Olympic Dream Read online

  To Dominic and Barbara

  Copyright

  Text copyright © 1996 by Matthew F. Christopher

  Illustrations copyright © 1996 by Karen Meyer

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: December 2009

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-09501-3

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  The air rushed by Doug Cannon’s face. It felt like a million tiny needles going deeper and deeper into his skin. Each and every downstroke on the pedals strained his whole body. There was no slipstream to encase him in empty air space, to just carry him along. He was out in front of the pack. He set the pace as the race wound to its finish.

  There was no looking back. Even though he was in the lead, he couldn’t be sure what was taking place behind him. He simply had to press on. With every bit of energy he had left, he had to race for the finish.

  But as the road stretched out in front of him in an unbroken ribbon of black, Doug couldn’t help drifting back. He was a long, long way from all that had happened to put him where he was—racing as hard and as fast as he could toward the grand finale of all his efforts, the gold medal Imagine, Doug Cannon, crowning his cycling career with a gold medal in the 2000 International Olympics!

  Whoever would have imagined it just a few years ago?

  1

  Zap!

  Score 22,000 and climbing.

  Zap! Zap! Zap!

  One more purple target and I’ll reach the big two-five.

  Fourteen-year-old Doug Cannon leaned in toward the video monitor as far as he could. But because of the bulge around his middle, that wasn’t as close as he’d like. It was at times like this that he wished he weighed a little less.

  There was a lot at stake. Right now he was the top video jock in his class. No one could approach him when it came to high scores. These were the numbers that mattered to him—not the ones on the scales. He clutched the joystick so fiercely he could almost feel it dissolve.

  But the thought of his oversize midsection had destroyed his focus for a crucial moment.

  Blurrrp! GAME OVER.

  Rats! In the midst of a supersonic air war, an ordinary widebody had come into the picture from the bottom. It had thrown him for a loop.

  Widebody! That’s what some of the kids at school called him behind his back. He didn’t like it, but what could he do about it? He couldn’t fight with half the kids in school, could he?

  He never missed those bottom ones. Too bad he couldn’t get a little closer. Maybe he ought to change his strategy. Or try a different game.

  “Yo, Doug,” came a voice from the front of the video arcade. “We’re going over to the beach. You coming with us?”

  It was Pepper Meade. Pepper was the unspoken leader of the guys in Doug’s class at school. They all played most sports together, hung out together. On Monday most of them would be going off to summer hockey camp together—but not Doug. He played goalie on the hockey squad, but only because the school made everyone play on some team. Because of his weight, he wasn’t much good at sports. And ex cept for video games, he didn’t think of himself as a competitive person. Still, he was always good-natured and willing to fill a spot on the team. The guys liked him. Most of the time, Doug liked them, too. So when they made wise-guy comments about his size, he swallowed his hurt feelings. No, instead he played along and was always welcome to join in on whatever they were up to.

  Pepper was always the ringleader when the guys did get on Doug’s case. He was the one who gave him the nickname “Lardy” when they were just little kids. The name had been forgotten by the others over theyears, but Doug remembered.

  “Go ahead,” Doug called back. “I’m just going to play one more game. Maybe I’ll catch up.”

  The school year had just ended at noon. He had the whole summer to hang out at the lake. Right I now he was on a hot streak at this video game. He was determined to set a new personal record. It was I something he was really good at. This is where he could really shine. Besides, the last thing he wanted to do was walk around in a bathing suit in front of those guys. They would only get on his case, call him “Willie the Whale,” and tease him to do a belly flop. So what if he was a lot bigger than most of them?

  He reached into his pocket and found it was empty. He’d used up all his money already. Now there was nothing else to do except join the guys at the beach—or go home.

  Doug glanced at the machine, sighed, and walked out of the arcade. He shrugged his shoulders and turned in the direction of his house.

  The minute he crossed the threshold, he could tell that something was different. Suitcases! There were suitcases, bags, boxes, and a big laundry sack, plus a tennis racket dumped just inside the door. Kate was home!

  His sister Kate had just finished her first year of graduate school. She had graduated from State College a year ago and now she was going for her master’s degree. Doug knew she was due home that week, but it was still a surprise when he saw her drinking a tall glass of iced tea in the kitchen. Even though there was nine years between them, she treated him like a pal as much as a brother. And she never made wisecracks about his size. There was a strong bond between the two Cannon kids.

  “Hey, buddy-boy, how are you doing?” she called over to him. She got up from her chair and opened her arms wide. Their hug was instant and powerful.

  “Great,” he replied, flopping down on a chair opposite her. As he watched her sip her tea, he noticed a flashing sparkle on her left hand. “Hey, that’s a ring,” he said, pointing.

  She wiggled the third finger of her left hand at him. He could see a thin, gold band with a single diamond smack in the middle.

  “Uh-huh,” she said with a big smile. “Guess what—I’m engaged.”

  “Like … like … you’re getting married?”

