Scrubs Forever! Read online

  To Keith

  Text copyright © 2008 by Jamie McEwan

  Illustrations copyright © 2008 by John Margeson

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

  Darby Creek

  A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  241 First Avenue North

  Minneapolis, MN 55401 U.S.A.

  Website address: www.lernerbooks.com

  Cataloging-in-Publication

  McEwan, James.

  Scrubs forever / by Jamie McEwan ; illustrations by John Margeson.

  p. ; cm.

  ISBN 978-1-58196-069-3

  Ages 8 and up.—Sequel to: Rufus the scrub does not wear a tutu.—Summary: When Dan starts to win some wrestling matches, Biff and the “in” crowd let him be part of their group. This is what Dan has always wanted, and his attitude toward the other Scrubs wavers. Will Dan realize who his real friends are?

  1. Middle school students—Juvenile fiction. 2. Athletes—Juvenile fiction. 3. Rock climbing— Juvenile fiction. 4. Attitude change—Juvenile fiction. [1. Middle school students—Fiction. 2. Athletes—Fiction. 3. Rock climbing—Fiction. 4. Attitude change—Fiction.] I. Title. II. Author.

  III. Ill.

  PZ7.M478463 Sc 2008

  OCLC: 173185964

  [Fic] dc22

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  8/1/11

  eISBN: 978-0-7613-8592-9 (pdf)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-6776-7 (ePub)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-3150-8 (mobi)

  CONTENTS

  chapter 1: QUOTABLE DAN

  chapter 2: DON’T BREAK THE HANDS

  chapter 3: TO PULL OR NOT TO PULL

  chapter 4: AVOIDING EASY

  chapter 5: DAN GUESSES

  chapter 6: LOUD LUNCH

  chapter 7: COOL OR CREEP

  chapter 8: MYSTERY GIRL

  chapter 9: SPEED CLIMBING

  chapter 10: SHAKE, SCRUB

  chapter 11: HOLDING THE LINE

  chapter 1

  QUOTABLE DAN

  When the bell rang at the end of math class, Dan got down on the floor and started doing push-ups. Around him, students stood and picked up their books, getting ready to go to the next class.

  His classmates just ignored Dan. That was because he had been doing push-ups after every class since wrestling season started. When Dan finished a set of pushups, he’d jump up and run to his next class, where he’d do sit-ups until it started. At first the other kids had laughed and made fun of him, but after a while, they’d gotten used to it.

  But this time Dan’s friend Willy stopped and said, “I think you should skip the push-ups today.”

  “Why?” asked Dan. “‘No pain, no gain!’ ‘No guts, no glory!’”

  “Because today’s the last match of the season,” said Willy. “There’s nothing to prepare for. You should rest up for the match.”

  Dan frowned. “You’re right,” he said, getting up and brushing off his hands. “Shoot. Last match. I’ve got to win it. Like the general said, ‘There is no substitute for victory.’”

  “Come on, you’ve won a bunch of matches,” said Willy. “Win or lose, you’ve already had a good season.”

  “‘Good is not enough when you dream of being great,’” quoted Dan.

  “Dude,” said Willy, “don’t you get tired of all the quotations? They wear me out, I know that.”

  “‘When the wise man speaks, the fool often sleeps,’” replied Dan.

  “How many of those darned quotes do you know?” demanded Willy. “You sound like you swallowed a whole book of them.”

  Dan smiled to himself. He wasn’t going to tell Willy, but he’d made that last one up.

  chapter 2

  DON’T BREAK

  THE HANDS

  That afternoon, Dan was nervous. It was the last match of the season!

  Waiting for his turn wasn’t much fun. Watching his teammates wrestle just made him more nervous. His wrestling uniform seemed too tight, and his shoes seemed too loose. Dan’s heart was pounding, but his hands were cold. He couldn’t seem to warm them up.

  “Come on, Dan, relax,” said his big friend Rufus. “This is supposed to be fun, right?”

  “Fun? This isn’t fun. This is battle.”

  “It was a wrestling match, last I checked,” said Rufus.

