Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time Read online

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  JUNE 7, 1:40 P.M.

  JUNE 9, 7:16 P.M.

  JUNE 11, 10:07 A.M.

  JUNE 12, 7:31 A.M.

  JUNE 13, 2:40 P.M.

  JUNE 14, 8:48 A.M.

  JUNE 15, 10:15 A.M.

  JUNE 18, 2:37 P.M.

  JUNE 21, 11:58 A.M.

  JUNE 23, 7:42 A.M.

  JUNE 24, 8:53 P.M.

  JUNE 25, 8:19 P.M.

  JUNE 27, 3:21 P.M.

  JUNE 28, 2 P.M.

  JUNE 29, 9:30 A.M.

  JULY 1, 3 P.M.

  JULY 3, 2:45 P.M.

  JULY 4, 6:31 P.M.

  JULY 5, 12:48 P.M.

  JULY 7, 10:33 A.M.

  JULY 8, 7:54 P.M.

  JULY 9, 6:37 P.M.

  JULY 11, 3:59 P.M.

  JULY 12, 9:14 A.M.

  JULY 13, 11:23 A.M.

  JULY 15, 10:35 P.M.

  JULY 16, 4:05 P.M.

  JULY 19, 7:35 P.M.

  JULY 21, 9:49 P.M.

  JULY 22, 10:26 A.M.

  JULY 23, 12:30 P.M.

  JULY 25, 3:30 P.M.

  JULY 26, 1:57 P.M.

  JULY 27, 1:20 P.M.

  JULY 28, 3:39 P.M.

  JULY 30, 3:45 P.M.

  JULY 31, 10:39 P.M.

  AUGUST 1, 10:45 A.M.

  AUGUST 2, 7:46 A.M.

  AUGUST 3, 2:04 P.M.

  AUGUST 4, 7 P.M.

  AUGUST 5, 3:10 P.M.

  AUGUST 6, 4:12 P.M.

  AUGUST 7, 1:02 P.M.

  AUGUST 8, 8:04 A.M.

  AUGUST 9, 1:45 P.M.

  AUGUST 10, 7:15 P.M.

  AUGUST 11, 4:53 P.M.

  AUGUST 12, 9:13 A.M.

  AUGUST 13, 3:31 P.M.

  AUGUST 14, 1 P.M.

  AUGUST 15, 3:10 P.M.

  AUGUST 16, 9:03 A.M.

  AUGUST 17, 10:12 A.M.

  AUGUST 19, 9:17 P.M.

  AUGUST 20, 3:45 P.M.

  AUGUST 21, 2:03 P.M.

  AUGUST 22, 4:15 P.M.

  AUGUST 23, 12:01 A.M.

  AUGUST 26, 12:14 A.M.

  AUGUST 27, 12 P.M.

  AUGUST 28, 9:11 A.M.

  AUGUST 29, 7:30 A.M.

  AUGUST 31, 2:44 P.M.

  SEPTEMBER 1, 10:10 A.M.

  SEPTEMBER 2, 9:45 A.M.

  SEPTEMBER 3, 3:57 P.M.

  SEPTEMBER 4, 9:45 P.M.

  TEASER OF SO TOTALLY EMILY EBERS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  COPYRIGHT

  JUNE 7, 1:40 P.M.

  Today’s the last day of school, the only school day that I look forward to. I grab my basketball and head to Mr. Glick’s class. Once I make it through that I’m free for the entire summer. Good-bye, school — hello, camp!!!

  It takes a while to make it down the hallway.

  “Stanford, way to go!”

  “Congratulations, Stanford!”

  “Have a great summer, Stanford!”

  “Stanford, send me a postcard!”

  I’m grinning and waving and crash!

  “You okay?” I ask. Star Trek action figures lay scattered on the ground.

  “I’m fine,” the boy sputters.

  We face each other. It’s Marley. We both redden. I step on Captain Jean-Luc Picard as I back away. Marley raises his hand to me and parts his middle and ring fingers in the Vulcan salute. Gotta get out of here. I take off running.

  I spot Stretch heading toward me and slow down. He doesn’t say anything, but from the way he’s drumming every locker I can tell he’s happy school will be over soon. We take our seats in the back of the room and I brace myself for my final boring day of sixth-grade English.

