Takedown Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 - Outsmarted

  Chapter 2 - Stepping Up

  Chapter 3 - Mat Burns

  Chapter 4 - Flat on His Back

  Chapter 5 - First Match

  Chapter 6 - Time to Unwind

  Chapter 7 - Pigging Out

  Chapter 8 - Half Nelsons

  Chapter 9 - No Escape

  Chapter 10 - Jealousy

  Chapter 11 - Double Challenge

  Chapter 12 - The Pressure Builds

  Chapter 13 - Music

  Teaser chapter

  Also by Rich Wallace

  Restless: A Ghost’s Story

  Losing Is Not an Option

  Playing Without the Ball

  Shots on Goal

  Wrestling Sturbridge

  Winning Season Series

  The Roar of the Crowd

  Technical Foul

  Fast Company

  Double Fake

  Emergency Quarterback

  Southpaw

  Dunk Under Pressure

  Takedown

  VIKING

  Published by Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in 2006 by Viking, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  Copyright © Rich Wallace, 2006

  All rights reserved

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  FOR LUCY

  1

  Outsmarted

  Could anything be harder than this? Donald sat with his back against the gymnasium wall, eyes shut and sweat streaming down his face. His legs hurt. His shoulders ached. His left foot was starting to cramp.

  He opened one eye and looked at the clock on the wall: 4:27 P.M. Coach Mills had said practice would end at 5:15. Three minutes of rest and then forty-five minutes of drills.

  There was an inch of water left in his bottle, and he sucked it right down. The water was warm but it quenched his thirst a little. The corner of his mouth stung where the bottle had touched it. He put a finger to his lip. When he pulled it away, there was a dot of red. He curled his tongue to that spot and tasted blood.

  I’ll live, he thought.

  He felt a shoe against his leg—not quite a kick, but a rather hard nudge. Freddy Salinardi was standing there, looking down at him. Freddy was a muscular eighth-grader and one of the team captains. “Let’s go, wimp,” he said. “Nap time is over.”

  Donald scrambled to his feet. Freddy called everybody wimps, at least all of the seventh-graders. This was the first day of practice, so the newcomers were getting tested by the veterans. Donald stepped toward the mat. Freddy was already hassling Mario and Kendrick, making them stand up, too.

  What a jerk, Donald thought, but he’d never say that out loud.

  He had already started to figure things out. Coach worked the wrestlers hard but he was a nice guy, and he certainly seemed to know his stuff about the sport.

  They’d learned some basic wrestling moves earlier in the session, but the past half hour had been all about conditioning. Jumping jacks, sit-ups, running in place. Donald knew this sport would be difficult, but he hadn’t envisioned anything like this.

  Coach blew his whistle and quickly put the wrestlers in pairs. Donald winced when Coach lined him up with Tavo Rivera, one of the best eighth-graders. Tavo was the same size as Donald, but he was stronger and quicker.

  “Wrestle!” Coach called.

  Donald leaned back then lunged quickly forward, but Tavo easily sidestepped him and Donald stumbled to the mat. Tavo was on him in an instant, circling his thigh with one hand and lifting his ankle with the other. From there it was a matter of seconds until Donald was flat on his back, pinned.

  Tavo was an experienced wrestler, thin with long, lean limbs and gappy teeth. He’d been a starter the previous year as a seventh-grader and now was one of the clear leaders of the team. He grinned at Donald as they got to their feet, but Donald just glared back.

  “Let’s go!” Donald said, spitting out the words and lunging toward Tavo again. He’d show this guy how tough he was.

  Within five minutes, Tavo had pinned him four times.

  Coach Mills walked over and faced Donald.

  “Know what you’re doing wrong?” Coach asked.

  “Getting my butt kicked?” Donald said angrily.

  “Yeah, you are. But why?”

  “I don’t know. I’m trying as hard as I can.”

  “Hard but not smart,” Coach said. “You’re giving away every move. Watch.”

  Coach went into a staggered stance, one foot forward, knees bent, hands out in front.

  “Here’s what you do.” Coach leaned back and then lunged, just as Donald had done. “When you lean back and wind up like that, you’re telling your opponent that you’re about to attack. There’s no surprise.”

