The Hand You're Dealt by Paul Volponi

Author:Paul Volponi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Published: 2008-09-17T04:00:00+00:00

chapter seven

ON FRIDAY MORNING I flew through Abbott’s math final. I was the first one in class to finish, but I wasn’t about to hand in my paper and have him think twice about how much I really knew. So I sat there staring at my test with one eye and at Abbott out of the other. I even turned my pencil around a few times and erased some of the answers, before I wrote them over the same way.

The class was stone quiet when Abbott jumped up from his chair and charged over to Cassidy’s side of the room, like he’d caught somebody cheating. Everybody quit writing, and most of the kids in those two rows probably stopped breathing, too.

“Eyes on your own paper!” shouted Abbott, with his finger pointing among them all. “If I take your exam away, you fail. It doesn’t matter what kind of star athlete you are, or where you think you’re going to college. And remember, I’m the one teaching summer school!”

Then Abbott sat down again, with his elbows flat against the desk and hands clasped tight in front of him. Nobody was cheating. He was just jerking kids around for the fun of it, and I swore I saw him fight back a grin.

Cassidy had been struggling since the beginning and was starting to really sweat now. The day before, during the phys ed final, I had to climb to the top of a thirty-foot rope. Anybody on a varsity team didn’t have to take the test and got an automatic passing grade. So Cassidy was sitting on the side, calling guys who used a pair of leather gloves to climb “homos.”

The kid who’d just come down tried to hand me off the gloves, but I walked right past him.

“That’s the only way to do it—like a stud,” said Cassidy, coming over to anchor the rope for me. “Now go make the music.”

There’s a silver bell at the very top you need to slap. You can hear it ring all through the gym. That way kids can’t cheat even an inch, or have people say you didn’t make it when you really did.

I threw one arm over the other fast and got three-quarters of the way up before I needed a breather.

“Don’t hang there too long, Porter!” the gym teacher shouted. “You’ll go numb!”

The muscles in my arms were already turning to lead, and every part of me was straining just to hold on.

I felt Cassidy’s weight pull the rope tighter. But I wouldn’t look down for anything, because I wasn’t going there without getting to the top first.

I couldn’t be that kind of nobody ever again.

Then I pictured that poker player without any arms hanging from the top of the rope by his legs, smacking the bell with his chin, celebrating.

That got something burning from deep inside me.

I pulled up every bit of strength I had and inched closer.

Then I reached my arm up high and swiped for the bell.

I heard it

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