  “You’ve got it,” she said. “The wedding’s going to be right here in the backyard, last weekend in August.”

  “Holy cow!” he shouted. “I’m going to be a—a what? A brother-in-law! Hey, who’s the lucky guy?”

  “Terry, of course,” she said. “You ninny, who’d you think it would be?”

  “Just checking,” said Doug with a mischievous grin. “Had to make sure you didn’t dump him for someone I didn’t like. Terry’s a great guy. I remember when you first started dating him. You wanted us to get to know each other better, so you sent him over to the arcade one time to give me a lift home. He played a few games before we left. Great hands.”

  “They’d better be, since he’s going to be a doctor,” she said.

  “I just can’t get over it,” said Doug. He got up and took the cookie jar off the counter. Dipping in, he took out a couple of oatmeal-raisin cookies. “My big sister getting married!”

  “And my little brother is going to be an usher,” sa
id Kate.

  “What!”

  “Yup, Terry’s friend Red Roberts is going to be the best man and we want you to be an usher. They’re coming for dinner tonight, so you’ll get to meet Red. He’s going to be a doctor, too, like Terry, and—oh, there’s so much to do. Listen, help me drag my stuff upstairs and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “Sure,” said Doug, licking the last cookie crumbs from the corners of his mouth.

  As he headed for the doorway, a million thoughts rushed into Doug’s head. School’s out. The guys are going off to hockey camp for the summer. Kate’s going to get married at the end of August. I’m going to be an usher, like the guy who showed me to my seat at Cousin Hallie’s wedding in the big church in town. But Kate’s wedding was going to be in the backyard. Maybe I won’t have to get all decked out in one of those tuxedos like the ushers in Hallie’s wedding. They didn’t look all that comfortable. Yeah, and what about standing around for those pictures? Hallie’s husband’s cousin Timmy looked like a blimp when they lined up for the pictures. They put two little flower girls in front of him and you could still see Timmy on each side of them. Is that what I’ll look like?

  “Thanks a bunch,” said Kate when they had all her stuff stashed in one corner of her room. “Phew, I’ve got a lot of work to do right here.”

  “Like what?” Doug asked.

  “I have to clear some space for the wedding presents. They’ll start arriving as soon as word gets around. And if I know our mother, that won’t take long,” she said, chuckling.

  As if by magic, a voice came floating up the stairs, “Oh, Kate, I’m home! I have some sample invitations I want you to look at!”

  “Be right down,” Kate called. “See?”

  She gave Doug a playful tap on the arm and headed downstairs.

  Doug sat down on her bed and looked around. He couldn’t imagine Kate’s room filled with presents—wedding presents, at that.

  He realized suddenly that he’d have to give her a present, too. Yeah, but how was he going to buy her anything? He poured all his money into video games and never had a spare cent.

  The excitement of the wedding news was beginning to fade away. Doug got up and went downstairs. Mrs. Cannon and Kate were in the kitchen looking over the sample invitations.

  He shuffled out the front door and sat down on the porch swing. It was still a while before dinner. If only he had some money he could play a few more games at the arcade before he had to sit down at the table with Kate, Terry, and this friend of his. A new guy around who was going to be a doctor.

  He’ll probably take a look at me and start talking about diets, he thought. Just what I don’t want to hear. It’s bad enough with Dad on his health kick!

  Up until a year ago, Mr. Cannon had looked like an older version of Doug. But then something happened that, as he put it, “changed his outlook on life forever.” Mr. Cannon had been rushed to the hospital with chest pains. Everyone was sure he was having a heart attack.

  “We just have to hope for the best,” Mrs. Cannon had said as she sat in the waiting room with Kate and Doug huddled next to her.

  It turned out to be the best it could be—a very bad case of indigestion that acted a lot like a heart attack.

  “You did the right thing coming in immediately, though,” the doctor had said. Then he frowned and said, “In the shape he’s in, he’s lucky it wasn’t something much, much worse.”

  Mr. Cannon had then undergone a complete physical. The result was a new way of life.

  He began each morning with a regular routine of exercises. That was followed by a jog through the neighborhood. He constantly sang the praises of exercise, saying it helped overcome the “heavy genes” that ran in the family.

  Next came breakfast. Mr. Cannon was on a strict diet—“Not for weight loss as much as health,” he announced every morning as he ate his salt- and sugar-free cereal with skim milk.

  And then, if Doug hadn’t managed to have his own breakfast and get out of the kitchen, there was often a lecture on the healthy way of life. Maybe his father was right, but hearing it all the time drove Doug nuts. He didn’t eat any more than his friends did, and he was usually too tired to exercise. His father’s lectures ended up going in one ear and out the other.

  Diet and exercise were the furthest things from Doug’s mind right now as he rocked on the porch swing. The late afternoon sun beat down. Flies buzzed about and banged up against the screens. A gentle haze seemed to settle across Doug like a blanket. His eyelids drooped and finally closed.