  As Mr. Glick blabbers on, my eyelids get heavy. Soon I’m seeing myself, Stanford Andrew Wong, as a starter on the Rancho Rosetta Middle School Basketball A-Team. I flash forward two weeks when I’ll be on center court at Alan Scott’s Basketball Camp in the San Gabriel Mountains, “Where basketball is not just a game, it’s a way of life.” I get chills every time I read the brochure.

  During the last three days of camp, Alan Scott himself comes in to coach. He’s this season’s top NBA scorer. Everything about him is cool, from his spiked hair right down to his Alan Scott BK620 basketball shoes. At the end of camp he presents each basketball player with his own personally autographed pair of BK620s. I can’t wait to get mine. I close my eyes and imagine me and the man shooting hoops. I can hear Alan Scott now: “Hey, Stanford, great layup!” Or, “Stanford, a one-handed reverse triple-loop crosscourt slam dunk? You’re amazing!” Or, “Stanford Wong, snap out of it!!!”

  Huh? What’s that? Why is Mr. Glick glaring at me?

  “Stanford Wong, snap out of it!” he booms. Does he have to be so loud? “Put the basketball down. I’d like you to stay after class. There’s something important we need to discuss.”

  Uh-oh. He’s holding my final book report and he doesn’t look happy.

  The bell rings. Mr. Glick makes his way toward me as kids stream in the opposite direction, pushing toward the door. Toward summer. Toward freedom.

  Why am I still here?

  The room clears out fast. My desk feels like an anchor wrapped around me. I am sinking. Mr. Glick slides the report toward me, facedown. I lift up the corner, then slowly turn it over. All I see is red, like the paper is bleeding.

  “An F,” Mr. Glick says. “Not a C, not a D — you got an F. Stanford, I expect you to show this to your parents. They need to sign it and get it back to me within three days.”

  I try to leave, but Mr. Glick is not finished with me yet. “Young man, wait one minute. This is not something you can shrug off. This is serious business. If you don’t do something about your grade this summer, you won’t make it to the seventh grade. Do you understand?”

  Mr. Glick is staring at me. We are standing face-to-face. He’s not that much taller than I am. I’ll bet I could take him down.

  “Stanford,” Mr. Glick says, unblinking. “Do you understand?”

  “An F.” My voice is flat. “I get it.”

  I grab my book report and tear out of the room. I’m supposed to meet the Roadrunners at Burger Barn, but I run in the opposite direction. I run past the park and through the empty lot. I run over the bridge and toward the train tracks. I run as far away from school as I can and only stop when my lungs are about to explode. Panting, I drop to my knees and uncrumple my report. The paper looks blurry, yet one thing is clear — the big fat F scrawled on the page.

  JUNE 9, 7:16 P.M.

  These past couple of days I’ve been at the top of my game. All the Roadrunners say so. I hope they remember that when I’m dead, because in about two minutes my father’s going to kill me. I can already see my tombstone:

  STANFORD A. WONG

  Loving Son

  Great Basketball Player

  Rotten Student

  My parents are in the kitchen. Mom’s rearranging the utensils as Dad talks about work. Here goes nothing. I rush in, hand my father my book report, and pivot around to make a fast exit.

  “Stanford, come back here this instant!” Dad is gripping my paper. “An F? Stanford, you got an F? This is not acceptable!” I am frozen and on fire at the same time. “What’s the matter with you? Do you want to explain to me why you got an F?”

  I don’t want to explain anything. I want out of here.

  “I’ve put up with a lot from you, Stanford, but an F crosses the line.”

  I glance at my mom. She looks as upset as I am. I stare at the floor as my dad goes on and on and, “… now that you won’t
be going to basketball camp, you’ll have the whole summer to raise your grade.”

  What???!!! I jerk my head up. “No fair! Coach had to pull strings to get me a spot. Only the top players go to Alan Scott’s Basketball Camp.”

  “Flunking this class means you could flunk sixth grade.”

  “If I go to camp I’ll be the best player Rancho Rosetta’s ever seen.”

  “You need to study more.”

  “Basketball camp is the only thing I’ve ever wanted.”

  “If you had studied, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “I have to go to camp!” I insist.

  “Stanford, listen to me: You are not going to basketball camp and that’s final!”

