The Rhino in Right Field by Stacy DeKeyser

Author:Stacy DeKeyser
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

CHAPTER

26

THAT NIGHT AFTER LIGHTS OUT, I stared at my bedroom ceiling, thinking about stuff.

Poor Penny. Not allowed to enter the contest just because she was a girl. She even had a signed permission slip and everything.

And I’d turned in a forged permission slip, and now I was a finalist.

I told myself that one thing had nothing to do with the other. I mean, Penny would’ve been rejected even if I hadn’t cheated. But somehow, I felt even more like a rat than I had before.

And here’s another thing about entering a contest that you don’t actually have permission to enter: Who can you tell when you win?

Of course, I wasn’t an actual winner—not yet, anyway. Only a finalist. Besides, what would I miss by not telling Ma and Pop? A bunch of smeary kisses, and pinched cheeks, and stuff like What did I tell you, Athena, Nicky is the smartest boy in the whole wide world, you make us so proud, Nicky, let me kiss you again. I’d get pretty much the same reaction by bringing home a decent grade on a geography quiz. Or putting my shoes on the right feet.

Maybe I could talk them into going to the Mudpuppies game next Saturday, and once they saw me down on the field with only five other kids, they’d understand what a big deal it was, and they’d forgive me.

Who was I kidding? Pop would be at the shop on Saturday, like always, and Ma would be at home, cooking or ironing or hanging out the wash, like always. That was the problem: they didn’t know how to have fun.

But what’s life without a little fun?

And where’s the fun in winning if you can’t brag about it, even a little?

Of course, Pete wouldn’t have any trouble bragging. I would need to keep him away from Ma and Pop at church the next morning. Not that he’d brag about me. But you never know what he’s gonna do, and he doesn’t even care if he’s at church. In fact, the last time Pete tried to punch me was on the steps of the church.

This was way back, at the end of second grade. Everybody was heading outside after church one Sunday, and I spotted Pete on the sidewalk. We’d just started playing ball at the zoo that spring, and I wanted to tell him how I’d thought up the perfect name for our game. (You have plenty of time to think about stuff like that when you’re sitting in church for two hours trying not to fall asleep.)

So there I’d stood, on the steps outside church, when I spotted Pete down on the sidewalk, and at the top of my lungs I had hollered, “Hey, Taki! Let’s call it Scramble!”

I hadn’t done it on purpose; it just spilled out. But the words were barely out of my mouth when I knew I’d made a horrible mistake. Nobody except the grown-ups were allowed to call Pete “Taki” anymore. He’d never actually said that, but he didn’t have to.

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