Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie by David Lubar

Author:David Lubar [Lubar, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101554890
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2007-01-17T16:00:00+00:00

{eighteen}

mr. Franka had taught us to be careful about using words properly when we were writing. A phrase like five p.m. this afternoon is wrong because p.m. means afternoon. He gave us a whole list of stuff like that, including free gift and unfortunate tragedy. His favorite example was the sentence The troops ran into a surprise ambush. He pointed out that since an ambush is a surprise, the word surprise isn’t needed.

Either way, I got ambushed on Wednesday. And it was a surprise.

“Which do you like better,” Mandy asked when I walked into the meeting, “basketball or wrestling?”

That was easy. “Basketball.” Of course, I liked her brown top even better.

“Good,” she said, “so I’ll put you down for basketball.”

“What?” My jaw dropped as the meaning sank in. “Wait. That’s not what I meant.”

Mandy smiled at me. “Sorry. My mistake. If you’d rather cover wrestling, that’s fine. You did such a great job with football, I wanted to give you first choice. You really brought an amazingly fresh approach to the task.”

Book reviews! my mind shouted. That was my choice. I’d even brought a copy of Dragonflight with me, just to see if I could start a conversation with Mandy about fantasy series.

“So, then. Wrestling?” she asked. She leaned closer to me and smiled like she’d just offered me a sip of her soda.

I tried to think of some way to say Neither. I pulled my eyes from her and looked around for Mouth. But he wasn’t there. He hadn’t been on the bus, either. Maybe he’d be out for a long time. Then they’d have to let someone else do reviews.

Before I could speak, Mandy clapped her hands together and said, “You know what—I’m going to take a chance. Call me crazy, but I think you can handle both. That way, you don’t have to decide. This is super, Scott. It’ll be a lot of work, but I guess for a big sports fan like you, it’s actually a lot of fun. It’ll give you a great excuse to go to all the games.” She glanced around the room. “Anybody else want to do any sports?”

Naturally, every other pair of eyes in the place fled from contact.

“Fabulous,” Mandy said, making another note on her pad. “I’ll put you down for both. That’s a relief. I thought you might want to try other stuff, but this will work out perfectly.” She gave me a schedule, then started handing out art assignments.

Oh, great. There were two or three basketball games a week, and one or two wrestling meets. Worst case, I’d be covering as many as five games in one week. Best case, I’d meet a vampire who’d put me out of my misery. Or a giaour.

November 28

Don’t ever be afraid to ask for what you want. Nobody can read your mind. People always assume you want the same sort of things they want. I’ll give you an example. Bobby likes pepper flakes on his pizza, so if I go somewhere with him, he just sprinkles flakes on the whole thing, even though that’s not what I want.

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