The Rookie Bookie

by L. Jon Wertheim

  Listening to his introduction, I almost started to crack up, but I held it together. “Yes, sir,” I said. “I’m ready.”

  “Okay,” he said, staying in character. “Everyone at your school is suddenly interested in gambling on professional football games.”

  Did I hear that right? Did he really just—

  “This is cleeeeearly against school rules. Kids? Gambling on football? That’s not right. But your usual good judgment eluuuuudes you, Mitch. And you do it anyway.”

  I did hear it right.

  My classmates were starting to laugh.

  “Here’s the question, Mitch Sloan: You bet ten dollars one week and win eighteen when your team proves victorrrrious.”

  Wait, he even knows the amounts? How is that possible?

  “The second week, you waaaaager ten dollars and lose the bet. The question: What integer represents your total winnings?”

  I stood frozen like one of those lawn gnomes. Except that lawn gnomes don’t blush from a combination of shame and embarrassment.

  “I’ll repeat the question: What integer represents your winnings from gaaaambling?”

  Oh, that word again. I may as well give him the right answer.

  “Minus two,” I finally whispered, my heart beating faster than ever.

  “Yes! You wagered twenty dollars and made eighteen. So your winnings come to an integer of minus two! Which means you actually lost two dollars. Thanks for playing, Mitch. You have made your classmates—and yourself—so, so proud.”

  For the first time in Mr. R.’s math class, the bell couldn’t ring soon enough.

  From there, my day somehow got worse. Of course it did. It’s like a rule of middle school. If something goes wrong in the morning, you can bet that something else will go wrong in the afternoon. Every now and then, you get a day when you should have stayed in bed. And this was one of those days.

  I walked into fifth-period science class, where Mrs. Wolff always collects the homework right after the bell rings. I reached into my folder to pull out a worksheet she’d assigned about continental drift. I always keep my homework in the pocket on the left side. But when I looked, it was empty. Hmmm. That’s strange.

  I opened my science textbook, thinking maybe I had folded the worksheet in half and left it in the book. But when I fanned out the pages, nothing fell out. Maybe it was in my locker. But I couldn’t go back to check without a hall pass. And Mrs. Wolff wasn’t going to give me one of those—at least not until after the homework was collected.

  I got that awful panicky feeling. You know, when your mouth goes dry, like all the saliva has been drained. When your stomach feels like it’s doing a gymnastics routine. And then your palms get all the moisture that’s missing from your mouth.

  As I started flipping through my science folder one last, desperate time, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and it was Clint Grayson, flashing a smile that revealed teeth the color of creamed corn. When his lips turned up, I could see the beginning of the mustache he was growing.

  “Looking for this?” he said in his goofy voice, holding up my homework.

  “Give it to me!” I said, feeling the anger start to flare up.

  “I would,” he said, “except for one little thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t really want to,” he snarled.

  “Give. Me. My. Homework,” I said again. Panic was totally giving way to rage.

  “Do you want to try and make me?” he asked.

  This felt like a dance I hadn’t done in a while. The Bully Dance. And the step-by-step choreography was coming back to me.

  You know what I hate the most about bullies? It’s not just that they humiliate you. It’s that they turn everyone else against you, too. As Clint teased me, I looked back and saw that Mark Sterner was laughing, along with a lot of other kids. Rudy Matthews was grinning and Rachel Miller was snickering with a hand over her mouth.

  I didn’t even care about the homework. This is going to sound arrogant, and probably annoying, too, but I knew I was going to get a good final grade in science, even if I got a zero on this particular assignment.

  I cared more that Clint was embarrassing me in front of other kids. Mark and Rudy and Rachel? All of them were part of the betting pool. Mark was in my fantasy football league. Rudy and I had played H-O-R-S-E during recess just last week. Why were they siding with Clint? It’s like they wanted to be on the side of the person with more power, even if he was mean and wrong and acting like a jerk.

