by Don Aker
“Well, isn’t this sweet,” drawled a voice behind them.
Jared turned around to see Rafe standing with Kyle and Pete, the three of them grinning like the idiots he’d seen on that program last night. The Cornwallis Middle School version of reality TV Without the cameras. “Hey, guys,” Jared said. He didn’t know why he felt foolish.
And then, of course, he did.
“I thought you must’ve been getting help with your math, Jared,” Rafe said, looking at Ellie, “but I didn’t know who from.” He turned again to Jared. “How do you do it, anyway? Borrow brain cells? Ellie’s sure got a few million to spare.”
Jared looked at Ellie, who was staring at her tray. Her face resembled his sloppy joe. Shapeless. He didn’t have to imagine what his own face looked like. Red as berries, his mother used to say when he got embarrassed. Redder than that, he thought. Blood red? No. Tomato soup red.
“You guys spend a lot ‘a late nights together?” Kyle asked. “Doin’ the studyin’ thing, I mean?” He snickered and, behind him, Pete whistled. The long, low sound set Jared’s teeth on edge.
Jared got to his feet. “Funny, guys.”
Rafe shook his head. “Not us, Jared,” he said. “You. All this time I thought you were actually learning this stuff, but the joke’s on me. I should’ve known. The day Jared St. George really starts making hundreds in math is the day I start checking my underwear for diamonds.”
“What are you talkin’ about?” Jared demanded, his embarrassment flaring into annoyance.
“The assignments are one thing,” Rafe said. “Anybody can copy those easy enough. But how do you do it with tests and quizzes? Mirrors? Or does Ellie here just slip you the answers?” He turned and smiled at her, but there was no warmth in his face. “You’re such a brainer, you could do two tests in the time most of us take to do one.” His eyes widened. “Is that how you do it? You do your test and his? Clever!”
Ellie slid her chair back and got up. “You guys are such losers.”
“What I want to know,” Rafe continued, “is what you
get out of it, Ellie. Sure, Jared gets to be a Cougar.” A coldness crept into his voice. “But what floats your boat? Jared do any extra special favours for you?”
Behind him, Pete and Kyle hooted, and Jared could see they’d attracted the attention of several other students sitting nearby.
“You’re a pig,” Ellie said. Her voice was low and even, audible only to Jared and Rafe and his posse. But there was no mistaking its intensity.
“Oink, oink,” said Pete. He elbowed Kyle, who began echoing the animal noises.
“Guys,” said Jared, “this is stupid—”
“You’re the stupid one, Jared, if you think you can go on cheating just so you get to be a Cougar.”
“I have not been cheatin’!”
Behind him, Kyle made wet noises with his lips. “Either that or you been spendin’ a lot ‘a time with Smelly Ellie. Doin’ the test-takin’ tango!” The last few words sprayed from his lips, lost in a loud guffaw as he bent double, Pete slapping him on the back.
Even his mother wouldn’t have used “red as berries” to describe his face now, Jared thought. It was stove-hot. Around him, several others in the cafeteria had begun to point and laugh. Jared’s ears were pounding as the blood rushed to his head, but he could still make out a few giggled comments, like “Smelly Ellie and Jared St. George!” and “Who would’ve thought those two!” He turned in the direction of the comments and saw Samantha and Erica wide-eyed and talking animatedly behind their hands.
He looked down at his sloppy joe, wanted to scoop it up and ram every bit of it down all their throats. He looked at Ellie, who was looking at him, and suddenly he wanted to ram some sloppy joe down her throat, too. This was all her fault! He hadn’t wanted anything to do with her in the first place. And now look what was happening.
His face a furnace, he dug down deep for a way out, pawed over possibilities, rejected each of them, and then realized what he had to do. He turned away from Ellie. Forcing a grin, he shrugged. “You guys ain’t gonna tell Keaton I cheated, are ya?” he asked softly.
Rafe’s face flooded with triumph. “So I was right!” He looked at Pete and Kyle. “We aren’t snitches, are we, guys?”