  “Mommm!” My mother knows how much this camp means to me. She’s been to my games. She’s heard the cheers. Mom just shakes her head.

  As my dad continues to shout, my grandmother, Yin-Yin, peeks in from behind the door and then disappears. I look at Mom as she turns away from Dad. My mother hates it when my father yells. I’ve heard him tell her, “Raising my voice is the only way I can get that boy to pay attention to me.”

  He’s wrong about that.

  “I have to go to camp,” I plead. “I’m on the A-Team. Everyone’s counting on me!”

  “Well, they can stop counting,” Dad says. “I’m going to call your English teacher and get to the bottom of this.”

  My father leaves the room. My mother puts dinner in front of me. Fried chicken, my third-favorite food. I can’t eat, so instead I try to listen to my dad yelling at Mr. Glick. All I hear is a lot of nothing. Maybe Dad’s using his low voice on him. His low voice is even scarier than his yelling.

  Wait! He’s coming back and he looks pleased. I wonder if Mr. Glick changed his mind about flunking me. Or maybe Mr. Glick made a mistake and I didn’t flunk after all.

  “It’s settled,” my father says, smiling.

  Suddenly I am starving. I pick up a drumstick and tear into it. “Well, I’m glad that’s over,” I tell him. “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Stanford.” His voice is serious. “I talked Mr. Glick into taking you in his summer-school class. You’ll start on Wednesday.”

  “Summer school?” I try not to choke on my chicken. “Summer school?”

  “Mr. Glick said you hardly ever handed in your homework and that you never paid attention in class.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “Yes.”

  My dad believes everything teachers tell him.

  “Wha … what about basketball camp?”

  “I told you. There isn’t going to be any basketball camp. You’re lucky Mr. Glick agreed to take you for summer school.” Dad picks up a piece of chicken and salts it. “I hope it’s not too late to get a refund from camp.”

  Then it hits me. No camp? School all summer long? Whoaaa … this is way, way too much to take in. “Mommmmm,” I yell. “Mom!” My mother rushes to my side. “Dad says I have to go to summer school. He says there’s not going to be any basketball camp.”

  She looks at Dad. He gives her a little nod. He’s trying to hypnotize her! “Stanford, your father is right,” she says. “I’m sorry, but school comes first. Maybe you can go to camp next year.”

  He did hypnotize her! They never see things the same way, and suddenly they’re ganging up on me. I push my chair away from the table, grab my basketball, and run out, slamming the door behind me.

  11:57 P.M.

  I’m drenched. I am at the park playing hard, weaving in and out of the twenty guys guarding me from every angle. Only there’s no one on the court but me. Water is pouring down my face, but it’s not tears, it’s just sweat. Athletes don’t cry.

  When I was little I used to cry a lot. I wasn’t good at anything. I couldn’t even spell my own name. I was always in the lowest reading group, and whenever we had partners on class projects I’d hear: “Aw, why do I have to be stuck with Stanford?”

  Basketball saved me.

  No matter what else was happening at recess, I was always drawn to the basketball court. Different groups of guys played all the time. Every morning I went to school praying I’d be invited to join them. Every afternoon I went home depressed.

  Finally one day I took a giant gulp of air, then asked, “Can I play?”

  The world stopped until Trevor, the best player on the playground, spoke up: “Sorry, loser, but you have to be good to play on this court.” Laughing, the boys gave each other high fives and went back to their game.

  I started running and swore never ever, ever, to go back.

  But I couldn’t stay away. It was as if basketball was in my blood. One week later, there I was, first watching from a distance, each day getting closer and closer. I watched how the guys shot the ball. I studied how they guarded each other. I memorized the moves.

  At night my mom would quiz me, “How’s school?”

  “Fine,” I’d mumble.

  “Not so fine according to your grades,” my father would say.

  I couldn’t win. Not at home. Not in class. Not on the court.

  “Can I play?”

  “No.”

  “Can I play?”

  “No.”

  “Can I play?”

  “Give up.” Marley was standing next to me. “They’re never going to let you in.”

  Marley and I were friends by default since we both sat at the reject table in the cafeteria. He was wearing his Mr. Spock shirt. Marley always wore Spock on Tuesdays and Scotty on Wednesdays. Just the week before I had buried all my Star Trek T-shirts in a bottom drawer along with my Trekkie trading cards and Klingon Battle Cruiser. The only thing I couldn’t bear to hide was my 1988 Next Generation Galoob Phaser. I still have it.

