The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp (Alfred Kropp #1)(3)

2

I made the team as a second-string right guard, which basically meant I was a practice dummy for the first-string defense.

Coach Harvey was a short round guy with a gut that hung over his pants, and calves about the size of my head, which, as I mentioned, was large. Like a lot of coaches, Coach Harvey liked to scream. He especially liked to scream at me.

One afternoon, about a month before Uncle Farrell struck his deal with the chief Agent of Darkness, I saw how much screaming he could do. I had just let a linebacker blow by me and cream the starting quarterback, the most popular kid in school, Barry Lancaster. I didn’t mean for this to happen, but I was having trouble memorizing the playbook. It seemed very complicated, especially seeing it was a document intended for big jocks, most of whom could barely read. Anyway, I thought Barry had called a Dog Right, but actually he had said “Hog Right.” That one letter makes a huge difference and left Barry on the turf, writhing in agony.

Coach Harvey charged from the sidelines, silver whistle clamped between his fat lips, screaming around the hysterical screeches of the whistle as he ran.

“Kropp!” Tweet! “Kropp!” Tweet! “KROPP!”

“Sorry, Coach,” I told him. “I heard ‘dog,’ not ‘hog.’ ”

“Dog, not hog?” He turned his head toward Barry, still twisting on the ground. He kept his body turned toward me. “Lancaster! Are you hurt?”

“I’m okay, Coach,” Barry gasped. But he didn’t look okay to me. His face was as white as the hash marks on the field.

“What play was that, Kropp?” Coach Harvey snapped at me.

“Um, Dog Right?” I said.

“Dog! Dog! You thought hog was dog? How is dog like hog, Kropp? Huh? Tell me!”

The whole team had gathered around us by this point, like gawkers at the scene of a terrible accident.

Coach Harvey reached up and slapped my helmet with the palm of his hand.

“What’s the matter with you, boy?” He slapped me again. He proceeded to punctuate his questions with a hard slap against the side of my head.

“Are you stupid?” Slap.

“Are you stupid, Kropp?” Slap.

“Are you thick, is that it, Kropp?” Slap-slap.

“No, sir, I’m not.”

“No, sir, I’m not what?”

“Stupid, sir.”

“Are you sure you’re not stupid, Kropp? Because you act stupid. You play stupid. You even talk stupid. So are you absolutely sure, Kropp, that you are not stupid?” Slap-slap-slap.

“No, sir, I know I’m not!”

He slapped me again. I yelled, “My mother had my IQ tested and I’m not stupid! Sir!”

That cracked everybody up, and they kept laughing for the next three weeks. I heard it everywhere—“My mommy had my IQ tested and I’m not stupid!”—and not just in the locker room (where I heard it plenty). It spread over the whole school. Strangers would pass me in the hallway and squeal, “My mommy had my IQ tested!” It was horrible.

That night after the practice, Uncle Farrell asked how it was going.

“I don’t want to play football anymore,” I said.

“You’re playing football, Alfred.”

“It’s not just about me, Uncle Farrell. Other people can get hurt too.”

“You’re playing football,” he said. “Or you’re not getting your license.”

“I don’t see the point of this,” I said. “What’s wrong with not playing football? I think it’s pretty narrow-minded to assume just because I’m big, I should be playing football.”

“Okay, Alfred,” he said. “Then you tell me. What do you want to do? You want to go out for the marching band?”

“I don’t play an instrument.”

“It’s a high school band, Alfred, not the New York Philharmonic.”

“Still, you probably need to have some kind of basic understanding of music, reading notes, that kind of thing.”

“Well, you’re not going to lie around in your room all day listening to music and daydreaming. I’m tired of coming up with suggestions, so you tell me: What are your skills? What do you like to do?”

“Lie in my room and listen to music.”

“I’m talking about skills, Mr. Wisenheimer, gifts, special attributes—you know, the thing that separates you from the average Joe.”

I tried to think of a skill I had. I couldn’t.

“Jeez, Al, everybody has something they’re good at,” Uncle Farrell said.

“What’s so wrong about being average? Aren’t most people?”

“Is that it? Is that all you expect from yourself, Alfred?” he asked, growing red in the face. I expected him to launch into one of his lectures about the movers and shakers or how anybody could be a success with a little luck and the right mindset.

But he didn’t do that. Instead he ordered me into the car and we drove downtown.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“I’m taking you on a magical journey, Alfred.”

“A magical journey? Where to?”

“The future.”

We crossed a bridge and I could see a huge glass building towering over everything around it. The glass was dark tinted, and against the night sky it looked like a fat, glittering black thumb pointing up.