Kicking & Screaming Read online

  DEDICATION

  To Jakob, Lauren, and Christopher

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  My name is Steve, and I am a benchwarmer.

  In case you don’t already know, I love sports. I’m not a hotshot athlete or anything. Not even close. So I only get into games when the score is about a hundred to zip.

  And I’m fine with that because I love the other stuff that goes on around the games almost as much as playing.

  Like when I stick my face in the pocket of a spanking-new baseball glove and take a big whiff of the fresh leather smell.

  Or when I put on a football uniform and I look like a gnarly Roman gladiator with a huge chip on his shoulder.

  Or when I ride a bus to an away game and pull off all kinds of shenanigans with my friends. (Unless we’re sitting in the front seats right next to the coach.)

  So I love sports, but I don’t love every sport. Here are a few examples of sports that don’t exactly fry my burger:

  But there is one sport that I really dislike, and it’s probably the most popular sport in the entire world.

  In this book, I’m going to spill my guts about how I blabbed my opinion about that sport and practically ruined a close friendship. And about my embarrassing bodily affliction. And about a kid from Brazil with superhuman athletic skills.

  And I’m not even exaggerating.

  Right about now you’re probably curious.

  Stop!

  Sorry.

  I can’t reveal any details right now because—big, drool-y duh—it’s pretty much a rule when writing a book that you don’t just blurt out the juicy plot stuff in the first few pages.

  So I’ll tell you more when the time is right or I get in the mood. Whichever comes first.

  All you need to know for now is that, even though I’m a benchwarmer, I do have some skills.

  For example, I have excellent hand-eye coordination.

  That’s a huge advantage when I dive to catch a baseball inches above the ground. Or when I dribble a basketball. Or when someone in a museum shouts, “Think fast!”

  So I’m not a total drooling dweeb, okay? And when it comes to sitting on the bench, I’m probably better at it than anyone else my age in the entire city—maybe the entire world.

  End of the pine or middle of the pine, doesn’t matter. I pretty much rule the bench.

  No brag. It’s just a fact.

  I’m King of the Bench!

  CHAPTER 1

  Okay, I’m in the mood now.

  I was going to keep you waiting until the suspense built to the point where you couldn’t stand it a minute longer, but I’ll spill my guts right now:

  I don’t like soccer.

  There. I said it.

  Ace benchwarmer Steve Moore dislikes the most popular sport in the world—maybe even the entire universe.

  Quick Time-Out about Why I Don’t Like Soccer

  There are several good reasons, okay? It’s not like I’m just cranky.

  First of all, unlike the game of basketball, there’s not much scoring in soccer. A final score of two to zip is pretty much a blowout.

  Scoring is so infrequent that if you look away for even half a second to squash a mosquito that’s sucking blood out of your arm, you might miss seeing the only goal of the game.

  And soccer players run up and down the field with very few breaks. There are no time-outs, unless you keel over from a broken leg or some other ailment.

  And when there’s a foul, the ref holds up goofy yellow or red cards. Why not just signal with your hands like in basketball or football?

  But the main reason I don’t like the game of soccer is that my body has lousy foot-eye coordination. I call it “Foot-Eye Dweeb-Itis.”

  It’s an embarrassing affliction—worse than when you get lice in your hair and then everyone at school finds out about it.

  I already told you that I have excellent hand-eye coordination. But if my feet are asked to do anything more than walk, run, or jump, that’s when Foot-Eye Dweeb-Itis rears its ugly head.

  And in soccer, the feet do most of the work. So someone with foot-eye problems either won’t make the team, or, if they do, they’ll be sitting on the pine.

  I’m pretty sure that Foot-Eye Dweeb-Itis is due to faulty internal communication wiring.

  So soccer doesn’t exactly fry my burger. But I made a big mistake by saying so.

  Out loud.

  Right in front of a best friend.

  Who happens to love the game of soccer more than any sport in the entire universe.

  CHAPTER 2

  It happened at the sports stadium that sits right smack in the middle of my neighborhood.

  My best friends and I practically live at Goodfellow Stadium because we all pretty much love everything about sports.

  The stadium is really ancient. Archaeologists estimate that it dates back all the way to the early 1980s.

  Old people get all emotional and weepy-eyed whenever they walk through the gates because Goodfellow Stadium has hosted a bunch of “memorable moments.” Whatever that means.

  The stadium has a rickety domed roof that slides open and closed, so it can host any kind of sport in any conditions, except maybe a category 5 hurricane or a direct hit from an asteroid.

  On this particular day, my friends and I got into Goodfellow Stadium for free, as usual, by helping the concessions workers unload boxes from delivery trucks. As a bonus they always give us a treat of our choice.

  Joey selected a churro because his tiny, revved-up central nervous system demands a constant supply of sugar.

  Carlos grabbed a family-size bag of roasted peanuts. He sucks the salt off and then chews up and swallows the peanuts, shell and all.

