Reading Online Novel

The Stranger(3)



Push it away, Adam told himself. The stranger was just playing with you. . . .

Picking the teams should take seconds. Each kid was scored between one and ten in various categories—stick handling, speed, strength, passing, stuff like that. The numbers were totaled and an average was determined. In theory, you should just go down the list, put the top eighteen boys on A, the next eighteen boys on B, and the rest don’t make it. Simple. But first, everyone had to be assured that their own sons were on the teams that they were coaching.

Okay, fine, done.

Then you start down those rankings. Things were moving along swiftly until they got down to the very last pick for the B team.

“Jimmy Hoch should be on it,” Gaston pronounced. Bob Baime rarely just spoke. He mostly made pronouncements.

One of his mousy assistant coaches—Adam didn’t know his name—said, “But Jack and Logan are both ranked ahead of him.”

“Yes, true,” Gaston pronounced. “But I know this boy. Jimmy Hoch. He’s a better player than those two. He just had a bad tryout.” He coughed into his fist before continuing. “Jimmy’s also had a tough year. His parents got divorced. We should give him a break and put him on the team. So if no one has a problem with that . . .”

He started to write down Jimmy’s name.

Adam heard himself say, “I do.”

All eyes turned toward him.

Gaston pointed his dimpled chin toward Adam. “Sorry?”

“I have a problem with it,” Adam said. “Jack and Logan have higher scores. Who has the higher score of the two?”

“Logan,” one of the assistants said.

Adam skimmed down the list and saw the scores. “Right, okay, so Logan should be on the team. He’s the kid with the better evaluation and higher ranking.”

The assistants didn’t gasp out loud, but they might as well have. Gaston was unused to being questioned. He leaned forward, baring his big teeth. “No offense, but you’re just here to sit in for your wife.”

He said the word wife with a little attitude, as though having to sit in for one meant you weren’t a real man.

“You’re not even an assistant coach,” Gaston continued.

“True,” Adam said. “But I can read numbers, Bob. Logan’s overall score was a six-point-seven. Jimmy only has a score of six-point-four. Even with today’s new math, six-point-seven is greater than six-point-four. I can show you with a graph if that would help.”

Gaston was not digging the sarcasm. “But as I just explained, there are extenuating circumstances.”

“The divorce?”

“Exactly.”

Adam looked to the assistant coaches. The assistant coaches suddenly found something fascinating on the ground in front of them. “Well, then, do you know what Jack’s or Logan’s home situations are?”

“I know their parents are together.”

“So that’s now our deciding factor?” Adam asked. “You have a really good marriage, don’t you, Ga—” He had almost called him Gaston. “Bob?”

“What?”

“You and Melanie. You guys are the happiest couple I know, right?”

Melanie was small and blond and perky and blinked as though someone had just slapped her across the face. Gaston liked to touch her ass a lot in public, not so much to show affection, or even lust, as to illustrate that she was his property. He leaned back now and tried to weigh his words carefully. “We have a good marriage, yes, but—”

“Well, that should deduct at least half a point off your own son’s score, right? So that knocks Bob Junior down to, let me see here, a six-point-three. The B team. I mean, if we are going to raise Jimmy’s score because his parents are having problems, shouldn’t we also lower your son’s because you guys are so gosh-darn perfect?”

One of the other assistant coaches said, “Adam, are you okay?”

Adam snapped his head toward the voice. “Fine.”

Gaston started flexing his fists.

“Corinne made it all up. She was never pregnant.”

Adam met the bigger man’s eye and held it. Bring it, big boy, Adam thought. Bring it tonight of all nights. Gaston was the kind of big and muscular guy you knew was all show. Over Gaston’s shoulder, Adam could see that Tripp Evans was looking on, surprise on his face.

“This isn’t a courtroom,” Gaston said, flashing his teeth. “You’re out of line.”

Adam hadn’t seen the inside of a courtroom in four months, but he didn’t bother to correct him. He lifted the sheets in the air. “The evaluations are here for a reason, Bob.”

“And so are we,” Gaston said, running his hand through his black mane. “As coaches. As guys who’ve watched these kids for years. We make the final call. I, as a head coach, make the final call. Jimmy has a good attitude. That matters too. We aren’t computers. We use all the tools at our disposal to select the most deserving kids.” He spread his giant hands, trying to win Adam back into the fold. “And come on, we are talking about the last kid on the B team. It’s not really that big a deal.”