Jack Strong Takes a Stand (4 page)

“Well?” asked Ms. Li.

I hesitated. This wasn't really a text I wanted to share with the class.

“Well?” she repeated.

“Um, it said that today is Sundae Saturday down at Super Scooper. Free sundaes from twelve to one.”

Evelyn Chang, who never says a word, actually giggled a little bit.

Ms. Li nodded. “I see. Well, that's very nice to know—”

BUZZZZ!

Omg. Again?

“I'm so sorry,” I mumbled.

Ms. Li walked over, stood right over me, and stuck out her hand. Her glasses dangled dangerously close to the cliff of her nose. I took the phone out of my pocket and handed it to her. She opened it.

“‘THE WHOLE TOWN IS HERE,'” she read out loud. “‘WHY CAN'T YOU SKIP CHINESE JUST THIS ONCE AND COME DOWN?'”

This time
everyone
giggled.

Does the word
blush
come from combining the words
blood
and
rush
? Because that's what happened to my face. I got incredibly red, I think my nose started to run, and little drops of sweat started popping out all over my body.

It wasn't fun.

Ms. Li handed me back my phone. “You might want to turn that off.”

My mind was a jumble of Chinese lamps and hot-fudge sundaes. First the cello recital fiasco, and now this. Here I was again, stuck someplace I didn't want to be while everyone else in the world was hanging out and having fun, like normal human beings.

I turned off the phone and put it in my pocket.

Ms. Li smiled.

“By the way, the Chinese word for ice cream sundae is
sheng dai
.”

 

9

 

After my mom picked me up,
I asked her to take me down to Super Scooper. Even though the Sundae Saturday special offer was over, maybe I'd run into a few kids, and I'd get a milkshake out of the deal.

My mom thought for a second. “Don't you have baseball practice? It's important that you go, right? Big game tomorrow?”

“Practice is at one-thirty. I'll be fine. Come on, mom.” I was trying to be nice, since I really wanted that shake, but I was running out of patience.

“Okay, you deserve it,” she said, sensing my mood. Moms are good at that. My mom is, at least.

But by the time we got downtown, there was only one person there.

Cathy Billows.

She was sitting outside polishing off her free sundae, licking the spoon clean. I don't think I'd ever seen her alone before, and it didn't look natural. Maybe she was waiting for a ride. In any event, one thing I did know is that I didn't want her to see me. I was trying to figure out how to avoid her when she spotted me.

“Hello, Jack.” No exclamation point, but at least no stare of death, either.

“Hey. So, I'm really sorry I couldn't make your party last night. I heard it was awesome.”

She almost smiled at the compliment. “It was pretty awesome. At least, until Alex started acting like a jerk.”

It was my turn to smile. Finally, the rest of the world was discovering what I'd known for years: that Alex Mutchnik was the world's most annoying person.

“Yo, Strong!”

I turned around. Cathy's brother Baxter was running toward us, grinning from ear to ear. Baxter Billows was a grade above us, and he was the happiest person I'd ever met. Probably because he was really good-looking, really good at sports, and really popular. I'd be happy all the time, too, if I were even one of those things.

Baxter stopped and caught his breath. “Traffic is horrible,” he said to his sister, “so Mom wanted me to tell you to meet her at the post office.” Then he turned to me. “We got practice in an hour. You gonna be ready? Big game tomorrow!”

I tried to sound confident. “Yeah, I'm definitely going to be ready.”

By some fluke of nature and birthday cut-offs, Baxter and I wound up on the same Little League team, and the championship game was the next day. Since he was the star and I was, well, let's just say
not
the star, we had different definitions of “being ready.” His definition was taking an hour of batting practice and two hours of fielding practice. My definition was being able to find my hat.

Baxter smacked me on the back, which kind of hurt a little. “All right dude, see you at the field.” And off he went.

“Well, I better get going, too,” said Cathy. “See you later.”

“Bye, Cathy!” I said. Great. Now I was the one using the exclamation points.

My mom, who was sitting in the car, leaned out the window. “Was that Baxter? He's such a nice kid.”

There was no higher compliment in the world than being called “nice” by my mom, by the way.

“Yeah, he's really nice.”

I headed inside to get my consolation prize milkshake. Ricky, the kid who worked there, was reading a magazine.

“Hey, bro,” he said.

“Hey, Ricky. If my milkshake isn't the best milkshake ever, I'm going to call your boss.”

“That'd be just fine with me.”

Ricky and I always joked around like that. Working there seemed like it would be an awesome job, so I always pretended I was going to get him fired and take his job, and he always pretended that I could have it.

“How's school going?” I asked him. Ricky was already in college.

