Screaming at the Ump by Audrey Vernick

Author:Audrey Vernick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (www.hmhco.com)

Little League

I DIDN’T sleep. Or at least I didn’t think I did. My brain was all over this MacSophal thing. How could my dad allow that cheater to attend his school? And how could this cheater be telling my dad it was okay to go to Florida for over a month, every year, without me?

I wanted to talk to someone about this, but I couldn’t tell Zeke. The potential for him to do something stupid with this information was too great, so I decided to wait and keep thinking. Which I would have liked to do at home. But Zeke had decided this would be the day we filmed Sly’s cat.

So there we were in front of Mrs. G.’s house on a Saturday afternoon—me with my bike and Zeke with his skateboard. Sly was waiting for us with a big cardboard box on her lap.

“You’re not going to hurt him, are you?”

“Of course not,” Zeke said. “Definitely not on purpose, anyway.”

Sly stood and started carrying the box back to the house.

“I’m kidding!” Zeke said. He looked at me and said, “Kids!” Then he asked Sly, “So what tricks does your cat know?

“He’s supposed to know tricks?”

“Unless it’s some kind of stupid cat.”

Sly looked stunned. I think Zeke really didn’t get that you couldn’t talk to little kids the same way you talked to . . . people. Or maybe it was that Sly was a girl? Or some combination. I was definitely not Sly’s biggest fan, but he shouldn’t have been mean to the kid when she was trying to help him out.

“Hey, boys,” Mrs. G. called from the front steps, her hair hanging down instead of in that holding-pencils-and-other-surprises bun. “It’s so nice of you to come over to play with Sylvia today.”

Sly just mouthed the word “Sly.”

“Actually, we’re really just—”

I cut Zeke off. “We wanted to meet her cat!” I said. You have to know how to play the old people. You didn’t tell them that you wouldn’t be caught dead here if it weren’t for the fact that your slightly off-in-the-head best friend was trying to get something—anything—on TV and that he’d decided her granddaughter’s cat just might be the ticket. And you definitely didn’t mention that eleven- and twelve-year-old guys did not play with eight-year-old girls in any universe anywhere, ever.

“It’s probably a good thing she’s taken the cat out of the house. Her mom starts sneezing whenever she’s near him.”

Zeke gasped and put his palm flat on his cheek. “That is JUST like Marcia Brady!” he said.

“Jan, you idiot,” Sly said.

“Please be careful. It’s a busy street,” Mrs. G. said before going inside.

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