The Rookie Bookie

by L. Jon Wertheim

  And it actually was. Mrs. Barnes drove us. When she picked me up, she insisted on coming inside the house to meet “the extraordinary artist” who also happened to be my mom.

  “It’s so nice to finally meet you. I can’t tell you how much I admire your work,” she said, sounding like a fan meeting a rock star she worshipped. “Your painting looks lovely in my living room. Already I’ve had three friends ask where I got it. With any luck, I’ll be sending some business your way.”

  “Well, thanks,” Dad said, covering for Mom, who seemed embarrassed. “Mitch always said that word of mouth is important for a small business like ours—it can make you or break you.”

  “Oh, and Mitch—he was a great salesman!” Mrs. Barnes went on. Now I was getting embarrassed. “Speaking of word of mouth,” she went on, “I organize a benefit for the Jonasburg schools every year. You don’t have to give me an answer right now, but we would love it if you wanted to donate a painting or a piece of pottery for the auction.”

  With Mom and Dad left to think about that, we said our good-byes and headed down Route 26. As we pulled into the huge parking lot of the Galaxy Mall, I realized that ever since I got busted for running the gambling pool, my supply of cash had really dwindled. Between donating my “ill-gotten gains,” giving money to Kevin, and paying for school lunches, I didn’t have a whole lot left to spend.

  Ben seemed to have plenty, though, so we made a plan to meet Mrs. Barnes at the Electronics Hothouse in three hours.

  We wandered all over and eventually ended up at Sports King, the biggest sporting-goods store I had ever been to. There were posters of famous athletes on the walls, and at least a dozen TV monitors showing different sports programs. Ben went to the section that sold baseball bats, and he took some practice swings. I stayed closer to the front of the store, looking at all the running shoes. Most of the clothes I wore were Kevin’s hand-me-downs, but at least I could get my own shoes.

  As I stared at a pair of black high-tops with white stripes and a secret zipper under the tongue, I heard a girl arguing with her mother in the aisle behind me.

  “Can we get out of this store already and get you something more appropriate?” the mom said.

  “Wait—let me just see if they’ve got the new Atlanta Braves caps,” the girl said.

  “You have nice hair and you’re mashing it under a baseball hat,” the mom said. “I think it’s time for the sports phase to pass. Time to start dressing more like a teenage girl and less like a tomboy.”

  “I like the way I dress,” the girl said. “And the skirt you just showed me was hideous. It was so ugly it hurt my eyes.”

  Wait a second.

  I peered around the corner, and, yes, it was Jamie Spielberger, arguing with her mother. I saw her right away and she saw me. Then she turned away so fast she could have gotten whiplash. “Whatever, Mom,” she said. “Fine. Let’s just get out of here. This store has gotten totally lame.”

  What had been a fun afternoon had just gotten less fun. And I didn’t feel like telling Ben the whole story. I just saw Jamie. I got this weird feeling. We saw each other, but she turned and walked out of the store. Yes, I know she’s still mad at me. No, I don’t like her. Well, I like her, but not that way. Yes, you’re right that I probably shouldn’t care.

  So I kept it to myself.

  CHAPTER 15

  THERE’S NO RULE AGAINST HAVING BETTER INFORMATION

  At three o’clock we met Ben’s mom. She was buying Mr. Barnes an early Christmas gift, a pair of binoculars he could use when he went bird-watching. As Mrs. Barnes paid, the sales clerk asked if she wanted an extended warranty for twelve extra dollars.

  “What’s that?” Mrs. Barnes asked.

  “Well, if anything goes wrong with your product,” he said, “and you have an extended warranty, we’ll cover it.”

  “Don’t do it,” I said.

  “No?” she said. “Why?”

  “For a lot of reasons,” I said. “First of all, the binoculars already come with a warranty. It says so right on the box. Second, do binoculars really break that often? You’d be paying almost twenty-five percent of the price for the warranty and probably will never use it. And, if you don’t get the warranty and it does break, replacing the binoculars is not that expensive. Also, just because you have the warranty doesn’t mean you’ll be able to find it when you want to use it. It’s like those gift cards. Basically it’s a rip-off.”

