Slugfest, p.3
Slugfest, page 3
There’s no other way to say it—it’s torture squared. About a third of the way around, I’m wheezing. But I’m doing it. I pass the “beef” first—the muscled-up linemen. Then the kicker. As I pull even with Hammond and Amir, my two best friends, I prepare to shoot them a smart-alecky remark: “Since when do they let slowpokes on this team?” But I’m so out of breath that no sound comes out.
Okay, no joking. I’m going to pass everybody and show Basil that there’s only one elite athlete in Clarington, and his name is Arnie Yashenko. I reach down deep for that final burst of energy that will take me across the finish line.
A whistle blows, and Coach Basil steps out into the track. “All right, hit the showers.”
I swear I’m going so fast, and have so little body control left, that it’s all I can do to keep from running right over him.
He frowns at me. “Wait—what are you doing here, Yashenko? Thought you were in summer school.”
If he was willing to wait for me to catch my breath again—maybe ten or fifteen minutes—I’d give him a story he wouldn’t soon forget. But in the moment, all I can gasp is “Ran . . . straight . . . here . . .” Not much sound comes out. Maybe he reads lips.
He shakes his head. “That’s not how it works, kid. You can be in summer school or you can be here. Not both. Take your pick.”
“I pick here!” I blurt with a reasonable amount of volume this time.
“Yeah, well, forget it. Dr. Carmichael gave me the lowdown. I can’t even think about putting you on my team unless you’re one of my students. And until you pass that class, you’re still in middle school.”
“But I want to show you what I can do!” I almost whine. In the process, I throw up a bit of my half-digested sandwich. Eating and running—not one of my better ideas. I hope Coach doesn’t notice.
“I’ve heard about what you can do. As soon as you’re eligible, you’re a shoo-in for QB-one. You think anybody around here is as good as you?” He frowns. “Except maybe—”
“Who?” I explode.
“Nobody. Forget I said anything.” And he jogs off after his players, blowing his whistle and bellowing, “Shake a leg, you bums!”
Hammond and Amir sidle up to me.
“Am I ever glad to see you!” Amir exclaims. “I knew they had to let you out of Slugfest when they realized their mistake. You can’t be a slug. You’re Yash!”
“No mistake,” I mourn. “I ran here after class to see if I could join the workout. No dice. But I was too late anyway. As soon as I pulled up, Coach shut it all down.”
The guys start jabbering about the practice—how intense it was; how brutal. It sounds like complaining, but I can tell they were loving every minute, like I would have. This is what the three of us dreamed about in middle school—to make it to the next level, where sports are taken seriously. To be a part of real football.
As they’re talking, I’m picturing myself playing musical chairs and duck, duck, goose with Kaden and Fiona and the other slugs.
No, make it stop! I squeeze my eyes shut until the terrible image disappears.
“What’s Slugfest like?” Hammond asks.
“Oh, it’s great!” I reply savagely. “I’m so lucky to have friends like you guys to help me relive the worst part of my day!”
“Fiona Loftus is in that, right?” Amir queries. “Ever see her ride a bike? Her feet barely reach the pedals.”
I don’t know why I’d stick up for Fiona, but I retort, “If you’re as smart as Fiona, you don’t need to ride a bike. One of these days, she’ll be driving around Silicon Valley in a chauffeured limo.”
“Yeah!” Hammond chimes in at him. “Good thing you’re brain-dead. Like us.”
Hammond and I exchange a high five, and I begin to feel a tiny bit better. Like maybe one millionth of a percent. I may be a slug, but I’ve still got my friends.
“What do you guys do in Slugfest?” Amir probes. “Is it just a regular gym class?”
I hesitate to answer. If I describe the circus I just lived through, they’re going to make a big joke out of it, and it’s no joke to me.
On the other hand, Amir and Hammond are my friends, and friends are honest with each other. If I start hiding the truth from the people I’m closest to, that means Slugfest has already gotten its claws into me.