  I wasn’t going to overpower Clint and get my homework back. I knew that, and so did he. So I tried to act like a businessman and treat this as a negotiation.

  “Okay,” I said, rolling my eyes. “What do I have to do to get my homework back?”

  He had his answer ready. “Give me one of them football bets for free.”

  No way. That was a deal breaker, as they say in business.

  1) Jamie and I had agreed that we wouldn’t make any decisions without first talking to each other.

  2) If I did that for Clint, every kid who wanted a free bet would just steal my homework and hold it for ransom. I’d be vulnerable. And Jamie might be, too.

  3) It was just flat-out wrong. I wasn’t going to let this jerk get what he wanted, just because he was bigger than I was, and a star on the football team, and he had my homework assignment in his disgusting hands.

  4) A basic business rule: If you give something away for free, it’s not worth as much anymore.

  “No deal,” I said.

  “Okay, then. Have it your way.” He tossed the paper back at me. Of course it drifted to the floor and I had to lean down to grab it.

  I couldn’t believe Clint Grayson had given my homework back so easily. I’d said no to him, and he hadn’t even cared? What was up with that? Bullies never let you get away with “no.” They always find a way to make you pay.

  Clint saw that I was confused.

  “Don’t need one little piece of homework,” he said, grinning. “I’ve got something a lot better. Should have given me my free bet, little Mitch. You’re gonna be sorry about that.”

  I turned my back on him and sat down, like I didn’t care. But it was an act. If he was trying to make me nervous, it was working.

  CHAPTER 10

  BE RICH OR BE HAPPY?

  School let out at 3:15, but that still left plenty of time for the day to get even worse. Which it did. When I got off the bus and walked to our front door, I got that panicky feeling for the second time. I couldn’t find my house keys.

  That used to happen to me all the time in California. This was the first time it had happened since we moved. With all the distractions of the day—the one hundred and twenty dollars in cash that I was carrying in my pockets; Mr. R. making it clear that he knew about the football pool; Clint Grayson and his rotting teeth, not to mention his threats—I’d forgotten to take my keys off the peg in my locker.

  Even though it would mean risking a lecture filled with words like “responsibility” and “accountability,” I grabbed my bike and headed to Mom and Dad’s store to borrow their keys.

  When I got there, Dad was sitting on his stool, legs crossed, playing his guitar. I recognized the first chords of “Sweet Home Alabama.” Not a customer in sight.

  “Hey, Mitch,” he said. “How’s tricks?”

  “What tricks?” I asked.

  “How’s tricks?” he said slowly. “The kids don’t say that one anymore?”

  “Maybe not so much,” I said. Add it to the list.… “Where’s Mom?”

  “In the studio, working on a new painting,” he said, readjusting his ponytail. “Though I’m not sure what for.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think we underestimated Indiana as an art market,” Dad said, chuckling. “Not a lot of demand, you might say. That sounds like one of those business phrases you use, Mitch.”

  “Are you worried?”

  “No,” Dad replied. “No
t at all.” But I could tell he was.

  Now my lousy day at school seemed almost silly. This was serious. Without thinking it through, I reached into my pockets and pulled out five of the six twenty-dollar bills I had stuffed in there.

  “That reminds me,” I said, unfurling the money. “There’s a kid in my grade whose mom wanted to buy a painting from you. One that costs a hundred dollars.”

  “Really?” Dad said. “You’re not pulling my leg?”

  “No, I have the money right here,” I said. “It was a watercolor.…”

  “A hundred-dollar watercolor? Hmmm. Oh, it must be the small one of the covered bridge,” Dad said, suddenly excited.

  “Yeah, that’s the one,” I lied.

  “But why didn’t your friend’s mom just come by herself?”

  “Um, uh, I think that she was too busy with work,” I lied again.

  “Well, that’s too bad. I would have liked to explain the details to her,” Dad said. “Mom worked hard on getting the shade of red just right.”

