Booked: Gameplay–Not Cool

Instead, your dad’s a linguistics professor with chronic verbomania* as evidenced by the fact that he actually wrote a dictionary called Weird and Wonderful Words with, get this, footnotes.

When she gets to you, there are two girls left: April, and a girl with chronic halitosis.

Your team is invited to compete in the Dr. Pepper Dallas Cup, the renowned world youth soccer tournament.

They used to play soccer with you and Coby till they got kicked out of the league for literally tackling opponents and then, get this, biting them.

The twins live down the block from Langston Hughes Middle School of the Arts, which is why they get to go here, since the only art they’re interested in is pugilism, as evidenced by the flaming-red boxing gloves they sometimes sneak into school to punch other kids with (which is how they ended up at the Alternative Behavior Center, or the ABC, for the past year).

Class ends when Ms. Hardwick reads your assignment then runs into the hallway cachinnating like she’s about to pee in her
polyester.

That’s a load of codswallop. I give you the dictionary so you’ll know the world better, son. So you’ll BE better.

But it’s cool, ’cause now you can fall asleep watching the Super Bowl on ESPN Classic without getting a lecture on the negative impact of aggression and violence in your other favorite sport.

My dear Nicky, I’m assuming you’ve been eaten by a black mamba
or pummeled to shreds by a stampede of mammoth shire sport horses since you haven’t returned a single text of mine. Love, Mom

Dang! Trust me, you don’t want that. He’s got logorrhea, you answer.

You swallow your gum and string together a few coherent words.

She’s had a frown on her face since the beginning of the school year. So, when she smiles, you’re flummoxed.

It’s a pretty prestigious soccer tournament.

Does your so-called life involve that little hot mama from dance class?

Instead of playing soccer in the Big Apple, today you’re sitting in the Center for Relational Recovery on a pleather couch between Mom and Dad, staring at a quote by a man named Freud on the wall behind a, get this, psychologist with a black and white beard longer than Santa Claus’s, a red pencil in his mouth, and a tendency to ask stupid questions: What else besides soccer makes you happy?