Slugfest, page 18
“But we lo-o-o-ost!”
“Think back,” I order. “We were supposed to go down in the first round. Look how far we came.”
Nate and I manage to haul him upright. What happens next surprises everybody. Both teams, slugs and Comets alike, crowd around Kaden, slapping his arms and shoulders, offering encouragement and support. I’ve always been a win-at-all-costs guy, but right now, nothing is more important than making sure this poor kid doesn’t beat himself up for the rest of his life for dropping that ball. And the fact that the Comets put their victory celebration on hold so they can join us is something I’ll never forget—even if I’ve got a lot of problems with the way that team treated me.
As the crowd around Kaden bubbles and boils, I find myself face-to-face with Hammond, who holds out a hand. “Still friends?”
There was a time that I would have liked to take that arm and wrap it around his throat, boa-constrictor style. But maybe I’m a different person now—and anyway, the heat of battle is over. We shake on it.
That brings Amir over, and I shake his hand too. A guy doesn’t get so many best friends that he can afford to waste any. Still, if this summer has taught me anything, it’s that friends can be found in unexpected places—like a summer school gym class for PE rejects. Who knew?
From out of nowhere, a platter of brownies swings into my view. “You all did wonderfully well!” Finnerty praises as players from both teams help themselves.
Kaden resists for a while, but eventually, even he takes a bite. It’s impossible to resist Finnerty’s baking. The chocolate perks him up a little.
Coach Basil clamps a ham-like hand on my shoulder. “You were amazing out there, Yashenko. You dropped that pass right in the kid’s hands. It’s like he couldn’t help but catch it. You know—anybody but him.”
I have to stick up for Kaden. “Three weeks ago, he wouldn’t have known a football from a cow pie, and today, he nearly sealed a whole tournament. Don’t sell the guy short.”
He nods. “I’m not selling you short either. You’re everything they said about you and then some.”
“Thanks, Coach,” I reply, and mean it. After all, it wasn’t Basil who dumped me. It was a combination of bad luck and dumb rules. Can I really blame Coach for picking Nate with me out of the picture?
It’s hurts to say, but it needs to be said. “Nate’s great. It was a lot of fun competing with him today.”
“No coach is ever going to complain about having too many good quarterbacks,” Basil agrees. “But I’ve got some tough choices ahead. Who’s my starter? Who’s my backup?”
The words rise up my throat. This is the perfect time for me to tell him exactly where Nate lives—and, more to the point, where he doesn’t. All I have to do is say it: You don’t need to choose anybody, because I’m the only one who belongs at our school.
I catch sight of Arabella a few feet away, listening in with great interest. Our eyes meet, and she reads the question in mine, because she gives me a reluctant nod. I nod back. She may be Nate’s biggest fan, but in the end, fairness really does win out with her.
Now I’ve even got Arabella’s permission. But my mouth remains shut. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it’s because Nate was the first person to go to Kaden after he dropped that pass. Maybe it’s because I shouldn’t need any help to win a spot on a football team. Or maybe it’s just not my secret to reveal.
In fact, I owe Nate a handshake, quarterback to quarterback. That’s football tradition. But when I look around, he’s no longer in the group surrounding Kaden. “Where’s Nate?” I ask aloud. “I want to congratulate him.”
Amir points. “Isn’t that him up on the platform?”
Coach Basil frowns. “What’s he doing there?”
Still in his muddy uniform, the Comets’ quarterback stands with the tournament president. The head referee and two other officials join the conversation. Then the president steps to the microphone.
“I’m sure everybody’s anxious for the trophy presentation so we can get in out of the rain. But first, I want to introduce the quarterback of the Clarington Comets, Nate Breitmann. We all need to listen to what he’s got to say.”
The weather has become so bad that you can actually hear the thump-thump-thump of raindrops hitting the mic.
“There’s something I have to confess.” It’s the same deep voice, but it’s shakier, less confident. “I shouldn’t be on the Comets because I don’t live in Clarington. My house is in Forsberg, just over the town line.”
An uncomfortable buzz begins to spread through the crowd.
“Sorry, Dad,” Nate goes on. “I know how much you want me to play for Clarington. And I get that it’s my fault the tournament’s messed up now. But a really good friend once told me that fairness is more important than anything. And this is the only fair thing to do.”
Nate retreats from the microphone, his eyes on his cleats. I’m aware of a rush of relief that the truth is out and I wasn’t the one who had to reveal it. At the same time, Nate rises a few notches in my esteem. That took guts—especially since he had to go against his father in order to tell the truth.