So I tell them about Finnerty, the world’s oldest coach who’s really an FCS teacher and brownie baker. I run through the roster of my fellow slugs—kids we’ve grown up with, but nothing prepares you for the bizarro world of seeing them all in the same room.
My friends manage to stay sympathetic until I get to the kiddie games. Then they fall on the ground laughing.
I’m disgusted. “Real mature, you guys.”
“I’m sorry!” Hammond cackles. “I’m just picturing you playing musical chairs!”
“Or duck, duck, goose!” Amir howls. “We made our teacher stop that in kindergarten—it was too babyish!”
“Fine,” I say as they roll on the grass. “Let it all out. Have a great laugh at my expense.”
Eventually, they yuk themselves out and stand up again.
Amir grows solemn. “Seriously though, it’s kind of an embarrassment to the team to have our quarterback playing preschool games with a bunch of slugs.”
“They’re not all so hopeless,” I offer. “You know Cleo—she played on some of the girls’ teams before she broke her foot. She’s pretty good. She put a move on me that practically broke my ankles.”
Hammond is wide-eyed. “There are moves in duck, duck, goose?”
“It was tag,” I admit.
This starts Hammond laughing again, but Amir remains grave. “You know, if the word gets out about our quarterback being a slug, it would be bad for morale on the Comets. And if the other teams find out—”
“I might not even make the Comets,” I reply grimly. “Coach won’t let me step on this field until I have the Slugfest credit. Until then, I’m technically still in middle school.”
“What about the seven-on-seven tournament?” Hammond asks. “You can still go to that, right?”
I shake my head. “It’s for high school kids only—which I’m not.”
“No fair!” Amir groans in true pain. “This was going to be the summer for us to win the whole thing!”
“We’ll get killed without you,” Hammond adds. “We don’t have anyone else to play QB! You know, except maybe—”
They start hemming and hawing like crazy, and it bugs me. Coach did the same thing just a few minutes ago. Is everybody hiding something from me?
“Have you guys got a quarterback you don’t want me to know about?”
“No!” Amir insists. “It’s only the first day! Who knows who’s good and who stinks on the first day?”
“But there’s this kid Nate,” Hammond puts in.
“Nitro Nate,” Amir adds excitedly. “He’s new—his family just moved here.”
I follow Hammond’s pointing finger. A tall, blond, athletic-looking kid leans against the wall of the field house, a gym bag over one broad shoulder. The new guy offers a shy wave, and my two friends practically break their wrists waving back.
It’s the shining end to a perfect day, the butter on my poison popcorn. Not only am I sentenced to a summer of Slugfest; not only will I miss all the JV workouts. The one thing I could rely on—my spot as QB-1 on the Comets—is no longer the sure thing I thought it was.
Of course that doesn’t mean that this Nate kid is necessarily better than me. But you don’t get a nickname like Nitro because you’re lousy.
I try to act casual. “You think you can win seven-on-seven with this guy?”
Amir shrugs. “He’s pretty good.”
“Not as good as you, though,” Hammond adds quickly. “No one can replace Yash the Slash.”
That was my football nickname in middle school because I could play any position—quarterback / running back / wide receiver / tight end / linebacker. I even played long snapper because I was the only one who could get it right.
I’m somebody in this town. And I have no intention of giving up my place on the Comets because of a bunch of slugs.
4
Arabella Hopp
I don’t know how people can stand all the unfairness in the world.
For example, there’s this tiny island in the Indian Ocean that’s so low that every year a little more of its coast disappears under the water. It’s a real problem. They say that if sea levels keep on rising, in less than twenty years, the whole country will be gone. Just gone.
It’s all because of climate change, but here’s the thing. The people of this doomed little island don’t pollute at all. They’re going down because of the big countries that treat the environment like a garbage dump. How unfair is that?