The boys behind him murmured agreement, their faces reflecting surprise at Jared’s admission.
“Jared,” Rafe continued, his voice low, “we’ve all cheated on tests before. Who hasn’t?” He narrowed his eyes. “But it stops now, right?” It wasn’t a question. “You just tell Keaton you need to change seats so you can see better or something. No more getting help from her, okay?”
Jared nodded. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Ellie.
Rafe cocked his head and grinned. “Too bad the big math test is tomorrow. Right, guys?”
Pete and Kyle snorted. “Yeah, Jared. Too bad.”
Rafe made ball-handling motions, then momentarily dribbled an invisible basketball before sinking it in an imaginary basket above Jared’s head. “And don’t worry about your Cougars uniform. Keep it. My old man says he’s gonna get one specially made for me.” He nodded to the others. “C’mon, guys. Let’s go.”
The three moved off, several pairs of eyes watching them go. Jared turned to look at Ellie. But she was gone.
Jared sat by the outdoor courts for the rest of the lunch break, watching some eighth-graders play three on three. Watching them but not seeing a single play, his mind returning again and again to that moment in the cafeteria. He’d worn a thin jacket that day and he shivered in the chilly October air, but it somehow seemed right that he was cold. Besides, he didn’t feel like going inside.
When the bell rang and Jared finally returned to the classroom, he didn’t have to ask Mr. Keaton to change his seat. Ellie had already changed hers. She sat in the far right row in the second seat from the front, her face buried in a book She didn’t look up at Jared when he came in, just kept staring at the pages in front of her. He could tell, though, that she wasn’t really reading. Her eyes weren’t moving.
The afternoon seemed five days long, and a film on personal hygiene only made it drag more slowly. Even class clown Jimmy Stoltz couldn’t seem to muster up enough energy to make fun of the actors the filmmaker had hired to act as sixth-grade students. One “girl” had to be at least twenty years old, and two of the “boys” looked like they shaved on a regular basis. Even reality TV was better than that.
Basketball practice hadn’t been much better. Steve watched from the bench—Coach Jamieson wouldn’t let him play with his mouth still frozen from his visit to the dentist—but even from the sidelines it wasn’t hard for Steve to see that something was wrong with his friend. “Get in the game, man!” he hissed when Jared ran past. “Jamieson ain’t impressed.” And why would he be? Jared fumbled pass after pass, missed easy layups, didn’t sink a single foul shot.
“What’s up?” Steve asked him on the bus ride home.
Jared started to tell him, but the words wouldn’t form in his throat. “Just tired, I guess,” he said finally. Somehow it was easier to let his friend think he was a slacker than a world-class jerk.
Steve scowled. “We got our first game of the season tomorrow afternoon, and it’s like you were sleepwalkin’ out there.”
For a moment, Jared wished he had been sleepwalking, wished that the whole day had been just a bad dream and he’d wake up from it soon. But sitting there, feeling the bus jostle under him, he knew he was wide awake. He had to be. No nightmare had ever made him feel this bad.
CHAPTER 17
Jared sat staring at the jumble of words and numbers on the paper in front of him. He wrote down a few figures but erased them almost immediately. He looked at the paper again, jotted down some more numbers, then scrawled an X through them and crumpled the paper in his fist. He might as well be studying Egyptian hieroglyphs. He tossed the ball of paper into the wastebasket, but it was already overflowing and the paper tumbled to the floor.
> “Having trouble, slugger?” Jared’s mother asked as she came into the kitchen and opened the fridge door. Their new refrigerator didn’t match the stove, but it had been on sale for forty percent off and the Sears payment plan offered zero percent interest for one year. Even a math moron like himself could understand the value of zero percent.
Jared’s mother poured herself a glass of orange juice and came to stand beside him. “What’s this?”
Jared sighed. “The math review Mr. Keaton gave us. It’s supposed to help prepare us for the test tomorrow.” He slouched in the chair.
