Takedown (2 page)

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 against people his own size, unlike the huge linemen he’d had to contend with in football or the giants he’d met up with on the YMCA basketball court.

Pound for pound, Donald knew he was as tough as anybody. But since he weighed only eighty-seven pounds he was at a disadvantage in many sports. Wrestling would be different, but it sure wouldn’t be easy.

He set his backpack on a bus-stop bench, putting on a black knit cap and pulling it down over his ears. He sat there for a few minutes and drank his juice, watching the cars and buses and trucks go by on one of the county’s busiest streets.

He was exhausted. A shower and an early bedtime would be great, but of course there was that math homework and some reading to do for social studies. He’d never had much homework in elementary school, but the teachers piled it on in seventh grade.

It had been a full year since he’d been on a sports team. Junior football in sixth grade had been his last official season. He’d started to feel left behind as his friends moved on to more advanced athletic programs, especially Manny. They’d been best friends for a long time, but Manny had definitely stepped up. Now it seemed like it was Donald’s turn to do the same.

He shot the empty juice carton toward a garbage can, but it struck the rim and fell to the sidewalk. Donald frowned, picked up his backpack, and retrieved the carton.

His mom was waiting at the door when he arrived, and she stepped out to the porch and smiled. They lived on one side of a brick duplex; both sides were the same, only opposite. Donald could smell something cooking, warm and cheesy.

“Hi,” she said enthusiastically. “Long day, huh?”

“It was brutal. What smells so good?”

“Macaroni and cheese. I thought you’d want something hot.”

“Great. You find a job?”

“Not yet. But your dad’s working another double shift, so that’s good. He won’t be home until midnight.”

Mr. Jenkins worked at a factory in Newark. The work was fairly steady, but the family had always struggled to pay the rent and other bills.

Donald’s parents were quite a bit older than most of his friends’ parents. They hadn’t even met until they were in their thirties. Donald had no brothers or sisters.

“Dinner’s ready?” he asked.

“It’s been ready. I didn’t know you’d be so late.”

“Neither did I. They worked us just about to death. The coach actually said he was taking it easy on us because it was the first day. I guess tomorrow we’ll run a marathon and drag a school bus up a hill.”

“I’d better give you a double helping of dinner.”

“The day after that we have to swim across the Hudson River wearing metal vests.”

“That’ll be something to see.”

“Yeah, well, we’re wrestlers. We’re tough.”

“So I gather.”

He sat at the kitchen table and shut his eyes. The cat appeared and rubbed her head against his shin.

“It wasn’t
that
hard, I guess. I’ll be sore tomorrow, but I liked it. Most of it, anyway. I hated the running, but when we actually wrestled it was cool. I’m pretty quick; I took a few guys down.”

Mom sat across from him, and the cat climbed onto her lap. “Did anyone take you down?”

“Just one guy. Nobody else.”

She smiled. “I’m not surprised. You’ve always been elusive, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah, I know how to slip out of trouble. I think I might be pretty good at this. I just gotta learn a few more moves.”

 

 

Donald climbed into bed early after a shower and homework, leaving the light on for now and staring at the ceiling. Despite the cold weather, he had his window open about six inches so he could hear the traffic sounds a couple of blocks away.

Usually he’d listen to the radio at night, an odd-ball station out of New York City that played oldies from the fifties and sixties and sometimes even earlier. But tonight he didn’t want the distraction.

His right elbow was sore where a bit of skin had rubbed off when he was battling to keep Tavo from pinning him, and his legs felt heavy from the running. But those were good hurts; they were the results of his effort.

Except for a few sleepovers at Manny’s, Donald had slept in this room every night of his life. Everything in it was familiar: the trophies on his dresser for being a member of championship teams in Little League baseball and YMCA floor hockey, the framed photo on the wall above his bed of Donald and his father fishing off a pier at the Jersey Shore, the pile of board games collecting dust in the corner of the room—Monopoly, Stratego, Clue.

And then there were those patterns in the ceiling’s cracked plaster, especially the large one that was roughly the shape of a fat alligator. And toward the edge, above the window, was the pattern he’d first identified as a dog when he was a toddler. Now it looked more to him like a woodchuck.

All of these things were the same as they’d always been, but one thing seemed different to Donald. The difference was in him, the kid lying in bed thinking. He felt as if he’d crossed a line today, like he’d finally started becoming an athlete.

