Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie (8 page)

• • •

“I’m going to the football game,” I told the folks right after dinner.

“Have fun,” Mom said. “Wear a scarf. It’s chilly.”

“Want a ride?” Dad asked, giving me a little head shake that erased the scarf command. “I think the ‘vette can make it that far.”

“That would be cool. Thanks. But Patrick’s picking me up.”

After Patrick’s dad dropped us off, we met Kyle in the bleachers. I checked to see who else was there. No sign of Wesley Cobble, which meant I’d probably make it to halftime with the snack money I’d brought.

As the teams lined up for the kickoff, I pulled out a notebook and got ready to describe the highlights. Within five minutes, we were behind by two touchdowns. At the end of the first quarter, the other team brought in their second-string players. By the end of the half, we were behind 31 to 0.

“We weren’t that bad last year, were we?” I asked Patrick.

He shook his head. “All the good players graduated. This is pretty sad.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Kyle said.

“I can’t.”

“Maybe you can’t,” he said. “But we can.”

“You mind if we split?” Patrick asked.

“Go ahead,” I told him. “I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t stay if I didn’t have to.”

He called his dad. Then he and Kyle took off. Which sucked. I’d have stayed if they’d been stuck here.

The second half was just as painful as the first. When the
game ended, I walked home. It was about two and a half miles, but it was a nice break after sitting there for so long. And it was a nice way to delay getting to work. I guess I was supposed to write some sort of rah-rah article. What could I say? Only one thing came to mind. I wrote it down when I got home, but I knew I had to keep it to myself. If anyone from the team saw it, I’d get my butt whupped big-time.

1. Wait until the game is over and the other team has left the field.
   
2. Get one of our parents to drive the quarterback to the goal line.
   
3. Let the other team score so many points they feel sorry for us. (This appears to be our actual strategy, but we haven’t found the right number yet. It’s higher than sixty-three.)
   
4. Hide a catapult behind the offensive line.
   
5. Change the rules so you score points every time you get knocked back ten yards or throw the ball away.
   
6. Buy the points on eBay.
   

Block that kick
.

Block that kick
.

Block that writer
.

So, this was writer’s block. I was completely stuck. Not a clue what to say. Nobody would want to read about the other
team. But if I only listed our achievements, the article would be shorter than the headline.

I spent a long time staring at the blank screen on our computer, wishing I’d never written that list of Tom Swifties.

“I have no idea what to write,” Scott said thoughtlessly.

I typed a title, deleted it, typed another title, then deleted that.

“I can’t possibly write a football article,” Scott said unsportingly.

That’s when it hit me. The first sentence jumped into my mind. And from my mind to my fingers.

“
They keep gaining yards,” we said defenselessly
.

The next sentence was even easier.

“
The first quarter is over and we haven’t scored,” the crowd yelled pointlessly
.

Once I started, it just sort of rolled out.

“
Throw the ball,” the coach shouted passively
.

“
We need to keep the ball on the ground,” the fullback said dashingly
.

I kept it up for the whole article and managed to fit in all the details from the game. It came out pretty good.

b
am
.

Thump
.

Pause.

BAM
!

Pause.

Thumpa WHUMP
!

Crap.

I pulled the pillow over my head and tried to ignore the crashes and thumps coming from the spare room.

Knock, knock
. “Scott?”
Knock, knock, knock
.

I peeked out from beneath the pillow. Mom peeked in from the hall.

“Are you up?” she asked.

“What …?”

“I’m sorry. Did I wake you?” she asked.

“No,” I lied, still half asleep. “What’s going on?”

“We’re clearing out the nursery. Can you take your books?”

“Now?” I looked at my clock. It was barely after eight.

Mom nodded. “Your dad and I have a lot of errands to run later. Please?”

I staggered out of bed and went to the spare room. I’d kept my extra books on some of the shelves made from boards and cinder blocks. It was the only thing I’d ever built. Now the books were piled on the floor and the shelves were disassembled.

“Can’t we leave them here?” I asked.

“Cinder blocks?” Mom said, pointing to the floor. “In a nursery?”

Sheesh. What was the baby going to do? Fly out of the crib and crash headfirst into the shelves? Swallow a cinder block? If he could do that, I’d definitely get him a job in a carnival. It would be amazing going in, and twice as amazing coming out. But I could tell it wasn’t an area open to discussion. I lugged the books to my room, then tried to go back to sleep, but it was no use. I got up and started on my homework. As I listened to the thumps and crashes coming through the wall, I realized that I was going to be hearing a lot more noise once the nursery got occupied.

Around noon, I knew if I didn’t take a break I’d rupture something in my skull. I grabbed the book I was reading for English and headed to the playground at the elementary school to see if the guys were around.

“Hey, it’s the lost boy,” Patrick said when I got there. He was shooting hoops with Kyle. “Want to play?”

“Sure. For a bit. Is Mitch coming? We could go two-on-two.”

“Forget him,” Kyle said. “He’s gone for good.”

