The Trouble with Mark Hopper by Elissa Brent Weissman

anybody.”
    â€œIt’s not that I’m not good at it,” Mark said quickly. He thought of the soccer game in gym and his conversation with Mark and Jonathan at lunch the day before and wondered if he really was good at teamwork. “It’s that it’s not fair.”
    â€œWell, at least look over the new rules before you contact the committee. That’s my free good-sport tip of the day.”
    Mark turned to leave.
    â€œAnd Mark,” Mr. Rocco called after him, “when someone answers a question or gives you some advice, it’s nice to say thank you or at least good-bye before you leave.”
    â€œGood-bye,” Mark mumbled. Thanks for nothing, he thought.

Chapter 18
    Mark’s Strength, Mark’s Weakness
    â€œWhat are you looking at?” Mark asked, his wide eyes peering over Mark’s backpack to see.
    â€œNone of your beeswax,” Mark snapped. “Just do some problems on your own or something for a few minutes.”
    Mark shrugged and turned to the math. He had paid very close attention that day when Miss Payley went over how to convert mixed numbers into improper fractions, but of course now that he was looking at a page of problems, he had no idea what to do. It had something to do with adding and multiplying . . . or was it subtracting and dividing? “So you . . . add and then divide?” he asked the other Mark cautiously.
    â€œWhat? Look it up,” Mark said. He glared harder at the Mastermind pamphlet, as though he could intimidate it into changing its content. “I’m busy.”
    Mark frowned. “Are you having a bad day?” he asked.
    Mark softened a bit. No one had ever really asked him how his day was going before. “I just don’t have time for this. It was going to be bad enough preparing for the Mastermind tournament without them changing the rules.”
    â€œOh! That’s the thing Mr. Rocco was talking about, right? What is it all about?”
    â€œWhat is it about ? It’s about being the best.” In one long, impassioned rant, Mark explained the history of the tournament and the fact that his father had won it three years in a row. He told Mark how long he’d been preparing, how moronic it was that they changed the rules (though he was sure to win anyway), and how big a trophy the winner got. He told him everything except the part about having more than one artistic ability.
    â€œWow. That sounds really hard.”
    â€œOh, it takes a lot of planning, but it’s not hard .”
    Mark doodled a trophy on a piece of loose-leaf paper. Then, with just a few tiny strokes of his pencil, he made it look as though the trophy was glistening in the sun. “Maybe I’ll enter it,” he said. How impressed his family would be if he won something like that for being smart! It would be like the day he found out he was in all honors classes, only ten times more exciting.
    â€œHa,” Mark said with his you-couldn’t-beat-me-if-you-tried look. “I mean,” he added, “you could . But it’s really a lot of work. So if you don’t think you could win in every single part—the good grades and the essay and everything—it’s really not worth it.” He had to make sure there weren’t any other report cards or essays with the name Mark Hopper on them. And that there wasn’t another drawing with that name, either.
    â€œYeah, I guess,” Mark said. His face twisted into a half frown. “But that new teamwork part sounds fun. I like when you have to do something as a group. Like in gym when you have to hold hands with a big group and tangle yourselves up and then find a way out of it. We did that at my old school.”
    â€œWhatever,” said Mark, not knowing what Mark was talking about and thinking that it didn’t sound remotely fun. Holding hands in gym? Come on.
    â€œYou never did that?” Mark asked. He didn’t say it, but he