by Lindsay Eyre
Contents
Half Title
Title Page
Dedication
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
Sylvie Scruggs’s Rules for Being a No-Grader
About the Author
About the Illustrator
Copyright
It was the bottom of the last inning of the championship game. My team, the Raging Bulls, was up against the Red-Hot Devils. The Red-Hot Devils were ahead 4–5. I was on second base, waiting for Kimberly Sacks, our best hitter, to come to bat. We had two outs already. If we got one more out, the game would be over — the whole season would be over — and my team would lose.
Sweat dripped down my forehead. My heart thundered in my eardrums. I’d never been in a championship game before. My team had never made it this far. But we were going to win. I knew it.
I crouched low as Kimberly walked to the plate. I glared at Jamie Redmond, the meanest pitcher in the league.
Kimberly got into position. She brought her bat up to her shoulder.
Jamie Redmond just stood there.
“Throw the ball already,” I muttered as I inched away from second base.
Jamie whirled around suddenly and tossed the ball to the second baseman, but I was already back, my foot on the plate. Too late, I thought. Ha ha.
Kimberly got ready again. She looked like a statue of baseballness. My heart twittered. Kimberly was going to whack that ball so hard, it would be a homer, and she and I would fly into home plate for the victory. The score would be 6–5. The Raging Bulls would win!
Jamie threw. Kimberly swung.
She missed.
“Strike!” the umpire called.
“Ha!” the second baseman next to me shouted.
“That’s okay, Kimberly!” I hollered. “Next one’s yours!”
Jamie stomped her foot three times to show how awesome she was. Then she got back into position.
Kimberly raised her bat.
Jamie threw. Kimberly swung. Kimberly missed.
“Str-iiiiiiiike two!” the annoying umpire shouted.
Kimberly stepped up to the plate again. Revenge was written on her forehead. She was not going to strike out this time. Hands on my knees, I scootched a little ways toward third.
“Time-out!” Jamie shouted.
“Time-out?” I said. “Right now?”
Jamie waved at her infield to come closer. The second baseman gave me an I’ve-got-my-eye-on-you look and jogged up to Jamie, who had stepped off the mound. The first baseman, the third baseman, the shortstop, and the catcher joined them. They gathered in a huddle. Jamie was giving them instructions I couldn’t hear. I scootched out a little farther.
When they were done, the second baseman walked back to his base. The others returned to their spots too. All except for Jamie. She was bending over her knees like there was a miniature lion on her shoe telling her a secret.
Kimberly was ready to hit again. Everyone else was waiting. “Come on already!” I shouted.
Jamie whirled around and chucked the ball toward me as hard as she could. The second baseman leaped into the air, caught the ball, and tagged me on the shoulder.
“Ow!” I shouted. “You can’t do that! She wasn’t back on the mound. It was still time out!”
“Totally legal,” Jamie said, smirking a smirkity smirk.
“You’re out!” the umpire called. “Game over! The Red-Hot Devils win!”
“Ump!” I cried. “That’s not fair. The game hadn’t started again!”
“What grade do you think she’s in?” the second baseman asked Jamie.
“I don’t know,” Jamie said. “Maybe second or third. Watch — she’ll probably start crying.”
“I will not start crying!” I shouted. “And I’m in fourth grade next year. Fourth grade.”
Jamie and her friend, her follower, her munion, were jumping around with their team, giving each other high fives like they’d just won the championship game.
My team came out on the field.
“I can’t believe you fell for that,” Harry said.
“We would have won,” Sammy said.
“It was soooooooo close,” Nehu added.
My mom, our coach, just looked at me with a sad smile and mouthed, “It’s okay,” which was a big fat lie.
Georgie, Miranda, and Josh ran over to me from the bleachers. “They pulled the classic the-pitcher-calls-time-out-to-psych-out-the-baseman trick,” Georgie said. “I saw it coming.”
“You did not see it coming,” I said, because he thinks he knows everything about baseball and he does not.
“What an exciting game!” Miranda said. “I’ve never seen a game end without a final pitch.”
“You were brave to try to steal third,” a tiny boy said. I looked down at him. Way down. I recognized him from somewhere — Georgie’s baseball team, I think. He was in first or second grade. “Too bad it didn’t work,” he said.
“It almost worked,” Josh said as Jamie Redmond walked by with her bag over her shoulder.
“Yeah,” Jamie said. “Too bad almost isn’t enough.”
“You just got lucky!” I shouted at her. “Plus you cheated! Next time, we’ll beat the pants off you!”
“Thanks for the warning,” she said. “But if we ever play again, I don’t think I’ll be the loser.”
“Oh yeah?” I said, my fists on my hips. “Oh yeah?”
Jamie kept walking like I wasn’t even shouting at her.
“Don’t worry,” Miranda said in her grown-up voice. “I’m sure you’ll beat Jamie next year. Let’s go back to my house and see if the cockroaches have molted yet.”
“I’d like to see cockroaches molting,” the tiny boy on Georgie’s baseball team said. “Can I come?”
“No,” I said, because I was too tired to deal with first graders.
