Read Screaming at the Ump for Free Online

Feury—I had wanted him to win so bad. (Tell me that isn’t the greatest name ever!) I had cheered for him. I loved how his cool little brother held up signs for him: RAGING FEURY ! But then, poof, Feury was voted off. You got all attached, you counted on seeing this guy week after week, and then he was off the show. Gone.
    Big surprise—all I really watched was sports and ESPN. You could count on sports. No matter what happened in a game, you would start at the same point next time. A clean court, a newly chalked field, a Zambonied rink. A new story every time.
    ***
    After school, we got off the bus and turned the corner, and as we walked through the gate and down the long driveway, we could see that the parking lot was almost full. There were license plates from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, Maryland, D.C. There was no one outside, so we must have missed afternoon break.
    We dropped our backpacks in the house and headed over to the main building. Mrs. G. looked a little frazzled. The first day was always hard.
    â€œHow’s it going, Mrs. G.?” I asked.
    â€œDo you know where your father keeps the liquor?” she said. Then she barked her hard, loud laugh.
    Zeke cracked up, but I always worried that maybe Mrs. G. was stepping a little bit over the line onto the crazy side. And I preferred normalcy and peace in my life. I loved peace.
    â€œAspirin, maybe?” I offered.
    â€œI’m just kidding you, Baby. It hasn’t been too bad. We’re managing. Chet was late with lunch, but they got it served, so your father didn’t kill me or anything. Oh, Chet left your lunch for tomorrow here,” she said, pointing to a brown bag. That was the best part of Umpire Academy—my lunches were made for me by Chet. The rest of the year, I just bought lunch at school, but after the gross not-sure-that-was-really-ham sandwich and not-quite-chicken nuggets I’d had so far, I was extra happy to have Chet around for the next five weeks.
    Zeke, the ever-hungry, started to reach for the bag, and I swatted his hand away.
    â€œChet should really make me lunch too. Could he do that?” Zeke asked.
    â€œSo I could carry two lunches to school?” I said. “Anyway, it would remove the comedy from my life. Your lunches are always one of the highlights of my day.”
    Zeke’s parents stopped making his lunches when Zeke was in third grade, when they found that he kept trading away what they gave him for fruit roll-ups. He would trade anything—sometimes his whole lunch—for fruit roll-ups. Which he wasn’t supposed to eat. Because of his braces. Ever since then, he had just . . . had a very creative approach to what belonged in a lunch bag.
    We were about to head out to the lecture hall when Mrs. G. said, “Oh, I almost forgot. One new student showed up this morning.”
    â€œDo you have the papers?” I asked. “Is he all set?”
    â€œWe put him in that room with Jorge Washington,” she said. “That student with no roommate. I took care of the papers.”
    â€œGreat,” I said. “What’s his name?”
    â€œCabrera,” she said. “Hang on a second.” She quickly looked through a pile and pulled out a form. “Lincoln Cabrera.”
    I was back outside before it hit me. “Did you hear that?” I asked.
    Zeke looked at me like
, Hear what?
before it registered for him, too. “Jorge Washington’s new roommate is named Lincoln?”
    We high-fived. “Roommate pair of the year.”
    â€œQuite possibly of all time,” I said. “All hail Jorge Washington and Lincoln Cabrera!”
    â€œAnd their presidential suite!”
    â€œSweet!” I said.
    ***
    We walked to the lecture hall. Dad and Pop were at the front, rows of students with notebooks looking up at them. Pop, in the grungy green baseball cap he always wore through all five weeks of Academy, was sitting