The Talent Show
Page 5
“So you were scared.”
“I was petrified.” C.J. nodded toward the back steps, and he and Rhino sat down. “After about a half hour I woke Devin up. Not to tell him I was scared. I made up some excuse, like I needed a snack.”
Rhino laughed. “What did he do?”
“He rolled over and went back to sleep. So I did get a snack. I had a candy bar in my knapsack. That helped for a minute.”
Rhino’s thinker told him to remember that. Bring snacks!
“Every sound made me more scared,” C.J. said. “I opened the tent flap and looked out. It was dark, but I could see shapes in the moonlight.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.” C.J. pounded his fist into his mitt. “I just watched the lake for a long time. And I remember thinking, ‘Devin’s parents are right there in the other tent.’ I started to feel safer. And it was a beautiful night. I was never not scared that night, but it got easier. Sooner or later I fell asleep. Before I knew it, morning arrived.”
“It always does, huh?”
C.J. put his arm around Rhino’s shoulder. “Every time,” he said. “So, enjoy the tournament. Don’t complicate things by worrying about being away from home. You’ll get through that. Just like I did.”
Ryan Howard is a Major League Baseball first baseman. He won the National League Rookie of the Year award in 2005 and the National League MVP award in 2006. Ryan and his wife, Krystle, cofounded the Ryan Howard Big Piece Foundation, which is dedicated to improving the lives of children by promoting academic and athletic development.
Krystle Howard is a former elementary school teacher with a passion for education and childhood literacy. She was instrumental in developing Ryan’s Reading Challenge, a program that resulted in more than one million minutes of reading by the children involved. She is currently the COO of the Ryan Howard Big Piece Foundation.
Text copyright © 2016 by Ryan Howard
Illustrations © 2016 by Scholastic Inc.
This book is being published simultaneously in hardcover by Scholastic Press.
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First printing 2016
Cover art © 2016 by Erwin Madrid
Cover design by Christopher Stengel
e-ISBN 978-1-338-05227-5
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.