It doesn’t just happen in faraway places either. I heard about this guy who spent forty years working and saving up so he could build his dream house. It wasn’t a mansion, but it was all his, free and clear, and he worked his whole life for it. A week after he moved in, he got a notice from the government. They were building a new exit ramp for the crosstown expressway and his house was in the way. It was scheduled to be demolished in three months.
Sometimes I look around the mall or the street or the schoolyard and everyone is laughing and beaming and happy. And I’m like, What’s the matter with them? Don’t they know houses are falling to the wrecking ball and islands are sinking into the ocean?
And if you think it only happens to strangers, you’re dead wrong about that too. My mother worked two jobs and cooked and cleaned and raised my brother and me while putting my father through medical school. And when he graduated and set up his medical practice, what did he do? He dumped her and married somebody else, somebody half his age, somebody who wasn’t tired all the time.
Great guy, my dad. Took our college funds and transferred the savings to his new baby son.
“Sometimes, life isn’t very fair, Bella,” my mom sighs when the subject comes up. Understatement of the century.
She acts like unfairness is something that just happens, like the weather. Nothing could be further from the truth. Unfairness is done to you. You’re its victim.
Take summer school, for instance. How is it right that some kids go and others don’t have to? Why can’t they run a school properly? Like gym class. It’s fine for people like Yash, who have muscles going all the way to the top of their heads, and who love to get all breathless and sweaty. But it shouldn’t be mandatory for people who hate it. It’s not like it’s part of your education. You won’t need these skills in later life. When you go to a job interview, no one is going to ask if you can climb a rope or leap over a vaulting horse. Making kids do stuff like that is a violation of their rights.
When Dad walked away from our family, I swore I’d never be a victim again. When my rights are violated, I’m going to take a stand. So I cut PE for three years—sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. Dr. Carmichael warned Mom that I was asking for trouble. But Mom is a free thinker like me—and it doesn’t hurt that she hated gym class even more than I do. We’re not klutzes; we just happen to be anti-PE—a totally sensible thing to be! It was all working out fine, except that the state education department passed this new law: you can’t start high school unless you’ve finished eighth-grade gym. So here I am.
But the unfairness only starts there. I have to make up one class, but I’m stuck in summer school all day. I’m allowed to sit in on any of the other classes, but what’s the point of that? I didn’t fail anything besides PE. And I didn’t fail that either. I just chose not to engage with it—which is my right.
I have zero interest in art or music or drama, and video game design does nothing for me. The world isn’t going to become a better place because some nerd invents a new Halo or Fortnite or another way to waste your time. The only class that seems halfway interesting is something called investigative journalism. It’s about how to be a reporter who digs into news stories about crime, corruption, and all kinds of sleaziness and dishonesty. I like the sound of that. It sounds like it’s about fighting against things that are unfair. And I was born to do that.
So I start going to investigative journalism, which is in room 122, right next to the custodians’ supply closet, which always smells like that green stuff they mop the floor with. It doesn’t seem like the kind of place where world-shaking things happen, but you never know.
As soon as I walk in the door, I know I’ve made the right call. The teacher is none other than Juliet Landkammer—the Juliet Landkammer, who used to be a reporter for Channel 3 Action News. She broke the story about the local car wash that was charging customers for hot wax when their wax was only lukewarm. It isn’t as important as an innocent island sinking into the sea, but it’s still not right. Ms. Landkammer proved that she has the chops to stand up for justice, and that’s enough to make her the perfect mentor for me.
It’s only the second week, so we’re not working on our own investigations yet. We’re just learning about reporters who have blown the lid off big stories in the past, like the pollution of Love Canal, or how the tobacco companies tried to cover up how dangerous smoking is. But as soon as Ms. Landkammer lets us pick our own topics, I know exactly what mine is going to be: the conspiracy to make every kid take PE. Just like the investigative journalists of the past took on Big Tobacco, I’m going to take on Big Gym.
