Slugfest, p.5
Slugfest, page 5
I can tell Amir wants to say yes because he shoots me a hesitant glance.
“Pretty good,” Hammond admits. “But not better than Yash here.”
I’m starting to wonder if he means that.
6
Kaden Cooperman
When people talk about straight-A students, they mean me. I never got a grade lower than A in anything. I’m the last person anyone expects to see in summer school. That’s where you go to retake the subjects you’re bad at, and I’m not bad at anything.
Okay, PE—I’m not great at that. I’m uncoordinated. I’m not using that word to put myself down. I’m just stating a physiological fact. My right hand doesn’t know what my left hand is doing, and that goes double for my right and left feet. My body works okay, but no two parts of it function properly together. I can bounce a ball, and I can walk, but not both at the same time. I’ll never be able to dance, except maybe swinging my shoulders or tapping one toe. Riding a bike might as well be rocket science for me. No, scratch that. I’m great at rocket science. Biking—not so much.
But you don’t need to be a star athlete to pass gym. I got A’s in PE too, right through sixth and seventh grades. All you have to do is show up and try. The coaches all know how uncoordinated I am. It never held me back before.
I didn’t fail PE because I wasn’t good at it. I failed because I didn’t go. I cut that class for almost an entire year—and not because it was frustrating or embarrassing or even because I hated it (which I did). I cut it for an entirely different reason.
You’d think that being a straight-A student would be a good thing, but in middle school, nothing could be less true. I became the nerd, the dweeb, the dork, the Einstein. I was the guy you stick out your foot and trip—so I guess me being uncoordinated was part of this after all. It’s amazing how many ways there are to go after someone in middle school. There are spitballs and shoves and wedgies and kicks to the back of the heel. There are put-downs that send even a guy like me hustling to a dictionary.
Some places are worse than others. The cafeteria is pretty bad—it’s impossible for the teachers on duty to see everything. The school bus can be like a scene from The Purge. But the very worst is the locker room.
You’re trapped in there—trapped and exposed. The adults stay away to give the students privacy, and that means you’re on your own. Towels are snapping. You take a faceful of AXE body spray. And while you’re clearing your eyes, your underwear disappears. No, there it is, sailing around the room between guys eight inches taller than you. When you’re uncoordinated, nothing is more entertaining than forcing you into a long game of monkey in the middle, watching you stumble and flop in an effort to get your own clothes back.
I dreaded it. I couldn’t sleep nights because I was obsessing over what was sure to happen in the locker room the next day. And then a solution came to me that was so simple, so elegant, that it’s amazing it had never occurred to me before.
Don’t go.
So I didn’t. And I still didn’t sleep any better because I was so worried about the consequences of cutting a class. But guess what: The sky didn’t fall. The world didn’t end. And Principal Carmichael didn’t show up at my door with the SWAT team.
So I cut again. And again. Soon it was a week. Then a month. I kept waiting for the school to come after me. They never did. Oh, sure, there were a few scribbled words about attendance in the PE box of my midterm progress report. But next to all those A’s and A-pluses, it never made much of an impression. By this time, I was sleeping like a baby and my parents had never seen me happier and less stressed.
Then the ax fell. A meeting between my parents and Dr. Carmichael. A new law at the state education department. And suddenly, PE had an extra E and I was on my way to summer school.
I don’t have much to do at summer school since I’m only in one class. For a while, I tried to sit in on math, because that’s my favorite subject. I loved it. It’s such a long time since I’ve been in a math class that wasn’t advanced or enriched or gifted level that this felt like I was in third grade again. It was great. I answered every question and never missed a chance to volunteer in front of the class. Mr. Hansen asked me to leave. He said I wasn’t giving anybody else a chance to participate and they needed it more than I did.