  Becky and I chose the same treat—an Eskimo Pie. It’s vanilla ice cream covered in chocolate. In case you don’t already know, it’s pretty much nature’s near-perfect food. (Not a commercial endorsement!)

  We were at the stadium to watch our hometown professional soccer team, the Goodfellow Wiseguys, play an exhibition match against FC Barcelona, a hotshot soccer team from Spain.

  Our team was getting slaughtered by the Spanish team, one goal to zip.

  I wasn’t thrilled about watching a soccer match. My friends practically had to drag me to the stadium. But Joey, Carlos, and Becky are soccer fanatics.

  Becky was especially excited. She knew all about the FC Barcelona team. She even knew the first and last names and personal backgrounds of every one of their hotshot players.

  We were sitting way up in the very top bleachers, right under where the lice-infested pigeons roost.

  Our good friend Billionaire Bill was walking around the upper decks of Goodfellow Stadium blasting an air horn to scare the pigeons out of the rafters so that spectators wouldn’t need umbrellas to protect their heads. If you know what I mean.

  Bill is the stadium�
�s official “pigeon-control officer.”

  He calls himself a “bleacher bum” because Bill actually lives in a cramped “apartment” beneath the bleachers for free in return for his important pigeon duties.

  Bill once was a very successful and respected rocket scientist. Or a star player in the NBA. Maybe an umbrella salesman. I forget.

  Anyway, his previous life apparently got way too comfortable, so he decided to shake things up and get out of what he calls his “comfort zone.”

  Next to my mom and dad, Billionaire Bill is my favorite adult role model in the entire world.

  Bill took a break from blasting the air horn at the pigeons and sat down with us.

  He usually offers all kinds of wisdom that anyone would be foolish to ignore. But this time Bill looked down on the soccer field and said something that I didn’t exactly agree with.

  There was less than a minute left in the match between the Wiseguys and the hotshot Spanish guys and a grand total of one goal had been scored. What’s magic about that?

  To me, it was boring to watch. So I expressed my honest opinion about the most popular game in the entire universe.

  I didn’t say it very loud or anything. It was more like a mumble, but I immediately regretted saying it—especially because I used the h-word.

  The Power Structure (Mom and Dad) practically made me poke my finger with a needle and sign my name in blood on a legal contract promising to never use that word. Ever.

  And on top of that, Becky heard me.

  Derp!

  She turned and stared at me for what felt like three hours, but it was probably only three seconds. Then Becky stood up and, without saying a word, walked down from the bleachers and out of Goodfellow Stadium while the boring soccer match was still in progress.

  Billionaire Bill looked at me as if I’d just cut cheese. Then he got up and went back to earning his rent by terrorizing lice-infested pigeons with an air horn.

  About ten seconds after Becky and Bill left, the Goodfellow Wiseguys scored back-to-back goals in the final seconds and creamed the hotshot soccer team from Spain, two goals to one.

  And I’m not even making that up!

  CHAPTER 3

  Becky tried to avoid me at school the next day.

  That’s really hard to do at Spiro T. Agnew Middle School because students are packed into a building that is barely big enough to fit everyone. And it smells like melted crayons.

  The school was built in the ancient 1970s. I think it might be a historic site like one of those pyramids in Egypt where dead pharaohs are lying around just trying to get some rest for all eternity.

  Our school was named after a vice president who resigned from office for being corrupt. I don’t know what he did, but it must have been serious. I don’t think vice presidents resign just because they get caught chewing gum during a meeting or for speaking without raising their hand.

  Anyway, it’s hard to avoid running into other students at Spiro. The hallways are very narrow. Everyone migrates between classes like wildebeest with backpacks, but there’s not much noise because the hallways are carpeted.

  Why? I don’t know. You’d have to ask Mother T. She’s the school principal who had the loud linoleum ripped out and quiet carpeting installed.

  Mother T insists that students whisper—whisper—while struggling just to survive during the migration between classes. She is a tiny and frail woman, but Mother T has a mysterious power over students’ brains, just like that old geezer in the Star Wars movies.

  Becky had dodged me in the carpeted hallway between first and second periods. But the migration pattern between second and third periods put us face-to-face in the hallway.

  When we met up, I did that remorseful thing where you lower your eyes and shuffle feet and stick hands in pockets and try to apologize but nothing comes out of your mouth.

  Becky is probably the nicest person in the world, with Nature’s Near-Perfect Smile, so she wasn’t even angry or anything. Mostly she seemed disappointed.

  Becky asked if I had ever played soccer.

  I did mess around with a soccer ball a few times, but I admitted that I’d never actually played soccer, like in an organized game.

  Er . . . I lowered my eyes. Shuffled feet. Stuck hands in my pockets.

  Becky squeezed past me and disappeared into the mass migration in the carpeted hallway of Spiro T. Agnew Middle School.

