Take Two! (5 page)

“In my office. Top drawer of my desk,” Coach Mockler hollered. He seemed peeved – barely took his eyes off the basketball
game in progress. Miss Van Rye left me stranded and scurried around the outskirts of the gym, heading toward the locker rooms.
She almost bumped into the gi-normous scoreboard, which was half-covered in bubble wrap, leaning against the wall.

“If it’s not there, try the black filing cabinet. Or the closet. Or my gym bag.”

This could take days
. I took off my backpack and hovered near the door, pretending to be engrossed in the game (like that would ever happen).
In reality I was grossed out by the smell of sweat. It was intense, like hot chicken soup.

“Are you here to try out?” Mockler asked. I whipped my head around, thinking someone else was behind me. “Yeah, Grubbs, I’m
talking to you!” The Fireballs were still in the heat of their game, but some laughed right out loud.

“Oh, no, sir. I’m just helping Miss Van Rye.”

“Everybody makes the team, you know.”

“That’s okay. I’m good.”

He was either pullin’ my leg or he’d lost his mind
. I slipped back into the hall and pointed my astonished expression to the trophy display case hanging on the wall. I’d never
realized how many trophies and plaques our sports teams had racked up over the years. Right in the middle of all that hardware
was a framed newspaper clipping of Shatzi, our principal’s mutant-looking dog who served as mascot. According to the article,
Mr. Futterman had shaved a big
F
into the poor dog’s back for the final game last season.
F
for Fireballs. Probably a little for Futterman too.

A sharp whistle blast made me flinch. “Tyler, whaddya doin’?” Mockler yelled. I peeked into the gym and saw two kids tumbling
to the floor in a tangled lump. Heck, even I
knew tackling wasn’t allowed in basketball. “Why weren’t you looking up at the basket? It’s like you’re in la-la land out
there. And Piglowitz, you’re playin’ like my grandmother.” More with the whistle. “All right, guys, time for a little Basketball
One-Oh-One.”

The boys were gathering around the coach and I immediately spotted beanpole Zack, a head above the rest. He was taking a hit
off a bottle of breath freshener – or maybe an asthma inhaler? He noticed me too but wouldn’t look directly at me, like I
was the sun or something. I wanted to bolt.

“Even though we have a no-cuts policy, remember, only thirteen get to play. So listen up, ‘cause it’s time to separate the
men from the boys.” The team was hanging on the coach’s every word. “Who can tell me what a triple threat is?”

Did he just say triple threat or are my ears hallucinating?
That lured me back inside. Now
I
was hanging on his every word.

“Come on, guys, you know this. In a triple threat stance the offensive player has three different moves he can make: Shoot.
Dribble. Or pass.”

It’s a good thing I’d stopped myself. I’d almost raised my hand and said, “An actor-singer-dancer, like Fred Astaire or Catherine
Zeta-Jones.”

“Kincaid, you’re up! Front and center. Show ’em how it’s done.”

Zack flew to the middle of the floor and the coach shot him the ball. He caught it like a pro (I’m guessing) and froze
in a squat position, holding the ball as if he were about to throw it through the hoop thing – the net thing – the basket.

“Feet shoulder-width apart,” Mockler instructed, walking a circle around Zack, “legs slightly bent, back straight, head up.”

It sounded exactly like the drill in Miss Pritchard’s dance class.
If the jocks start doing turns across the floor I’ll wet myself!

“Good job, Kincaid, but stay low. Keep it tight and don’t palm the ball.”

“Found ’em, Lou!” Miss Van Rye called out, trotting across the floor with a jumble of keys jingling in her hand.
Jeez, it’s about time
. “Which key is it, do you know?” Mockler just grunted. “Oh, never mind, I’ll find it. I’m not even here.” She took me by
the hand like one of her kindergartners and led me to the storage unit at the far side of the gym. “You’re such a doll for
waiting. You wouldn’t believe the disgusting things I had to dig through to find these keys.”

Her trial-and-error process took forever. When she finally undid the padlock, I checked to see if my first pair of sideburns
had grown in.

“Heavens to Betsy, it’s a pigsty in here.” Miss Van Rye was having a hard time squishing through the door – I had to give
her a slight push. “Yeah, no… no… no,” she muttered, picking through things, “this won’t do at all.” Reminders of my stellar
theatrical debut lay all around us in a disheveled heap. “Refresh my memory – what did we do for costumes last year?”