So I’ve started hanging out in the library, reading books on the abiotic synthesis of organic compounds. But even that can get boring after a while. I’m anxious to get to PEE—which I don’t hate, weirdly. The kids are nicer. The locker room is safer and a lot less crowded. And the activities are easier—although in musical chairs, I’m much better at circling to the right than circling to the left, which is common in right-handed people. Coach Finnerty does sometimes blow her whistle too loud. (I’m sensitive to loud noises.) But her oatmeal raisin cookies defy the laws of science.
When I get to the gym, Yash is talking to the other PEEers. “Come on, guys, help me out. I need a training partner if I’m going to be ready for football this fall.”
He says it to everybody, but it’s pretty obvious that he means Cleo. I can see why. She’s a fantastic athlete, maybe just as good as Yash himself, and the best duck, duck, goose player I’ve ever seen.
“Real talk: Do I look like a linebacker to you?” she challenges him.
“No, of course not, but you don’t have to play football for this,” he pleads. “I just need a workout buddy. You’ve got all the right stuff—speed, agility, instinct, balance—”
“Not interested.”
Yash won’t let it go. “I’m missing out on the team workouts because of summer school. And drilling myself just isn’t cutting it. All I’m asking for is another human being to measure myself against and work off of.” He turns to the rest of us. “It doesn’t have to be just Cleo. How about it? Jesse? Bella? Stuart?”
“I’ll do it,” I hear myself say.
At that moment, if I could take back my words, swallow them, choke on them, I would. I’m terrible enough at sports as it is. To put myself in the field against Yash—the best athlete in the whole town—is madness. But I can’t help thinking of that day in the mall, when Yash stood up to his friends for me. Not only that, but he stopped Hammond from spilling out my whole molecular construction set. Now he needs a training partner, and no one else is volunteering. I won’t be great, but I can try my hardest.
Yash looks at me like he’s just taken a bite of too-hot pizza that’s burning the inside of his mouth. “There! Thanks, man!” he exclaims, stumbling a little over it. “We’ve got Kaden. Who else?”
I’ve read a lot of books where it says the silence is deafening. But I never experienced it until right now.
7
Arnie Yashenko
I finally have a workout partner. I have Kaden.
I know I said that I didn’t need a super athlete; I just needed a warm body. I might have been wrong about that.
It’s hard to believe that the guy has two arms and two legs like everybody else. Because he sure can’t use them, probably not to save his own life if he had to. He can’t catch. He can’t throw. He can’t run. He can’t walk fast without his legs getting tangled.
It goes without saying that he can’t keep up with me. I can’t even use him as an orange cone to practice my broken-field running. He gets so dizzy watching me juke and jive that it throws off his balance. At best, he reaches out his arms to steady himself. At worst, he twists himself down to the ground and lies there, dazed. It’s the first time I’ve ever pancaked someone without actually making physical contact. It gets to the point that the crew power-washing the school roof stops work to come over and check us out.
I reach down and offer Kaden a hand to help him get back up. He can’t even make contact. I have to grab his arm and haul him physically upright. I look at him. He’s sweaty. His clothes are covered in dirt and grass stains. He’s huffing and puffing like a steam locomotive. And his eyes are barely focusing.
“Maybe we should take a break,” I offer.
He shakes his head so vehemently that he almost keels over again. “Not necessary! I’m sorry I’m so useless! I’ll do better.”
“You’re not useless,” I tell him, hoping that the honesty police don’t have any hidden microphones around here.
“I said I’d help, and I will,” he insists. “We’re on the same team.”
I fight off a wave of bitterness. “I’m barely on the Comets, much less—”
That’s when it dawns on me. He’s not talking about the Comets. He means Slugfest. The smartest kid in Clarington believes that if we call Finnerty “Coach,” then PEE must be a team. A duck, duck, goose team, but still a team.
That makes me laugh, and he starts laughing too, even though he doesn’t know what we’re laughing at. Come to think of it, neither do I. The whole thing is pretty sad. If we had any sense, we’d be crying.
