Athlete vs. Mathlete: Double Dribble (2 page)

And that legendary victory would happen in just three weeks.

I met up with most of my teammates in the Lewis and Clark cafeteria the next afternoon, after the most boring English class ever.

“Hot-dog day,” I groaned as I read the chalkboard on the far wall.

The place smelled worse than the wet socks I'd peeled off after last night's game. I had no idea what kind of mad scientists the cafeteria ladies were, but they had some
serious gross-out skills. And it was pretty much guaranteed that if the lunch special smelled that bad, it would look even worse.

“Skipping the dogs?” Nicky Chu asked when I sat down next to him at our usual table.

“No doubt.” I shook my head. “How do you ruin wieners, anyway? All you have to do is boil them.”

“Maybe they're boiling them in acid,” he suggested, “or toxic waste.” He shrugged as he bit into a ham-and-cheese sandwich.

I unwrapped my own turkey and sprouts, wishing Mom would switch back to lettuce so it wouldn't look like I was eating boogers all the time.

I checked out the Masters of the Mind table, where Russ and his buddies looked all excited. They were probably figuring out the scientific name for peanut butter or something.

Just then, a slice of pink meat came flying through the air. When it landed next to Paul's juice box, it sounded like a wet slap.

“Really?” He sighed, pushing it out of the way with his math textbook. “I mean,
really
?”

“That's just wrong,” I said, shaking my head as I bit into my sandwich.

We didn't bother looking to see who'd launched the meat, since it always came from the same place: the eighth graders' table.

I couldn't wait until next year, when we were the big kids and all those jerks were freshmen at the high school.

I wished I could be there to see
them
dodging lunch meat on their first day. I was pretty sure seniors could whip a bologna bomb harder and faster than any of them could.

“Did you hear?” Chris asked, dropping a tray with two nuclear hot dogs on the table and sitting down across from me.

“Hear what?” I asked, trying to fan the stink away with my hand.

“About the new kids,” he said, tearing open a package of mustard and squeezing it all over his lunch.

It was going to take a lot more than mustard to fix that steaming pile.

“What new kids?” Paul asked.

“
What new kids
?” Chris repeated, obviously loving the fact that he had the scoop for once. “The ones Coach Baxter just handed Pioneers jerseys and welcomed to the team.” He looked around the table. “And by that, I mean
our
team.”

“What?” Nicky gasped.

“No way,” Paul said, shaking his head.

“I'm serious. We have two new teammates.”

“Impossible,” Paul said. “Nobody makes the Pioneers without trying out.” He looked from me to Nate to Nicky Chu. “We
all
had to.”

“Nope. This is different,” Chris told him. “They're transfer students.”

“From where?” Nate asked.

“Minnesota,” he said, like that was supposed to impress us.

“So?” we all asked at the same time.

“So, they're freakin' awesome,” Chris said, grinning.

Freakin' awesome transfer students from Minnesota who didn't have to try out? I couldn't find a single piece of that description I liked. I took another bite of my sandwich and wondered what was going on.

“How do you know they're awesome?” Paul asked.

“Yeah,” Nate said. “Did you see them play?”

Chris shrugged. “No, but they look like they're already in high school.”

“That doesn't mean they're good,” Nicky Chu argued.

“I'm talking letterman jackets, you guys.” Chris grinned. “With patches for basketball.”

I would have loved my own letterman jacket!

“Hold on,” Paul said. “They both showed up wearing letterman jackets?”

“Yeah,” Chris said, and nodded.

“
Matching
jackets?” Paul snorted. “Are you kidding me?”

“They dressed like twins on their first day of school?” Nicky Chu shook his head. “Bad idea.”

“Lame,” Nate agreed.

“No, no. You don't get it,” Chris said. “They
are
twins.”

“Really?” I asked, wiping some stray sprouts off my chin.

“Yeah,” he said, glancing at me. “Like,
real
ones.”

When Owen told me about my new teammates, I wasn't worried about their size, their letterman jackets, or the fact that they didn't have to suffer through the grueling tryouts the rest of us Pioneers had (in my case, barely) survived.

What bothered me was that Chris had called them “real” twins.

Real twins
.

Owen and I might not have looked or acted even slightly alike, but we'd most definitely been squeezed together for nine months in our mother's belly, and we were born only a few minutes apart.

We'd spent our entire lives sharing birthday parties (though not the same number of guests—he's much more popular than I am), Christmas presents (I don't remember
asking for a
Sports Illustrated
subscription, but we'd been “enjoying” one for the past four years); and we'd even shared a bedroom in our old house. I took the top bunk, to be closer to the stars, while Owen took the bottom, to be closer to the bathroom.