  Mrs. Barnes looked at the clerk. “My advisor says no, so I think I’ll pass,” she said with a smile.

  “Suit yourself,” he said in a voice that suggested that, deep down, he knew the extended warranty was a rip-off, too.

  “Man, you know a lot about this kind of stuff,” Ben said as we walked to the car. “When I get rich and famous, you can definitely be the guy who handles my money.”

  I kind of liked that idea, helping rich and famous people manage their money. It was a job I could see myself doing. I knew I’d told Mrs. Barnes the right thing about the warranty, and she’d listened. Mom and Dad were maybe going to listen to me, too, about business ideas.

  It got me thinking, after Ben and his mom dropped me off, about helping people. Cleaning up the locker room was one thing. But anybody could do that. Even that idiot Clint Grayson.

  There might be something else I could do to help. To pay back. Something that most people wouldn’t be able to do—but I could.

  That Monday, when I got to the locker room and folded uniforms with Mr. Eads during study hall, I had my ear out for Coach Williams. I heard him coming into the locker room, and I asked Mr. Eads if I could have a quick break.

  “Sure, take off for the day,” he said. “We’re about finished here. It goes faster with two people, that’s for sure.”

  “Hey, it’s Little Sloan,” Coach Williams said when I found him. He was sitting on one of the locker room benches, and he looked really tired. “Got any more tips for an old man?”

  I didn’t really like that nickname, but that was something for later. Right now I had this idea, and it was about to come bursting out of my mouth.

  “You ever use statistics?” I asked eagerly. “When you’re thinking about what plays to run, or the strategy for a game?”

  The coach shrugged.

  “I go by my gut, mostly,” he said, not really looking at me. “Lots of experience up here.” He tapped his forehead with one finger. “But sometimes I check to see a few things. How often the other team runs the football, how often they pass. Stuff like that.”

  “Basic stuff,” I said.

  “I suppose.”

  “And it makes no sense,” I barreled on. Now the coach did look up at me, a little startled. I guess I was about to be annoying. But you know what? He needed it.

  “Why not look at all the statistics? I mean, as much as you can? There’s no rule against having more information than the other team, right?”

  That’s almost exactly what I’d said to Jamie, the first time I won the bet against her. And I’d said it to Kevin, too. Maybe he had a point about how the other kids in the betting ring didn’t know it was a competition, didn’t know they should have been using their brains against mine.

  But a football game? Everybody knows that’s a competition. Everybody knows each team is doing all they can to win.

  So I said it again, to Coach Williams. “There’s no rule against having more information than Clarksville, is there?”

  Coach Williams shook his head. “Mitch, I appreciate it. I really do. But I don’t have time to find out all the numbers, not before this weekend.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I do.”

  I knew I couldn’t do it alone, so just like every weekend for months, I called my partner.

  Unlike every other weekend, she hung up on me.

  I called her back. “Jamie, wait a minute!”

  She hung up again.

  I called her back again. “Seriously, Spielberger, knock it off!” I barked before she could slam th
e phone down. “Listen to me! I’ve got to say something to you, and I’m not calling again!”

  There was a really, really long silence, then Jamie’s voice. “Okay. I’m listening.”

  “I need your help with something,” I told her.

  “You are kidding, Sloan. Kidding. Right? And you’re not even funny.”

  “Hey, back off, will you?” I was starting to get a little mad, too. “I know we got into trouble, and I’m sorry, but—”

  “But? You’re sorry, but? Your sorry butt better come up with a better apology than that if you want some help from me!”

  “Hey!” This was not how I’d wanted this conversation to go at all. But I didn’t seem to have any control over it. I’d known for a couple of weeks that Jamie was seriously mad at me, and now, all of a sudden, I was finding out I was mad at her, too.

