Read Online My Brother's Keeper by Patricia McCormick - Free Book Online

goatee leaning up against a car. Andy Timmons is wearing sunglasses and taking a drag on a cigarette that he’s got not-so-secretly cupped inside his hand. And Jake’s looking at the baseball team walking past right in front of him like it has nothing to do with him, like he didn’t single-handedly clinch the division championship last year, and like he isn’t the kind of player that new kid wannabes like me and Arthur and Badowski would do anything to be.
    From a couple feet behind me, Coach Gillis yells out, “Malone!”
    I turn around so fast I practically sprain my neck. Then, as he walks right past me like I don’t exist, I realize he means Jake.
    Coach Gillis shoots Andy Timmons a glance, then looks Jake up and down.
    “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
    Jake shrugs. “Nothing,” he says.
    “Did you forget that today’s the last day of tryouts?”
    “Not exactly.” For about a split second Jake looks like he’s nervous, like he suddenly remembered that Coach Gillis was the guy who stayed after practice a bunch of times last year to personally show him how to straighten out his swing, and who let him keep his uniform jersey to celebrate winning the division even though it was technically against the rules. Jake looks down at the ground, then over at AndyTimmons, who’s grinding his cigarette out under his boot and not even pretending to be nervous. Then he looks back at Coach Gillis.
    “I’m done with baseball,” he says.
    Coach Gillis keeps staring at Jake. He swings his whistle around till the cord is wrapped all the way up his finger, then he swings it in the other direction. When it’s all the way unwrapped, he bites it between his teeth, shakes his head, and walks away.
    Which means I’m standing there in the middle of the parking lot feeling weird and embarrassed and wondering what a persons supposed to do in a situation like this.
    It’s sort of like the time Arthur and his dad and I were leaving the movies at the mall and I spotted my dad driving the trash sweeper—this giant yellow truck with big noisy brushes that you can’t help but notice. When I realized it was my dad driving, I made a big deal out of not noticing.
    So I pull the brim of my cap so far down I practically can’t see where I’m going and keep walking.
    W hen I get to the field, I can see the kid with the pulled hamstring, who is named Sean and who I now remember was sort of annoyed last year about Jake getting MVP instead of him, already putting on the catcher’s equipment in an obvious way. So I go join the other wannabes in the Outer Mongolia part of the field and wait for no one to watch us.
    Except that after about twenty minutes, Coach Gillis comes over and stands at the head of our line and watches us. Which means I start sucking. Arthur throws me a soft grounder, which somehow disappears right through my glove. Then, after I run out to Outer Outer Mongolia where it rolled off to, I throw it back to him except that I practically hit Badowski in the head.
    Coach Gillis comes up to me not looking exactly ecstatic. “Malone?” he says. “You gonna live up to your brother’s potential?”
    I’ve heard the legend about Coach Gillis picking some kid up by the jock strap and hanging him on a hook in the locker room, so I say yes, even though I have no idea how one person can live up to another person’s potential.
    “You keep your nose clean then,” he says.
    Behind the coach’s back, Arthur’s trying to make me laugh by shoving his finger up his nose. I ignore him and tell Coach Gillis I’ll try, while I wonder what it is about grown-ups and kids’noses being kept clean. I also wonder what Mr. Miller and Coach Gillis know about Jake and how they know it, and if that means other people know it, too.
    A rthur’s mom is waiting to pick him up after practice for an orthodontist appointment, which is sort of good because it means I don’t have to talk to him about Jake’s showdown with Coach