Some of the medical photographs from the smoking investigation can be pretty hard to look at, so I rip my eyes away from the slideshow. That’s when I see him outside in the schoolyard. It’s Yash, working out like a madman on the lawn. First he runs in place, legs pumping with such intensity I’m amazed he doesn’t drill himself through the ground all the way down to the earth’s core. Then he does sprints, shuttling back and forth between the tetherball pole and the juniper hedge. Then he drops to the ground for thirty push-ups—again, all at a frantic pace, despite the ninety-degree heat.
Honestly, I’m getting exhausted just watching the guy. What is he doing, and, more important, why is he doing it? We both have PEE next period. Who does extra gym right before gym? At this point, he won’t have the strength left to march around the musical chairs.
Actually, we haven’t been playing as many kiddie games this week—at least not the really babyish ones like duck, duck, goose. Tag is still in, and Coach Finnerty is trying to find some new activities for people who hate activities. It isn’t as easy as it sounds. No jump rope is so slow that Kaden can’t get it tangled around his ankle, and Ping-Pong might have to be shelved because Stuart and Sarah can’t be trusted to hold paddles without using them on each other. Fiona won’t stop staring at the ball. I think she’s trying to move it with her mind.
So far, the only thing the teacher has succeeded in getting everyone to do is eat her baking. Every day, she brings something new for us to try—cookies, muffins, cupcakes, scones. It bugs me as an investigative journalist that someone is allowed to teach a class they know less than nothing about. And the only reason I’m not complaining to the school board is because she said she might bring in a red velvet cake today. I’ll bet it’s going to be mind-blowing.
Now Yash is doing burpees, bouncing up and down like an inflatable punching clown. What a weirdo. Come to think of it, I understand what he’s doing. Cleo was talking about it at lunch yesterday. Because he’s at summer school, Yash is missing out on the workouts the junior varsity football team runs to get ready for the fall season. He can’t practice with them, so he’s practicing alone.
Funny—Yash and I are about as different as two eighth graders can be, but we’re both losing our summers because of that awful state rule. And that means we’ve got something in common. We’re both victims of unfairness.
When we meet in the gym for PEE, Yash has sweat stains under both arms and all down the middle of his T-shirt, front and back. Gross.
Cleo makes a face and moves away from him. “Where have you been? You stink!”
“Excuse me for wanting to stay in shape,” he retorts.
“You’re supposed to exercise in PE, not before it,” she tells him.
“For some reason, I don’t think duck, duck, goose is going to get me ready for football.” He adds, “You should work out with me. You’re a natural athlete.”
“Why? So I can smell like you?”
Yash bites his lip and retreats a little from the rest of us.
Coach Finnerty comes into the gym, beaming as usual. “Good morning, everybody!”
I never know what to make of her. The way she moves is kind of little old lady because she takes these dainty steps. But there’s a definite energy to it, like those steps could bring her to the top of a mountain if she needed to go there.
“Why’s everybody looking so down in the mouth?” she demands in her chirpy voice.
None of us has the guts to tell her. The problem is she doesn’t have her picnic basket, which means no red velvet cake—at least not today. Summer school is borderline unbearable even with dessert. This is instant train wreck.
Sarah tries to shake off her disappointment. “What are we doing today, Coach? More Ping-Pong?”
I can’t help noticing that the scrape on the side of Stuart’s head still hasn’t healed from yesterday’s Ping-Pong game.
“I thought we might take a little break today,” the teacher says brightly. “I’ve arranged a special treat.”
“Cake?” Jesse blurts hopefully.
“Even better. Follow me.”
She leads us, two by two, like we’re kindergarteners, down the hall. At least we don’t have to hold hands. I end up beside Yash, and Cleo’s right. He does stink—like a locker room.
We follow Mrs. Finnerty upstairs, but halfway along the second-floor hallway, she comes to a stop, frowning.
“No, this isn’t right.”
So we retrace our steps back to ground level, but apparently, that isn’t right either. The next thing we know, we’re heading down to the basement, still two by two.
But when our progress stalls next to a row of offices, we start to get antsy.