  I knew the gambling was my idea. I knew she’d kind of wanted to quit before we got into trouble, and I’d talked her into keeping it going.

  But that didn’t mean it was all my fault, every single thing that had happened.

  “What’s this about, Jamie? I didn’t make you take the bets! You wanted to do it, too! You came up with half the ideas! Why are you acting like I started World War III all by myself?”

  “You said we wouldn’t get into trouble! I trusted you, Mitch.”

  “Well—sorry.” There. I said it.

  “And I wanted to stop, and you wouldn’t let me!”

  “Wouldn’t let you? Come on, Jamie! I’m not some big bad guy with a machine gun over here! If you’d really wanted to quit, you would have!”

  “How was I supposed to, after you told me all that stuff about your family and how you needed the money and everything?” Her voice sounded different than I’d ever heard it before. Like she was going to cry.

  The idea made me feel less mad, and more panicky. I didn’t want to hear Jamie cry.

  “How was I supposed to just say forget it when you needed my help? How was I supposed to turn my back on a friend?”

  Oh. Wow.

  I felt just about as bad as I had when Dad gave me that hundred dollars back. I break about half the rules in school and get suspended and everything, and the thing that really makes me feel like dog crap is when somebody gives me money, and somebody else calls me a friend.

  So I did the only thing I could think to do.

  “Sorry, Jamie. Really. I didn’t think it was going to be this bad. I honestly didn’t.” I sighed. “If you want me to vanish off the face of the earth, I will. Maybe they’ll move my locker if I ask. I could change my last name to Ackerman or Baker or something if you want.”

  Jamie sniffled. Loud. “Don’t be an idiot, Sloan.”

  That seemed to be a slightly hopeful sign.

  “Anyway. Say hi to Pepper for me, okay? And never mind, I won’t ask for your help with this thing. I guess that was really stupid, thinking you’d want to help me out. I mean, it’s for Coach Williams, too, and the football team, so it’s not just for me. But I won’t bother you. Forget it.”

  “I said, don’t be an idiot. What do you need me to do?”

  Jamie came over to my place, right after I’d explained my idea. She said her parents would not be too excited about the idea of me turning up at their house. “My mom really liked you at first,” she explained, getting off her bike. “She probably thought you’d take me to the seventh-grade dance or something. But right now you’re not her favorite person.”

  Whoa. My brain went into free fall there for a second. All of a sudden I saw Jamie in a dress with one of those strange little bouquets of flowers tied to her wrist, and me in a suit. Like I even own a suit. It was a very disturbing image, and I shook it off because she was staring at me like I’d grown an extra head.

  “Are we getting to work here or what?” she demanded.

  I’d printed out all the information I could find, and all I could get from Coach Williams, too. We were going to look at all the stats from Jonasburg’s games. And we were going to look at all of Clarksville’s games. Every game, every play. We were going to be in information overload.

  What plays were the most and least successful? What kinds of defenses worked best? In which quarter did Jonasburg score the most points and the least? Were there certain penalties that the team was most likely to commit—our team, or the other one? Was Jonasburg more successful throwing the ball to the right side of the field, the left side, or the middle?

  Coach Williams had gotten me DVDs and video links of the games, and Jamie and I drank organic ginger ale and chomped our way through bags of chips as we watched. I made up a spreadsheet to keep track of everything we were discovering.

  We were discovering a lot. Like this:

  When Neil threw a pass on first down, he seemed to catch the defense off guard. Throughout the season, he had completed less than half his passes, only forty-eight percent. But when he threw the ball on first down, he threw a completion more than seventy percent of the time.

  When Jonasburg ran the ball to the right side of the field, they averaged less than one yard. When they ran to the left side, they gained more than five yards. When they ran on third down, which was rare, they gained six to seven yards.

  On average, Jonasburg gained eleven yards for every kickoff return. The three times during the season that Kevin returned a kickoff, he averaged twenty-nine yards.