  “Do you want to come over after school?” Marley asked. “I’m still working on my model of the Voyager. Did you ever finish your Stargazer?”

  Trevor glanced our way and snickered. I braced myself and then said in a loud voice, “Star Trek? Are you still playing with Star Trek stuff? That’s only for geeks!”

  Marley looked right at me. “What’s going on, Stanford? Why are you acting like this?”

  I turned away, unable to face him.

  “This is mutiny, mister,” he muttered, quoting episode twenty-five of the original series.

  After that I wasn’t welcome at the reject table. I wasn’t welcome anywhere.

  A few days later my grandmother asked me to come over to her house. “Stanford,” she said as we ate shu mai in her kitchen, “I know you’re having a hard time at school, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Here.” She held up a black leather cord with a bright green stone dangling from it. “This is for you. For good luck.”

  Yin-Yin explained that the stone was from the fabled Hengshang Mountain, one of China’s Five Famous Mountains. A group of monks trekked there to fetch the jade, and the eldest monk carved it under the moonlight so that it would be infused with the magical rays. “Then,” she said, “while I was visiting the Great Wall, the eldest monk personally presented the pendant to me.”

  I protested. What kind of boy wears a necklace? “Wear it for a week,” Yin-Yin insisted. “After that, if it doesn’t change your luck, you can do with it what you want.”

  The next day, I went out to the court again. There was a new group playing basketball.

  “Can I play?” I asked, already turning around to leave.

  To my surprise, a freckle-faced kid said, “Give him the ball. Let’s see if he can even get it near the hoop. It’ll be good for a laugh.”

  “Jeez, he’s a waste of time,” Trevor groaned. “He’s just a dork.”

  Someone handed me the ball anyway. “Good luck,” a boy with dark curly hair whispered.

  Jaws dropped when I shot the basketball. It sailed through the hoop and I heard the most beautiful sound in the world: whoosh.

  “Bet you can’t do that again!”

  At first everybody thought
my free throws were a fluke, including me. But when it became clear that not only could I make free throws, I could dribble, I could block, I could score impossible shots, the other boys stopped ignoring me. Instead they started asking me to play basketball.

  Then Digger invited me to join the Roadrunners with him, Stretch, Tico, and Gus. They were okay before me; they won with me. We took the Parks and Rec title three consecutive times. I was league MVP three times. I moved from the reject corner of the cafeteria to the popular table. I got taller and stronger.

  Basketball’s big in Rancho Rosetta. Even before I started middle school last year, people knew who I was. I was the leading scorer for my school’s B-Team, breaking the league record. I got my picture in the newspaper. I was unstoppable. Everyone’s forgotten that I used to be a nobody. Everyone but me and Marley.

  My mother drives up to the park. She rolls down the car window. “Stanford, time to go home.”

  I make one last basket. An amazing jump shot. The kind of jump shot that made Alan Scott famous.

  It is quiet in the car. The radio is on, but the volume is way down low so I can only hear murmurs. It sounds like people drowning. My mother doesn’t seem to notice. She is just staring straight ahead. I was afraid she would be angry, but she’s not. She seems tired. It’s hard to figure her out. Sometimes I get in trouble for just being alive. But here, it’s almost midnight and she doesn’t even blink.

  “Stanford,” Mom says, “you owe it to Coach Martin to tell him you won’t be going to basketball camp.”

  “Do I have to?”

  She gives me that look.

  As we near our house, I ask, “Do you hate me because I’m stupid?”

  Through the living room window I can see my dad pacing. Mom doesn’t answer. Instead, she keeps driving until we’re on the next block. Carefully she parallel parks the car but leaves the engine running. “Honey, I don’t hate you, and you’re not stupid. Grades aren’t everything.”

  “Dad thinks so,” I mutter.

  She sighs. “Yes, well, they are important to him. But as long as you are doing your best, I’ll be happy.” Mom pauses. “Stanford, did you do your best in Mr. Glick’s class?”

  I think about it. I think about the books I didn’t read. I think about the homework I didn’t turn in. I think about how I skipped class to play basketball….

  My mother is waiting for my reply. I take a deep breath. “Yes,” I tell her. “I did my best.”