  “I’ve just got to win it. You know what they say: ‘Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.’”

  “That doesn’t even make sense,” said Rufus.

  “Makes sense to me,” said Dan.

  Finally Dan’s turn came. He shook hands with a tough-looking kid just his size. The whistle blew. Dan went right after him. He took his opponent down—but then the guy reversed him. Dan put the guy on his back for a second—and then the guy put Dan on his back. It went back and forth like that until Dan wasn’t even sure who was on top or who was ahead.

  But at the end of the match, after they shook hands, it was the other guy’s hand that was raised over his head. Dan had lost.

  In the locker room Dan was so mad he kicked a locker. He raised his fists to bang on it, too, but Willy and Rufus grabbed his arms to stop him.

  “I worked so hard!” yelled Dan.

  “Hey, take it easy,” said Rufus.

  “Come on,” said Willy. “So you lost a match. You’re the one who’s always saying, ‘What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.’ I don’t think that’s true of beating your fists on the locker, though. That just makes you injured.”

  “Yeah,” said Rufus, “if you break your hands, you won’t be able to go climbing tomorrow.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Dan. He lay on his back on the bench. “Man, I’ve had it,” he said. “I’ve really had it. I give up. I’m tired of being the smallest kid in the class. I’m tired of getting chosen last when we play volleyball at recess. I worked so hard at football! And I was still lousy. I worked so hard at wrestling! I’m telling you, I give up.”

  “Are you kidding me?” asked Willy. “You’re the guy who’s always telling us things like, ‘There is no elevator to success; you have to take the stairs.’”

  “And,” said Rufus, “‘The harder you fall, the higher you bounce!’”

  “And, ‘If at first you don’t succeed—’”

  “Can it, guys,” said Dan, “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “What I say is,” said Willy, “that win or lose, the Scrubs still have fun. ‘We came to play,’ right?”

  “No, I’m telling you, I’m tired of being a Scrub.”

  “Hey, man, we’re proud of being Scrubs!” said Rufus.

  “Not me. I tell you, I’m tired of it,” said Dan.

  Biff had come in from the showers while they were talking. “Yeah, you guys think you’re so cool,” he said, “but you’re too old for that stupid Scrubs stuff. Right, Dan?” Biff was an older kid, and one of the ‘in’ group. He’d never been friendly with Dan.

  “You think so?” asked Dan.

  “Yeah,” said Biff. “You’ve outgrown it.”

  chapter 3

  TO PULL OR

  NOT TO PULL

  When Dan got home from school, the house was quiet. He went into his room and put on one of his CDs. He sat in his chair and looked at his posters. There were national champion wrestlers and pro-football stars and top climbers and kayakers all over his walls.

  He wondered if those guys had ever lost as often as he had.

  After
a while, he heard his father come home. Dan found him in the kitchen getting a snack.

  “Sorry I couldn’t make your match today,” said his father. “How’d it go?”

  Dan shrugged. “Dad,” he said, “you’re always talking about the power of positive thinking and focus and working hard. ‘Whatever you can dream, you can do.’ Right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Yeah, but—I’ve been really trying hard. I really have. And I—I lost the match today. I’ve lost a bunch this season.”

  For a minute Dan’s father just stared at him. Dan was afraid he was mad. But when his father finally said something, he didn’t sound mad. He sounded tired.

  “You know,” said his father, “I’ll tell you a secret. I don’t succeed all the time, either. But what are we going to do? Give up?”

  “The guys say I try too hard,” said Dan. “That I should just have a good time.”

  “I want you to have a good time,” said his father. “But can you try hard and still have a good time?”

  Dan thought for a moment. “I’m not sure I could have a good time if I didn’t try hard,” he said.

  His father laughed. “There’s your answer. I’m that way, too, you know.”

  “So I should go ahead and do pull-ups every night like Mr. Kwan suggested?”

  “He’s the climbing instructor?” his father asked. Dan nodded. “You be careful out there rock climbing, okay?”

  “Don’t worry, Dad. It’s totally safe. But how about those pull-ups? Should I?”

