Athlete vs. Mathlete: Double Dribble (5 page)

“I do,” Owen whispered.

“I think that once you see these boys play, you'll agree that we're lucky to have them.” He smiled at our new teammates. “Very lucky.”

And that was the end of the discussion.

I don't know what I was expecting. I should have realized that basketball, unlike Masters of the Mind, was not a democracy. What Coach said, went.

As I ran laps around the gym for our warm-up, which was the most grueling part of my week, I watched Mitch and Marcus run together. Their strides perfectly mirrored one another, their elbows moved in unison, and their chests rose and fell in time when they inhaled and exhaled.

It was like they were one person, split into two bodies.

Watching them, I was embarrassed by my jerky legs and flailing arms. They looked natural, like they were born to run while I wasn't even sure I was born to
walk
.

When Owen lapped me for the second time, I paid attention to how steady his pace was, and how he kept his head high.

For the first time I could remember, I wished that my brother and I were more alike.

And I kept wishing for that as the practice went on.

Coach Baxter had us line up for all the usual drills, but seeing the Matthews twins in action was like watching an instructional video.

Basically, they were the “dos” while I was a “don't.”

“Nice play,” Nicky Chu shouted during the scrimmage at the end of practice. M&M had just dazzled all of us with an unbelievable joint effort to score yet another basket.

“Now
that
was a no-look pass,” Paul said, shaking his head. “How'd they do it?”

That was what I wanted to know.

Owen and I worked well together on the court, but we couldn't coordinate moves like the new twins even if our lives depended on it.

Thankfully, they didn't.

“Shoot, Russ!” Nate shouted the next time I had the ball.

I hesitated as one M came toward me. He was the tallest player I'd ever gone up against, and he had at least three inches on me. Of course, that meant they both did, so I should have been expecting the other reaching arm that came from behind me and snatched the ball.

But I wasn't.

“Like candy from a baby,” one of them said as he dribbled away from me.

I wished I could tell them apart, so I'd know which one was the jerk.

Then again, maybe they both were.

“Don't let them get to you, Russ,” Owen said as he ran past me.

At that precise moment, one of them threw the ball toward the basket and the other came flying through the air to
dunk
it.

I'd only seen an “alley-oop” on TV, completed by professionals.

Don't let them get to me? It was a bit late for that.

By the time practice was over, the entire Pioneer roster (except for my brother and me) was awestruck by the new guys.

“I can't believe how good they are,” Chris whispered as we walked off the court. “No one's going to be able to stop us this year.”

Owen frowned. “I thought we were doing pretty awesome without them.”

“Yeah, I know.” He nodded. “But this is a whole new level, man. A whole new game.”

Judging by the expression on my brother's face, I knew he felt the same way I did.

We liked the game the way it used to be.

When we sat down at the dinner table that night, Mom asked how practice had gone.

“We got a couple of new guys on the team,” Owen told her. “Twins, from Minnesota.”

“Ah, the Minnesota Twins,” Dad said, chuckling.

Mom didn't look like she knew about the baseball team either. I had the feeling that, like a lot of other sports facts, we might be the only people alive who didn't.

“They're good,” I said.

“As good as you two?” Dad asked, doubtfully.

“Better,” I told him.

“Whoa! Speak for yourself,” Owen said.

“I meant as a pair, they're better than we are.” It was the truth, and sometimes the truth hurt. In fact, sometimes it stung like you were being attacked by a swarm of Asian hornets. And I use them as an example because their stings
contain more of the pain-causing chemical acetylcholine than any other insect.
That's
how much it stung to know how good the Matthews twins were.

“Better than us? You really think so?” Owen asked.

“Did you watch the drills? They were perfectly synchronized.”

“Yeah, well the rest of the Pioneers can be synchronized.”

“Sure,” I told him. “When they do the hokey pokey.”

“Russ,” Owen said, his expression very serious. “None of us do the hokey pokey.”

I rolled my eyes. “I was just making a point.”

“Well, geez, don't make that one.”

“Okay, drills aside, did you watch the scrimmage?”

“I was playing, Russ. So yeah, I was watching.”

“Then maybe you noticed that they were like … a machine?”

“We're still talking about a pair of twelve-year-old boys, right?” Mom asked.

“Yes,” I said, attempting to scoop several unwilling peas onto my fork.

