Slob - Ellen Potter [26]
But Mason was the bad guy.
Still, at that moment, I admired him anyway.
Finally, Mr. Wooly called a stop to the idiotic warm-up and said it was time for gymnastics. I felt my stomach twist up.
“Today, my friends,” Mr. Wooly announced, “we are going to engage in a little healthy competition.”
Oh, blithering carbuncles.
I didn’t really think that, you understand. I thought something else entirely, but it’s not printable.
“I’ll be separating you out into teams and we’ll have a little gymnastic triathlon.”
From his back pocket, he whipped out a list of all our names and which teams we were on. I tell you, he must have sweated over the thing all night long. For a subhuman bozo, Mr. Wooly could be diabolically clever when he wanted to be. The three teams were set up thusly:
1. Team A had one kid who was a superstar athlete (that was Andre) and a few other passably athletic kids
2. Team B had several wannabe superstar athletes who were clawing their way to the top and full of pent-up frustration that they were not the real, actual superstar athlete. They also had a few so-so-ish to poor athletes and one bully magnet whose job was to bring down the entire team. That would be me.
The combination was designed to not only foster competition between the teams, but also within the teams. Have you ever seen those movies about the Roman gladiator fights, where they tossed a bunch of poor guys into an arena with tigers and crocodiles?
Yeah.
That’s right.
And I didn’t even have a helmet or those nifty sandals.
But Mr. Wooly had another decision to make. He hadn’t counted on Mason being there. After all the rest of us were herded into opposite ends of the gym, Mr. Wooly looked down at his list, then looked at Mason, who was still standing on A4. You could practically hear Mr. Wooly’s Neanderthal brain whirring, trying to figure out where Mason would cause the most pain and suffering.
“Team B,” Mr. Wooly finally said.
Of course.
Mason strutted over to our team, his chin tipped up, eyeing all of us. Clearly he was not going to disappoint Mr. Wooly. He stood a little apart from the rest of us, but to be honest, we were all standing apart from each other. No one on Team B seemed to want to be on Team B. Even I looked longingly at Team A where Andre was already having a sportsmanly chat with his team.
“This is so unfair,” muttered a tall, pimply kid on our team named Jay, one of the Andre wannabes. “Andre gets Ron and Corey and Tristan, while Wooly gives us . . . what? A fat slob and a psycho.”
Everyone on the team glanced at Mason nervously to see how he would react to that. No one looked at me nervously, of course, but I didn’t expect them to.
Mason didn’t say anything. He slowly reached down for his sock. All eyes followed his hand. We all saw it. The outline of something stuffed in his sock. Something distinctly knife-shaped. Eyes grew wide. Then Mason calmly tugged at the edge of his sock, just as though he was adjusting it to make all the lines in the cuff straight. He stood upright again, folded his arms against his chest, and quickly looked at all his teammates, as if daring them to say anything. None of them did.
So he did keep his famous switchblade in his sock. I’d have to tell Izzy.
Mason’s little exhibition did one good thing at least. It stopped Team B’s grumbling. All of a sudden, losing a gymnastic competition seemed somewhat less important than losing a thumb.
Mr. Wooly explained the triathlon’s events course, which involved walking across the balance beam, jumping on the trampoline and tucking your legs, running a lap around the gym, then ending with a somersault on the mat.
That’s four events, by the way. A triathlon would be three events, Mr. Wooly. That’s tri-athalon.