Losers Take All (31 page)

“Powers,” I shouted, and started my run. He heard me, and even though there were two players on him he somehow got off a long pass into their left corner. The tall Lynton captain chased it with me, matching me step for step. He was fast and determined, and this was by far my best footrace of the season. I knew there couldn't be more than ten seconds left, and I switched into that extra gear that my father had given me as a birthright. The Lynton captain looked like he couldn't believe it as I started to pull away from him, and we both realized that I would get to the ball first.

It had rolled to a stop near the corner flag, and when I reached it and turned I saw five Lynton players between me and the goal. There was no way I could dribble by them all, and any second the ref would whistle the game over.

There was only one chance—I had to cross the ball and trust that one of my teammates would knock it in. I picked up my head and saw Rob waiting in the penalty area, and Pierre and Dylan running up. The Lynton captain tried to tackle me, but I pushed the ball to the goal line and got off a hard cross with my right foot. A split second later he knocked me off my feet, and we both went down.

I lay on the grass and watched my cross sail toward their goal. Rob jumped for it, but it went two feet over his head. Pierre might have gotten to it if he was just a little faster. I thought for sure Dylan would head it in and turn out to be the team hero who had gotten his wrist broken and came back to score the wonder goal. But he mistimed his header and the ball flew by him. It finally came down right in front of the smart Lynton sweeper who did exactly what he was supposed to do—he booted it as hard as he could upfield.

His attempted clearance traveled about five feet on a line drive, smacked into the side of Shimsky's head, and rebounded toward the Lynton goal. Their goalie dove at it and managed to push it with his fingertips. The ball rolled sideways along the goal line, hit the side of the post, and rebounded slowly back. It crossed the goal line by a quarter of an inch before their goalie frantically grabbed it.

The ref blew his whistle several times and I wasn't sure if he was announcing the goal or the end of the game. It turned out to be both. “Four–four tie,” he shouted. “Game over. Well played, both teams.”

The Lynton players protested that the goal shouldn't count. They were still undefeated but the last-minute tie had destroyed their perfect season. They surrounded the ref, who shouted for them to back off.

The ball to the head had knocked Shimsky to the turf. I reached him first, and he looked up at me, a little confused. “What just happened?”

“You won it for us,” I told him.

“But I wanted to lose,” he said.

The rest of the team arrived, and we picked Shimsky off the grass and hoisted him to our shoulders. I saw Becca standing next to me helping to hold him up and we shared a smile. “I didn't want to score,” he protested loudly. “It shouldn't count. It was an accident. Put me down! I want to go out a Loser!” But he was high up on Pierre and Frank's shoulders, and we carried him around the field in a wild team victory lap as our fans cheered. Somewhere along the way Shimsky stopped fighting us and just went along with it. I'm not positive, but I might have even seen him smile.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Klass
is the author of many young adult novels, including
You Don't Know Me
,
Losers Take All
, and
Grandmaster
. He is also a Hollywood screenwriter, having written more than twenty-five action screenplays, including
Kiss the Girls
, starring Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd,
Walking Tall
, starring The Rock, and
Desperate Measures
, starring Michael Keaton and Andy Garcia. Klass grew up in a family that loved literature and theater-his parents were both college professors and writers-but he was a reluctant reader, preferring sports to books. But he started loving the adventure stories his parents would bring home from the library-particularly Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson and Alexandre Dumas. After his sister twice won a story contest in
Seventeen
magazine, Klass decided he would win it too, and when he was a senior in high school, he did, publishing his first story, "Ringtoss," in the magazine. He studied at Yale University, where he won the Veech Award for Best Imaginative Writing. He taught English in Japan, and wrote his first novel,
The Atami Dragons
, about that experience. He now lives in New York with his wife and two children. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

 

ALSO BY
DAVID KLASS

California Blue

Danger Zone

Screen Test

You Don't Know Me

Home of the Braves

Dark Angel

 

The Caretaker Trilogy

Firestorm

Whirlwind

Timelock

 

Stuck on Earth

Second Impact
(with Perri Klass)

Grandmaster

 

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CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

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31

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38

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40

About the Author

Also by David Klass

Copyright

 

Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers

175 Fifth Avenue, New York 10010

Text copyright © 2015 by David Klass

All rights reserved

First hardcover edition, 2015

eBook edition, September 2015

macteenbooks.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

 

Klass, David.

    Losers take all / David Klass. — First edition.

        pages cm

    Summary: “At a sports-crazy NJ high school where all kids must play on a team, a group of rebels start a soccer team designed to undermine the jock-culture of the school”—Provided by publisher.

    ISBN 978-0-374-30136-1 (hardback)

    ISBN 978-0-374-30137-8 (e-book)

    [1.  Sports—Fiction.   2.  High schools—Fiction.   3.  Schools—Fiction.   4.  Individuality—Fiction.   5.  Friendship—Fiction.]   I.  Title.

    PZ7.K67813Los 2015

    [Fic]—dc23

2015006009

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eISBN 9780374301378