10 Our Secret Weapon

Chapter 10 Our Secret Weapon It was Andrea Young!!! Little Miss Perfect I-Know-Everything-and-You-Don't walked into our locker room. And she was wearing a football uniform! "There's a girl in the locker room!" shouted Neil the nude kid. "Run for your lives!" "Coach Hyatt is a girl, too, dumbhead," I told Neil. "Oh, right." "Hi, Arlo!" Andrea said. "What are you doing here?" I asked her. "Coach Hyatt asked me to join the team because you boys are so lame," she told me. "I wasn't allowed to wear my jewelry, so I accessorized my helmet with stickers. Do you like it?"

"No," I told her, "and girls don't play football." "I've been watching Andrea on the sideline," Coach Hyatt told us. "I think she can help us. She's fast. She's strong. She's smart." "She's annoying," I added. "Do you want to win, A.J.?" Coach Hyatt asked. "Or do you just want to complain?" "Can I do both?" I asked.

Coach Hyatt paced the locker room again. "Do you ragamuffins know what I used to have when I was your age?" asked the coach. "A log cabin?" I guessed. "No, a hamster," Coach Hyatt said. "His name was Chip. I loved that hamster. And one day Chip got run over by a bulldozer. Poor little fella. He didn't have a chance. Chip was flattened; and after the bulldozer ran over him, he was about the size of a living-room rug." Everybody started sniffling because we were imagining in our heads a hamster getting run over by a bulldozer. "When you kids go out on the field for the second half," the coach continued, "don't think about winning this game for me. Don't think about winning this game

for your parents. Think about Chip, that poor little hamster. Let's go out there and win this one… for the Chipper!" I wasn't sure why we should play any better just because Coach Hyatt's hamster got run over by a bulldozer. But it almost didn't matter what she said, because we all started jumping up and down and chanting "Chipper! Chipper! Chipper!" as we ran out of the locker room to start the second half of the game.