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The cornhole game is already set up on the front lawn when I get to Brent’s. “ ’Bout time you showed up,” he says.
Cameron tosses a beanbag toward the hole in the middle of the board. Not only does the beanbag not go into the hole, it doesn’t even land on the board. “You suck!” I yell at him.
“Yeah. Okay. Let’s see what you can do, Hook.”
“I can do more with this hook than you can do with both of your hands!”
Cameron laughs. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
Brent’s got a sheet of rules in one hand and one of those heavy-duty metal measuring tapes in the other—like the tape William uses to measure rooms with. “This has to be regulation,” he says, pulling out a few inches of the tape and handing the end to me. He walks toward the farthest board, the tape measure unrolling along with him, and motions me toward the closer board. “Twenty-seven feet. It has to be 27 feet from one end of the board to the other.”
Cameron groans. “Let’s just play. I’ll whip your asses no matter how many feet apart the boards are.”
“Dude! I’ve got to practice on a regulation court! When I play my dad, he’ll have everything measured down to the millimeter,” Brent says.
Brent and his dad don’t have much to do with each other. Brent’s dad is this hotshot bridge engineer who, after three girls, wanted that like-father-like-son thing with Brent, which included the engineer thing. That doesn’t work too well for a guy who got skipped over when the math brains were handed out. Brent’s oldest sister, Britney, is already finishing a degree in structural engineering at Cal Tech. Seems like that would be enough to satisfy Mr. Bruno, but I guess it’s a dad/son thing. I wouldn’t know about that.
It’s weird, but it’s like Brent’s parents have this love of BR or something. His dad is Brad Bruno. His mom is Brenda. The rest of the Brunos are the sisters, Britney, Brook, and Bridget, and then there’s Brent.
Brent and his dad mostly get along by staying out of each other’s way. But sometimes they get into this thing where they bet on stuff. Like whether or not it’s going to rain, or how high is Mt. Wilson, or who will be the first one to spot a dog on some road trip. Anything. They don’t bet money. They bet “services.” Like, I remember a time back in the third grade, I was at their house for dinner. It was pizza night. Bridget asked if we liked our teacher, Mrs. Calahan, the same teacher she’d had two years earlier.
“She’s okay,” Brent said. “Except she likes Eddie better than me.”
Bridget laughed. “I like Eddie better than you. Everyone likes Eddie better than you.”
“Yeah? Well, I like Eddie better than you, too!” Brent said.
I just sat, munching pizza, trying to be likable. Mr. Bruno said, “Mrs. Calahan? Is that the blonde one who plays the piano?”
Bridget nodded her head but Brent said, “Black hair. Mrs. Calahan has black hair.”
“The teacher all of the girls had? In that room where the walls are mostly whiteboards? That Mrs. Calahan? She doesn’t have black hair,” Brent’s dad said.
“Does too,” Brent said, picking bits of tomatoes off of his pizza.
Mr. Bruno looked at Brent like he was crazy. “Mrs. Calahan. Third grade? She does not have black hair!”
“Betcha,” Brent said.
“You’re on, Buddy. What’re the stakes?”
“You take me and Eddie for a day at Disneyland.”
“Whoa. That’s a big bet! What’re you gonna do for me when you lose?”
Brent didn’t know what to say to that, because he didn’t plan on losing. He thought for a long time. “Maybe Eddie and me wash your car every Saturday for a month?”
“How about every Saturday for a year? You and Eddie wash, wipe down, leave no streaks. Clean the inside, too. Inside of the windows, vacuum, leave it looking like it’s right off the showroom floor.”
Mr. Bruno was a fanatic about his car—a little red Lamborghini that he bought with some bridge-building bonus money.
Brent’s mom turned to me. “Don’t let them drag you into this,” she said. I didn’t care, though. I knew Brent would win. I was already thinking about which rides I wanted to go on first. Maybe Space Mountain.
The next morning, I watched as Brent led his dad into the classroom. Mr. Bruno did one of those cartoon double-takes when he saw our teacher.
She said, “Oh, Mr. Bruno. It’s nice to see you. How are those three sweet girls of yours?”
“Mrs. Calahan?” He stared at her, his mouth half open. She laughed.
“Some people don’t even recognize me with this black hair,” she said. “I’m going to be Maria in ‘West Side Story’ at the Community Theatre. I’m too old for the role, and too blonde. I couldn’t get younger, but at least I could get black hair.”
“Is it a wig?” Mr. Bruno asked, looking for some out on a technicality, I guess.
