Free Anton's Odyssey by Marc Andre Page B

jacking cars!”
    “So?” he asked defiantly, urging me to get to the point .
    “So, here, do you see people getting knifed?”
    “No.”
    “You see any cars to steal?”
    “I guess not.”
    “And how many schools do you think there are?”
    Cotton’s eyes darted back and forth as he thought. “Oh crap!” he said, finally reaching the obvious conclusion.
    “How many?” I asked. I wanted to hear him say it out loud so that he would have no other choice but to admit he was an idiot.
    “Just one,” he said sheepishly.
    “Yes,” I said, “just the one, and the guards here don’t seem to have anything to do except hang out in the mess hall, the very place you chose to cut class. Hell, you might have even gotten away with it if you hadn’t stole Mr. Boldergat’s french-fries.”
    “Fried corn nibblets,” Cotton corrected, “and he said we’re supposed to call him Sergeant Boldergat, not ‘mister.’”
    “Whatever!” I snapped, pretending to be angrier that I actually was.
    Cotton looked at his feet and said he was sorry. He skulked into our bedroom to either sulk or read comic books, but within five minutes he got bored and came back out to the living room.
    “Did you go to any of your classes today?” I asked out of curiosity.
    “Yeah the last one.”
    “Which one was that?”
    “Social studies.”
    “Who’s your teacher?”
    “Some strong-looking dude with a really funky hairdo.”
    “Yeah, Mr. Fox. I have him too,” I said. “Learn anything?”
    “Naw, it was mostly pretty boring, but the teacher did talk about this president guy who hanged himself in the oval office.”
    “Present Jimenez,” I said.
    “Yeah that’s the guy,” Cotton said, disinterested.
    “Anything worth watching on the vid?” Cotton asked.
    “Nothing,” I said, “just some stupid public health announcement. Bob the steward cut off our access to all the good channels.”
    “Man, I wish someone would hang that guy like President Jimenez.”
    “Careful what you wish for,” I said dispassionately with neither belief nor conviction, “because it just might happen.”
    Cotton sighed with boredom. “What do you want to do?” he asked.
    It was 17:15, and I remembered what Hammond had said about open rec. “You wanna go mess around in the gym?” I suggested. “There will be other kids there.”
    “Yeah, okay.”
    Still having problems finding our way around the ship, we took a side door to the recreation center by mistake and not the main entrance. We found ourselves in a physical training room that overlooked the gaming gymnasium below. A rather poorly planned layout, every now and then a stray basketball would find its way among the dumbbells and treadmills, and someone would have to chase it down and toss it over the banister down to the players below. Most of the people in the training room were adults. I spotted Hammond in the corner bench pressing a huge amount of weight without a spotter.
    “That’s gotta be like 100 kilos!” I said, impressed. I never really lifted weights myself, but I wasn’t bad at doing push-ups and pull-ups.
    Hammond looked up and smiled. “This is just my warm up,” he said. “I can lift a lot more.”
    “Wow, you’re pretty strong!” Cotton said.
    “Naw it’s the gravity. Point seven eight G’s means I can lift twice as much as I can on Earth.” Hammond’s math didn’t seem right to me, but I wasn’t one to pass judgment. Hammond stood up and gestured to the bench. “You wanna grab a set? I can spot you.”
    “Naw,” I said, nodding towards Cotton. “We’re here to play around with a ball.”
    “Okay,” he said, “maybe I’ll come find you later.”
    We retreated down the steps to the gymnasium. Center stage was a full court scrimmage. Mr. Fox, my boring social studies teacher, wore a stripy shirt. He ran up and down the court blowing a whistle as referee. The bright light from the flood lamps above allowed me to study his funky hairdo more closely. His