Read Online Fairway Phenom by Matt Christopher, Paul Mantell - Free Book Online Page B

to finish. Malik was off to the
     left, Luis to the right.
    Malik watched as Luis took another huge “practice shot.” “That’s two!” he shouted.
    “No way, man — I was practicing!” came the predictable response. Luis hit again, and this time his ball landed on the green.
    “That’s three!” Malik yelled, ignoring Luis’s cries of protest. Malik hit his shot, and it landed on the edge of the green,
     close enough to putt. “That’s two!” he said, making sure Luis got his meaning.
    Each boy holed out in two putts. “I still lead by one,” Malik said. “With one hole to go.”
    “Yeah?” Luis responded, whipping out his own card. “Well, according to my scorecard, I lead you by one.”
    “How do you figure that?” Malik exploded.
    “You cheated on the last hole, that’s how. You think I didn’t notice you switched balls? I checked it when you took it out
     of the hole, yo. You think I’m some fool or what?”
    The fact that Luis had caught him made Malik even more furious. “Yeah? Well, you took an extra swing on your approach shot
this
hole — and don’t say you didn’t!”
    Luis was about to answer, but there was a huge thunderclap, and both boys jumped with fear. “Yo,
     let’s finish out!” Luis ordered. He hit a quick drive, not a bad one considering, and gave way to Malik.
    They played the eighteenth so fast that neither of them hit very well. Malik had trouble counting his own shots, let alone
     Luis’s. They putted out in a hurry as the rain started to fall, then ran to the shelter of the clubhouse, pelted by the sudden
     downpour. Lightning flashed out of the darkness, lighting up the course behind them.
    “Are you kids crazy?!” a maintenance worker shouted at them as they came into the building. “Don’t you know you could get
     killed like that? Next time you hear thunder, you come in right away — you understand?”
    Both boys nodded dumbly, then sat down on a bench to catch their breath and count up their scores.
    Malik’s card was soaked, and some of the numbers had run. He added up his own score, giving himself a seven on the eighteenth.
     He had a fifty-one for the second nine. Not bad. If he hadn’t been rushing through the eighteenth, he could have broken fifty.
     Now he wished he knew what his true score on the first nine had been. Maybe he would even havebroken one hundred for real. Now, he’d never know for sure.
    “What’d you get on eighteen?” he asked Luis, dreading the answer.
    “I got a six, man,” Luis mumbled.
    Malik could tell he was lying, even if he didn’t know for sure that Luis had taken at
least
seven shots.
    “Come on, yo!”
    “No, for real,” Luis insisted. “What did you get?”
    Malik frowned. “Six,” he lied, staring Luis right in the face.
    “You lie like a rug!” Luis said, giving him a little shove to the shoulder. “Don’t cheat, yo! I beat you fair and square!”
    “What? No way!” Malik shouted, shoving back.
    Before he knew it, the two of them were throwing punches at each other. “Hey, hey, cut it out!” the maintenance man yelled.
     “None of that in here, or you won’t be allowed in anymore!”
    Malik and Luis allowed him to pry them apart. “Go on home, now,” the man ordered them. “You wanna play golf, you gotta grow
     up a little.”
    The rain had almost stopped by the time theystepped out onto the cobblestone driveway in front of the clubhouse. “I beat you, man,” Luis muttered.
    “You are such a liar!” Malik shot back. “Give me my clubs back, yo.”
    “Here,” Luis said, removing them from his dad’s fishing-rod bag and dropping them on the hard ground. “Take your ratty clubs
     back. Who wants them, anyway? This game is stupid — just like you!”
    “Hey, you dweeb, don’t drop my clubs like that!”
    “See you in school tomorrow, loser,” Luis said, taking off by himself as Malik stooped to pick up his clubs.
    “Yeah? Not if I see you first!” he called after his friend —