Two-Minute Drill - Mike Lupica [19]
“Let’s go, pal,” Scott said.
Casey’s answer was to come sliding right into Scott on their slippery kitchen floor.
As soon as they were out the door, Casey was pulling him down the front walk. It was completely dark by now, and the old-fashioned streetlights were lit. When they got to the sidewalk, Scott saw a woman he recognized from up the block walking at them from the other direction, power-walking the way his mom did sometimes, earphones in her ears.
As she passed them, she said to Scott, “Very cool dog.”
Scott smiled and said, “I know,” wondering if she even heard him over whatever it was she was listening to.
When the sound of her footsteps was gone, there was just the panting Casey the dog, straining against the leash the way he always did once they got going, wanting Scott to go faster.
Alone on the street, Scott began to announce an imaginary game.
“Welcome to Bloomfield North Field,” he said. “It’s a perfect morning for football as the Eagles prepare to open their season against their cross-town rival, the Jets.”
Not a great voice, he thought.
But not bad.
“The Eagles have won the toss and elected to receive,” he said.
On the quiet street, his voice sounding loud, Scott said, “Scott Parry to kick off. . . .”
TWELVE
Chris’s big day in class was the Thursday before their first game.
Mr. Dykes, their English teacher, was going to give them a passage from a book, ask them to read it in an allotted period of time, then quiz them on it right after they finished reading.
Quiz them and grade them.
“It will be like a homework assignment, just in class,” Mr. Dykes had told them on Monday. “And it will give me a good read, early in the semester, on your ability to not just read, but understand what you’re reading.”
On the bus home on Monday, Chris had said, “If I have to read a chapter fast, I’m done like dinner. You know how slow I read.”
“So you pick up a step by Thursday,” Scott had said.
“You sound pretty confident.”
“I am.”
Actually, he wasn’t.
That afternoon they figured out that it took Chris about two minutes to read a page. The book they were using was one they were reading in school, called My Brother Sam Is Dead, about a family during the Revolutionary War.
When Scott put himself on the clock, they found out he needed fifty-five seconds to read the same page.
“Great,” Chris said. “You’re more than twice as fast as me.”
Scott smiled.
Chris said, “You’re smiling because?”
“Because I just came up with another one of my brilliant ideas.”
“Your brilliant ideas usually mean more work for me,” Chris said.
“You want to hear it or not?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Nah.”
“Before we get to Mr. Dykes’s class on Friday,” he said, “your time is going down, sucker.”
“You sound like Mr. Dolan when he takes his stopwatch out.”
“Exactly,” Scott said. “You’re going to compete. Against yourself. And I’m going to time you.”
The hero of My Brother Sam Is Dead was a boy named Tim Meeker, and the story was about how his brother Sam runs off to fight for the American rebels and against the British army in the late 1770s, before America won its independence. Scott, who’d finished the whole book even though the class hadn’t been required to do that yet, thought it was a solid book. Chris was only about halfway through, but Scott could see that he was getting into it, too.
“I still can’t believe I actually like a book,” Chris said.
Scott looked at him, curious now. “You’ve never read just for the fun of it?”
Chris shook his head. “Would you, if you were me? And who said this is fun, anyway?”
“You’re liking this book, you said so yourself.”
“I like it okay.”
“That’s good enough for now,” Scott said.
As the week went on, Scott saw the athlete in Chris coming out a little more every day, saw how competitive he was getting, how he was pushing himself. Could see how Chris would finish a page, say “done,” then look at Scott and ask with his eyes what his time was without