“Everybody was responsible for their own. Pepper’s was a sheet. Mine was a pillowcase.”

“Well, that’s not going to help – unless we do
Once Upon a Mattress
!” She let out another cackle that ended in a dusty cough. We kept hunting around, but weren’t coming up with much. “Yeah,
no… no… no. Honey, you want to climb back in that corner and see if there’s anything other than –”

“Kindling?” I maneuvered my way over a busted drawbridge, muttering, “Yeah, no… no… no.”

“What’s in those boxes, Dustin?”

I started searching through box after filthy box. “Christmas decorations,” I reported, “
more
Christmas – oh, wait, here’s one marked
COSTUME PIECES AND PROPS
.” I checked inside, but all I found were “Two dented crowns, a rubber chicken, and –
argh!
– a dead mouse!”

We emerged back into the gym with nothing but dangling cobwebs just as two big, burly men in brown jumpsuits came trudging
through the gymnasium doors. One was pushing a large, steel dolly.

“Excuse me,” he garbled. “You Coach Mockler?”

“Who wants to know?”

“We’re from Trektronics – here to pick up the Mascot 2000.”

There were a few seconds of silence during which all the Fireballs looked stunned. One, one thousand, two, one
thousand…. Then in a flash they transformed into an angry mob, closing in on the coach and bombarding him with questions.

“Settle down,” Mockler grumbled. He shoved the basketball under one arm and signed the papers on the clipboard that the Treky
guy held out. “I don’t know why I was holding off telling you boys about this – I guess I was praying for a miracle or something.
The scoreboard’s gotta go back.”

“No way!” Zack cried out. “Why?”

“From what I understand, it never should’ve have been ordered in the first place.” He gestured over to the scoreboard, mumbling,
“That’s it over there, guys. Help yourselves.”

“Uh, we got a problem here, Coach,” the burliest guy said over a chorus of hisses and groans. “That thing’s supposed to be
packed and ready to go.”

Mockler slammed the basketball into the bleachers. “Zack, Tyler, Piglowitz, lend us a hand, will ya? The rest of you boys
are on a short time-out.”

“Isn’t that just a doggone shame,” Miss Van Rye whispered, meaning the scene that had just played out in front of us. I shrugged.
While she was doing up the padlock on the storage room door, Darlene and Maggie sprang out of the girls’ locker room and came
sprinting over to us, carrying chewed-up-looking pom-poms – more like just poms.

“We’re trying out for cheerleader this year and we get to take these things home to rehearse!” Darlene spouted, like
anyone asked. “So what’re you doing here, barf-breath?” She had the nerve to shake her ratty pom-poms in my face.

“Knock it off! Who invited you?”

“What’s going on, Miss Van Rye?” Maggie asked.

“Oh, hello, girls.” She jiggled the door to make sure it was locked and turned around smiling. “I was just about to tell Dustin
the good news.”

“What good news?” Darlene said, bouncing around as if she had squirrels in her pants.

“Well, kids…” Miss Van Rye took a dramatic pause like an actress on a soap opera – then bellowed at the top of her lungs,
“It looks like we’re going to be renting professional sets
and
costumes for our musical!”

“Woo-hoo!” the three of us exploded altogether.
Costumes too! We’re really going all out
. Darlene and Maggie were jumping up and down, shaking their pom-poms. Inside myself I was doing the same. Even Miss Van Rye
let a girlish squeal slip out.

“I’m sure the Arts Committee will back me up on my decision,” she cried, clapping soot off her hands. “So we can just dump
that old scenery from last year!”

“Burn it!” Darlene cried out over Maggie’s “Who needs it?” Cheers and high fives all around.

“Good riddance!” I yelled through cupped hands as the scoreboard on the dolly went
squeak-squeak-squeaking
out the door.

After the dust settled (I’m talking real dust) and I was strapping on my backpack, I realized there was a gym-full of Fireballs
and a red-faced coach scowling at us. I wasn’t sure why at first, but then it hit me:

Drama geeks cheering + scoreboard exiting = really bad timing!