“That’s just plain wrong,” Patrick said. He threw the ball
hard against the backboard, then caught the rebound. “A guy should stick with his friends. No matter what. Right?”

“Right,” I said.

Kyle nodded.

“So if there are three of us,” Patrick asked, “does that make us the two Musketeers?”

“Something like that,” I said.

We played a couple games of H-O-R-S-E. Then I dropped out and let them play one-on-one. I sat on the side of the court and started reading. Right when I was really getting into the story, something whizzed past my face and smacked the book from my hands.

“Are you crazy?” I shouted at Kyle.

“It slipped,” he said, giving me a grin as he chased after the basketball.

“No, it didn’t,” I said.

He scooped up the ball and tossed it to Patrick. “Look, I’m doing you a favor. Trying to save your eyesight. You’re going to get all squinty if you keep reading.” He scrunched up his eyes and put his hands in front of him like he was trying to feel his way in the dark.

“Very funny.” I grabbed my book, moved farther from the court, and sat where I could keep an eye on him while I read.

Later, when they took a break, Patrick actually asked to see the book. He looked at it for a moment, then said, “Doesn’t look bad. Probably better than memorizing prepositions.”

I nodded. “There’s hope for you, after all. Want to read it when I’m done?”

“Nah. I’d rather waste my time on movies and video games.”

When Kyle and Patrick knocked off, I headed home. The sweet aroma of warm cake and fresh icing greeted me as I walked past the kitchen.

“What’s up?” I asked Mom.

“Bobby got a job,” she said.

“Great. Where?”

“The diner on Market Street. It’s close enough for him to walk. He starts on Friday.”

I guess she’d made the cake to celebrate Bobby’s job. Maybe he’d keep this one for a while. “My first article comes out in the school paper on Tuesday,” I said.

“That’s wonderful.”

“I’ll show it to you after school.”

“That would be nice.”

As I pictured her reading the paper, I started to get nervous about my article. Then, as I pictured the whole school reading it, I moved from nervous to terrified. I went upstairs and read it again. Suddenly it didn’t seem as hilarious as before. What if people didn’t get it? What if it was a truly stupid idea?

I thought about last year’s middle school talent show. This seventh grader played the trumpet. He was so bad, the notes could turn your guts to water. But he seemed to think he was great. He didn’t have a clue that he was beyond awful. What if that’s how it was with my article? Maybe it actually stunk.

I wondered whether I should chuck the whole thing and just write about the game. Something short and simple.
We
sucked. We lost
. But I’d already tried, and I hadn’t been able to come up with anything else. And it was sort of cool. At least, I hoped it was.

Monday, before homeroom, when I handed in the article, I told Mandy, “It’s a little different.”

“Excellent.” She slipped it into her folder. “No point boring the readers with the same old stuff.” She was wearing a long skirt again. With a tight blue top.

“You want to check it to make sure it’s okay?”

“I’m sure it will be fine. Good job.” She tapped me on the shoulder with the folder, like she was granting me knighthood, then headed down the hall.

Good or bad, it was out of my hands. Nothing much happened in the morning. But then I learned something in the last place I expected. History class. Mr. Ferragamo was telling us about France. We were supposed to be studying ancient Rome, but Mr. Ferragamo tended to get distracted. The Romans had fought the Gauls. And the Gauls later became the French. Once Mr. Ferragamo started explaining this, we ended up smack in the middle of the 1900s. Which was fine, since I could doze as easily there as I could in ancient times. I wasn’t alone. Since history was right after lunch, pretty much everyone around me was nodding off, too. As heavy carbs invaded our bloodstreams, heads dropped down and snapped up like we were at some kind of weird prayer meeting. I was napping just fine until he said, “Their leader, during the war years, was Charles de Gaulle.”

My eyes opened all the way.
De Gaulle
? That was the same name as my Spanish teacher. Which might not mean anything. But also might explain a lot. I could swear I’d never heard her speak more than a word or two in English. If that much.

I thought about the way she sounded when she taught us.
Hoola sheekoes eee sheekahs, coomo ezdas
? It was almost like she filtered every syllable through her nose. Good grief—she did sound sort of French.

And once, when a kid had tripped over his sneaker laces and fallen flat on his face, she’d shouted, “
Mon dieu
!” As I thought back, that sure seemed pretty French to me.

I knew just how to find out. I waited until seventh period, when I had life skills. Ms. Pell is pretty cool, and she likes to talk. After class, I went up to her desk and asked, “Is Ms. de Gaulle from France?”

“Oh yes,” Ms. Pell said. “She came here last year. Good thing for us. There’s quite a shortage of qualified Spanish teachers. We were lucky to get her. Lovely lady, though I do admit I sometimes have just a teensy bit of trouble understanding her.”

Lucky me. My Spanish teacher spoke mostly French. I guess even her Spanish came out with a French accent. No wonder the stuff she said didn’t resemble anything in our book. Great. I was learning a language that virtually nobody else would ever understand. Except for the other kids in the class. I guess you could call it Fanish. Or Spench. Maybe we could start our own country. Our flag would be a huge upside-down question mark.