The second day of practice was certain to be even harder. Donald yawned and turned out the light. The cold breeze from outdoors was steady. He huddled under the covers and fell into the deepest sleep he’d had since he was a baby.

D
onald could smell coffee brewing as he brushed his teeth in the morning. That would mean that his dad was up. He had only a few minutes before leaving for school, so he hustled into his clothes and trotted down the stairs.

“Hey, Dad!”

“Darnald!” Dad said with a laugh. “Cutting it close, as usual, I see. Not much time for breakfast.”

Mr. Jenkins looked like an older version of his son—very lean with a smirky expression, and straight sandy hair that was cut short. The difference was that Dad’s hair was already turning gray and he wore glasses.

Donald opened the refrigerator and set the orange-juice carton on the table. He picked up a cold baked potato from a few nights before and stared at it. “How long to microwave this, you think?”

“Half a minute.”

“Good deal. Any of that macaroni and cheese left?”

“Should be.”

He was very hungry, and lunch was a long way off.

“Mom says you liked the wrestling?”

“Yeah. Discomfort is a lot of fun.”

“Your muscles hurting this morning?”

“Not too bad. I can walk. A little.”

Dad rolled his eyes. “Maybe we’d better call a limousine to take you to school. Or a helicopter.”

“That’d be great, Dad. Have them pick me up after practice, too.”

“That’ll really impress your teammates.”

“I know it.”

Donald wolfed down his food and grabbed his backpack. “Still cold out?”

“Very. Feels like winter already.”

“It won’t last. You working tonight?”

“I expect to.”

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

Dad stood and kissed the top of Donald’s head.

“Oh, man!” Donald said. “I forgot to make my lunch.”

Dad rolled his eyes and took his wallet from his back pocket. “This’ll break the bank, but I guess you’d better buy lunch today.” He handed Donald a couple dollars. “Work hard,” he said.

“Thanks,” Donald said as he stepped out to the porch. “Yeah, work is hard.”

Manny was waiting on the Boulevard. He pointed to his wrist to indicate that they were running late. And he swung his backpack gently at Donald. “It’s cold, man. I been waiting here for five minutes.”

“Poor guy. I’m weeping for you.”

“I have math problems to finish in homeroom.”

“Should’ve done ’em last night,” Donald said.

“Like you should talk. I watched Monday Night Football instead.”

They had to run the last three blocks to avoid being late.

“My legs are beat,” Donald said as they hustled up the steps outside the school.

“It’s good for you.”

“We ran forever yesterday. You probably went out and did fifty miles just for fun.”

“Only three. I’m resting this week.”

“Doesn’t sound like resting to me.”

Donald took his seat in his homeroom just seconds before the late bell. He turned to Mario, seated behind him, and noticed a raw spot on his cheek.

“Your face looks like my elbow.”

“That’s called a mat burn,” Mario said. “My brother says to expect a lot of them if we keep wrestling.”

“What do you mean
if?
”

“I mean . . . You know what I mean. Expect a lot of sore skin.”

“Doesn’t scare me.”

“Me either,” Mario said. “A couple of guys already said they’re quitting, though.”

“Like who?”

“Ricky said he is. And he said Jordan is out, too. They hated it.”

Donald could understand the temptation to quit. You either loved the physical challenge or you didn’t. He was pretty sure he loved it. “Hope we get more one-on-one time today,” he said. “You know, actually get to wrestle somebody again. Anybody but Tavo, I mean.”

“That’s how I got this,” Mario said, pointing to the mat burn on his face. “But I know what you mean. That’s why we went out for this sport in the first place.”

“Right. I mean, I
love
doing push-ups until my fingers snap off, but the actual wrestling is even better.”

“Yeah,” Mario said. “My favorite was running in place for four hours. I think we were supposed to dig a hole in the mat with our feet.”

“That’s the idea. Do drills until the gym caves in, then wrestle on the debris.”

“That’s what makes us tough.”

Donald turned to face the front of the room. School days were long, but at least now he had something to look forward to at the end of it.

D
onald squirmed and twisted, but Tavo was just too strong. Why did Coach keep putting Donald against him?

Just like yesterday, Tavo was using Donald as a takedown dummy. He’d pinned him four times already.

I could beat half the guys in this gym,
Donald thought.
Is Coach trying to make me look bad or what?