I feel bad for Kaden—and not just because he’s so hopeless at sports. It can’t be easy being practically a genius and all you get for it is people making fun of and picking on you. I think back to the incident at the mall, and I’m embarrassed. Sure, I stuck up for him then, but over the years, there have been a lot of other times when I snickered along with everybody else and maybe even joined in. Plus, when he had a chance to help me, he jumped at it. Not that he can jump. To be honest, he looks so exhausted that I’ve got to get him some rest, whether he likes it or not.
So I sit him down on a large flat rock. “I’m going to work on my throwing now.”
“And what’s my job?” he asks eagerly.
“You’re the judge. See that maple tree about twenty yards away? I’m shooting for that gap in the leaves.”
“Twenty-two,” he tells me.
I stare at him blankly. “What?”
“It’s twenty-two yards away. I’m good at spatial relations.”
My first three passes fall short, and by the fourth, I’m overcompensating, and sail it over the target completely.
“I thought you were trying to hit the tree,” Kaden comments when I jog back with my four footballs.
“I am,” I manage between puffs, out of breath and kind of frustrated. “I can’t understand why my aim is off today.”
“It’s not your aim,” he informs me seriously. “It’s your physics. You’re failing to compensate for air resistance.”
“Huh?”
“Without air resistance,” he explains, “the throw would travel in a perfect parabola. But the air exerts a drag force on the ball, flattening the parabola on the way down. . . .”
Honestly, I don’t even know what a parabola is. But as he lectures about trajectory and wind shear, demonstrating the arc with one arm, it starts to make sense. I picture the flattening descent of the ball, and my next two passes are a lot closer to the mark. Number three is a tight spiral that threads the needle right through the opening. I never miss again.
“I am the greatest!” I howl at the sky.
I know that must sound like I’m pretty full of myself. But when you’re an athlete, sometimes you get so in the zone that you can’t help it. Especially when I’m missing out on the summer workouts and some guy named Nitro is gunning for my job. I’d like to see him flatten the parabola, or whatever.
That’s when I glance back at Kaden, who’s gazing up at me in admiration. I offer a fist bump, but he high-fives it instead, slamming his open palm against my knuckles.
“Ow!” he exclaims, cradling his injured hand.
“Kaden, you’re awesome!”
If I’d given him a million dollars, he couldn’t look more grateful. Kaden has been called a lot of things by guys like me, but awesome probably isn’t one of them.
I promised myself that I wasn’t going to go to a single summer school class other than Slugfest. But it looks like I’m going to have to break that rule.
Blame Arabella. She’s the one who put it in my head that Finnerty might not be a certified gym teacher. I don’t care about that. It’s what Arabella said next that’s been haunting me: That if it turns out our “coach” doesn’t have the right diploma or whatever, our PEE credit might not count.
Oh, sure, I was listening when Cleo said it’s not possible to be unqualified to teach gym. She’s probably right too—Cleo’s pretty smart. The key word is probably. Probably means not 100 percent. There’s just too much at stake to take a risk like that. It’s bad enough I’m wasting my summer in Slugfest. To suffer through all that for nothing is beyond what any human should have to endure. Plus—thanks to the new state requirement—I wouldn’t be able to start high school in the fall.
The agony of not knowing is killing me. Which is why I signed up for that investigative journalism class Arabella thinks is so great. Not that it’s my ambition in life to be some kind of dopey reporter. But if there’s a way to figure out whether Finnerty is legit, maybe I can learn it in this class.
I recognize Juliet Landkammer. About a year ago, she interviewed me for this TV segment she did on the most promising preteen athletes in town. She doesn’t seem to remember me though. Maybe I look different. Or maybe she just didn’t care too much about any story that wasn’t going to win her a Pulitzer Prize.
Maybe that’s why it’s so crowded in room 122—because the teacher’s kind of famous. Investigative journalism isn’t the kind of class you’re sentenced to because you flunked it during the school year. It’s an interest course, like music or drama or video game design. People take it on purpose—usually because they’re stuck at summer school anyway, but sometimes because they honestly want to. There must be twenty-five kids in investigative journalism, including Arabella, me, and Stuart.