She squeezed his shoulder. “Listen, buddy, that test won’t be any harder than the quizzes you’ve been writing, just longer. Remember how well you’ve been doing on those, right?”
Jared put his head in his hands. “This ain’t the same.”
“Isn’t the same.”
“It isn’t,” Jared said, defeat in his voice. “There’s too much stuff. It’s too much to remember.”
His mother squeezed his shoulder again. “You’re getting yourself all worked up over nothing.”
He gave her a blank look. “That’s easy for you to say.”
Jared’s mother smiled sympathetically. “You’re right. Most of this doesn’t look anything like the stuff I did when I was your age.”
“Big help, Mom,” Jared muttered. He pulled himself up in his chair and turned to the review sheet once more.
His mother watched as he made a few more halfhearted attempts at the work before letting his pencil fall to the table. “Why don’t you call Ellie?” she asked. “I bet she could help you sort this out.”
Jared shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not? She’s helped you before.”
Jared turned to his mother and opened his mouth, but nothing came out. For a moment, he thought about all the ways he could answer that question, but he knew he didn’t have the words to make her understand. “I need to do this myself,” he said finally. That was, he knew, the only explanation she’d accept.
“Okay, buddy,” she said. “Just don’t beat yourself up over it, okay?” She ran her hand through his blond hair. “You’re gonna do fine,” she said, then wandered back into the living room with her orange juice.
Yeah, he thought, I’m gonna do fine. He reached out and grasped the pencil between his fingers, his thumbs pushing it into a shallow curve. He wondered how much pressure the pencil could take before it snapped. He pressed on it even harder for a moment, then released it. No sense breaking it. He’d already ruined enough that day.
For what seemed the thousandth time, he replayed the scene in the cafeteria in his mind, saw himself do what he did. Heard himself say what he said. That he’d been cheating.
He guessed he should be worried about what Rafe might do now. The principal took a hard line with cheaters—kids who got caught ended up with as many after-school detentions as it took for them to redo everything they’d cheated on, and they still got zero for the work. If Rafe went to the principal with Jared’s “confession,” he’d likely be in detention until mid-November. Worse, all those zeros for the tests and assignments he’d been doing would bury his math mark. No way would Jared pass the year.
But for some reason, he wasn’t really worried about Rafe Wells. After all, Rafe was pretty sure he’d be getting what he wanted most—Jared’s place on the team. And, looking at the unfinished math review spread over the kitchen table, Jared was pretty sure Rafe would, too.
Jared glanced at the cordless phone on the table and, for the umpteenth time, considered calling Ellie and telling her he was sorry.
But there was nothing he could say that would make a difference. To either of them.
CHAPTER 18
The buzzer sounded, and Jared jogged dispiritedly toward the bench. Halftime already, and he had barely seen any court time. And for good reason. Although he’d started in all their practices, he hadn’t been first on the floor today. Coach Jamieson was clearly still annoyed with him for his lacklustre performance during practice the day before. And when the coach had finally put him on toward the end of the first half, Jared hadn’t played much better. He’d repeatedly allowed the player he was guarding to slip by him, and all but one of Jared’s shots had bounced off the rim. The one that didn’t was an air ball.
The coach was livid. Taking the team into the locker room, he pointed out the things they’d been doing right: most of the guys had played hard, handled the ball well, made some strong drives to the basket. Steve, in particular, was responsible for sixteen of the points on the board. But the Gators were beating them to the ball, out-thinking them on defence, suckering them into fouling out.
“But that’s not the worst of it,” he snarled. The Cougars had seen their coach annoyed during practices, but they’d never heard this particular tone. “The worst is when players let their team down, when they just don’t have the guts to get the job done.” Jared didn’t need to guess whom Jamieson was talking about. And if anyone else hadn’t been sure, Jamieson left no doubts in their minds when he sent the team out to the bench but told Jared to stay behind.
