Free Takedown by Rich Wallace Page B

gray: the walls, the floor, even the lockers themselves. The only color in the room was a red poster with black lettering that read HUDSON CITY HORNETS. The room was small and was divided in two by a line of lockers in the center. Tradition had it that the eighth-graders were on one side of the wall of lockers and the seventh-graders on the other.
    There was laughter and energy on the eighth-grade side of the lockers, but things were quiet over here.
    Donald stood in front of his locker in his underwear and wiped his wiry body dry with a towel. Mario was seated on the bench next to him, staring at the floor with his chin in his hands, too tired to move. Everybody, in fact, seemed to be having the same thought: Is this really going to be worth it?
    Mario leaned toward Donald. “How many times you get pinned?” he asked.
    “About a thousand,” Donald replied. “Every two or three seconds. It was tons of fun.”
    Mario shook his head. “Me, too. Did you pin Tavo at all?”
    “You kidding? I could barely touch the guy.” He reached into his locker and took out his sneakers and pants. “I’ll get him, though. I’ll show him a thing or two as soon as I figure him out.”
    “How long you think that’ll take?”
    “Two days. Maybe three.”
    Mario laughed. “Or two years.”
    “We’ll see,” Donald replied. “I got more going for me than you think.”
    He could hear Freddy and Tavo and the other eighth-graders joking around and laughing. “They think they’re big shots,” he whispered to Mario. “They won’t be laughing in a few days, believe me. . . . At least Tavo won’t.”
     
     
    The November air had a cold bite to it, but it felt great against Donald’s flushed face as he walked across the blacktop basketball court outside the gym. The sun was already down, and the streetlights had come on. He turned to Kendrick, who was putting on his jacket as they walked.
    “So what’d you think?”
    Kendrick let out his breath in a low whistle. “Hard work,” he said. “How ’bout you?”
    “About a hundred times harder than anything I ever did,” Donald replied.
    He stopped walking as they reached the street. “Which way are you going?”
    “Down to the Boulevard. Over to Eleventh.”
    Donald was headed in the same direction, but he lived all the way down on Second Street, nearly in Jersey City. They started walking again.
    “It was rough,” Donald said, “but I didn’t let it get to me. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”
    “Guess so.” Kendrick yawned and rubbed his shoulder. “Man, I’ll sleep tonight. Every muscle hurts.”
    They walked past the post office and the YMCA and reached Eleventh Street, where Kendrick said, “I’m out of here. See you tomorrow in English.”
    “Looking forward to it. I get really excited learning about adverbs and prepositions.”
    “Me, too.”
    “Wake me up when it’s over.”
    So Donald continued along the Boulevard alone, stopping in the grocery store at the corner of Ninth for a small carton of orange juice. Tired and hungry as he was, he was in no hurry to get home. His mom had lost her job the month before, so he was pretty sure he’d be having peanut butter for dinner again. He’d already eaten that for lunch.
    The Boulevard had never seemed longer. It was thirteen blocks from school to home, and after all that running it felt like ten miles.
    How did Manny do it, running four or five miles every day after school and loving every step of it? He’d turned into a champion cross-country runner this fall, outdistancing older kids to win the league and district titles.
    Several of Donald’s friends had begun to have real success in athletics now that they’d reached junior high school. Donald had been on plenty of sports teams, too, but he had to admit that the most successful kids worked harder at it than he did. He’d decided to become a wrestler after attending some high-school matches the winter before. It would be great to finally compete