“Because right now they're sounding like something out of a Spielberg movie.”

“
Twinvaders of the Third Kind
,” Dad said, smiling.

“That fits,” Owen said, then started speaking in a ghoulish voice. “They came out of the darkness to take over the team.”

“Minnesota is hardly the darkness,” Mom said, rolling her eyes. “In case you've forgotten, I grew up in Wisconsin.”

Owen looked completely lost.

“It's the state next door,” I whispered.

“Oh,” he said, like the country had been modified and he hadn't seen the new map yet.

“Anyway,” I said, trying to bring the conversation back to the original topic. “Maybe ‘machine' is the wrong word. They were more like …” I tried to think of how to describe the way they moved around the court as if they were attached with an invisible rope, always the right distance apart, each of them anticipating what the other was going to do. And then it hit me. “They were like Kevin Maple and Adam Donaldson.”

“You've lost me,” Mom said, shaking her head.

“Blazers,” Dad explained, then turned to me. “How so, Russ?”

“It's hard to explain. They just seemed to be in tune with each other. They didn't have to say anything, or make eye contact or—”

“They were mind-reading Twinvaders from outer space,” Owen said, in that same creepy voice.

“I didn't say they were telepathic, Owen,” I reminded him, feeling irritated. “They just seem to have … an understanding.”

“Well,” Dad said, reaching for another piece of chicken. “That would make sense, wouldn't it? Maple and Donaldson
played together for three solid years in college. These Matthews twins have probably been playing together all their lives.”

That was a very good point.

I picked up my chicken wing and started gnawing on the pointy tip while I thought about what Dad had said.

Owen and I had been playing together for only four
weeks
. In that short amount of time, we couldn't expect to have created the kind of on-court connection that the Matthews twins shared.

And while Owen and I might not have had that connection yet, we could work on building it.

I started right there at the table with my chicken dinner. I mirrored my brother, lifting my fork at the same time and speed as he did. I ate my vegetables in the same order and drank my milk with the same annoyingly small sips that he did.

When Mom brought out bowls of ice cream, instead of eating it like a normal person, I stirred it until it had the texture of a milk shake, just like Owen did.

“Will you cut it out?” he asked.

“What?” I asked.

“Stop copying me.”

“I'm not copying you,” I told him. “I'm getting in tune with you. I'm hoping that it will help our game.”

“That's crazy,” Owen said, rolling his eyes and turning his attention to his ice-cream soup.

Maybe it was.

I scooped a drippy spoonful into my mouth and wished I'd left it alone.

When I arrived in my science class a few minutes early the next morning, I set up my work station just the way I liked it. We were in the middle of a geology section, and even though I preferred to study physics and chemistry, I was enjoying it.

I had just opened my textbook to reread the chapters I'd studied the night before when two long shadows spread across my page.

I glanced up and saw Mitch and Marcus standing over me, blocking the light from the windows. They were wearing matching University of Minnesota baseball hats and the letterman jackets I was beginning to think they never took off.

“Hey, Owen,” one of them said.

“Actually, I'm Russell,” I told him.

They couldn't tell
us
apart?

“Oh, sure,” he said, nodding. “Hey, Russell.”

“Hey,” I replied, wondering what on earth they were doing in Mrs. Lansdowne's lab. “Are you looking for a classroom? I know the layout of the school is a bit strange, but—”

“This
is
our classroom,” one of them said.

“You're taking accelerated science?” I asked doubtfully.

“Yes,” they said at the same time.

“Both of … you're
both
registered for accelerated science?”

They nodded again. “And advanced math,” they said together.

This can't be happening
.

I'd already seen how amazing they were on the court, and now they were going to excel in academics, too?

I glanced from one identical face to the other, feeling my body fill with dread.

“What are we studying?” one of them asked.

“Geology,” I told them as I flipped open the cover of my textbook to show them. “We've been talking about the layers of the earth and—”

“Our dad is a geologist,” they said at the exact same time.

“Oh,” I said quietly.

“He specializes in plate tectonics,” one continued.

What I knew about plate tectonics couldn't fill one of the glass beakers on the shelf in front of me.

“That's interesting,” I said glumly.

I could already imagine them at the top of the class, smiling down at me with identical dimples.

It was one thing to be outplayed on the basketball court, but in the lab, too?

That, as Owen would say, was pushing it.