After lunch we had Economics with Mr. Chandler. He brought up the stock-picking competition and explained it as if he hadn’t given us all the same information at the end of the last school year. I suppose that not everyone was as into it as James, Eva and I were. The only difference in his spiel was that today he showed us how to log onto the online software that we’d be using and walked us through its basic features. Most of the students were looking at the software in confusion. Thanks to James, Eva and I already knew everything that Mr. Chandler showed us and a lot more. It really wasn’t that complicated, but when you looked at the screen for the first time you were likely to experience information overload; especially when you didn’t know what all of it meant.
The rest of the class was a complete waste of time for me. Mr. Chandler went through the basics of trading stocks and gave us different strategies for investing. At this point, nothing that he explained was news to me and I’d already had a very successful first foray into trading stocks. In the month and half since my first trades, my portfolio of stocks had already jumped up by eight percent. Most of that came from my ‘guess’ about Sun Energy Systems, but almost all of our picks had been doing well. Only one of Eva’s picks and one of mine were duds, each having lost a few percent, even though they reported decent results. Just like James warned us, good results didn’t always translate into a higher stock price. James and Eva were only up 3% and 4% respectively, as they hadn’t bet as big on Sun Energy as I did. I don’t blame them. I would have been skeptical too. James was taking Eva’s good natured ribbing with grace and talking about the tortoise and the hare. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint”, seemed to be his mantra these days.
When school let out, I checked the bus routes on my phone and hopped on the one heading closest to Northfield High School. With football season only lasting about two months, I couldn’t any waste time if I was going to help Bobby get his hands on Northfield’s playbook.
I’d never been to Northfield High before, but Waze took me right to the front entrance. They had a lovely campus and even though classes had finished for the day, there were still quite a few students milling around outside, enjoying the sunshine. I walked along to the side of their main building until I was out of everyone’s sight and activated the field to get into R1. I didn’t try holding two fields this time, because I didn’t know how long I’d be here for and I didn’t want to get too tired. With just one field, I could take my time. If all went well, I’d practice with the expanded field on the way out.
Going back to the main building entrance, I walked through the door and started poking around. In the administration office I found the school directory and map. Coach Thorpe’s office was located just off of the main gymnasium, not too far from the outdoor football field and the locker rooms. Memorizing the path that I needed to use to get there, I left the administration offices and walked to his office. On the way, I peeked into classrooms and closets and the staff lounge. Nice place. Given the technology that I was seeing, this school had a healthy budget. Even the staff lounge had new computers.
After a brief stop to admire the Northfield High library, I finally found Coach Thorpe’s office. The lights were off, and the door was closed, but I just kept walking and passed through it. With the blinds having been left open, I had plenty of light to see by. Looking around, one thing quickly became very clear. Coach Thorpe had no organizational skills whatsoever. I’m no neat freak, but even I had to wonder how he could live in this mess. He had papers all over the place, as if he’d never heard of a computer. Binders were stacked in piles on the floor, the desk, the credenza and his filing cabinets. He even had stacks of vcr video tapes. Did they still make those? I didn’t even know where to start my search. A huge calendar on the wall showed that the team was having a practice for the next few hours, so I would have plenty of uninterrupted time to go through this mess.
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Taking the measure of the room, I figured that anything in use or in recent use would be on the top layer. I started taking binders into R1, one by one, and looking to see what was in them. Some piles were player rosters and notes from years before. Other piles had information on opposing teams from previous years. Budgets, gala fundraising information, baseball and basketball schedules. I guess head coach was a busy job. Not being much into sports, I’d never really thought about it.
Twenty minutes in I had nothing to show for my efforts in the mess and I moved on to the desk drawers. This was tricky in that I had to choose to bring myself back to reality for a bit and risk possible exposure or I could bring the desk into R1. I chose the latter option. Three drawers were full of junk and the fourth, the one on the bottom right, was locked. I was trying to think of how I could use my field to bring the contents into R1 and have them fall to the floor, when I realized that using my powers were not necessary in this case. The drawer above it was unlocked and I slid it out and unclipped it to remove it from the desk. Sometimes the normal solutions were best. I'd need to remember that.
With the top drawer gone, I could see the contents inside the locked drawer. On top was a copy of our football playbook that Bobby had mentioned. It was good to know that Bobby had been right about their using our playbook to cheat. I debated taking it with me and decided against it for a few reasons. First, I doubted it was their only copy. Second, I didn’t want to alert anyone that I’d been here. Third, if I succeeded in ‘borrowing’ Northfield’s playbook, then the two sides would be in the same situation. I was merely balancing the scales. I could see the justice in doing that. However, if I were to take back the book, and if it was their only copy, then I’d be tipping the scales in our school’s favor. Honestly, I had no moral qualms about doing that, but I just didn’t care enough about it. I had a different reason for doing this and balancing the scales was good enough for me.
Leaving the playbook where it was and putting back the drawer, I shifted the desk to reality and left Coach Thorpe’s office. I headed out to the field to see if the team was using some playbooks and I hit paydirt right away. I found several copies on the sidelines and while the team was working on their physical conditioning, I snagged one into R1.
I took my digital camera from my backpack and started taking pictures. I took a lot of pictures. I had no idea that there were so many plays in football. Did the team really have to memorize all of these? Every season? I’d need to re-evaluate my assumptions about the game and its players.
As I finished the last page, I shifted the binder back into reality and spent a few minutes watching the practice. The boys certainly looked fit. I sighed and went to the Galt university library to print out my own binder. Bobby better appreciate all this hard work.