Read Online No More Dead Dogs by Gordon Korman - Free Book Online

math: By any stretch of the imagination + By any means = By any stretch of the means.
    Cavanaugh stepped forward, and I knew the rough ride was only beginning. “This was a close game, Wallace,” he declared loudly. Because he called me Wallace, and not some nasty double nickname, I realized that his true audience was the team and not me. “I scored twelve points, so a star like you could have gotten at least that many. We would have won by a mile!”
    A chorus of grumbles bubbled up in the locker room.
    “We need you on the team, not in the gym!”
    “We’re getting killed out there!”
    “We’re 0 and three!”
    Silence fell as Coach Wrigley stepped out from his office. He gave me a crooked smile. “Congratulations, Wallace. I see your public hasn’t forgotten you.”
    “Sorry, Coach,” I murmured.
    He clapped me on the shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault. Relax. Go home. Maybe even—write a book review.”
    I just couldn’t look him in the eye. Instead, I concentrated on the concrete floor, my sneakers, Rick’s muddy cleats, Feather’s open locker—
    I froze. There on the shelf beside Feather’s wadded-up sweat socks stood a two-pound box of ground black pepper. I had a vision of the cast and crew of Old Shep, My Pal coughing and sneezing in a big black cloud.
    “Hey, Feather—” I hardly recognized my own voice. “What’s with the pepper?”
    He made a face. “It’s for the celery, to disguise the taste.”
    “Yeah,” I insisted, “but two pounds?”
    “Ever eaten celery?” He snorted. “Two pounds isn’t enough.”
    As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one thinking about the attacks on Old Shep, My Pal. First thing Monday morning, I got called to the principal’s office.
    Dr. Chechik spent the first few minutes showing me his poster-size blow-up of the newspaper photograph of me scoring the winning touchdown. The next few minutes he devoted to telling me that I couldn’t expect any special treatment because of it.
    I kind of liked our principal. He was a straight-up guy who got right to the point. He asked if I did it, and I said no. But then he caught me off guard:
    “Do you have any idea who might be responsible?”
    I was stuck. I couldn’t tell him my suspicions about Feather. After all, the kid had a good reason for keeping a lockerful of pepper. Besides, I’d never rat out a friend. But I couldn’t lie either.
    “I can’t say for sure,” I replied. The “for sure” made it okay.
    When I left the office, my head was spinning. Why would Feather have a grudge against the play? The answer was simple. The whole Giants team was mad at Mr. Fogelman over my detention. Feather was the most obvious suspect because of the pepper. But it could also be Rick, or Kevin Wilkerson, or any of those guys who were dumb enough to believe I was a big star.
    And what about Cavanaugh? He didn’t want me back on the Giants, but he sure got a charge out of watching me suffer. He could be doing all this to set me up. Pinning the blame on me would guarantee that my detention would go on forever. Come to think of it, Cavanaugh seemed to know a lot about what was happening to the play. Was that because he was making it happen?
    When I walked out of the office, Parker Schmidt was skulking on the bench. I’ll bet he’d been hiding there ever since he’d heard my name paged over the P.A.
    “I can’t believe you have the nerve to come anywhere near me!” I snarled. “Especially after what you printed last time!”
    He waved the slightly damaged tape recorder in my face. “Did your meeting with the principal have anything to do with your ongoing holdout from the Giants?”
    What an idiot! He even sounded like his stupid articles.
    But then I got an idea. For some strange reason, a lot of kids read the Standard and talked up Parker’s columns. If I leaked to Parker that Dr. Chechik was looking into the attacks on Old Shep, My Pal , chances were the bad guy would read it and back off. Then I