Jacob slept fitfully the entire night. His feet seemed to ache and throb and itch, and he felt the need to restless stretch his legs over and over again. Just as he felt himself starting to nod off, his alarm began to blare, leaving him dizzy, tired and unsure of how much sleep he’d managed to get that night.
“Just another half hour…” Jacob muttered to himself as he slammed the snooze button on his alarm clock and sunk back into bed, where he dozed for a few minutes before…
*BANG BANG BANG*!
“Wake up, sport! We’ve got to get going soon!” Jacob’s father walked into his bedroom and took one look at his son.
“You’re the one who wanted to get going early today, so why’re you still in bed? Come on!” As Jacob’s father turned to leave, he caught a glimpse at the notebook page Jacob had written the night before laying on his desk. He frowned and looked at his son sympathetically.
“Oh, Jake… Look, I understand you spend a lot of time practicing, but you need to spend more time studying, too. You’re too old to still be writing like this. I’ll make you a deal: If you work with a reading tutor and pass English this year, I’ll get us season tickets to the games next year. How’s that sound?”
Jacob looked at his father like he was crazy. He’d always been fine at writing! Once his father left, Jacob leapt out of bed, tripping on his feet as he did. Blushing, he pulled himself together and looked at the notebook he had left out last night before bed. He read:
FRIDAY-
This morning I fit in Size 15 shoos.
Dad gave me some munny to buy new shoos for sports, even though I havent chozen what sport I want to play.
I went to a shoo store named Funkos, where I picked out a pare of Size 17 Hoops brand baskitball shoos.
The sales person told me not to worry if the shoos felt to big.
Everybuddy who saw me waring them said that the shoos were good.
Mom looked right at them while I was waring them and didnt think that they were to big.
After dinner my feet were to big to fit in my reguler shoos.
Im thinking about trying out for the baskitball teem.
Jacob’s head felt fuzzy and sluggish, and it took him nearly five minutes to slowly read aloud what he wrote, stopping to sound out some of the words as he did. Looking at the notebook gave him an uncanny feeling, like it was right and wrong at the same time. The messy mix of lower-case and capital letters definitely looked to him like his own handwriting, and he thought most of the words looked like they were spelled mostly right. Plus, he definitely remembered going to the shoe store yesterday. What could be wrong…?
Jacob wracked his brain for nearly ten minutes before it struck him! A haze lifted from his head, and he remembered everything that he had actually written last night…
He didn’t buy the shoes, they’d been forced on him.
His old shoes weren’t size 15, they were size 7.
And he’d never even thought about playing basketball until yesterday.
Jacob remembered his old shoes, and went to check on where he had tossed them… when he found them, his breathing stopped. Written there as clear as day on the tongues were “Size 15”. Between the shoes and his notebook, he could tell something was terribly wrong here. His memories were telling him that he was a great student with no interest in sports, but everything else, from his parents to the words written in the notebook, told him he was some sort of barely-literate jock.
Jacob then remembered that his father had some sort of plans with him this morning. Between checking out if anything else had changed and getting some answers from the people at Funko’s, he really didn’t think he had any time to waste with his dad…