I knew about Arabella, but Stuart never struck me as a journalist wannabe. He keeps interrupting Landkammer, trying to sound the alarm about something that happened outside the school this morning.
“I never saw anything like it,” he exclaims, his voice strident with emotion. “This little dog—only a pup really—was hiding in the bushes by the front entrance. It must have been a stray—no collar—probably scared and hungry. And this rotten girl came along and kicked it! For no reason—just for the fun of it!”
A chorus of outrage rises from the class, with cries of “That jerk!” and “You should have called the cops!” and “Who was it?”
“I don’t know,” Stuart tells them. “But I’m pretty sure she was coming to this school. She was wearing white shorts and a Genesis T-shirt—you know, the old-time rock band. I think our first class project should be to find out who did it!”
“Not so fast, Stuart,” Landkammer jumps in quickly. “I agree with you that this person doesn’t sound very nice. But we’re investigative journalists, not police officers. It’s not up to us to hand out justice.”
Arabella raises her hand. “I have an idea for something we can investigate. How can we be sure that our teachers are really qualified to teach us? Not you, Ms. Landkammer,” she puts in quickly. “But think about it. You walk into a new class, and nobody asks the teacher for a diploma or a certificate or anything like that. For all we know, there’s a teacher at this very summer school who’s a fraud.”
That makes my ears perk up. I mean, I agree with her, but she’s totally going about this in the wrong way. I don’t want to find out about Finnerty so I can get her fired. If she turns out to be unqualified, we have to keep her secret forever—or at least until the credit is registered with the state so we can all start high school. And here’s Arabella, trying to blow the whole thing wide open in front of a professional TV reporter!
I deliver an urgent kick to the back of her chair, but she keeps on talking. The girl is like a word machine. “Cut it out, Bella!” I hiss.
I can’t be sure if she’s going to mention Finnerty by name. But if she does, it’ll already be too late. I kick harder until I see her whole chair jump with her in it.
She wheels on me. “What?”
Desperately, I blurt, “How can we think about ourselves when some rotten girl kicked a dog?”
“Yeah!” Stuart exclaims. “She’s getting away with it while that poor puppy suffers!”
“Yeah!” several more voices ring out, and pretty soon, the whole class is back on the dog story, with Landkammer trying in vain to restore order.
Speaking of teachers being unqualified, I don’t know if Landkammer is so great either. Finnerty may be clueless about PE, but she can be pretty tough when she needs to be. Look how she brought the hammer down on Jesse in the FCS room. Professional or not, Landkammer can’t seem to get everybody’s mind off this one thing. Eventually, we send four kids outside to search for the poor puppy that got kicked. And when they come back without any dog, there aren’t four of them anymore. There are more than a dozen. Most of the newcomers decide to stay in order to become “the dog squad.”
“We’re not the dog squad,” Landkammer insists. “We’re investigative journalists.”
Could have fooled me. But by this point, I’m starting to feel a little guilty. I’m the one who doubled down on the whole dog thing. When second period is finally over, I’m actually relieved to be heading to Slugfest. At least I won’t have to worry about Arabella spilling the beans about Finnerty.
Arabella has a different opinion. “If Coach Finnerty is a fraud,” she tells me as she, Stuart, and I make our way to the gym, “it’s our job as reporters to expose it.”
“First of all, we’re not reporters, we’re middle school students,” I remind her. “And we’re never going to get out of middle school if we don’t get that PE credit. How’d you like to be stuck here forever?”
She gives me that superior look. “Fairness is more important than one class of kids making it to high school.”
“You can have all the fairness you want—as soon as I’m the quarterback of the JV Comets.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize it’s all about you,” she shoots back sarcastically.
“Be reasonable, Bella,” Stuart soothes. “Everybody wants things to be fair. But we also want to graduate.”