  “Sure. Hey, I’ll join you. I think I need to do some of those.”

  chapter 4

  AVOIDING EASY

  Dan climbed up a cliff of overhanging gray rock. Mr. Kwan and Dan’s friends watched from below. Ten feet . . . twenty feet . . . Dan was climbing fast. He was near the top when he suddenly slowed down.

  “You can go to your right now,” Mr. Kwan called up to him. “It’s not as steep there. It’s a lot easier.”

  “Too easy!” Dan called back and climbed straight up the steep part.

  He was thirty feet up now. The wind blew through his hair. A bird flew by below him. He was almost at the top. Dan stretched up and tried to grab a big knob of rock above him, but he couldn’t quite reach it. His foot started to slip. He jammed it back into place again.

  “You can do it!” called Rufus from below.

  “Go, go, go!” shouted Clara.

  “Go, you Scrub!” shouted Willy.

  All of a sudden, Dan fell. “Agh!” he cried as he dropped off the rock and into the empty space below.

  Rufus gasped. Willy started to yell something, then cut it short. Mr. Kwan moved his right hand behind him. In that right hand Mr. Kwan held a bright purple rope that went through a metal belay device. The rope ran from Mr. Kwan up to the top of the cliff through a link they called a carabiner and back down to where it was clipped to a harness around Dan’s waist. Dan couldn’t fall very far, because he was attached to the rope that Mr. Kwan was holding. With the belay device set, the rope couldn’t slip. It stretched for a few feet and then held. Dan was brought to a gentle stop, still twenty-five feet off the ground. He hung there beside the cliff, catching his breath.

  “Can I try that part again?” shouted Dan.

  “No, we’re running low on time,” Mr. Kwan called back. “We have to give Rufus a turn.”

  “Just once?”

  “Sorry, Dan. I’m going to lower you down.”

  chapter 5

  DAN GUESSES

  When Dan was at the bottom of the cliff beside the others, he unclipped himself from the rope. Rufus clipped in and started to climb, very slowly, up the rock.

  “Have you ever climbed that part where I was?” Dan asked Mr. Kwan.

  “Put your right foot in that crack,” Mr. Kwan said to Rufus. “Sideways!” Then to Dan: “Yes, I have.”

  “Yeah, but you’re tall,” said Dan. “You could have reached that last hold easy.”

  “Well, sure, sometimes being tall helps,” said Mr. Kwan. “But a lot of top climbers aren’t very tall. Somebody told me that girl, Elisabeth whatever-her-name-is, climbed that route. She’s not tall.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A girl who moved here from Colorado. I saw a TV special about her.”

  “She’s been on TV?” asked Clara.

  “Yeah.”

  “I want to be on TV,” said Dan.

  “You’re too ugly,” said Willy. “You’d break the camera.”

  Dan just rolled his eyes.

  Mr. Kwan frowned, but he didn’t take his eyes off Rufus, who was halfway up. “Listen, Willy,” said Mr. Kwan, “no insulting allowed, not even in kidding. That reminds me. You shouldn’t call Dan a ‘scrub,’ either.”

  “No, no, that’s not an insult,” said Willy. “Rufus and Dan and I were so bad at football last year, other guys called us ‘scrubs.’ We decided we liked it. We’re the Scrubs. Clara’s an official Scrub, too. Right Clara?”

  “You bet,” said Clara. “And proud of it.”

  “Is that right, Dan?” asked Mr. Kwan.

  “Yeah, true story,” said Dan. “But . . . .”

  “But what?” asked Mr. Kwan. “You don’t like being called a ‘scrub’?”

  “I guess it’s all right.”

  “What do you mean, ‘you guess’?” asked Willy.

  “I mean, I guess.”

  chapter 6

  LOUD LUNCH

  As usual, the lunchroom was crowded. Rufus and Dan were holding their trays, trying to edge over to where Willy was sitting.

  “Hey, guys, . . . wait up,” said a voice behind them.