And since we'd always been the only set of twins at Lewis and Clark Middle School, it hadn't mattered that we didn't look or act the same. As far as the other students were concerned, we were
the
twins.

So, if the perfectly coordinated new transfer students were “real” twins, what did that make us?

Fake?

Even though I hadn't been there when Chris made the comment, I heard it in my head repeatedly for the rest of the day. It bothered me through two of my favorite classes and during the walk to Nitu's house for a Masters of the Mind meeting.

Real twins
.

What was that supposed to mean?

“You know, Russell,” Nitu said, when I told her about Chris's comment, “I don't think he meant anything by it.”

“I know,” I told her, trying to shake off my irritation the same way Pioneers shook things off on the court. “It just hit a nerve.”

“Why?”

“I don't know,” I admitted with a shrug. “I guess I liked
us being the only set of twins at school. And you know I can't help that Owen and I don't look alike.”

Nitu smiled at me, then rhymed, “Basketball is only a game, and twins don't
have
to look the same.”

I couldn't help smiling back. I loved rhyming with my Masters teammates, and she was right, too. I was probably being a bit uptight, considering I hadn't even met the new twins yet. I thought for a couple of seconds before rhyming back, “The Pioneers are like my brothers, but I should be willing to welcome others.”

“See? That's the spirit,” she said, grinning.

We walked past the elementary school, which seemed to have shrunk in the past couple of years. The fireman's pole I'd always been too scared to slide down looked tiny.

“See that little drinking fountain?” I rhymed. “I used to climb it like a mountain.”

She laughed and pointed to the playground. “Whenever I fell off those swings, I wished that I could grow some wings.”

“Did you really?” I asked, laughing.

“Fall or wish I had wings?” She shook her head. “It doesn't matter. I actually did both.”

I didn't remember spending much time in the playground back in those days. While Owen and his friends turned sticks into guns and chased each other at recess and lunch, I spent most of my free time in the library.

What I
did
remember about elementary school was
standing on the stage to accept the Science Award three years in a row. And the Top Student Award twice. Of course, Nitu had won the math honor four times.

“Hey, if these new guys are identical twins,” she said, interrupting my thoughts, “do you think they can read each other's minds?”

I laughed. “I doubt it. Telepathy seems a bit—”

“Sci-fi?” she asked.

“I was going to say unlikely,” I told her.

She shrugged. “Well,
I
think it would be pretty cool.”

I thought about it for a moment. “I don't know about that.”

“Why not? Imagine if you didn't have to open your mouth or write anything down because other people knew exactly what you wanted to say.”

“But how would you stop them from knowing the things you
didn't
want to say? Or didn't want anyone to know?”

She frowned. “
Hmm
. Good point.”

“Our thoughts are the only things in the world that are completely private.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “Wait a second. Are you afraid someone would steal your Masters of the Mind ideas or cheat on a test, using your brain?”

“Well … yes.” I had a lot of other concerns, too, but those were near the top of the list.

“Oh, Russell,” she said. “You're such a worrywart.”

I'd been called worse.

In fact, my own brother had recently called me “geek of the week” in the heat of an argument.

But we were past all that. We were past a lot of things, and it felt good to be starting over with Owen. That was part of the reason I was upset about the “real twins” comment. Basketball was a new bond between my brother and me, and it seemed like such a delicate balance, I didn't want anything to change it.

Since I'd joined the Pioneers, the only thing that had been a bit tricky was splitting my time between my Masters of the Mind and basketball teammates. Sometimes I liked to eat lunch with Nitu, Jason, and Sara, but other days I liked being part of the action at the jock table with Owen and the rest of the guys. The conversation wasn't quite as sophisticated, but the guys were a lot of fun.

“I wonder how these new twins are going to fit in at Lewis and Clark,” I said to Nitu as we turned into her driveway.

“What do you mean?” she asked. “If they're jocks, they'll just fit in with the jocks, won't they?”

I nodded.

But what if they were a better fit at the jock table than I was? What if letterman jackets were more important than I thought? What if they took over as the school twins
and
took over my spot at the Pioneers table? Where would that leave me?

“Man, you guys look serious,” Jason said when he and Sara joined me and Nitu a few minutes later in her basement.

I explained the twin situation to him. “I just feel weird about it.”

“That's cool,” he said, nodding. “But you know it's going to take more than a couple of new kids to replace you at Lewis and Clark, right, Russ?”

“Uh—”

“Dude, you're an athlete and a mathlete. It sounds like those guys are just a couple of jocks who like to dress the same.”

He had a point there. I had pretty well cornered the market on brains and, well, not
brawn
, but athleticism at school.

“You're one of a kind, Russ,” Sara said quietly. “Don't give it another thought.”

And I didn't. For a while, anyway.