by Dan Gutman
I wasn’t sure why we should play any better just because Coach Hyatt’s hamster got run over by a bulldozer. But it almost didn’t matter what she said, because we all started jumping up and down and chanting “Chipper! Chipper! Chipper!” as we ran out of the locker room to start the second half of the game.
11
The Moose Goes Nuts
We ran out onto the field and got ready to receive the kickoff. One of the Sharks walked by me.
“You guys are toast.” He sneered.
That guy totally made no sense at all. Toast is bread that was in a toaster. I’m a person, and I’ve never been in a toaster. How could a person fit inside a toaster, anyway? He’d have to be really small. I’d rather be one of those muffins made of rags.
We lined up, and the Sharks kicked off to start the second half. Andrea picked up the bouncing ball.
She faked left, and some Shark went flying by her.
She faked right, and another Shark missed the tackle.
Andrea was faking left and right, and the Sharks were falling all over themselves trying to tackle her! Everybody started screaming with excitement.
Andrea was running downfield, dancing and leaping past the Sharks. She pirouetted and Irish stepped and hip-hopped around the Sharks. They couldn’t lay a hand on her! Finally, Andrea clog danced into the end zone.
Touchdown!
We actually scored! Everybody was going crazy. Football is a lot like dancing, I guess, except that you get to knock guys on their butts.
Suddenly, I didn’t feel tired or sore anymore.
Andrea is a really good soccer player, so Coach Hyatt said she could kick the extra point.
Sharks 77, Moose 7.
After we all calmed down, Andrea kicked off. We ran down the field and gang tackled the Shark with the ball. He fumbled it. Andrea scooped the ball up and ran it all the way into the end zone!
Sharks 77, Moose 14.
Coach Hyatt called time-out and gathered us all around her.
“Okay, A.J.,” she said, “from now on, I want you to be our wide receiver.”
“But I’m the quarterback!” I protested. “That’s my position.”
“We’re going to try something new,” the coach told me. “From now on, Andrea is the quarterback.”
“WHAT?! That’s not fair!”
“Do you want to win?” Coach Hyatt asked me. “Or do you want to complain?”
“Can’t I do both?”
“We’re a team!” Coach Hyatt barked. “You ragamuffins picked up my car as a team, and you play as a team! Now go out there and win this one for the Chipper!”
“Who’s the Chipper again?” I asked. I had forgotten who the Chipper was.
“My hamster!” Coach Hyatt barked. “He got run over by a bulldozer, remember?”
“Oh, yeah.”
I didn’t feel good about being replaced as quarterback, but I ran out on to the field anyway.
Well, I’m glad I did. Because after that, the Moose just went nuts! With Andrea at quarterback and me at wide receiver, we were unstoppable. Every pass she threw went right into my hands. When the Sharks had the ball, Andrea would intercept their passes and run the ball all the way down the field to score.
We made touchdown after touchdown. Field goal after field goal. Andrea was leaping and diving and spinning and clogging and hip-hopping. The Sharks were totally dazed and confused. It was amazing! Everybody in the bleachers was going crazy.
Sharks 77, Moose 44.
Sharks 77, Moose 51.
Sharks 77, Moose 58.
Sharks 77, Moose 65.
Sharks 77, Moose 72.
After Andrea scored that last touchdown, one of the Sharks went over to her and said, “Hey, kid! Where’d you learn how to play like that?”
“At the Ballet des Jeunes School of Dance,” Andrea replied.
Thanks to Andrea, in the second half we were totally kicking the Sharks’ butts! The only problem was that we were running out of time.
The score was 77–72. We were still behind by five points. Coach Hyatt blew her whistle and called time-out to stop the clock.
I looked up at the scoreboard. There were eleven seconds left in the game.
12
The Secret Play
We all ran to the sideline and huddled around Coach Hyatt.
“Take a knee, kids,” she said.
“Where should we take it?” I asked.
“Quiet!” barked Coach Hyatt. Then she started whispering. “Okay, this is it. It’s time.”
“Time for what?” Ryan asked.
“It’s time for The Secret Play,” Coach Hyatt told us.
“Oh no!” said Neil the nude kid. “Not The Secret Play! The last time we tried The Secret Play, we fell all over ourselves.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I almost broke my leg.”
