Free Slob by Ellen Potter Page B

counted on Mason being there. After all the rest of us were herded into opposite ends of the gym, Mr. Wooly looked down at his list, then looked at Mason, who was still standing on A4. You could practically hear Mr. Wooly’s Neanderthal brain whirring, trying to figure out where Mason would cause the most pain and suffering.
    “Team B,” Mr. Wooly finally said.
    Of course.
    Mason strutted over to our team, his chin tipped up, eyeing all of us. Clearly he was not going to disappoint Mr. Wooly. He stood a little apart from the rest of us, but to be honest, we were all standing apart from each other. No one on Team B seemed to want to be on Team B. Even I looked longingly at Team A where Andre was already having a sportsmanly chat with his team.
    “This is so unfair,” muttered a tall, pimply kid on our team named Jay, one of the Andre wannabes. “Andre gets Ron and Corey and Tristan, while Wooly gives us . . . what? A fat slob and a psycho.”
    Everyone on the team glanced at Mason nervously to see how he would react to that. No one looked at me nervously, of course, but I didn’t expect them to.
    Mason didn’t say anything. He slowly reached down for his sock. All eyes followed his hand. We all saw it. The outline of something stuffed in his sock. Something distinctly knife-shaped. Eyes grew wide. Then Mason calmly tugged at the edge of his sock, just as though he was adjusting it to make all the lines in the cuff straight. He stood upright again, folded his arms against his chest, and quickly looked at all his teammates, as if daring them to say anything. None of them did.
    So he did keep his famous switchblade in his sock. I’d have to tell Izzy.
    Mason’s little exhibition did one good thing at least. It stopped Team B’s grumbling. All of a sudden, losing a gymnastic competition seemed somewhat less important than losing a thumb.
    Mr. Wooly explained the triathlon’s events course, which involved walking across the balance beam, jumping on the trampoline and tucking your legs, running a lap around the gym, then ending with a somersault on the mat.
    That’s four events, by the way. A triathlon would be three events, Mr. Wooly. That’s tri -athalon. Never mind.
    The teams would go one at a time, and he’d be timing them with a stopwatch. It would be relay race style, with points taken off if people botched the individual events. I could feel my teammates’ eyes on me, Owen Birnbaum, The Imperial Botch-meister.
    Team A was first. Mr. Wooly gave them a few minutes to figure out the lineup. Andre, of course, was the one who gave the orders, huddle style, arms over shoulders. It looked very professional. Our team was watching Team A enviously. There was no way we would get into a huddle. We didn’t even want to be on the same side of the gym with each other, much less nose to nose. Team A unhuddled, Andre clapped a few times to get everyone pumped up, and they sent their first teammate out on the course.
    I watched the first few guys pretty carefully to see how this thing was supposed to be done and to figure out just how badly I was going to embarrass myself and infuriate my teammates.
    It was going to be ugly.
    Mr. Wooly stood at the finish line with his thumb poised over his stopwatch. All the members of Team A finished their course. A few kids missed the leg tuck on the trampoline and five of them fell off the beam, but all in all, they did pretty well. Andre, of course, did it all so effortlessly that for a moment I wondered if he was one of those undercover cops they send into schools to masquerade as schoolchildren.
    One of the kids on my team groaned and said, “We might actually stand a chance if we didn’t have blubber butt on our team.”
    I felt my teammates’ eyes turn on me bitterly. I didn’t look back at them, yet I couldn’t help but catch Mason’s face in my peripheral vision, staring at me. Not with resentment, but with curiosity.
    Ah, yes, I thought. He’s never witnessed Owen Birnbaum