Free Wall Ball by Kevin Markey Page B

“It’s like a giant solar reflector.”
    “We hoped it would be a real attention getter.” Stump giggled.
    “I think it’s actually magnifying the sun’s rays,” said Gabby. “All of a sudden I feel warmer.”
    She had a point. My own head baked under my wool hat. If the warmth held, we might actually get to play our season opener after all. I wondered if Orlando felt the heat up at the shining summit.
    If so, it didn’t slow him down any. We watched him drop from Calvin Coolidge’s left ear on to the president’s shoulder. From there he edged under Silent Cal’s chin and into a chute formed by his necktie. Orlando eased himself into it, pulled his knees up under his chin, and rocketed down Mount Rambletown like a turtle using its shell as a toboggan.
    For a kid who’d never been sledding before, he was fantastic.
    In no time flat he arrived at the base, nose red, eyes watering, mouth frozen in a smile wider than the Grand Canyon.
    We gave him a hero’s welcome. In fact, we carried him all the way home on our shoulders. His feet didn’t touch the ground until we deposited him on his front doorstep.
    We turned and looked toward school, where we caught the rays of the lowering sun glinting madly off the team banner atop Mount Rambletown. With one last cheer we said our good-byes, promising one another we’d all get a good night’s sleep before the big game the next day.

CHAPTER 18
    I don’t know about the other guys, but I broke my promise. I broke it like Ted Williams broke hitting records. I shattered it.
    Lying in bed Friday night, I couldn’t sleep at all. Despite Orlando’s heroic climb, I still felt nervous. Butterflies played musical chairs in my stomach. It was thinking about the Hog City Haymakers that did it.
    We had beaten them to win the championship last year. But that was then, as Flicker said, and this was now.
    This was a new season. A new, cold, snowy season that was supposed to be spring but looked and felt an awful lot like winter.
    This was a frozen field and cold bats thatstung your hands like swarms of bees and a center fielder who ran into walls.
    This was the Hog City Haymakers out for vengeance. A team that would stop at nothing to get back the championship they thought they owned and we had stolen.
    This was Flicker Pringle, the biggest, meanest Haymaker of them all. The kid with the best fastball anyone had ever seen. Or not. It moved so fast you couldn’t.
    The butterflies in my stomach started turning cartwheels. They did leaps and flips and forward rolls. It was regular butterfly gymnastics down there.
    There’s only one thing for butterfly gymnastics.
    Fried baloney sandwiches.
    I tossed aside the covers and rolled out of bed. Mr. Bones followed closely on my heels as I slipped downstairs. In the darkness of the kitchen, I started sizzling up baloney and toasting bread.
    Mr. Bones sat down beside me and gazedlongingly at the smoking pan. The baloney hissed and popped. When the first batch was done, I shoveled it onto the bread and filled the pan again. Mr. Bones began to drool. The toaster ejected four more slices of bread, and I loaded them up with hot baloney.
    I was so busy I didn’t hear my dad slip into the kitchen.
    “Ahem.” He cleared his throat.
    “Oh, hi,” I said. “Hungry?”
    He looked at me. He looked at the pan on the stove. He looked at the stack of sandwiches on the plate. He looked at the clock on the wall.
    “You’re cooking,” he said, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “I thought the furnace was acting up. The whole house is full of smoke. Do you know what time it is?”
    “Sorry,” I said. “I couldn’t sleep.”
    “Worried about the game?” he asked.
    I nodded.
    “As far as I know, you guys are still thechamps. You beat the Haymakers last year, remember? They’re the ones who should be concerned.”
    I flipped the last sandwich onto the stack and clicked off the stove.
    “Last year we didn’t have a center fielder who ran into walls,”