Free My Brother's Keeper by Patricia McCormick

tip jar. Little towers of quarters and dimes and nickels are stacked up in front of a bunch of wrinkled bills and she’s counting the money over and over, like if she counts it one more time, it’ll add up to more. She gets up and feels around in her bathrobe pocket for her new herbal stop-smoking gum, and I slink back up the steps.
    Later, after everyone else is in bed, I can’t sleep so I go downstairs to get a bowl of Lucky Charms. I pick up the mail and sift through it for any personal stuff, like a letter or a postcard from California. But there’s nothing but bills and junk mail. I set aside two envelopes, though: an American Express bill marked “Second Notice” and an envelope stamped with the words “You may have already won!” I slip the bill in my back pocket, pour out the Lucky Charms, and sit down and rip open the you-may-have-already-won envelope.
    With the purchase of just three magazine subscriptions, the people from the you-may-have-already-won contest say we’ll be entered in a drawing, where the grand prize is one million dollars. There’s no obligation; the subscriptions can be canceled at any time.
    So I order a subscription to Cooking Lite for my mom, Sports Illustrated for me and Jake, and National Geographic Kids for Eli. Then I check off the “Bill Me Later” box, sign my name right above where it says “Open to contestants over age 21,” and make a note to myself to cancel the magazines if we don’t win.
    T he next afternoon, as soon as the last bell rings, Arthur and I meet up to walk down to the locker room to see if by some miracle our names are on the list of people who made it for the team. We walk slow at first, then faster, then slow again, speeding up and slowing down depending on how hopeful or hopeless we are as we try to figure out our chances.
    When we get there, I’m too nervous to look. Which is okay because Arthur, who never gets nervous about anything, says he’ll look for both of us.
    A bunch of guys are crowded around the locker-room door. Arthur pushes his way to the front, then starts jumping up and down so he can see the list, his flaming red hair appearing and disappearing in between all the shoulders of the guys who are older and taller. Then I hear him whoop. Then he hollers. Then he bursts out of the crowd and does a backflip, which he knows how to do from fourth grade when his mom made him take gymnastics. Which, of course, is highly embarrassing, but which means we made it.
    But which I won’t actually believe until I see the list, too.
    I inch my way through the crowd, which is now actually two crowds: the guys who are thumping each other on the head because they made it, and the guys who are watching guys thump each other on the head because they didn’t make it. They step aside so I can see the list.
    And my name is right on it. Which makes it official that I’m on the team.
    And which also makes it official that Jake’s not. “We made it!” Arthur says. His face is almost as red as his hair. “We made it.”
    “Yeah,” I say. I mean to sound happy, which I am, but I end up sounding bummed out, which I also am. “Yeah,” I say again.
    At which point, a bunch of girls go by, including Martha MacDowell.
    “We made the team,” Arthur yells out “Me and Toby.”
    The girls look at Arthur the way girls usually look at Arthur—like he’s entertaining as long as he’s at a safe distance.
    Then Martha MacDowell looks at me and smiles. It’s an actual, no-doubt-about-it smile that isn’t pitying or kindhearted or anything except normal.
    “Congratulations,” she says. “What position do you play?”
    I don’t say anything. Sometimes around girls I act like I have the IQ of a paramecium. This is one of those times.
    Arthur elbows me in the rib. “Catcher,” he says. “He plays catcher.”
    “Me too,” she says.
    I nod. Then I swallow. Then I clear my throat, like I have something to say. Which I don’t.
    Then Martha MacDowell does give