  It was Clara, standing with a girl named Lisa—a new girl in school that year. They looked funny standing together. Clara was tall and wore her blond hair in pigtails, while Lisa was the smallest kid in the class and had dark, curly hair.

  “Hey, Clara,” said Biff, coming out of the lunch line to stand beside them. “Does she really play basketball? I mean, she’s not much bigger than the ball.” Biff’s friends behind him laughed.

  Lisa frowned, but she didn’t say anything.

  “You’re no giant yourself, Biff,” said Clara, looking down at him. Clara was almost a half-foot taller than Biff.

  “Maybe she’s the team mascot,” said Dan. “Little Lisa, the mascot.”

  “Don’t you start talking trash about Lisa!” said Clara angrily.

  “It doesn’t matter,” murmured Lisa.

  “Dude,” Clara said to Dan, “she’s one of the Scrubs, too, you know.”

  “Since when is she one of the Scrubs?” asked Dan.

  “Since I say she is,” replied Clara.

  “Come on, it’s not some exclusive club. She tries hard, just like you.”

  “Yeah,” said Lisa.

  “Yeah, but she’s the way the Scrubs used to be,” said Biff. “Dan won over half his matches this year.”

  Dan looked at Biff in surprise. He wouldn’t have thought Biff was keeping track.

  “Okay, great, but so what?” asked Clara. “I was high scorer on our basketball team. Who cares? I’m still a Scrub at heart. And so is Lisa.”

  “Come on, Dan,” said Biff. “Sit with us. That table’s going to be too crowded anyway.”

  Dan hesitated. But he decided he just couldn’t turn Biff down.

  “I’ll see you around, guys,” Dan said to Rufus and Clara.

  So he had lunch with Biff and his loud friends. Clara glared at him from their nearby table. Rufus and Willy looked puzzled. Lisa just kept looking down at her lunch tray.

  chapter 7

  COOL OR CREEP

  The next day was the day the Scrubs went kayaking together. Now that winter sports were over, they were alternating climbing with kayaking.

  When Dan got into the van, Clara said right away, “I’m mad at you, Dan.”

  “Huh?” said Dan. “What did I do?”

  “You made fun of Lisa for being small, of all things. You kno
w how idiotic that is, coming from you? It was also mean.”

  “It was just a joke.”

  “And then you wouldn’t sit with us,” said Clara.

  “The table was crowded,” said Dan. He turned to Rufus and Willy. “Come on, guys. Was I being mean?”

  Rufus shrugged.

  Willy said, “Well, yeah. Kind of.”

  Dan stared out the window and watched the trees go by for a minute. “Okay,” he said finally. “If I was mean, I’m sorry. Tell her I’m sorry.”

  “Since when do you hang out with Biff, anyway?” asked Willy.

  “Hey, we wrestled on the same team all season,” said Dan.

  “Yeah, but it’s Biff! The original jerk!”

  “He’s changed,” said Dan. “Ever since I started beating him in practice every once in a while. And winning some of my matches.”

  “Is that what you want?” asked Willy. “Friends who only like you when you win?”

  “Maybe I want friends who are cool,” said Dan. “And popular.”

  “Like Biff?”

  “Yeah, like Biff.”

  “The whole reason we started the Scrubs was to stand up to creeps like Biff,” said Willy.

  “Yeah,” said Dan. “That was fine then. But now, I’m starting to think the Scrubs thing is so . . . so grammar school.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Willy.

  “I mean, Rufus is getting good at football and—we’re getting better at wrestling and kayaking and—we’re just not ‘scrubs’ anymore!”

  “I was always good at basketball and soccer,” said Clara, “but I was still a Scrub. Being a Scrub is a state of mind. It means we don’t care what everybody else thinks. It means we go for it, no matter what—like you did yesterday, going for the hard part of that cliff. It means we’re not afraid to go out for ballet, like Rufus did last fall.”

  “Yeah, okay,” said Dan. “That was fine. Now I think it’s time to make some new friends.”

  “Be careful you don’t lose the old ones along the way,” said Clara.

  Just then they pulled up beside the river. Everyone got out before Dan could think of anything to say.