“No! A wig would be too hard to manage—all of that dancing and running around. Hot, too. No, I had it dyed. I may even keep it this way. Like it?”
“I like it!” Brent said, pulling his dad toward the door.
Besides being a stickler for math, Mr. Bruno also prided himself on playing by the rules, and once a bet was made, there was no backing out. So, he kept his end of the bargain and took us to Disneyland. One of the best days ever!
Brent and his dad have probably made hundreds of bets since then, and Brent probably hasn’t won more than two or three. But he’s determined to win this one. High stakes! If Brent beats his dad in cornhole, in what they’re calling a tournament, he doesn’t have to do the summer math camp thing. If he loses, he not only has to go to math camp, he has to work with a math tutor for the whole rest of senior year.
Brent’s dad went to some big, important engineering and science college back east somewhere. Maine, or Montana, or Massachusetts, or Michigan, one of those M states. And cornhole was like their main school sport. I’ve heard of colleges with Frisbee teams, and skateboarding teams, but cornhole? Here’s the thing, though. Brent’s dad was a college cornhole star, and I don’t think Brent’s ever in his life beaten his dad at the game.
* * * * *
BRENT AND I PLAY FIRST, with Cameron as the ref. He’s supposed to be watching to be sure that we don’t step past the platform when we pitch. If that happens, the throw doesn’t count, and Brent will want every throw to count so he’s got to practice staying in the boundary. But Cameron’s so busy texting, we could step ten feet out of the box and he wouldn’t notice.
I take the first throw with a red beanbag, give it an easy lob, and it drops straight into the hole—doesn’t even touch the sides. Brent takes the next toss. It hits the edge of the platform and bounces off. “Shit.”
My next throw lands on the platform and rests inches from the hole.
Brent’s blue bag lands a few inches from mine, slides, and pushes mine into the hole. “Fuck!”
Cameron looks up, sees my two red beanbags on the grass under the hole. “Hey, Blockhead! I know a cute math tutor. If you’re going to be spending all year with a math tutor, might as well be a cute one.”
“Up yours, Quinn!”
Cameron laughs, turns back to his phone.
By mid-afternoon we’re all starving. Out of seven games, I’ve won three, Brent and Cameron each won two. But it was the last two that Brent won, so maybe with enough practice...
“Sonic’s?” Brent asks.
“Nah. That’s crap food. Let’s go to the taqueria,” I say.
“Sonic’s is crap and the taqueria isn’t?” Cameron says.
Brent turns to Cameron. “Let’s do McDonald’s. Salad for Eddie, crap for us?”
I dangle my keys in front of them, letting them know it doesn’t matter where they want to go. I’m driving, and the car goes wherever I take it.
“Goin’ to lunch,” Brent yells in the general direction of the kitchen. The kitchen door opens, and his mom yells back at him, “What about the lawn??”
“After lunch!”
“It better be done by the time your dad gets home!”
* * * * *
THE TAQUERIA’S SO CROWDED we go down a block to the McDonald’s drive thru line. We order at the window, crap for them, salad for me, like Brent said. At the window, I pass the food over to Cameron and drive away.
“No eating in my car!” I say to Cameron as he reaches into the bag for a french fry.
“I’m starving!”
“You’re also a slob.”
Brent laughs. “You’re as bad as my dad is about his car.”
“Yeah, well, I hate when my car smells like McDonald’s.”
At Dodsworth Park, we find a table in the shade and tear into our lunches. For the first few minutes, we’re dedicated to eating, then Brent says, “We’ve got time for another practice tournament before I have to mow the lawn.”
“Not me,” I say. “I’ve got to meet William on the job at 2:00.”
“Thought you had the day off, Dude,” Cameron says.
“Nope. The only reason I got the morning off was because Max and William are over on the east side, registering voters.”
“Can’t people register for themselves?” Brent asks.
“I guess not everyone has a way to get to a place to register, and some people might have trouble filling out the forms.”
“Why the east side?” Cameron says.
I shrug. “Maybe because that’s where a lot of people who might have trouble voting live?”
Brent says, “I hope they’ll be registering voters again next Saturday. All day, next Saturday. I need all of the cornhole practice I can get. Zitter screws around too much for it to seem like a real tournament.”
“I’m a multi-tasker,” Cameron says, grinning. “While you two were in such a serious competition, I got a time to meet Nora at her place, where her parents won’t be, and I arranged to borrow thirty bucks from my dad and another thirty from my grandma, and I got two John Wicks on Fortnite. All that, plus I nearly won the second cornhole!”
“If losing by seven points counts as nearly winning,” Brent says.
CHAPTER SEVEN
