Running Loose Read Free Page A

I’d see if I could catch it without looking back. He’d yell just before the ball came into my vision. It’s a good drill for reflexes, and we did it every day at least once. I was getting pretty good at it. We did it for two laps that day, and I only missed twice.
    “Three days till practice starts,” he said. “Gotta be ready. Right!” He tossed the ball over my right shoulder into my outstretched hands. I flipped it back without looking.
    “I can see it now,” he went on. “Sampson to Banks on a down-and-out—left!—Sampson to Banks on a post. Sampson to Banks on a hook-and-go. Touchdown! Top!”
    “Sampson and Banks to Evergreen County Hospital for major surgery,” I said, “in the second quarter of theTamarack game, when Cowans gets tired of Sampson trying to make a hero out of Banks.” I flipped it back.
    Carter held the ball and caught up to me. “Boomer’ll be okay,” he said. “You just have to know how to handle him. He ain’t smart, but he ain’t dumb enough to get me down on him. I mean, who gives him the ball?”
    “Got a point,” I said. “Me, I know how to handle him. From a distance. Maybe the next county.”
    Carter did have a point. He always has a point. He knows exactly what he’s doing all the time. It’s hard for me to figure how he can look so free and easy when I know he calculates every move he makes. I guess it goes along with having a good act.

CHAPTER 3
    I guess I got a pretty good draw when they handed out parents. I mean, just since last summer Rob Dropzec’s uncle became his stepdad while his real dad became his stepuncle in a trade that still has the fans baffled. And Amy Miller’s little brother got taken away— taken away —because he kept showing up at school with funny bruises and marks on his back and legs. Carter hasn’t spent three days with his old man since he was five and his dad took a hotshot job with Morrison-Knudsen down in Boise. He was supposed to move the family down as soon as he got settled in his job and found a house. What he found was a new family, and now it’s like Carter doesn’t exist. Carter and I ran into him down there one night in a pizza place, and it got pretty heavy; but other than that one time, Carterpretends his dad doesn’t exist either. Just says it’s no big deal.
    And then there’s Becky’s parents. Her dad is a real class guy, one of those people who seem to know how things work. But his noodle must’ve been on sabbatical when he married her mom, to hear Becky tell it. Boy, now she’s a case for the books. If you could bottle half the garbage she pulls, you could sell it for 150 proof Brain Disease. Luckily they aren’t together anymore either. Becky chose to live with her dad when they split a little over three years ago. Her mom stayed back East, where Becky used to live, and her dad came out here to be a frontier lawyer.
    And I wouldn’t have Boomer’s dad if he were the only one left in the world. It’s not hard to see where Boomer comes by his sweet attitude. Stuff like what happened that time at his birthday party is just a way of life at his house. And his mom is the only person in the world tough enough to hang in there, though I don’t know why she’d want to.
    Anyway, except for the times I wish I had crappy parents so I’d have someone to blame things on, I gotta say I got a pretty good deal. Norm’s always real calm and takes time to work things out. Doesn’t like to leave a lot of loose ends. He’s a good guy to go to when youhave a problem. He’ll never tell you the answer, but he’ll stick with you till you come up with one. Brenda’s a little more emotional—like to the seventh power—but you need a little of that. She’s good for helping you realize that how you feel is how you feel, and a lot of times there’s no use trying to control it. If you lived your whole life like that, you’d probably turn out like Donald Duck, but there’s a need for some of it. At least for me there