  Coach went back into his stance. Then he shot forward toward Tavo, head up and his body low. “Penetrate,” he said. “Take a big first step and really shoot in there toward your opponent.”

  Donald kept glaring at Tavo, who kept grinning back with confidence. Tavo could tell how frustrated Donald was, and he knew that his year of wrestling experience was making a huge difference.

  “Got it?” Coach asked.

  “Yeah,” Donald said flatly.

  “Then do it. There’s a lot more to winning than being stronger or faster than the other wrestler. Tavo weighs the same as you, but he’s outsmarting you by a mile.”

  “I’m smart,” Donald mumbled.

  “That’s nice,” Coach said sarcastically. “But it doesn’t mean you know what you’re doing yet.”

  Donald and Tavo circled around each other, hands up and bodies leaning slightly forward. Tavo threw out a quick hand and Donald flinched, but Coach told him to stay low.

  And quick as a flash
Tavo was on him again, his hands locked behind Donald’s left knee. Donald felt himself being lifted, and Tavo’s shoulder was jamming into his ribs. He grabbed Tavo’s back with one hand and tried to unclench the grip with the other, but suddenly both feet were in the air. He hit the mat hard. In a matter of seconds he’d been pinned for the fifth time.

  Tavo stood quickly and reached down to give Donald a hand. But Donald looked away and ignored the hand. “I don’t need your help,” he said.

  “Oh, no?” Tavo grinned confidently.

  “No. And you won’t be smiling when I knock you flat.”

  “As if that’ll ever happen.”

  Donald didn’t have a chance to reply. “Line up!” Coach called. “The fun starts now.”

  Donald joined the others in a straight line against the wall.

  “What now?” asked Mario, tugging on Donald’s scrawny arm.

  Donald turned and shrugged. Mario was one of the few kids here who was shorter than Donald, but he was stockier, so they weighed about the same. His dark curly hair was matted to his forehead with sweat.

  “Some new form of torture,” Donald whispered.

  Coach was looking over the thirty or so wrestlers, sizing them up with a smug smile. He was young—three years earlier he’d still been wrestling for the college team at Montclair State—and had the build of a solid 140-pounder.

  “Nobody said this would be easy, right?” Coach said. “You new guys are getting a taste of how tough this sport is. You can’t even begin to be a good wrestler until you get into shape. The whole key is conditioning. Without that, you’re nothing.”

  Coach pointed to Kendrick, a quiet newcomer to Hudson City who sat next to Donald in English class. “What’s your favorite sport?” he asked.

  Kendrick looked around and scrunched up his mouth before answering. “Wrestling?”

  “Is that a question or a statement?”

  “A statement, I guess.”

  “Good answer.”

  Now Coach looked at Donald. “What’s your least favorite sport?”

  Donald put a finger to his chest as he asked weakly, “Me?”

  “Yeah, you.”

  At this point Donald could have said “wrestling” and he wouldn’t have been lying. But he said “track,” which would have been true any other time. His best friend Manny Ramos was a standout distance runner, but Donald had wanted no part of that sport, despite Manny’s frequent urging to join him at it.

  Coach’s smile got broader. “That’s too bad,” he said, “because guess what? Wrestlers run their butts off.”

  Coach made a circular motion with his hand. “Laps around the gym,” he said. “A nice steady pace. We’re not racing here, just staying in motion.”

  There was a collective groan from the group, but all of them started jogging. The gym was small and the corners were tight, but the jogging did seem easier to Donald than all those calisthenics.

  That changed in a hurry when Coach gave his next directive. “Every time I blow my whistle, I want you all to drop and give me five push-ups. Then pop up and get right back to the running. Start now.” And he blew his whistle.

  Donald dropped with the others and managed the five push-ups, feeling the strain all the way from his shoulders down to his fingers.

  Why am I doing this? he wondered.

  He kept wondering that for fifteen more minutes as they alternated running with push-ups. But when the session finally ended and he looked around at the exhausted wrestlers making their way to the locker room, he couldn’t help but feel more than a little bit proud to be one of them.

  2

  Stepping Up

  Everything in the locker room was painted 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 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 d
ifferent, 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.”