Miranda grabbed my hand and dragged me over to the dugout. I didn’t resist. We’d lost the championship! My team was mad at me. My friends were being way too nice. My mom was busy trying to convince my team that everyone can be a winner if they never give up, which was also a big fat lie. My twin brothers, Tate and Cale, were at my grandma’s house, and my dad wasn’t at my very first championship game ever, because he’d just won a big promotion at work and he had to go on a superimportant business trip. My body sagged with sadness.
Miranda helped me gather up my baseball stuff, and we started to walk home. I stopped for a moment to look at the field I wouldn’t set foot on again for a whole entire year.
Last game of the season. The championship game. Lost. Because of me.
Next time, I promised myself, you will win. And next time, no matter what, Jamie Redmond will lose.
Summer ended. September came. School started because it does that. And my mom finally, finally had her baby. We named her Ginny. She’s cute, she’s perfect, and she’s noisy.
“You look tired,” Miranda said to me one Monday in October. Georgie, Josh, Miranda, and I were at the back of our classroom putting away our backpacks.
“My dad came home from a trip at one o’clock in the morning,” I said, sounding like a panther with a sore throat. “He woke Ginny up to give her a kiss, and she started to scream, which woke up the twins. Then the twins woke me up so I could say hello to Dad, and that woke up my mom.”
“Oh no!” Miranda said, probably thinking of her nice, quiet house.
“
It took forever to calm everyone down,” I said. “And I had to get up extra-early to help the twins make their lunches, because my dad was too tired and that’s supposed to be his job.”
“Your dad makes really good lunches,” Josh said, probably thinking of his mom, who does not.
“And then Tate and Cale decided to make sandwiches without bread again,” I said, letting my head fall to my desk. “They just plop the peanut butter and jelly in a Baggie.”
“Really?” Georgie said as if he might want to try that.
“Class!” my teacher, Ms. Bloomen, said. She clapped her hands. “Please take your seats. We have a visitor.”
A tall, tall boy with dark, curly hair, dark skin, and a shirt that said DON’T MESS WITH ME — I KNOW SCIENCE stepped into the room.
“Ooo,” Miranda whispered as we walked to our desks. Miranda loves science.
“This is Max,” my teacher said. “He’s a student from the high school. He is a Science Olympiad champion and you would all do well to look up to him.”
Miranda nearly fell off her seat.
“He is also a hockey champion, and” — Ms. Bloomen sighed — “I believe that’s why he’s here today.”
Hockey! Now I nearly fell off my seat. I love hockey!
“Thanks, Ms. Bloomen,” Max said. “That is indeed why I’m here. We’re starting a hockey league for kids in this area, and everyone in this room can sign up. The season will begin in two weeks, and, believe me, it will be awesome. Hockey is full of banging and hitting and scoring and shouting. But you wear lots of padding so you don’t get hurt. We’ve got used equipment for you to borrow, so it won’t cost much. Hockey is the best!”
“Well!” Ms. Bloomen said with a frown. “That does sound exciting. Everyone, raise your hand if you’d like more information about hockey.”
I raised my hand high. My heart was thumping. My eyes felt sparkly. I was good at ice-skating. I was fast and I could do spins. My dad was a hockey champion when he was in high school, just like Max. He used to take me ice-skating on daddy dates, back when he wasn’t so busy.
I looked at Josh, who slowly raised his hand. No other hands went up.
I gave Georgie a fierce look, the kind a jaguar might give a friend who was supposed to raise his hand and say he wanted to play hockey.
Georgie did not raise his hand.
I gave Miranda a nicer look, the kind a beetle might give its friend to encourage her to play hockey.
Miranda smiled back, but she did not raise her hand.
Max handed Josh and me hockey sign-up papers.
“They want to play too,” I said, pointing at Georgie and Miranda.
Max gave both of them papers, even though they tried to give them back.
“And my dad can be the coach,” I said. “He’s great at hockey.”
“Awesome,” Max said. “We always need coaches.” He winked at me. “We always need team captains too.” Then he glided out of the room like he was on skates.
“Awesome,” I whispered.
On the way home from school, I gave my friends a talking-to.
“So we’re all going to play hockey, right? It will be super fun, because we’ll learn how to play together and we’ll get to go to practices and games together and we’ll be together all the time, and it will be super fun.” I said all of this with great funness in my voice.
“Oh, Sylvie, I don’t know,” Miranda said. “I’ve got the science fair coming up, and I really need to spend every spare minute doing research. My project last year could have been so much better if I’d worked harder.”
“You took first place in the district,” I said.
She waved her hand at this, like first place meant nothing in the world of science. “If that had been a real science competition, the experiment would have been rejected because —”
“It’s October,” I said. “When is the science fair?”
“April,” Miranda said.
“That’s six months away, and I’ll help you with your project.” I put my hand over my heart. “Come on, you never do sports with me. Never.”
Miranda’s forehead went scrunchy. “That’s because I don’t like sports. Unless I’m watching you play.”
I sighed, because convincing everyone was taking forever. “Hockey isn’t a regular sport,” I said. “Hockey is ice-skating with some other stuff, and you love to ice-skate, so you will love hockey!”
