Page 31 of Kiss the Girl
“Bugs Bunny.” Meh. “Paw Patrol?” No. “Mickey Mouse?” No. “SpongeBob?” Maaaayb…No.
Good. They weren’t supposed to like any of those ideas. I paced behind the bench, turned, and accidentally “bumped” into it, knocking my messenger bag to the floor. The top contents spilled out: an empty water bottle, my whistle, and…a copy ofThe Cat in the Hat.
“I got it, coach,” Grant said. I’d made sure it would fall over in front of him specifically. He hopped up to pick up my stuff and set it on the bench, but when he straightened, he still had the book in his hands. “Why are you carrying aroundTheCat in the Hat?”
“My niece wants it for her bedtime story every night, so I’ve been reading it aloud a lot. ‘I know some new tricks, I will show them to you. Your mother will not mind at all if I do.’ I probably have it memorized by now.”
“TheCat in the Hat,”DeShawn said.
“Yeah. That’s the book.” I took it from Grant and started to slide it into my bag.
“No, I mean, we could doCat in the Hat,” DeShawn said. “He’s the right kind of corny.”
Grant gave a slow nod. “I could see that.”
“We could dress like those crazy kids, what are they called?” the kicker asked.
“Thing One and Thing Two,” another player supplied.
“Yeah, I mean, we all got red warm up sweats. We just make a paper label for our shirts, spray our hair blue, and boom, you got a costume,” Grant said.
I’d been banking on the red sweats to sell the idea. I pretended to consider it. “That’s not bad. Cheap costume. But how do we tie it to donuts?”
“Man, do we have to think of everything for you, coach?” DeShawn asked.
The rest of the players laughed.
“Fair enough. Maybe…” I rubbed my chin again. “Oh. Oh. Huh. What about ‘uh-oh,’ like the mess the Things make? And O, like the donut shape.”
“Seniors get to be Cat in the Hat,” DeShawn said. “Everybody else has to be the Things.”
“That’s dope,” another player said. “I want to be a Thing, anyway.”
I let my eyebrows rise in surprise as I looked over the team. “Gentlemen, do we have ourselves a theme?”
“I think we do, coach,” Grant said, going back to his seat.
“All right, then. Practice dismissed.”
I went to my office to grade quizzes from the freshman health unit while they got changed. A few minutes later, a knock sounded and DeShawn poked his head in. “You’re a pretty good actor, coach, but you’re not that good.”
I glanced up at him, keeping my face neutral. “Not sure I know what you mean.”
“You played us. And that’s fine.Cat in the Hatis cool. Bye, coach.”
I smiled when he left. One big hurdle out of the way. That only left a million more.
I finished up my grading, and it was nearly six o’clock when I headed to my car. “Coach,” a voice called as I unlocked the door.
I looked up to see Dr. Boone heading for her own car. “Need something, ma’am?”
“I heard you got the football team on board with doing the booth and even picked a theme.”
“Wow. News travels fast.”
“DeShawn Jones is my nephew.”
Ah. Now she’d have an inside source to report on how I was doing.