  He started to wrap up the painting but then stopped. “Do you know the woman’s name? I’d like to write her a thank-you note and let her know that she can exchange the painting if it’s not the one she had in mind. I’ll put her on the mailing list, too.”

  “Uh, no,” I said.

  “What’s your friend’s last name?” he said. “I can look up their address and drop it off on the way home from work.”

  “I forget,” I said, less than smoothly. “I’ll just take it.”

  Fortunately, Dad doesn’t really do suspicion. He’s too trusting, too look-on-the-bright-side, and too all-around nice of a guy for that. Besides, he didn’t figure I could have possibly had a hundred dollars on my own. “Well, I guess if she gave you a hundred dollars, she must really want it!”

  “Exactly.”

  “Your mom loved that painting,” Dad said. “This sure will make her happy!”

  And me, too. I was out a hundred dollars, but I still had twenty in my pocket and a bunch more at home. I had done a good thing for Mom and Dad. (Plus, I was now the proud owner of a painting of a covered bridge.) Once Dad applied the last layer of Bubble Wrap, I stuck the package into my backpack and rode off.

  On the way home, I realized that, with all my panicked lying, I had completely forgotten to get the keys, which was the reason I went to the store in the first place. Now I had some time to kill, so I took a detour past Jamie’s house. She was sitting on her front steps typing on a laptop when I rode up. “Hey, Mitch!” she shouted.

  “Oh, hey,” I said from my bike. “Hey, Jamie.”

  “What are you doing around here?” she asked.

  “Just out for a bike ride,” I said. Another lie. They were really starting to pile up.

  Bending the truth for Dad by pretending that the mom of a mystery classmate wanted to spend a hundred bucks on a painting? I could get away with that. Bending the truth for Jamie? That was tougher.

  “Yeah, right.” She smirked. “If you wanted to hang out, you should have just asked. Wait a sec for me to put my dad’s laptop back in the house. I’ll get my bike, too.”

  We rode around the neighborhood. Since there weren’t many cars, we mostly pedaled side by side. I was going to tell her about Clint Grayson stealing my homework in science, but she’d already heard about it.

  “You should have told him to put his name on it and hand it in as his own,” she said. “It would have been the only time in his life he could’ve experienced the feeling of seeing an A on the top of the page.”

  That made me feel better. “Before that, in Mr. R.’s class, he pretended to be a game show host,” I went on. “When it was my turn to be the contestant, my problem was all about a football gambling pool.”

  “Probably just a coincidence,” she said nonchalantly.

  “A betting pool where you put down ten dollars for the chance to win eighteen?”

  “Oh,” said Jamie. “A coincidence. Ish.”

  “And then to top it all off, I left the keys to my house in my locker,” I said.

  “So, not such a good day, huh?”

  “No,” I agreed. “Not really.”

  “It’ll get better,” she promised. “I mean, things do, right? You go through these crappy days and nothing goes right and you think, okay, this is my life, this is what it’s always going to be like. And the next day it’s all back to normal. Hey, I lost something, too, today. My notebook. That’s why I was working on Dad’s laptop when you accidentally-on-purpose came by.”

  I let that crack go. But, wait—

  “You lost the notebook?” I said, skidding to a stop. Jamie sailed on ahead. “With all our information in it, who bet on what teams and how much?”

  She stopped her bike and turned back to me.

  “It’ll turn up,” she said. “I’m not worried. Come on, Mitch, ride.”

  She wasn’t worried? That made one of us.

  When we got to the Meadowbrook Park apartment complex, we stopped riding and sat on a picnic table.

  “Let me ask you something, Mitch,” she said. “What are you doing with all your money?”

  I couldn’t tell her how I’d bought a painting to help my parents’ lame business out. That was kind of embarrassing. Plus, I didn’t want her to catch me in another lie. “Nothing, really,” I said. “It’s mostly in my room. Why?”

