Two-Minute Drill - Mike Lupica [17]
“What’s that?”
“I’m the brain.”
TEN
It was later that same afternoon, and Scott and Chris were in the Conlans’ living room with Chris’s mom and dad.
“Nothing else we’ve tried has worked out that great,” Chris said. “Why can’t we try this?”
Scott and Chris had done most of the talking from the time they’d all sat down, taking turns like they were some kind of tag team, not really giving Chris’s parents a chance to interrupt them. That was always the way you did it with your parents when you weren’t just talking to them, but trying to talk them into something.
When you were afraid that the second you stopped talking they were going to say no.
Only that didn’t happen, at least not right away.
All Chris’s dad said, in a nice way, was, “Are you two finished?”
Chris’s dad was tall, the way Chris was, and looked like an athlete. But Chris said he really wasn’t, that all he did was jog. He had no real interest in sports unless he was watching one of Chris’s games.
“You two really think you can pull this off?” Bill Conlan said.
“We do,” Scott and Chris said, almost at the exact same time.
“I’ve heard what a wonderful student you are,” Chris’s dad said to Scott now.
“Not as good as he says I am.”
“I doubt that, just listening to you speak today, the way you present things. But you’re talking about being the first eleven-year-old teaching assistant I believe I’ve ever heard of.”
Chris’s mom hadn’t said anything yet. She was mostly smiling, like she knew something the rest of them didn’t.
“All we’re asking for is a shot,” Chris said.
“For two weeks,” Scott said.
“Scott,” Chris’s dad said, “has Chris really explained to you the issues he has in the classroom?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re saying you can help him get past them?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying.” Then he added, “Sir.”
“No?”
“I’m saying that I’m willing to try, Mr. Conlan,” he said. “And my mom says she’s willing to help, too. She used to be a guidance counselor before she married my dad, and she says she can help me plan stuff out.” He turned toward Chris, grinning. “Like a game plan.”
“I’d rather have Scott than another new tutor,” Chris said.
Now Mrs. Conlan said, “Maybe this is so crazy it might work, Bill. Peer support instead of peer pressure.”
“It’s going to work!” Chris said. “I’m going to work twice as hard as I ever have!”
“Your plan is to study before every practice, is that right?” Bill Conlan said.
“That’s the plan,” Scott said. “Sometimes here, sometimes at my house.”
“And you study together from then until it’s time for football?”
Scott and Chris nodded, hard.
Mrs. Conlan, whose first name was Gail, said, “And two weeks from today, we talk to Chris’s teachers and see where he is.”
Talking about it like it was a done deal already.
Scott and Chris waited, not saying anything now.
Then Chris’s dad looked at his mom, turned back to them and said, “You’ve got a deal.”
“Yessssss!” Chris said, leaning over in his chair to bump fists with Scott and nearly falling over as he did.
Then the two of them were running out of the living room, colliding with each other in the Conlans’ front hall before heading up the stairs to Chris’s room.
When the door was closed, Chris said, “Do you really think we can pull this off?”
“I do if you do,” Scott said. “Who’s the one always saying that you can’t do stuff in sports unless you think you can?”
“I am so hearing you,” Chris said.
Then Scott told Chris to get out the flash cards he said he tried to use for English sometimes, so the two of them could get busy.
It wasn’t so long ago that Scott was the new kid at school.
Now he was the new teacher.
ELEVEN
After the first week of real practice, with one more week to go until the first game, Scott’s dad said to him one night at dinner, “So what position do you think you’re going to end up playing?”
Being serious.
Scott decided not to paint one of those dopey smiley faces on the whole thing.
“I don’t have a position,” he said, trying to make himself look busy cutting another piece of steak.