The president is back at the microphone. “Since the Comets had an ineligible player, I have no choice but to disqualify them from the tournament. That means that the championship goes to the second-place team—Slugfest.”
Kaden lifts out of the crowd like a Polaris missile breaking through the surface of the ocean. If he could jump like that all the time, he’d be the greatest athlete any of us have ever seen.
“No way!” he howls.
His scream echoes over the stunned crowd. Their confused murmur gradually builds into a real ovation and finally a roar of approval for Slugfest. It’s so loud that I almost wonder if they’re making fun of us. But no, this is 100 percent genuine. When a team that’s so obviously outclassed fights hard and is rewarded with a win, it makes people happy. It’s an underdog thing.
The Comets, now losers, stand around in shock as the celebration takes place all around them. But I give them credit. They’re cool about it.
I ask Hammond the question he put to me when he was the winner and I was the also-ran: “Still friends?”
“Yeah!” Amir exclaims. “This doesn’t change anything.”
Hammond’s expression is a mixture of disappointment and embarrassment with a side order of guilt. “You guys deserve this,” he mumbles.
They drag Finnerty up onto the platform to receive the big trophy. She’s beaming, and you can almost see the young swimmer she used to be having her gold medal placed around her neck all those years ago in Mexico City. She waves to the crowd, leans over to the mic, and chirps, “I guess we slugs aren’t such slugs after all.”
The eight of us go absolutely nuts. Stuart and Sarah fall into a joyous hug, the first time I’ve ever seen the twins in physical contact when one of them wasn’t attacking the other.
“Hey,” a nearby kid points at Sarah in angry recognition. “Aren’t you that girl who—?”
Stuart rounds on the kid in outrage. “My sister,” he announces, “would never kick a dog. And don’t you forget it!”
Considering how miserable the weather is, no one seems to be in a hurry to go home. The Forsberg Falcons stick around to introduce themselves to their new quarterback, Nitro Nate. With him at QB, I’m not looking forward to facing them next season. Or maybe I am. When you’re a top athlete, there’s something special about going up against a guy who’s every bit as good as you. I have a feeling the two of us are going to be rivals—in a good way—for a very long time.
Nate doesn’t spend too much time with his soon-to-be teammates though. The minute he spots Arabella in the crowd, he’s off like a shot. I’m half expecting them to run together like a scene from a cheesy romance movie, but that’s not what happens. Instead, they stand facing each other, cheeks flushed, both grinning nonstop and talking at the same time. I have to admit it makes me feel warm all over, and that’s really saying something with cold rain pouring down my neck.
Mr. and Mrs. Fidelio are so stunned to see Stuart and Sarah not fighting that they don’t rush them out of the monsoon. The high school science teacher is trying to recruit Kaden and Fiona to sign up for his enriched freshman chemistry class.
Kaden isn’t interested. “I’m a football player now. Didn’t you see that catch I almost made?”
Jesse finishes off the afternoon with the small crowd of toilet protesters.
“Listen, you guys, this is awesome and all that, but I made the whole thing up. So don’t sweat it. Your bathrooms are safe.”
The guy with the megaphone frowns at him. “What do you mean, you made the whole thing up?”
Jesse shrugs. “It was a joke.”
“You think it’s funny that a tyrannical government wants to take away a basic human right?” demands the lady with the “PLUMBING IS FREEDOM” sign.
“Well, no—if it was happening,” Jesse tries to explain. “But it isn’t. There’s no toilet ban. It was a goof. A prank.”
Megaphone Guy looks disgusted. “Come on, gang. City hall’s still open for another forty-five minutes. Let’s give them a piece of our minds!” And they march off into the rain, chanting, “What do we want? . . . Toilets! . . . When do we want them? . . . Now!”
29
Cleo Marchand
“Citizens of Andromeda, I present your future ahead!”
Yash’s deep voice booms out over the sound system in the middle school auditorium. Standing onstage in my costume, I hold my breath in the stuffy air of my fishbowl helmet until the line is fully out of his mouth.
He did it. He actually did it. He didn’t mess it up. He didn’t snicker. He even said ahead instead of a head, like he did the first time around.
Considering how he laid an egg on open house night, Yash has been all in for the final performance of Andromedon. He came to rehearsal. He took direction from Mr. Collier. He even helped the stagehands move around sets and hook up the lights and microphones. You almost forget that you’re dealing with the great Yash, sports legend of all Clarington schools.
