Free Girls Love Travis Walker by Anne Pfeffer

probably wanted to get tossed from the class.
    “Vaughn!” Garret called, pointing to Brandon. He held out the fifty-pound weight vest you were required to wear during the test.
    Brandon struggled to his feet. “This sucks so bad,” he said, going off to meet his fate.
    I would be next.
    I rolled my shoulders and stretched out my hands and fingers. I’d always been in good shape, but my recent weeks in the Benny Sandoval School of Fitness Training had prepared me for this in a way that no fancy-boy gym ever could. I’d spent most of yesterday hauling Hefty bags full of grass down a steep hillside and lobbing them into a dumpster. I thought I could do a few garage door raises.
    “Ready to go, Walker?” Garret asked.
    Brandon wasn’t far enough along. I was going to run into him from behind and lose time.
    “Do you mind if I wait a few minutes?”
    “Okay.” Garret gave me a shrewd look as Brandon groaned and stopped to catch his breath. “If you need more time to prepare, I understand.”
    “Thanks.” I waited, thinking about Mom looking forward to our soup kitchen food every night, me sliding down hillsides, arms full of branches, dirt creeping into my socks, and, then, like music filling a silence, Zoey’s low, husky voice.
    Brandon had finished Task Five and lay flattened on the concrete of the training yard, catching his breath. I shook my head at Garret. Too soon to go. We waited as Brandon pulled himself up and kept going. When he was almost done with Task Seven, I said to Garret, “Okay, I’m ready now.”
    I noticed that Perkins and a couple of the other senior firefighters had come out to watch. “This is the guy,” Perkins was saying to them, “who kicked Hale’s butt on that turn-out drill. He’s hungry.”
    I slid on and buckled the weight vest, thinking I was hungry, all right. “Ready.”
    “Go.”
    I focused. Stairmaster. Three minutes at sixty steps per minute. Done. Legs starting to loosen up.
    Hose drag. Pulling the nozzle over my shoulder, I dragged the heavy hose the required hundred feet, putting my back into it, then did the chain saw carry, thinking all in a day’s work. My breathing had deepened and my arms, back, and legs were now fully warmed up.
    A month ago, this test would have taken me longer. But in my short time with Benny, I had stopped being your average guy. I was a beast of burden now.
    Don’t run in between task stations. I could “walk with purpose,” but running would disqualify me.
    Task Four. With smooth, long pulls of the rope, I extended and retracted a twenty-four foot ladder, then without missing a beat, picked up a sledgehammer and began to wail on a measuring device, picturing my target as — well, not Mrs. M exactly, but some anonymous landlord who I could take vengeance on. I was breathing deeply by now. Sweat plastered my hair to my forehead.
    Next came a sightless obstacle maze. My already fast-beating heart sped up as they blindfolded me and led me to the entrance to the tunnel. Reminding myself that this was just a plywood-constructed tube and not a building on fire, I squeezed my way through the tunnel and went on to do the last two tasks. Muscles now aching, gasping for breath, I kept going, moving methodically until the last lowering of the garage door in Task Eight, when the whole group burst into applause.
    I gave them a salute, my t-shirt sticking to my chest and back as the sweat trickled down. My arms and back ached, but it felt good, like I’d accomplished something.
    My time was ten minutes fifty seconds. I’d missed passing the Physical Ability Test to become a firefighter by a mere thirty seconds. On my first day of training.
    It was the coolest thing I’d ever done.
    Brandon pulled off his helmet and threw it on the ground. He’d come in at nineteen minutes. Perkins came over, grinning broadly. “Great job, Travis!” He turned the Garret. “Better watch out. You’re gonna have Walker passing you up soon!”
    “In your