“I sort of like ice-skating,” she said.
“But you also like math,” I said, “and hockey is full of math! There are angles and triangles and squares and lines. The whole rink is an oval, and ice is probably a physical equation.”
“Okay!” Miranda said. “Fine! I’ll play hockey. But it’s just for nine weeks, right?”
I smiled. I patted her on the shoulder. “It’s just for nine weeks.” I turned to Georgie.
“No,” he said.
“You’ll love it,” I said. “It’s like baseball, but with ice. And no bases.”
Georgie had his no-way-am-I-listening-to-you face on. “It’s not like baseball on ice,” he said. “It’s like soccer on ice, and I don’t like soccer. Or ice.”
My mouth fell open. How could someone not like ice?
“Hockey hurts,” Georgie said. “It’s the only sport where you run into walls.”
“Not true,” I said. “You run into walls in swimming. And golf.”
“I saw a hockey player fall on his head once,” Josh said. “But he had a helmet on, so he was probably okay. He only lost one tooth.”
“I think they make pucks softer for kids,” I said. “So you’ll play?” I asked Georgie.
“No,” he said.
* * *
Later that night, I tried to tell my mom and dad about hockey, but Tate and Cale had found a mountain of red ants right before dinner, and they needed an emergency bath.
I followed my dad into the bathroom and jumped up to sit on the counter. “I’m going to play hockey,” I told him. “And Josh and Miranda and almost Georgie want to play too.”
“That’s great!” Dad said as he looked at his watch. “Would you two get in the bath now? I’m in a hurry. Stop it, Cale, scratching will just make it worse.”
“What’s the oatmeal for?” Cale said with wide, scared eyes.
“For your bath,” Dad said.
“Baths don’t eat oatmeal,” Tate said.
I stuck my head close to my dad to get his attention. “You could be my coach.”
“The bath is not going to eat the oatmeal,” Dad said to Tate. “It’s supposed to soothe your ant bites. Don’t you dare dump that in the toilet!”
There was a plop and a splash. Too late.
I waved my hands in front of my dad’s face. “Max says they always need coaches. You could come to my practices. Like when you coached me in T-ball? Remember?”
“I wish I could,” he said. “Where is that blasted plunger?”
“On the roof,” Cale said.
“We’re using it for antennas,” Tate said, hopping in the bath.
“You’d be a fantastic coach,” I told him. “The best in the whole league!”
“You two’ve been going on the roof again?” my dad said.
“Yes,” Cale said, getting in the bath with his underwear on.
“No,” Tate said.
“I might be team captain,” I told my dad. “Max said.”
My dad was trying to wrestle Cale out of the bathtub, but he paused to look at me. “I was captain of my hockey team.” He smiled a great big smile. “You’d be a good team captain, sweetheart. I’d love to see that.”
My mom stepped into the doorway with Ginny in her arms. “Sylvie,” she said, her right eyebrow scrunched up at me, “I’ve asked you and asked you to clean up the bag of potato bugs you’ve got living in the hall.”
“They’re not living,” I said. “They’re dead. I’m storing them for Miranda.” My dad was leaving the bathroom. “Where are you going?” I asked.
“But I might be in bed,” I said, following him down the hallway. “And we need to talk about hockey.”
“Later,” he said. He opened the door to the garage like he was really going to go.
“Are you sure you don’t want to coach?” I said.
“Bye!” he shouted as the door slammed.
“Bye,” I whispered to the empty room.
* * *
Georgie found me in our classroom the next day. We had some time before the bell rang, so I was cleaning out Josh’s cubby.
“Thanks a lot,” Georgie said.
“You’re welcome,” I said as I threw away a paper airplane. There were lots of things that Georgie should thank me for, and I was glad he was now realizing this.
“Your mom called my house yesterday to see if my dad would coach the hockey team, and he said yes.” Georgie did not look grateful. “Abuela made him. She told him we needed to spend more time together and since he played hockey in college, he should be my coach. Then she said I had to play too, because that nice Sylvie would be on my team.” He didn’t look like he thought I was a nice Sylvie. “What are you doing?” he said.
I moved some pencils over to the corner where I decided Josh should keep his pencils. “Josh is a disorganized person, so I am organizing him. Do you want me to organize you?” Georgie’s cubby was famous for messiness. It overflowed with potato chip crumbs, baseball mitts, and suspicious-looking green clumps.
“Don’t ever touch my stuff,” Georgie said.
I gave him a very nice smile. “My dad wanted to be the coach,” I said. “Only he couldn’t because he’s really busy with superimportant stuff. But I’m glad you finally decided to play. Our team will be awesome. We’ll crush our opponents. We’ll probably win the whole championship.”
Georgie shrugged, picked a green clump out of his cubby, sniffed it, then ate it.
“We will,” I said to reassure him. “I’m sure we’ll win the whole thing.”
Two weeks later, my mom drove Miranda and me to our first practice.
“Don’t be nervous,” I told Miranda as we pulled into the parking lot. “It probably won’t matter how good you are. Not with Georgie and me on the team. And I might be team captain.”
