Coach Hyatt Is a Riot! (5 page)

We all ran to the sideline and huddled around Coach Hyatt.

“Take a knee, kids,” she said.

“Where should we take it?” I asked.

“Quiet!” barked Coach Hyatt. Then she started whispering. “Okay, this is it. It's time.”

“Time for what?” Ryan asked.

“It's time for The Secret Play,” Coach Hyatt told us.

“Oh no!” said Neil the nude kid. “Not The Secret Play! The last time we tried The Secret Play, we fell all over ourselves.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I almost broke my leg.”

“It's going to be different this time,” the coach told us. “Now we've got Andrea. You ragamuffins can do this. Just like you picked up my car. Do it for the Chipper.”

“Who's the Chipper again?” I asked.

“My hamster!” Coach Hyatt barked.

“Oh, yeah.”

The ball was on our twenty-yard line. We had to drive eighty yards in eleven
seconds. It looked impossible. We got into position.

“Hut-one!” Andrea shouted. “Hut-two! HIKE!”

Wyatt hiked the ball to Andrea.

Andrea flipped it to Ryan.

Ryan passed it to me at the thirty-yard line.

I shoveled it over to Michael.

Michael ran to the fifty-yard line and lateraled it to Neil.

Neil ran all the way to the ten-yard line and handed it off to Wyatt.

Wyatt ran almost to the goal line, and then he suddenly stopped.

“Run, Wyatt! Run!” we all screamed.

There was no time left on the clock. Wyatt was just standing at the one-yard line. If he didn't score, the game would be over and we would lose.

“RUN!” we all screamed.

A Shark was about to tackle Wyatt!

That's when the weirdest thing in the history of the world happened.

Wyatt picked his nose.

Well, that's not the weird part, because Wyatt picks his nose all the time. The weird part was that Wyatt picked his nose, and then he stuck the booger right on the Shark's face!

Ew, disgusting!

The Shark shoved Wyatt away from him!

Wyatt fell on his butt and landed…in the end zone!

Touchdown!

78–77. The Moose win!

Everybody went crazy! You should have been there! Our whole team ran to do the end zone dance. We shook our butts, lifted one of our legs over our heads, hopped up
and down for a while, and then put our hands in the air and waved them around like crazy people. Nah-nah-nah boo-boo on the Sharks!

We ran to the sideline, and all the parents were taking pictures of us. It was a real Kodak moment.

“You made a home run!” my mom yelled. I slapped my forehead.

Everybody was going nuts and hugging each other. Andrea came over to me. She opened her arms.

“Give me a hug, Arlo,” Andrea said.

“Not gonna happen.”

“I want a hug, Arlo,” Andrea said.

“Not for a million hundred dollars.”

“Come on, Arlo,” Andrea said.

“I would rather eat a live-bug sandwich.”

We went back and forth like that for a while.

“Arlo, I'm on your
team
!” Andrea said. “Humphf!”

Hmm. Andrea had a point. After a big win like this, you should hug your team-mates. Andrea was on our team, and she won the game for us.

But she was a
girl
! If I hugged Andrea, the guys were sure to make fun of me.

I was faced with the hardest decision of my life. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to do. I had to think fast. I
was concentrating so hard that my brain hurt.

Suddenly, Andrea reached out to grab me.

I faked left.

Then I faked right.

Then I faked left again.

But Andrea didn't fall for my fakes. She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me.

Ugh, disgusting!

“Oooooh!” Ryan said. “A.J. and Andrea are hugging. They must be in
love
!”

“When are you gonna get married?” asked Michael.

Coach Hyatt told everybody to line up. At the end of each game, we have to line up, shake hands with the other team, and say “good game.” Nobody knows why.

I shook hands with all the Sharks. When I got to the last one, he grabbed my hand and started squeezing.

“Good game,” he told me as he crushed the bones in my hand. “If it weren't for that girl, we would have destroyed you.”

I thought I was gonna die.

On TV, the winning football team dumps Gatorade over the coach's head at the end of the game.

“Hey,” I whispered to the guys, “let's dump the Gatorade over Coach Hyatt's head!”

