were the sounds of pencils scratching paper and the backs of hands brushing eraser bits off of desktops.

It was like music to my ears.

I wrote down all the important details in my own special form of shorthand (when Owen saw it for the first time, he thought I'd created an alien language), and I had a pretty good idea of how to solve the problem.

I was practically humming to myself.

“Mr. Hollis?” one M said, interrupting the moment.

“Please raise your hand if you have a question,” the teacher requested. He was kind of a stickler for classroom rules, which was one of my favorite things about him.

After all, what kind of a world would it be without rules?

The twin sighed and lifted one hand as if it was the most ridiculous thing in the world to do.

As if Mr. Hollis had asked him to scale Mt. Everest with no boots.

That attitude wasn't going to get him very far in this class, and there was a small part of me that felt excited, knowing that things were about to turn around for at least one of the Matthews twins.

“Yes?” Mr. Hollis said, holding his chalk a couple of inches from the board.

“Your answer will be wrong.”

My mouth dropped open almost as fast as Nitu's did.

“I beg your pardon?” Mr. Hollis said, eyebrows raised in surprise. He probably hadn't been on the receiving end of the word “wrong” in years.

I turned in my seat, wondering what on earth the twin was going to say next.

Naturally, I wasn't sure which one had spoken.

“Arizona doesn't—” one of the boys said.

“Change their clocks,” the other finished.

They sounded like they'd been practicing the sentence for years, just like everything else I'd seen or heard from them.

How did they both know what to say? I hadn't heard them whispering, and I could see from my desk that their notebook pages were blank.

Completely blank.

“So,” the first twin continued, “if you don't take into account the fact that Oregon adjusts for daylight savings while Arizona stays on mountain time and doesn't roll back their clocks in November, your train's arrival time in Phoenix is going to be off by an hour.”

I gulped.

Daylight savings?

No one had said anything about daylight savings.

I looked at the scribbles on my page.

Why hadn't
I
thought about daylight savings?

Mr. Hollis cleared his throat, but before he could speak, the second twin said, “Unless we say that the train trip is happening sometime after next March, when our clocks spring forward and line up with Arizona's again.”

Mr. Hollis frowned.

The other twin nodded. “That would solve it.”

“Mr. Hollis?” his brother asked. “Should we say the train trip is—”

“Happening next spring?” his twin finished for him.

“Uh … yes,” the teacher said. It was the first time I'd ever seen him at a loss for words.

And I didn't have much to say either.

On the way out of class, Nitu shook her head. “That was interesting.”

“Yes, it was,” I agreed. Interesting
and
annoying.

“I can't believe they thought about something so random. Daylight savings never would have crossed my mind. I mean, I just stick to what's on the page.”

“So does Mr. Hollis, obviously.”

She shrugged. “It was kind of cool.”

That was the last thing I needed to hear.

“Especially when they finished each other's sentences,” she continued. “I'm telling you, there's something to that twin telepathy.”

The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me that Mitch and Marcus were so closely connected. They could anticipate each other's moves on the basketball court, they shared the same way of thinking through problems, and they even finished each other's sentences.

I wanted that bond with Owen.

At dinner that night, I thought back to my attempt at trying to get in tune with him through eating. Yes, I had failed, but many experiments failed the first time. If no one was willing to try again, we wouldn't have cars, televisions, or even lightbulbs.

Yes, I would try again.

My hope was that if we could develop the same kind of bond as M&M shared, we could be as strong as they were on the court. An academic bond with Owen was out of the question, obviously.

So, I laid my napkin on my lap at the same time that Owen did, then lifted my glass of milk, matching him perfectly, sip for sip.

With relief, I noted that mirroring his movements was a bit easier the second time around.

When he lifted his fork, I lifted mine.

I knew it was a very simple idea, but some of the best ideas in the world were simple. I could practically feel the bond between us growing stronger.

He pierced a piece of broccoli and I did the same, then started to lift it toward my mouth. But instead of Owen doing the same thing, he moved the fork to spear a piece of steak. I hesitated, but followed his lead.

Then he scooped up some mashed potatoes.

When I saw that he was going to shovel those different
foods with those different tastes and textures into his mouth
at the same time
, I gagged.

“Russell?” Mom asked. “Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” I told her, though I was far from it.

I didn't even like my foods to touch on my plate, let alone in my mouth!

I removed the steak from my fork and sighed.

Apparently, getting in sync with Owen was going to happen somewhere other than at the dinner table.

But I wasn't giving up yet.

My next attempt to get closer to my brother was at the following Pioneers practice, where we ran laps to warm up. In no time at all, my lungs burned and my legs felt like they weighed at least a ton. Each.

But I was on a mission, so I pushed myself to run faster than ever before. And I did. But I was still lapped by the perfectly synchronized Matthews twins, which was all the encouragement I needed to push even harder.

By the time I caught up with Owen and Chris, I was sticky with sweat and gasping for breath.

“Whoa, Russ!” Owen said. “What's going on?”

“Nothing,” I told him, having to split the word up over two gasps to get it out of my mouth. “Just warming up.”

“Don't kill yourself,” Chris said. “We'll have a whole practice to do that.”

“I know,” I said, and choked.

We ran in silence, aside from my panting, for about twenty seconds. It felt like an hour and a half.

“Are you guys watching the game tonight?” Chris asked.

“Definitely,” Owen told him. “Right, Russ?”

“Yeah,” I said, and gasped.

“What do you think about Will Sanders?” Chris asked, looking to me for an answer.

I was supposed to keep up with their insane pace, breathe,
and
carry on a conversation?

Really?

I glanced at Mitch and Marcus, who were chatting away like they were on a stroll instead of a death sprint. The soles of their Adidas hit the floor at the exact same time, every time, and it didn't even look as if they were trying.