  Clarksville hadn’t been called for a single pass interference penalty all season.

  Clarksville has passed the ball on almost every single third down this season.

  Ninety-two percent of Clarksville’s punts landed on the right side of the field.

  “It’s better than fantasy football,” Jamie murmured, peering over my shoulder at the computer. “It’s real football. It actually means something, you know?”

  “I guess that’s a good way to look at it,” I said. “Especially if it can save Coach Williams from getting fired.”

  There was so much I wanted to say to her. But it was like the sugar that gets stuck on the side of the shaker. Nothing came out. Luckily, Jamie kept on talking.

  “So,” she said. “How much trouble did you get in, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. Medium, I guess. Extra chores at home while I was suspended. And one day I had to work at my parents’ store.”

  But the really bad thing… I looked over at her. Should I tell her?

  I remembered her voice on the phone. Yeah. I should tell her. I explained how my dad had handed me back the money I’d spent on that painting, and how it had made me feel. She whistled.

  “But they made me give away the rest of the money,” I added. “And I decided to donate that hundred dollars, too. So I’m broke now. Remember how much money we made? I might have to borrow from Kevin pretty soon.”

  “Tell me about it,” she said. “My parents said I had to put all the money into a college fund. So I’ve got nothing left. I used to find crumpled up twenty-dollar bills in the pockets of my pants. Now I’m happy if I find a few pennies in the back of my dresser drawer. Who’d you give your money to?”

  “Actually, I didn’t give it away,” I told her. “I loaned it instead.”

  “Mitch? Seriously? What are you doing, charging interest? You think that might get you in trouble again?”

  “Not the way I did it.” I pulled up a webpage on the computer to show her. “It’s this site, see? You can donate money, and they loan it to people all over the world. If somebody wants to, I don’t know, sell bananas or something. Or buy a cow so they can sell the milk. These people might have a really good idea to make their lives a lot better, but they just need a little bit of money to get it started. Then they pay it back, and you loan it to somebody else. Check it out.”

  She read a few of the stories on the site, and grinned. “Cool. That’s better than a college fund.”

  “I loaned this guy money for a new engine for his boat. He’s paid some of it back already,” I told her. This part actually didn’t feel like a p
unishment at all. It was a lot of fun seeing how my loans did, and imagining some dude named Ronnie, halfway around the world, catching fish every day, fish that he could sell, because of the money that I loaned him.

  “So how about you?” I asked Jamie. “How much trouble did you get into?”

  “It was weird,” she said. “My mom freaked out. But I think it’s mostly because she didn’t really get it. ‘If you had passed notes in class or tried to wear short skirts, the way we did when I was in school, it would be one thing. But betting on football?’ ”

  I had only been around Mrs. Spielberger a few times, but I could tell Jamie was doing a good imitation of her.

  Jamie continued: “My dad was different. He tried to act all angry in front of my mom but I could tell he wasn’t that upset. One time he even let it slip: ‘That sounds like the kind of thing I would have done at your age.’ ”

  It was another good imitation.

  “I’ll never be the son he wanted me to be. But it’s, like, if I do things a boy would normally do—no matter how bad—he doesn’t really mind. Maybe I’ll start belching and spitting gigantic loogeys.”

  “You already do that,” I said.

  “Shut up,” she said. Then she smiled.

  And we kept talking. Like normal. Pretty soon we were even laughing about the day we got caught. “I still picture Mrs. Allegra calling me Mitchell and gripping her pen like it was a sword and she wanted to poke me!” I told her.

  “Oh, I know!” said Jamie. “I think I even saw a little spit coming out of the corners of her mouth. She was like a rabid dog.”

  “When she was yelling at me, there were veins popping out on her neck. She was staring at me so hard, I’m surprised her makeup didn’t crack right off her face.”

  “Good one!” said Jamie, reaching into her back pocket and pulling out a notebook. “I have to write that down. I’m going to use it!”