It was official. As Miss Van Rye had promised, a sign-up sheet was hanging on the bulletin board outside the main office on
Tuesday morning. I was afraid to look at first, but as it turned out, Darlene was way off – either that or she had flat-out
lied to my face, because
Oliver!
was the show of choice!
Excellent!
I’d seen two different movie versions of it and knew all the characters inside and out. Orphans, pickpockets, upper-crust
British well-to-dos. And not a tap-dancer in the bunch. Around tenish, about a dozen names were on the list – as well as a
SPORTS RULE
! bumper sticker. And come lunchtime, kids were all over that piece of paper like ants on a fumbled ice cream cone. Mostly
girls, though. Okay,
all
girls – and me. Story of my life lately.

“So did you sign up to audition?” Wally asked, as we joined the parade of orange plastic trays in the lunch line.

“Do boxer briefs ride up? Dumb question.” The cafeteria
lady handed me a warm plate with a toppling sloppy joe on it, and I set it onto my tray. “I thought they’d go for more of
a fluff musical, but
Oliver!
has real depth! And I was born to play the Artful Dodger, don’t you think?” I didn’t wait for his answer. “I mean it’s pretty
obvious the Arts Committee had that in mind when they made their choice.”

“Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back, conceited.”

Wally asked the cafeteria lady for an extra helping, which was his usual drill, and we inched our trays along the metal ledge.
He was lugging his bassoon in its beat-up leather case, knocking into everything as usual. It always looked like he was going
on vacation – especially when he wore his Hawaiian pineapple shirt.

“Hey, don’t you have to be able to sing to be in a musical?” Wally asked, ogling the desserts.

“So? What are you getting at?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you sing. Except The Star Spangled Banner’ with everybody else.”

“I sing plenty.” Mostly in the shower, but I wasn’t coming clean – so to speak.

By the time we’d reached the cash register, our meals were complete with mashed potatoes doused in gray gravy, watery creamed
corn, a square of lime Jell-O, and the usual chocolate milk. I grabbed a butter cookie at the last second and
added it to my bill. They were expensive at seventy-five cents a piece, but impossible to resist. Wally and I took a seat
next to Pepper, who was brown-bagging it at our usual table next to the window. It was pouring rain outside, so the lunchroom
was darker and stickier than usual.

“Hey, Wal, are you gonna audition too? You should.”

“Nah, been there, done that. Maybe for the orchestra, if there’s an orchestra. Do you think they’ll have an orchestra?”

I shrugged. “They’ll probably use all high school kids.”

“You guys talking about the tryouts?” Pepper asked. She was rotating her egg salad sandwich and licking around the edges.

“Auditions, Pep,” I said. “Tryouts are for basketball teams. You going?”

“Nah, I’m still recovering from last year’s show. Maybe I’ll do tech.”

A squeal came from a table across the room, where the seventh- and eighth-grade cool girls sat. The Geyser Girls we called
them because they were always gushing about every little thing. I didn’t pay much attention until I realized that Candy Garboni
was the loudest squealer. Zack was lining paper airplanes at her from the next table and they were sticking in her hair. The
back of her head looked like an airport tarmac.

“Where does that Zack kid get off?” I said to the others.
“Just ‘cause he’s king of the jocks doesn’t mean he can go around torturing innocent seventh-graders. Do you think I should
say something?”

Wally checked out the scene. “Only if you want a bloody lip.”

“Ah, leave those two alone,” Pepper said, still working on the rim of her sandwich. “It’s obviously just puppy love.”

“If that’s the case, Zack needs to be neutered!” Egg guck shot out of Pepper’s mouth from laughing at my zinger. “Thanks for
coming, ladies and gentlemen,” I said into my microphone-thumb, as if I were winding up a comedy routine, “and enjoy the steak.”

“There’s steak?” Wally asked.

Candy squealed again, and not in a good way. Tyler and Pig, two Fireballs from my class, had joined in on the Zack-attack.
Even though any of them could pound me into mulch with one hand tied behind their backs, I grabbed my cookie and headed for
the jock table, unsure of what I was going to do or say.

“It was nice knowing you,” Wally called out after me.

I approached the testosterone zone looking easy and breezy. “Hi, guys,” I said in my friendliest voice. “Sorry about your
scoreboard and everything. Total bummer.” Felix Plunket was the only one at the table who bothered looking up at me. Nice
kid, Felix.

“Incoming enemy
hair
craft,” Zack said, shooting another
plane at Candy. Pig snorted and high-fived Zack for coming up with that little gem.

“Hey, Zack.” I knocked on the table. “Zack?”