  Wheeeee-ew! Wheeeeee-ew! Wheeeee-ew!

  A siren screeching in the distance jolted him awake.

  It was the fire signal.

  Doug jumped off the swing and ran down to the sidewalk. He gazed up and down the road. A dark cloud of smoke rose high into the sky above the downtown area.

  He hurried off toward it until he was stopped by the firefighter’s blockade.

  But there was no need to go farther. Even from there he could see the flames and smoke billowing out from doors and windows of the one building he knew better than any other. Just like a horrible nightmare come true, he watched as the raging fire consumed the video arcade.

  It was going to be a long summer.

  2

  For Doug, the excitement of the fire was canceled out by the fact that his favorite hangout was burning to the ground. He couldn’t wait to talk to his family about it. But when he got back from town, the news of the disaster died on his lips. Terry and Kate were out on the front porch with a tall, red-headed guy. He wore a gray T-shirt with his college colors on the sleeve, and it fit his trim, muscular body like a second skin.

  “Hey, Doug,” said Terry. “Kate said she told you about our getting married. Pretty cool, huh? This is my buddy, Red. You guys are both going to be in our wedding, so you might as well get to know each other.”

  “Uh, hi,” said Doug, suddenly feeling like a lumpy sack of potatoes. He automatically sucked his stomach in.

  “Nice to meet you, Doug,” said Red, stretching out a hand.

  Doug expected a crusher grip that would make him feel like a real weaklingi But Red’s handshake was firm without doing any damage.

  Maybe he’s not so tough, Doug thought. And as far as looking like one of those guys in the ads for health clubs, well, maybe he’s just lucky and was born like that. Not like Dad with his “heavy genes,” the same kind I probably have.

  Then Kate and Terry began talking about places to go on a honeymoon. Doug was about to head into the house when Red turned to him and said, “I hear you’re a hockey player. Goalie. That’s a lot more work than people think.”!

  “I guess,” Doug agreed with a shrug. “They say you have to …”

  For the next few minutes, they discussed some of the finer points of defensive hockey, until Mr. Cannon called out that dinner was ready.

  Doug would have liked to keep on talking with Red, but the dinner conversation that night at the Cannon house was firmly fixed on the wedding. When Doug finally did get a word in, it was to tell them about the fire at the video arcade.

  “That’s too bad,” said his father. “I hate to see any business hit so hard, but I’m sure they’ll reopen eventually. Their insurance will pay for it. It’ll be a while, though.”

  “Terry tells me that you’re a real ace at video games, Doug,” said Red. “That is, after he confessed how many times he lost to you over there.”

  Doug had to smile. Red Roberts was one of the friendliest guys he’d ever met. Terry, who was pretty sharp himself, sure knew how to pick his buddies.

  Mrs. Cannon and Kate were talking about dresses and shoes while the guys kept up their own conversation at their end of the table.

  Terry speared a piece of bright green asparagus from the serving bowl. “You’re off to work bright and early tomorrow, Red, aren’t you?”

  “Are you working at the hospital?” asked Doug.

  “Nope,” said Red. “I’ll be seeing enough of t
he not-so-great indoors soon enough. I’m spending the summer working on an outdoor project. But first, I have to find me a place to live.”

  “Red did it backwards,” said Terry. “First he de cided he liked it here, then he got this terrific job, and now he’s staying with me till he gets his own place. With my two brothers and three sisters, it’s a little crowded at the Walcott homestead.”

  “Maybe we could help out. What about the carriage house?” asked Mrs, Cannon.

  The carriage house stood at the beginning of the Cannons’ driveway, close to the road. The Cannons had their carport made into a garage, and the carriage house was pretty much a storage barn now.

  “It has that little place Upstairs that carriage drivers lived in,” Mrs. Cannon explained.

  “Yes, there’s electricity, and running water too,” said Mr. Cannon. “Just needs to be turned on.”

  “And cleaned out,” said Kate, wrinkling her nose. “Probably find all kinds of mementos up there. Phew!”

  “Never mind,” said Red. “Sounds real interesting to me. Can we take a look at it?”

  “Sure, it’s still light out,” said Mr. Cannon.

  “But first, how about some of this blueberry pie with a little vanilla ice cream?” suggested Mrs. Cannon. “Doug, here’s yours.” She handed him a heaping dish that threatened to topple over.

  “I’ll skip dessert, thank you,” said Mr. Cannon.

  Without looking up from his plate, Doug could feel his father’s disapproving look bearing down on him as he shoveled in his pie and ice cream. It made him eat it all the faster.

  After sighs of pleasure had been heard all around, a group of young people with blue mouths followed Mr. Cannon down to the carriage house.

  It turned out to be in better condition than anyone thought.

  “Won’t take all that much work to whip it into shape,” said Red.

  “And you can use any of this old furniture we’ve been storing here,” said Mr. Cannon.

  Within a few minutes, it was agreed that Red could settle in as soon as they got the place cleaned out.