He shook his head. “Not going this semester. I'm just gonna take it easy and work for a while.”

Wow. Working in an ice cream store
and
taking it easy?

Some guys have all the luck.

 

10

 

At practice
I managed to hit the ball out of the infield twice. Which was three fewer times than Baxter Billows hit the ball over the fence.

“How'd it go?” asked my dad when he picked me up.

“Really good.”

About three traffic lights later, I said, “But, Dad? I don't really think I'm cut out for baseball. I think this will probably be my last year playing.”

My dad turned the radio down, which he did whenever he was stressed in the car. And he would get stressed in the car for two reasons: a bad traffic jam and a stubborn son.

“I thought you just said it went really well.”

“Yeah, by my standards. Which means that I didn't trip over my own feet running around the bases. By those standards, today's practice was a total success.”

“Jack, listen to me,” my dad said. “I can't tell you how important it is to be well rounded. It's not enough to just be smart these days. You need to play an instrument, be involved in the community, do some volunteer work, and play a sport.”

“Why can't I just do karate? Karate's a sport.”

My dad shook his head. “Karate is an exercise that helps your coordination and stamina for the real sports, like soccer and baseball. Plus, you actually
like
baseball.”

That was true. I did actually like baseball. As long as I was watching it on TV and not playing it.

“Maybe it's team sports you're not crazy about,” my dad suggested. “What if I sign you up for some tennis lessons? Tennis is a great game.”

I just wanted to end the conversation. “Whatever.”

“Whatever yourself,” my dad said. “All I'm saying is, colleges look at all that stuff.”

“Don't you think it's a little early for me to be worrying about college? I have all of high school to deal with that.”

“It's NEVER too early to be thinking about college and finding that thing that will set you apart. Do you have any idea how competitive it's gotten out there?”

I was starting to get mad. “Actually, no, I don't. Why would I? I'm in MIDDLE SCHOOL.”

My dad turned the radio completely off. “Listen, Jack, I know you think I'm a crazy lunatic. Sometimes I think I am, too. But I'm the one out there in the world, not you. I'm the one who sees how hard it is to get ahead and how hard people have to work. I know you're a kid. I get it, I swear. But if you don't learn the value of hard work now, I'm afraid you're going to fall behind. And these days, once you fall behind, it's incredibly hard to catch up.”

“You're right about one thing,” I said. “You ARE a crazy lunatic.”

I turned the radio back on, way louder than before, and neither one of us said another word until we pulled into the driveway. But as I was getting out of the car, I turned to my dad and said, “I'm twelve years old. I would appreciate it if you didn't bring up college ever again until I'm sixteen. I just want you to let me live my life and do the things I want to do and be a kid. I don't see what's so bad about that.”

Then I smacked the hood of the car with my hand before I went inside.

It was the hardest hit I had all day.

 

11

 

Sunday, before the big game,
I had a cello lesson and junior EMTs.

I bet Derek Jeter never warmed up that way.

Anyway, the cello lesson was fine, because I love my teacher, Dr. Jonas, and since he's a big baseball fan, he took it easy on me. “After the season is over, though, I'm going to work you to the bone,” he said.

Then I had to go to Junior EMTs, which was a volunteer organization where kids learned emergency medical procedures. My dad made me join because he was an EMT when he was younger, and I guess he helped save some guy's life in college. And also, because supposedly it looked good on a college application, which I guess makes sense if you're applying to college. I wasn't. I wasn't even ready to apply to high school.

“Don't worry about that part of it,” my mom would say. “Just think of it as a way to help people.”

She had a point, of course. The only problem was—and I hate to admit this—helping other people wasn't that high on my list. Especially on a Sunday morning between a cello lesson and the baseball championship game.

The EMT class was at the fire department. “Tell mom to pick me up fifteen minutes early,” I said to Nana, who was dropping me off on her way to play golf. “I need to get to the field for early batting practice.”

“Isn't it a little late to practice?” said Nana, who wasn't a very big baseball fan. “The game's in two hours. Shouldn't you know batting by now?”

“You would think,” I told her.

I walked into the firehouse, where there were four dummies—by “dummies” I mean fake bodies, not dumb people—laid out on the floor. We were learning how to do CPR, which basically means trying to get someone breathing again by pressing on their chest and blowing air into their mouths. There were only four of us in the class—me and three high school kids who totally ignored me—so we got a lot of individual attention from the teacher, Lieutenant Sniffen. This was not a good thing.

I was busy pressing on my dummy's chest, and trying to get up the courage to put my mouth on it, when Lieutenant Sniffen came over to inspect my technique.

“You're doing it too gently,” he said. “Our job is to save the person, not tickle them.”