“It’s going to be different this time,” the coach told us. “Now we’ve got Andrea. You ragamuffins can do this. Just like you picked up my car. Do it for the Chipper.”
“Who’s the Chipper again?” I asked.
“My hamster!” Coach Hyatt barked.
“Oh, yeah.”
The ball was on our twenty-yard line. We had to drive eighty yards in eleven seconds. It looked impossible. We got into position.
“Hut-one!” Andrea shouted. “Hut-two! HIKE!”
Wyatt hiked the ball to Andrea.
Andrea flipped it to Ryan.
Ryan passed it to me at the thirty-yard line.
I shoveled it over to Michael.
Michael ran to the fifty-yard line and lateraled it to Neil.
Neil ran all the way to the ten-yard line and handed it off to Wyatt.
Wyatt ran almost to the goal line, and then he suddenly stopped.
“Run, Wyatt! Run!” we all screamed.
There was no time left on the clock. Wyatt was just standing at the one-yard line. If he didn’t score, the game would be over and we would lose.
“RUN!” we all screamed.
A Shark was about to tackle Wyatt!
That’s when the weirdest thing in the history of the world happened.
Wyatt picked his nose.
Well, that’s not the weird part, because Wyatt picks his nose all the time. The weird part was that Wyatt picked his nose, and then he stuck the booger right on the Shark’s face!
Ew, disgusting!
The Shark shoved Wyatt away from him!
Wyatt fell on his butt and landed…in the end zone!
Touchdown!
78–77. The Moose win!
Everybody went crazy! You should have been there! Our whole team ran to do the end zone dance. We shook our butts, lifted one of our legs over our heads, hopped up and down for a while, and then put our hands in the air and waved them around like crazy people. Nah-nah-nah boo-boo on the Sharks!
We ran to the sideline, and all the parents were taking pictures of us. It was a real Kodak moment.
“You made a home run!” my mom yelled. I slapped my forehead.
Everybody was going nuts and hugging each other. Andrea came over to me. She opened her arms.
“Give me a hug, Arlo,” Andrea said.
“Not gonna happen.”
“I want a hug, Arlo,” Andrea said.
“Not for a million hundred dollars.”
“Come on, Arlo,” Andrea said.
“I would rather eat a live-bug sandwich.”
We went back and forth like that for a while.
“Arlo, I’m on your team!” Andrea said. “Humphf!”
Hmm. Andrea had a point. After a big win like this, you should hug your team-mates. Andrea was on our team, and she won the game for us.
But she was a girl! If I hugged Andrea, the guys were sure to make fun of me.
I was faced with the hardest decision of my life. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. I had to think fast. I was concentrating so hard that my brain hurt.
Suddenly, Andrea reached out to
grab me.
I faked left.
Then I faked right.
Then I faked left again.
But Andrea didn’t fall for my fakes. She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me.
Ugh, disgusting!
“Oooooh!” Ryan said. “A.J. and Andrea are hugging. They must be in love!”
“When are you gonna get married?” asked Michael.
Coach Hyatt told everybody to line up. At the end of each game, we have to line up, shake hands with the other team, and say “good game.” Nobody knows why.
I shook hands with all the Sharks. When I got to the last one, he grabbed my hand and started squeezing.
“Good game,” he told me as he crushed the bones in my hand. “If it weren’t for that girl, we would have destroyed you.”
I thought I was gonna die.
13
UFM*
On TV, the winning football team dumps Gatorade over the coach’s head at the end of the game.
“Hey,” I whispered to the guys, “let’s dump the Gatorade over Coach Hyatt’s head!”
“Great idea, A.J.!” Ryan said.
I should get the No Bell Prize. That’s a prize they give out to people who don’t have bells.
Coach Hyatt was facing away from us, talking to some parent.
Neil unscrewed the top from the jug of Gatorade. Me and Michael and Ryan grabbed the jug. Wyatt just picked his nose.
“Man, this jug is heavy!” Michael said, grunting.
“Hey, we picked up a car, didn’t we?” Ryan said.
We lifted the giant jug and carried it over to Coach Hyatt. The parent she had been talking to was walking away. Coach Hyatt was about to blow her whistle.
That’s when we dumped the entire jug of Gatorade over her head.
