Chapter 43: Chapter 2: Guidelines

Tommy Hawk first returned to his apartment, took off the T-shirt with "Italy will win" he'd just been wearing, and threw it into a corner. Then he put on another T-shirt, this one printed with a Bob Dylan lyric, "When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose," and flipped off the T-shirt in the corner with a gloomy expression:

F*ck you, Italy!

Only then did he get on his bike and hurry to Lincoln High School.

The reason for his current hatred toward Italy was naturally because of the World Cup. Although both the official betting companies of Las Vegas and illegal gamblers like Ruby were offering World Cup betting services, Tommy Hawk didn't intend to make a big fortune by gambling, since he only remembered that Italy was the champion in '82 and knew nothing about the specific matches or scores.