Rivals by Tommy Greenwald (the speed reading book txt) 📗

have a caller! My first caller ever! This is so exciting!

MR. RASHAD:

Congratulations. You might want to answer it.

ALFIE:

Oh yeah, right! Uh, hello? You’re on the air with Alfie Jenks, Talking Sports.

CALLER:

Oh, hey. Uh, yeah, listen, I don’t have a question or anything. I just, uh, want to say I agree with everything you guys are saying and well, there’s another thing you guys should know about, and that is there’s this girl who goes to Walthorne North who’s like a star athlete, and uh, she moved to another town over the summer but still goes to Walthorne North just so she can play on the basketball team. Is that legal?

ALFIE:

Whoa.

MR. RASHAD:

Who is calling, please?

CALLER:

Uh, I’d rather not say.

ALFIE:

It’s a good question—is that legal, Mr. Rashad?

MR. RASHAD:

Well, actually if what you’re saying is true, and there hasn’t been specific permission granted for some extenuating reason, then no, it’s not.

ALFIE:

Are you sure you don’t want to give us your name? (PAUSE) Hello? Hello? I think they hung up.

MR. RASHAD:

I think they may have.

ALFIE:

Well, that sure is an interesting way to end the show. My guest has been guidance counselor and media advisor Mr. Rashad. This is Alfie Jenks, Talking Sports—well actually, talking about what’s wrong with sports. Thanks for listening.

CARTER

A few days after my dad telling me that all I have to do to solve our problems is become a superstar in the NBA, I’m heading home after practice with Eddy. We walk together pretty much every day, since we live in the same neighborhood. Usually, we talk about fun stuff, like is this TV show better than that TV show, or what song we’re obsessed with, but today, we’re talking about the opposite of fun stuff. We’re talking about math. More specifically, the test we have coming up later in the week.

“No, man, I keep telling you,” Eddy says. “To figure out the percentage of the number Y that X represents, you have to divide X by Y, then multiply the result by a hundred.”

I try to roll that around in my brain, but it just makes my head hurt. “Got it,” I tell Eddy, hoping he’ll believe me. He doesn’t.

“Dude, you just need to pass,” he says. “You need to get sixty percent. That means sixty percent out of what number?”

“Uh, seventy?” I say. He responds by punching my arm.

When we get to my building, I notice something weird right away: My dad’s truck is parked out front, right behind my mom’s car. This never happens. I can’t remember the last time my parents were in the same room without me.

“Huh,” I say, pointing at the truck.

Eddy sees it and whistles. “What’s up with that?”

“I have no idea.”

We high-five our goodbyes and I head up the stairs, since the elevator’s out again. It’s five flights, so I’m totally out of breath by the time I walk into our apartment. My mom and my dad are sitting together at the kitchen table, looking like someone’s cat just died.

My mom gets up and walks over to me. “How was practice?” she asks.

“Fine,” I pant, still out of breath from the stairs.

She glances at my dad, then back at me. “Something happened with your father today,” she says. “Something at work.”

“What?”

“I’ll let him tell you.”

My dad stares straight ahead, holding a beer in his hand. I notice he keeps clenching his hands into fists. I recognize this from the old days, when he would get mad at my mom and try to keep his anger under control. Almost always, he succeeded. Every once in a while, he didn’t.

“I had an incident at work today,” he says, so softly I can barely hear him. “I started this new job, and the lady seemed nice enough, but she wanted me to paint this section of a wall that was right near some fancy sculpture of an eagle or something. I told her I needed to move the sculpture, but she said it couldn’t move under any circumstances because it was really valuable and only a professional mover could move it, and she said that I should just be careful, and I said of course, I’m always careful, but then as I’m painting, one of my brushes starts to slide off the tray, I don’t know how, I mean that’s never happened before, and as I reach for it I guess I nudged the dang thing a little bit, the sculpture of the eagle I mean, and it fell and got chipped.”

He pauses, and I say the first thing that pops into my head. “Were you drunk?”

My dad looks shocked, then angry. “What? No! Of course not! Why would you ask that?”

“Because you’re always drinking, Dad. You don’t think I notice, but I do.” I point at his beer. “Look, you’re drinking right now.”

“We all do what we need to do to get through the day. But I’m never drunk on the job.” He looks at my mom for help.

“This isn’t about that,” she says, quietly.

“Not at all,” my dad says.

I’ve never heard my dad talk like this before. He sounds scared.

“Well, it doesn’t really sound like it was your fault, Dad,” I tell him. “I mean, you told her you needed to move the sculpture, right? She’s not blaming you, is she?”

His eyes look sad. Lost. “You gotta understand something about how the world works, Carter,” he says. “When the homeowner says one thing and the housepainter says another, the homeowner is always right.”

My dad gets up without another word and walks into the other room. I look at my mom, who makes a face like, I wouldn’t go in there right now if I were you.

So I sit at the kitchen table. My mom sits down next to me.

“Apparently your dad argued with the woman, and she told him to leave,” she says. “Then she called Rico and told him what happened, and Rico told him he was off the job and