It’s probably just because he’s in a good mood. Things have worked out pretty well for Yash—big surprise. He won the seven-on-seven flag football tournament, just like he wanted. Now that Nate is going to play for Forsberg, Yash’s spot as the starting quarterback of the Comets is rock-solid. All the problems that were threatening the perfection of his life this summer have evaporated. I doubt even the Beach Boys could come up with a song that explains how stuff magically falls into place for this guy.
Best of all, he got the credit he needed for summer school PE—although that happened for everybody, not just Yash. I’ll never forget the day that the letter came from the school district officially graduating me out of middle school. I’m no longer an eighth grader. I’m a rising high school freshman. We all are—except Sarah. Her diploma is being frozen by the school board because of a complaint they received from the ASPCA, accusing her of animal cruelty. Stuart promised to meet with Principal Carmichael to straighten the whole thing out, but Sarah says he’s only doing it so he can “hold it over my head forever.”
I’ll never figure those two out.
Even though PEE class is supposed to be pass/fail, Mrs. Finnerty gave every one of us an A-plus.
Kaden’s comment: “Of all the A-pluses I’ve ever gotten, this one’s my favorite.”
Coming from a guy who gets only A-pluses, that means a lot. He also got an A-plus on the investigative journalism project he and Fiona did together. They didn’t actually overturn Stephen Hawking’s theories on black holes, but Ms. Landkammer called their arguments “brilliant.” I think that means she didn’t understand any of them.
Yash got a B-plus for his reporting on the Comets’ summer workouts, and Jesse received a B-minus for his essay on the toilet ban experiment. That seems low, considering he stirred up real protesters, who even served a night in jail after they handcuffed themselves to the plumbing in the public bathroom at city hall.
Stuart and Sarah took incompletes because they each refused to do any work that might make the other one look good. So their conclusion about whether or not there’s a special connection between twins will have to remain a mystery forever. Or maybe not.
In my opinion, the highest grade of all should go to Mrs. Finnerty herself. She was given a class of kids who couldn’t agree on a single thing except what a bummer it was to be there. And she made our summer as good as it could possibly be. That’s a teacher.
“That’s a coach,” is Yash’s opinion. “Anybody who could take down the Comets with Slugfest should have a job in the NFL. She’s a natural.”
When Andromedon is finally over, we get polite applause, and I have a brief moment in the sun as the star of the show. Drama is fun, but one thing this summer has taught me is that I could never give up sports. I’m already planning to try out for soccer, basketball, and lacrosse next year—so Slugfest will be placing more than one athlete on the JV rosters in the fall.
What happens next blows my mind: Mr. Collier pulls Yash out of the citadel of Andromeda Prime so the identity of the voice of Zarcon can be revealed. Instantly, the audience leaps to its feet in a rousing standing ovation.
Un. Believable.
Zarcon isn’t a big part. It isn’t any part. He never even appears onstage. They’re not cheering a performance. They’re cheering a sports hero. They’re cheering the future quarterback of the JV Comets.
I feel a surge of heat rising up my spine and flushing my face. Not that I expect to be worshipped as the leading role in the production. I totally get that Andromedon isn’t the greatest play ever written and that summer school drama isn’t exactly the Broadway stage. But it still bugs me.
Then Yash does something I never would have expected. He walks over to me, grabs my hand, and raises it high. There we stand in the spotlight, drinking in the cheers of the crowd.
That’s the thing about Arnie Yashenko. He’s full of surprises. He can even make you like him, even if you don’t want to. Weird.
Or maybe it’s not so weird. The best thing Mrs. Finnerty did this summer wasn’t getting us through PEE; it was turning us all into friends. So I guess that includes Yash and me.
Real talk: an Olympic gold medal is a minor achievement compared to that.
About the Author
GORDON KORMAN published his first book at age fourteen and since then has written more than one hundred middle grade and teen novels. Favorites include the New York Times bestselling Ungifted, Supergifted, The Unteachables, Pop, Notorious, Unplugged, and the Masterminds series. Gordon lives with his family on Long Island, New York. You can visit him online at gordonkorman.com.
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Copyright
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
SLUGFEST. Copyright © 2024 by Gordon Korman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover art © 2024 by David Miles
Cover design by David DeWitt
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023936922
Digital Edition JANUARY 2024 ISBN: 978-0-06-323811-4
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-323809-1
FIRST EDITION
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Gordon Korman, Slugfest
