Read Online I'm With Cupid by Anna Staniszewski - Free Book Online

would tell on him.
    â€œOh, um.” Marcus grabbed for any excuse he could think of. “I went for a run.” It was sort of true. He had sprinted a good part of the way home, paranoid that Caspar would come after him.
    His dad’s eyebrows shot up. Then he leaned against the door frame, smugly crossing his arms in front of his chest. “So you finally decided to man up a little, huh?”
    Marcus swallowed.
    â€œHow far’d you go?” his dad asked. The fact that his only son could barely run in a straight line had been a sore topic for years.
    â€œN-not far,” Marcus stammered. “Only, uh, a few miles. Three, maybe.”
    â€œThree?” His dad whistled. “Last time I tried to make you run, you couldn’t even make it through one.”
    Oops. Well, that was it. His dad would call Marcus out on the lie and make him do push-ups as punishment, the whole time telling stories about how much worse his own father had punished him when he was young.
    But surprisingly, Marcus’s dad shrugged and said, “Maybe next year, we’ll try you out for the track team.” He thought for a second and added, “I’ll have to time you beforehand though. The first year I tried out for hockey, I fell on my face in front of everyone, and my father said I’d embarrassed the whole family. We don’t want history to repeat itself, do we?”
    Marcus shook his head, stifling a sigh. The funny thing was, his dad actually thought he was going easy on Marcus. But since Mr. Torelli had been a high school hero back in his day—track star, hockey legend—he didn’t seem to know what “going easy on someone” actually meant.
    â€œAnyway,” his dad went on, “your mother wanted me to tell you that we’re going to the nursing home to see your grandfather tomorrow afternoon, so be ready after school.”
    â€œI can’t. I have a lot of homework to do.” At least this part was true.
    â€œHomework can wait. Family can’t,” his dad said. “You’re going.” He turned to leave, but then his gaze fell on the moon ship on Marcus’s worktable. “You still wasting your time on this nonsense?”
    â€œIt’s not nonsense,” Marcus said. “It’s a hobby.”
    â€œA hobby is something useful, like collecting bottles and cans or getting a job. This…” He held up a lunar module that Marcus had finished painting last week and sighed. “This is a waste of time. What happened to doing Boy Scouts or joining the debate club? You never gave those things a chance.”
    Marcus swallowed. Over the years, he’d tried every sport and club his dad had come up with, and he’d failed miserably at every single one. He didn’t want to think about the one—and only—Boy Scout camping trip he’d been on a few years ago when he’d gotten up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night and wound up lost in the woods until dawn. But his dad couldn’t accept that his son was bad at those things. He thought Marcus only had to try harder.
    â€œGrandpa built models when he was my age,” Marcus said weakly.
    His dad shook his head. “I know you and Joe get along, and that’s fine. You should respect your elders, but that doesn’t mean you need to be like them. Do you know what I’m saying?”
    Marcus kept his lips tightly shut. Of course, his dad meant that he should grow up to be just like him . But the truth was, if Marcus could become half the man Grandpa Joe was, he’d be happy, no matter what his dad said.
    â€œDid you go running in those old shoes?” his dad asked suddenly.
    Marcus glanced over at the sneakers he’d worn every day since last year, still wet from this evening’s trip to the pond. “Um, yeah.”
    â€œWe can stop on the way home tomorrow and get you some proper running