ADDISON COOKE WAS DOWN on his luck. Rain clouds had been following him around for months, though to be fair, he was in England. Whatever switch controlled the British weather was permanently stuck on Rain. Addison imagined that if archaeology didn’t work out for him, he
could always enjoy an extremely easy career as an English weatherman. Today’s weather was even more dismal than normal, and the same could safely be said for Addison’s mood. He was, in a word, miffed.
His troubles had begun, as troubles often do, when his aunt and uncle were thrown from a cliff in Outer Mongolia. This unfortunate act had been perpetrated by a dangerous man named Vrolok Malazar, known in criminal circles as the Shadow. Fearing for Addison’s life, Addison’s uncle Jasper had sent him into hiding at the Dimpleforth School in the town of Weebly-on-Hammerstead. The boarding school was founded by King Edward III more than six hundred years ago, and as far as Addison could tell, no one had yet updated the plumbing.
Dimpleforth was a rambling estate filled with rambling professors and blue-eyed, blue-blooded students with family names older than the ivy-covered buildings. The daily dress code at Dimpleforth was a black tailcoat, a starched white collar, and pinstripe trousers. “Trousers,” Addison had discovered, was the British word for pants, and “pants” was the British word for underwear. Addison learned this the hard way on his first day of school, when he innocently asked his professor if the dress code required him to wear pants to lunch.
This mistake earned Addison his first trip to the headmaster’s office, where he was sentenced to sit quietly for two hours after dinner. And this, in turn, was how Addison learned that “dinner” was in fact the British word for lunch, and “tea” was the British word for dinner. Thus, Addison showed up for his detention at dinnertime, or rather teatime, and missed lunch, that is to say, dinner, entirely. And so Addison earned his second detention right on top of the first. Try as he might, Addison could not seem to get the hang of England.
Now here he was, stuck playing a game of cricket in a spitting drizzle. The two team captains happened to be the two meanest boys at Dimpleforth: Weston Whitley from Upper Nobbly, and Randall Twigg, a scholarship student from Lower Nobbly. They took infinite pleasure in teasing Addison for his complete lack of understanding of the British game.
Cricket, Addison had discovered, was much like baseball, if baseball had been designed by a vast committee of bureaucrats paid by the hour. The game of cricket was four hundred years old, and no wonder: a single match lasted thirty hours over the course of an entire week. Weston Whitley’s team was currently beating Addison’s team by a staggering three hundred points.
Addison trudged across the muddy grass to take his place in the outfield. He had no idea which position to play.
“Where should I stand?”
Randall Twigg squinted at Addison in disgust. “Just stand at cow corner so the ball will never come to you.”
“Which way is cow corner?”
“It’s next to deep midwicket, you grotty ferret. Unless . . .” Randall added thoughtfully, “unless we move to attacking field, in which case you’ll move up to midwicket.”
Addison shook his head and sighed. He trotted to the farthest corner of the playing field and stood next to his roommate, Wilberforce Sinclair, the one person in school who would bother to answer his questions. Addison had no friends to turn to.
“Wilber, why do they call me a ferret?”
Wilberforce pushed his foggy glasses higher on his narrow nose. “Because a ferret is a rabbit, you see.”
“How,” asked Addison as patiently as he could, “is a ferret a rabbit?”
“In cricket they’re much the same thing. A rabbit is someone who scores zero points. And in cricket, zero points is called a duck.”
“So a ferret is a rabbit with a duck.”
Wilberforce clapped Addison on the shoulder. “Now you’re getting it.”
Addison found this all so dumb that he found he was dumbfounded. It was one thing to have a nickname. But it was another thing to have a nickname that made no earthly sense.
After watching the grass grow in the outfield for a good half hour, it was finally Addison’s turn to go to bat. “Any advice?” he asked Wilberforce.
Wilberforce polished his glasses on his white cable-knit sweater.
“It’s easy, really. Don’t swing at anything off stump, block any yorkers, and cut the bouncers. Unless . . .” he added helpfully, “unless you play off the back foot, in which case pull the bouncers.”
“Thanks,” said Addison, thoroughly confused. He trotted to the stump, hefted the cricket bat over his shoulder, and wound up like a baseball player. This resulted in Weston Whitley toppling to the ground in laughter. Addison gripped his bat, unsure whether he wanted to hit the ball or just take a run at Weston’s kneecaps.
“Ferret,” said Weston, “in cricket, we bat underhanded, like swinging a golf club.”
Addison adjusted his grip accordingly.
“Just pitch me the ball.” He wanted to get this over with.
“Oh, ferret,” Weston guffawed again. “You don’t ‘pitch’ a cricket ball, you bowl it.”
Addison was bowled over. To him, bowling involved wooden lanes, rented shoes, and a loose acquaintance’s interminable birthday party. “Fine, just throw it to me.”
Weston Whitley wound up and pitched the ball directly at Addison’s head. It smacked into Addison’s jaw, sending stars across his vision. Addison took two dizzy steps backward and crumpled to a seat in the wet grass.
Randall Twigg, Addison’s team captain, was furious. He marched to stand chest to chest with Weston Whitley. “You can’t bowl a beamer at a bloke! That was a bean ball bowled at the batsman’s brains!”
“It weren’t never a beamer,” Weston retorted. “It was a fine googly, and a dibbly-dobbly at that.”
Addison tuned them out. When he had lived in a cramped apartment in New York City, he had often grown quite sick of it. But now he found he was homesick for the very home he was once sick of. He loved England’s history, he loved England’s culture, but he could not seem to fit in at Dimpleforth.
While the boys argued, Addison stood up and left the field. The patting drizzle turned to a pelting downpour. He had never felt so alone. Addison limped back to his dormitory, feeling every bit like a ferret who’d been beamed by a yorker.
Copyright © 2019 by Jonathan W. Stokes. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