“Great idea, A.J.!” Ryan said.

I should get the No Bell Prize. That's a prize they give out to people who don't have bells.

Coach Hyatt was facing away from us, talking to some parent.

Neil unscrewed the top from the jug of Gatorade. Me and Michael and Ryan grabbed the jug. Wyatt just picked his nose.

“Man, this jug is heavy!” Michael said, grunting.

“Hey, we picked up a car, didn't we?” Ryan said.

We lifted the giant jug and carried it over to Coach Hyatt. The parent she had
been talking to was walking away. Coach Hyatt was about to blow her whistle.

That's when we dumped the entire jug of Gatorade over her head.

It was great! Gatorade was everywhere! Coach Hyatt was soaked!

That's when the strangest thing in the history of the world happened.

Coach Hyatt grabbed her throat. It looked like she was trying to say something, but she couldn't. All that came out of her mouth was a whistling noise.

“She's choking!” Ryan yelled. “Her whistle is caught in her throat!”

Coach Hyatt was gagging and looking really scared.

“She can't breathe!” Neil yelled.

“We've got to
do
something!” shouted Emily.

“This is all your fault, Arlo!” Andrea said. “It was
your
idea to dump the Gatorade on her head!”

I looked at Ryan. Ryan looked at Neil. Neil looked at Andrea. Andrea looked at Emily. Everybody was looking at everybody else.

“Does anybody know the Heimlich maneuver?” one of the parents shouted.

The Heimlich maneuver is this thing you do when somebody has something caught in their throat.

“A.J. does!” Ryan yelled.

“That's right!” shouted Andrea. “He
saved my life once.”

It was true. One time, Andrea was choking on an apple, and I punched her in the stomach to make the apple pop out.

I grabbed Coach Hyatt from behind and punched both of my fists against her
stomach.

The whistle shot out of her mouth.

“You saved my life, A.J.!” said Coach Hyatt.

The whistle kept flying up in the air. And you'll never believe in a million hundred years what it hit.

Rufus the Doofus!

That whistle must have had a sharp edge, because it tore a hole in Rufus.

Rufus started flying crazily around in the air!

Rufus faked left!

Rufus faked right!

Then Rufus must have run out of air, because he was falling out of the sky!

“Run for your lives!” shouted Neil. “It's an Unidentified Flying Moose!”

Everybody freaked out and went running in all different directions and crashing into each other.

Rufus was heading straight for the group of cheerleaders!

And then…
WHAM
!

Rufus landed right on Emily!

Emily was on the ground under Rufus, freaking out, like always. It was hilarious.
We saw it live and in person.

“Owwww, my leg!” Emily yelled.

We all gathered around and picked Rufus up off Emily. It was easy, because we had already picked up a Mini Cooper and a jug of Gatorade.

“Are you okay, Emily?” asked Andrea.

“No, I'm not okay!” Emily yelled with tears in her eyes.

Sheesh, what a crybaby! So a moose fell out of the sky and landed on her head. What's the big deal? Stuff like that happens all the time.

“Walk it off,” Coach Hyatt told Emily.

“I think it might be broken!” Emily whined.

“Broken?” Coach Hyatt said. “If a moose fell on me when I was your age, I would get up and build a log cabin with my bare hands.”

 

Well, that's pretty much the way it happened. With Andrea on our team, maybe we'll actually win a few games this season. Maybe Emily's leg will heal. Maybe Wyatt the Nose Picker will run out of boogers. Maybe we'll get to ram the Elvis dummy some more. Maybe another moose will fall on Emily's head. Maybe Coach Hyatt will stop building log cabins and get a new hamster. Maybe we'll find out what “ragamuffin” means. Maybe Rent-A-Blimp
will be able to patch the hole in Rufus the Doofus.

But it won't be easy!

Dan Gutman
has written many weird books for kids. He lives in New Jersey (a very weird place) with his weird wife and two weird children. You can visit him on his weird website at www.dangutman.com.

Jim Paillot
lives in Arizona (another weird place) with his weird wife and two weird children. Isn't that weird? You can visit him on his weird website at www.jimpaillot.com.

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