Free Laggan Lard Butts by Eric Walters Page B

possible. Maybe I wasn’t a good loser, but I wanted to be a loser who didn’t hang around.

chapter two
    We piled into Mr. Davidson’s van. Probably the best thing about having him as coach was that he was the only teacher with a van big enough to carry a whole basketball team. It was a fifteen-seater. He used it to drive people to and from church on Sundays. He was a big-time church-going sort of guy—not that there was anything wrong with that.
    He was also a pretty good teacher and a nice guy, but he knew next to nothing aboutbasketball. That was okay, though, because he knew he didn’t know much and he didn’t try to tell us what to do. He just let us call our own plays and play the game.
    â€œEverybody buckle up!” he sang out.
    Seatbelts clicked through the vehicle.
    â€œNow that we’re all safe we can go.”
    He put the van into gear and we started away. I looked back at the school. This was the last time I would ever have to come here to lose, I thought. The last time I’d ever have to drag myself out of Maple Ridge school after losing another game to the Maple Ridge Mustangs. I
hated
that school.
    They were everything we weren’t. We were little and they were big. They were city and we were country. They were winners and we were...well, we all knew what the score was.
    At least this year those stupid Mustangs weren’t going to win it all. It looked like they were going to finish second. They had lost both of their games with the other big city school. Not that I necessarily liked that team any better.
    â€œI’m really proud of you boys!” Mr. Davidson called out over the sound of the engine.
    I had to hand it to him. He never got down. He always seemed to be able to find the silver lining in any cloud—even a storm cloud.
    â€œCan you imagine how much prouder you’d be if we’d won the game?” Tanner asked.
    â€œWouldn’t make any difference. First place or eighth, I’m just as proud. It isn’t whether you win or lose—”
    â€œIt’s how you play the game!” we yelled back, cutting him off.
    I don’t know how many times we’d heard him say that. Certainly a lot more times than the number of wins we’d had.
    â€œAnd, who knows, we might still win it all,” he said.
    â€œHow do you figure that?” Taylor asked.
    â€œWe are solidly in seventh place.”
    Great, seventh place in an eight-team league. Made me feel proud.
    â€œAnd our last game is against the teamthat is just ahead of us in the standings. Martintown,” Mr. Davidson said. We’d lost to Martintown by only two points in our first meeting. That game had been a heart-breaker. It was better to lose by a lot than by a little. “If we beat them we’ll finish in sixth place.”
    â€œSixth place, my dream,” I said sarcastically.
    â€œWe’re number six! We’re number six!” Tanner started chanting and the whole van— except me—joined in.
    â€œAnd!” Mr. Davidson said, silencing the cheer, “if we finish sixth that means we make the play-offs.”
    â€œThat would be great!” somebody said. Yeah, right, great.
    â€œWho would we play in the first round?” I asked.
    â€œI think sixth place plays the team in first place.”
    There was sudden silence from everybody. We all knew what that meant. If we did make the play-offs our last game was going to be a blowout of epic size. Go, Lairds, go.
    â€œI think we do really well,” Mr. Davidson said, “relative to the size of our school. We’re so much smaller than every other school in the league.”
    He did have a point. Martintown had over eight hundred kids. We had one hundred and fifty kids between kindergarten and grade eight. We had ten grades with an average of fifteen kids per grade. I didn’t even know what it was like to not be in a split class. Martintown had more grade seven and