Whale Talk Read Online Free PDF Page A

into his music, not to mention the bodybuilding.
    “Actually, that sounds kind of fun. I’m kinda burned out on the bodybuilding thing. You have to travel too far to catch the drug-free contests, and the price of regular supplements is killing me.”
    I ask if he swims much.
    “I can chase down my water ski,” he says, laughing. “Actually, I swam the river, over and back, from Boulder Beach last summer.”
    That isn’t bad. It’s more than three-quarters of a mile across there. I tell him that’s farther than I’ve swum in the last year and sign him up. If nothing else, Tay-Roy is plenty familiar with All Night Fitness. When he’s working out for a contest, he’ll spend more time on that little bump of a muscle that pops out right next to your elbow than I spend on my entire upper body. He even knows what that muscle is called.
    So if I can convince Chris to swim, and Dan assesses the situation in our favor, we’ll have at least enough swimmers for a relay. Who knows what else will come floating up from the bottom?
     
    My quest gains momentum the next day while I’m pitching the team one more time to Chris Coughlin at first lunch, and look up to see Barbour standing over us with a couple of offensive (I won’t say how offensive) linemen. Talk about thinking football is life . Cutter could win it all this year, and football guys are gods. Before the first game is even played, Barbour is being talked about as first string All-State. The one thing that couldmake me play football is if I could transfer to another school and go up against that asshole. Anyway, it’s clear he’s going to loom until I acknowledge his presence, but I leave him unattended until Chris appears ready to bolt out of sheer terror. “Barbour the Barbarian,” I say finally. “What can I do for you?”
    “I wanna talk to the dummy.”
    I point to Greg Steelman, the lineman beside him. “So talk.”
    He points to Chris. “That dummy.”
    “Christopher may not be matriculating to Harvard,” I say, “but he’s plenty smart enough not to waste his time in discourse with you. What do you want?” Matriculating. Discourse . Dan Hole is lodged in my brain.
    He glares at Chris. “I said I was—”
    I stand, shoving my chair back hard enough to send it crashing to the floor—bringing us into focus as objects of attention from five tables in every direction—then step forward. Steelman puts a hand on my shoulder, but I brush it off with enough force to let him know he’ll at least get his hair messed up messing with me. “If you call my friend a dummy one more time, I’m going to take you apart. I know, you’re a hotshot football stud and you think nobody has your number, but even if I don’t, we go at it, we get three days to cool off, and thatmeans you miss three days of practice, which makes you ineligible for the game Friday. It makes me ineligible for a math test. So go ahead, Barbour, sound off.” I think I said I’ve spent a record number of days out of school for letting the heat that starts in my gut rise all the way, and I do my best to keep that under control, but the day I take Barbour out will be worth finishing the year homeschooled.
    Coach Benson, the head football coach, spots us from his lunch-duty spot by the door and hustles over. “What’s going on?”
    “I’m just keeping these two apprised of the school athletic code; how nobody wears a letter jacket but the guy who earns it.”
    I translate that for Benson. “He wants to tell Chris Coughlin one more time he can’t wear his dead brother’s jacket.”
    Chris puts his head down, and I touch his shoulder. “Sorry, buddy, I shouldn’t have said it like that.”
    “There’s pride in being an athlete at this school.”
    “There may have been before you peed into the athletic gene pool,” I tell him.
    Coach Benson says, “Mr. Jones, there’s no call for that kind of language.”
    “I’m just speaking in his native tongue, sir.” I realizeI stepped