  “Why? Because we’ve each made three hundred and fifty dollars already. That’s a lot of allowance. And I haven’t really spent much of it either. That’s kind of weird, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think that having money makes me happy. And if I spent it, I wouldn’t have it.”

  “So are you?”

  “Am I what?” I asked.

  “Happy,” Jamie said. “Are you glad to have three hundred and fifty dollars you didn’t have just a few weeks ago?”

  Actually, in my case it was two hundred and fifty. But I didn’t tell her that. “I guess,” I said. “I mean, yeah. It makes me feel better, having that money around. In case… you know.” She nodded, remembering what I’d told her about my parents.

  “But really,” I went on, “it just feels good to have an idea no else had. It felt good to have a plan and then put it into action. It felt good that my actions turned into a profit.”

  Plus, it felt good to be liked by a bunch of other kids. Or sort-of-liked. Being the Rookie Bookie was better than being “Mitch with a swirly.” And it felt best of all to have Jamie as a business partner.

  But was I actually happier being rich? I hadn’t thought about it before, but—no. Not exactly. I was still me, still Mitch. Not that much had changed because of the cash stuffed into the back of my dresser drawer.

  Our conversation was interrupted when we both looked up at the sky. It had turned from gray into something uglier, almost the color of a bruise.

  “Just a Midwestern fall storm, California boy,” Jamie said.

  “Is it coming or going?” I asked.

  “Coming,” she said. “It’s definitely coming.”

  CHAPTER 11

  THE PRISONER’S DILEMMA

  Then, on Monday, like someone flipped a switch, everything came to an end. My smooth adjustment to a new town and a new school. My booming business. Pretty much my life as I knew it.

  I was sitting in math class, learning about irrational numbers, when static crackled over the loudspeaker. The voice of Ms. Minton, the office administrator, blasted through the air. “Mitch Sloan, please report to the assistant principal’s office. I repeat: Would Mitch Sloan please report to Assistant Principal Allegra’s office?” She phrased it like a question, but it was really a command.

  I’m going to let you in on a little secret. If you’re worried about getting sent to the principal’s office, well, forget it. The person you really have to fear is the assistant principal. Principals are like CEOs of big companies, captains of big ships, generals of big armies. They’re in charge of the whole enterprise, and they s
pend most of their time in boring meetings, dealing with Big Issues. They deal with parents, with the superintendent, with the newspapers, and so on. They don’t usually deal with the students.

  The assistant principals? They’re the eyes and ears of their schools, the ones who really know what’s going on. They’re the ones you have to watch out for.

  Without saying a word—in fact, without even looking me in the eye—Mr. Rafferty scribbled out a hall pass and put it in my hand. He looked disappointed. Like he had asked me for a favor that I forgot to do. I made the long walk down to the office. My guess was that Mrs. Allegra was not calling me because she wanted to offer a belated welcome to the new kid, or to tell me that I had won Student-of-the-Week honors. I had a sinking feeling this was about one thing and one thing only.

  I tried to put the negative thoughts out of my head, and I walked into the office wearing my brightest, blue-ribbon smile, a trick I learned from one of those business books. People don’t want to make deals with somebody who looks miserable or angry. Looking cheerful and confident is the way to go.

  The smile quickly melted away when I saw Mrs. Allegra. She was sitting behind her desk, glasses riding low on her nose. She was peering down at some sort of report, looking as though she had just smelled an overflowing toilet.

  I could see a framed picture next to her computer. She was posed with two boys who looked about Kevin’s age—her sons, I guessed—in front of the Saint Louis Arch. Everyone was wearing shorts and sunglasses. It was probably a family trip over the summer. Mrs. Allegra looked a lot happier in that photo than she did now.

  “Hi, I’m Mitch!” I said as cheerfully as I could, extending my arm for a handshake. She didn’t look up. This. Was. About. To. Get. Ugly.