  If you want to know the truth, I’d much rather have a best friend be angry with me because then I’d know exactly how to respond. A sincere apology, without wimpy excuses, usually smooths things over.

  Disappointment, though, is harder to fix.

  CHAPTER 4

  When I got home from school, I went to my bedroom and let Fido out of his cage.

  I happen to love animals, and I have several pets.

  Fido is my pet boa constrictor. He is by far the coolest pet in the entire universe. Fido can grow to ten feet, which is big enough to swallow a French poodle.

  And my family just happens to have a French poodle. Frenchy is by far the most demented dog in the entire universe. And I’m not even exaggerating.

  Frenchy lives under my bed and only comes out when it’s absolutely necessary to “do his business” in the backyard.

  Frenchy doesn’t do normal dog stuff like playing fetch or vomiting on clean carpets or rolling in the rotting corpses of salmon.

  I think he’d actually like doing that dog stuff, but Frenchy has never even tried.

  He has his little comfort zone under my bed, where he just lies around and thinks about, er, whatever demented poodles think about all day.

  I plopped down on my bed to think of a way to make up for opening my big mouth in front of Becky and my friends at the boring soccer match.

  I kicked around some ideas . . .

  Buy her an Eskimo Pie?

  Lame.

  Compliment her Nature’s Near-Perfect Smile?

  Lamer.

  Offer to carry her tray in the cafeteria?

  Lamest.

  I was stumped.

  Then Fido wandered under my bed, in a snake sort of way. Frenchy growled and barked and tried to act all threatening because Fido had invaded his precious comfort zone.

  Fido blew him off, though, because snakes rarely get intimidated. As a sign of friendship, Fido “kicked” a tennis ball that had been gathering dust under my bed for at least five years.

  Snakes have excellent tail-eye coordination.

  The ball rolled into the middle of the room, and Frenchy crawled out from under my bed and retrieved the dusty tennis ball just like a normal dog!

  Frenchy immediately reverted to his old ways and crawled back under my bed, but Fido had done something no one else in my family had been able to do. The snake had gotten the psychotic poodle out of his comfort zone—even if it was only for a few seconds.

  That reminded me of wise advice my grandpa Jim taught me but that, apparently, I had forgotten.

  Quick Time-Out about Grandpa Jim

  Gramps lives on a sailboat on the island of Maui in Hawaii with Ulupalakua, an African gray parrot who has the vocabulary of a thirty-five-year-old man with a snotty attitude. And I’m not even making that up.

  He talks in complete snotty sentences.

  (I’m not exactly sure why grandpa doesn’t just open the hatch of his sailboat and command his snotty pal to fly off to some other more appropriate living situation.)

  I don’t see Grandpa Jim very often because he rarely leaves Hawaii. He’s sort of a hermit. Gramps has long hair and a beard and overgrown eyebrows that look like caterpillars with lousy personal hygiene.

  But he sends me texts practically every day and sometimes he attaches videos of Ulupalakua making snotty comments about current fashion and music trends.

  My dad told me that Grandpa Jim is a veteran of a war that happened way back in the days before smartphones were invented.

  During one of Grandpa Jim’s rare visits to our house, he no
ticed at dinner that I wasn’t eating the broccoli that was being served.

  I had never eaten broccoli. My parents had tried to get me to eat it, but I didn’t like the way it looked or smelled, so I figured the taste wouldn’t exactly fry my burger. They finally gave up.

  But Grandpa Jim loves broccoli, so he jabbed me with his elbow and whispered in my ear.

  I don’t know why, but advice from a grandparent always seems more reasonable than advice from a parent.

  So I tried the broccoli. It didn’t make me gag or lapse into convulsions, but it didn’t exactly fry my burger.

  And I was worried that eating broccoli would make my eyebrows grow into caterpillars with lousy personal hygiene.

  I remembered Grandpa Jim’s advice after Frenchy briefly crawled out of his comfort zone to fetch the dusty tennis ball.

  Don’t knock it until you try it.

  There was only one thing to do if I was going to save my friendship with Becky O’Callahan.

  No! Not that.

  I made up my mind to suck it up, break out of my comfort zone, and try out for the Spiro T. Agnew soccer team.

  CHAPTER 5

  By the time I got to school the next day, I was having second thoughts about playing soccer with my Foot-Eye Dweeb-Itis. I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of the entire world.

  But at lunch break, it became clear that I really didn’t have a choice.

  In the cafeteria, where gossip is like a nasty virus with no vaccine, I sensed that people were talking about me.

  I thought someone at school had spilled the beans about my “I hate soccer” comment.

  I went through the food line and got a plate of the “Mighty Plumbers Special,” which was just canned tuna dumped into a vat of pinto beans.

  Then I walked with my tray toward the C Central table, where Joey, Carlos, Becky, and I usually sit.