The Great Interactive Dream Machine by Richard Peck Read Free Book Online Page B

walk out?”
    â€œSenior privileges,” Aaron said.

    Huckley School is a block away from Central Park. Halfway to the corner, we met the upper-school guys coming back.
    Stink Stuyvesant and Hulk Hotchkiss led. Everybody was in Huckley sweatshirts and shorts, swaggering toward us. I started to get in the gutter like you have to do when you’ve got upper-school people coming at you.
    â€œForget that,” Aaron said, and we held our ground. They walked around us, the whole class. They didn’t know us. They couldn’t place us. But we were the same size as they were, bigger than most. It felt great.
    Hulk Hotchkiss had brushed right by me. Little did he know he’d just walked past his own underwear.
    We crossed Fifth Avenue, and then we were in the park. Aaron seemed to have something in mind. Like a plan. Now we were coming up on the soccer field. We sat down on a nearby rock and pulled up our huge knees.
    Suddenly it was great. It wasn’t even weird anymore. It was the perfect spring day, and we weren’t in class, and we were practically grown. Better than grown. We were in upper school.
    â€œHow old do you think we are, Aaron?”
    â€œI put us at seventeen, pushing eighteen. I’d say we were looking at colleges about now.”
    We sat there and felt the sun on our big stubbly faces. We basked. “Aaron, we’re adolescents, and we didn’t have to get here. We didn’t have to do the whole puberty thing. We didn’t have to do the pimple thing. We didn’t have to—”
    â€œHold it a minute,” he muttered.
    People were beginning to trickle onto the soccer field from Fifth Avenue. Small, spindly people in droopy shorts were dragging net goals.
    â€œIs that our Gym class?”
    Aaron shook his head. “Our class is last period. This is the eighth grade.” It was. Trip Renwick in his Dartmouth sweatshirt was in the lead. Next to him like an assistant coach was Daryl Dimbleby.
    We watched while Daryl assembled two eleven-man teams and ordered the real runts to the sidelines. We noticed how he put all his peer group on his own team, making sure the other team could be systematically stomped. We watched Daryl rule while Coach Renwick stood around, taking roll or whatever.
    We watched the game kick off.
    Then Aaron climbed off the rock. He slipped out of the blazer and rolled up Stink’s sleeves.
    So I did too. “What are we doing?”
    â€œWe’re going to level the playing field.”
    â€œWe’re what?”
    â€œWe’re going to show Daryl how soccer’s played.”
    â€œBut Aaron, we don’t know. We’re terrible at soccer.”
    â€œWe were,” he said.
    He flexed his thick neck and then his big elbows. He hugged one knee and then the other in a warm-up.
    So I did too. Then we started walking toward the game.
    We weren’t suited up, but our ties said we were from Huckley. And who’s going to keep a couple of upperschoolers out of an eighth-grade game? Please.
    Most of the guys who weren’t on Daryl’s team were already flat on the field, clutching parts of their bodies. We came in on their side.
    The next minutes went really fast. I was feeling my way, trying to throw my weight around. Aaron got into it. Where his coordination came from I can’t tell you. But he had control of the ball and was ankling it down the field, making magical moves with his vast feet through a forest of knobby knees. His fiery hair flashed in the sun, and now the ball was bouncing off his big shoulders, off his heels, you name it. Aaron was steamrolling the peer group. Daryl was screaming for time-out.
    Then somehow I myself was pounding up behind Daryl, and Aaron was bearing down on his front like an express bus. It was amazing how small Daryl actually was. Shrunken, nearly. My Mighty Morphin kick went wild, and Hulk’s thick shoe connected with the back of Daryl’s shorts. It really lifted