It wasn’t until the last player had left the locker room that the coach spoke. “St. George,” he said. Jared would have preferred if Jamieson had continued to snarl. But his voice was filled with disappointment. “I don’t know what’s been going on with you the last couple of days, but you’re not the player I saw during tryouts. Or the player who’s been showing up at practice giving a hundred percent from first to last. I don’t know who this person in front of me is.” He shook his head. “I don’t often break my rule about not picking grade six students for the team. This time I’m sorry I did.” He turned to leave.
Jamieson’s words were like razors, and Jared felt shame burn his face. More than anything, he wanted to explain. He owed the coach that much.
“Coach?” he said.
Jamieson looked back, his body poised in mid-stride.
Jared knew he had only a few seconds to make the coach understand. “You’re right. My head hasn’t been in the game.”
The coach snorted. “Your head hasn’t been in the building!” But he wasn’t walking away. That, at least, was something.
“I’ve had some trouble with—”
The coach cut him off. “We’ve all got problems, St. George. But problems don’t belong on the court. Basketball does. You’re letting people down. And I don’t just mean the team. Your friends are out there. Your mother’s out there. But even worse,” he said, his voice softening, “you’re letting yourself down.”
Jared looked at the floor, fought the fist-sized lump in his throat that threatened to crowd out his next words.”I can do it, Coach. Give me another chance. Please.”
Jamieson gazed at him for a moment, and from behind him came the blast of the referee’s whistle signalling the end of halftime. “I know you can do it. You proved that to me in every practice. The question is, do you want to?”
This time Jared did not hesitate. “Yes, sir.”
The coach put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Then do it.”
Jared took a long swallow from his water bottle and then made his way out to the bench. Jamieson was right. He was letting everyone down. He couldn’t be thinking about Rafe or Ellie or Mr. Keaton or any of that stuff. Not even the math test he’d written only two hours earlier.
If he did think about it, he’d know this was his last time on the court as a Cougar. Because he knew he’d failed the test. And not just failed it. Failed it miserably. He’d left whole sections unanswered. And what he had done, he’d mostly guessed at. He’d forgotten everything he knew. Or maybe he hadn’t known it in the first place. It was Ellie who had somehow convinced him that he could actually do the stuff, but he’d known all along that he was an idiot when it came to math. He’d just forgotten that sad fact for a while. Looking around Mr. Keaton’s classroom at everyone bent over their tests, he’d watched their pencils flying over their papers, proving to the
teacher how much they knew.
Well, he’d certainly proven that all right. He’d seen it in Mr. Keaton’s eyes when he passed in his test. The teacher had flipped through it quickly, had seen all the empty spaces, the half-attempts, the Xs Jared had drawn through his work. He’d hated the look he had seen on Mr. Keaton’s face. It was the same look Ellie had worn in the cafeteria.
Yes, he had let them both down, but he wasn’t about to let the team down now. If this was going to be his last game as a Cougar, then people would remember it for the right reasons. He was going to play some basketball.
He listened as the coach began to reel off the names of the starters for the second half. His name was first.
Jared mopped the sweat off his forehead with the bottom of his jersey as the team gathered around Mr. Jamieson in the final timeout. The coach was not the same person they’d followed into the locker room at halftime. This man was animated and overflowing with praise. Two minutes left in the second half, and the score was 82-79 for the Granville Gators.
“You’ve brought her back, boys,” he said. “We were down nineteen points at the beginning of the second half, and now it’s anyone’s game. You can do this!” He knelt over his clipboard, quickly sketching a variation of a play they’d tried several times during practice. The team listened closely as he described the action that would unfold. In what seemed like no time, the referee’s whistle blew and the team huddled for a final Cougar cheer.
Just before Jared jogged back onto the court, the coach gripped his shoulder. “Jared, about what I said before. I’m glad I broke my rule.” He flashed Jared a thumbs-up as the players ran out on the floor.
“Go, Cougars! Wooo-hooo!”
Jared turned to see his mother and two of her friends from work clapping and cheering, and he couldn’t help but grin. His mom would have no voice tomorrow.