It was great! Gatorade was everywhere! Coach Hyatt was soaked!
That’s when the strangest thing in the history of the world happened.
Coach Hyatt grabbed her throat. It looked like she was trying to say something, but she couldn’t. All that came out of her mouth was a whistling noise.
“She’s choking!” Ryan yelled. “Her whistle is caught in her throat!”
Coach Hyatt was gagging and looking really scared.
“She can’t breathe!” Neil yelled.
“We’ve got to do something!” shouted Emily.
“This is all your fault, Arlo!” Andrea said. “It was your idea to dump the Gatorade on her head!”
I looked at Ryan. Ryan looked at Neil. Neil looked at Andrea. Andrea looked at Emily. Everybody was looking at everybody else.
“Does anybody know the Heimlich maneuver?” one of the parents shouted.
The Heimlich maneuver is this thing you do when somebody has something caught in their throat.
“A.J. does!” Ryan yelled.
“That’s right!” shouted Andrea. “He saved my life once.”
It was true. One time, Andrea was choking on an apple, and I punched her in the stomach to make the apple pop out.
I grabbed Coach Hyatt from behind and punched both of my fists against her stomach.
The whistle shot out of her mouth.
“You saved my life, A.J.!” said Coach Hyatt.
The whistle kept flying up in the air. And you’ll never believe in a million hundred years what it hit.
Rufus the Doofus!
That whistle must have had a sharp edge, because it tore a hole in Rufus.
Rufus started flying crazily around in the air!
Rufus faked left!
Rufus faked right!
Then Rufus must have run out of air, because he was falling out of the sky!
“Run for your lives!” shouted Neil. “It’s an Unidentified Flying Moose!”
Everybody freaked out and went running in all different directions and crashing into each other.
Rufus was heading straight for the group of cheerleaders!
And then…WHAM!
Rufus landed right on Emily!
Emily was on the ground under Rufus, freaking out, like always. It was hilarious. We saw it live and in person.
“Owwww, my leg!” Emily yelled.
We all gathered around and picked Rufus up off Emily. It was easy, because we had already picked up a Mini Cooper and a jug of Gatorade.
“Are you okay, Emily?” asked Andrea.
“No, I’m not okay!” Emily yelled with tears in her eyes.
Sheesh, what a crybaby! So a moose fell out of the sky and landed on her head. What’s the big deal? Stuff like that happens all the time.
“Walk it off,” Coach Hyatt told Emily.
“I think it might be broken!” Emily whined.
“Broken?” Coach Hyatt said. “If a moose fell on me when I was your age, I would get up and build a log cabin with my bare hands.”
Well, that’s pretty much the way it happened. With Andrea on our team, maybe we’ll actually win a few games this season. Maybe Emily’s leg will heal. Maybe Wyatt the Nose Picker will run out of boogers. Maybe we’ll get to ram the Elvis dummy some more. Maybe another moose will fall on Emily’s head. Maybe Coach Hyatt will stop building log cabins and get a new hamster. Maybe we’ll find out what “ragamuffin” means. Maybe Rent-A-Blimp will be able to patch the hole in Rufus the Doofus.
But it won’t be easy!
About the Author and the Illustrator
Dan Gutman has written many weird books for kids. He lives in New Jersey (a very weird place) with his weird wife and two weird children. You can visit him on his weird website at www.dangutman.com.
Jim Paillot lives in Arizona (another weird place) with his weird wife and two weird children. Isn’t that weird? You can visit him on his weird website at www.jimpaillot.com.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Copyright
MY WEIRD SCHOOL DAZE #4: COACH HYATT IS A RIOT!. Text copyright © 2009 by Dan Gutman. Illustrations copyright © 2009 by Jim Paillot. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition NOVEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780061973536
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* One goose and another goose are geese. But one moose and another moose aren’t meese. Nobody knows why.
* It’s called a quarterback because in ancient times a football cost seventy-five cents. When primitive people used a dollar to buy one, they got a quarter back.
* Clog dancing is a dance that plumbers do to make water go down the drain.
* Quarterbacks always say “Hut” before the ball is hiked. That’s because in ancient times the first primitive football players lived in huts.
* Grown-ups get mad when you say “butt.” Nobody knows why.
* Unidentified Flying Moose
