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shrugged. “And I was afraid you was working for
Tenny. With that lousy SPECS, he don’t need no finks.”
    “What happens to you now?” Danny asked as they headed
for the elevator.
    “I’ll get a lecture from Tenny, and for a couple
months I’ll have to take special classes instead of shop work.”
    “Is that all?”
    Ralph stopped walking and looked at Danny. His eyes
seemed filled with tears. “No it ain’t all. I thought I’d be out of
here tonight. Now I’m further behind the eight ball than ever. I
don’t know when I’ll get out. Maybe never!”
     

Chapter Eleven
     
    Danny worked hard for the next two weeks. He paid
attention in classes. He passed his first reading test with SPECS,
and Mr. Cochran let him pick out his own books. Danny started
reading books about airplanes and rockets.
    The arithmetic class with Joe Tenny was almost
fun.
    “You keep going this well,” Tenny told him, “and I’ll
start showing you how to work with SPECS on really tough
problems.”
    Danny smiled and nodded, and tried not to show how
much he wanted to get SPECS to work for him.
    Danny worked especially hard in the language class,
so that the teacher would let him take one of the class’s pocket
tape recorders back to his room. For extra homework.
    Sure.
    The teacher—a careful, balding old man—said he’d let
Danny have the tape recorder “in a little while.”
    Afternoons, Danny spent mostly in the gym. He took an
asthma pill before every workout, but found that he needed another
one after a few minutes of heavy work.
    Ralph was still showing him dirty tricks, still
telling him to “break Lacey’s head open.” Ralph even got into the
ring and sparred with Danny.
    And Danny took on a job. He joined the Campus
Clean-up Crew. It was a pleasant outdoor job now that the weather
had turned warm and the trees were in full leaf. Danny spent two
hours each afternoon raking lawns, cutting grass, picking up any
litter that the boys left around the campus. And he was also
learning to spot the little black boxes lying nearly buried in the
ground, the boxes that held the cameras and lasers and alarms for
SPECS.
    The day before his fight with Lacey, Danny’s language
teacher finally let him have a pocket tape recorder. But it was too
late to try a breakout before the fight. Danny figured he would
need at least a week to get the right words from Joe Tenny onto a
tape. Then he’d have to juggle the words onto another tape until he
had exactly the right order to give SPECS.
    Danny wasn’t looking forward to fighting Lacey. It
would have been fine with him if he could have escaped the Center
before the fight. But he wasn’t going to back out of it.
    Maybe Lacey’ll help get me out of here, Danny
thought, with a grim smile. On a stretcher.
     

Chapter Twelve
     
    The gym had been changed into an arena. All the
regular equipment had been put away, the ring dragged out to the
center of the gym, and surrounded by folding chairs. All the chairs
were filled with teachers and boys who cheered and hollered for
their favorite boxers. And they booed the poor ones without
mercy.
    Danny could hear the noise of the crowd from inside
the locker room. Ralph had helped him find a pair of trunks that
fit him. They were bright red, with a black stripe. The color of
blood, Danny thought. One of the gym teachers wrapped tape
around Danny’s hands and helped him into the boxing gloves. Then
they fit him with a head protector and mouthpiece.
    There were no other boxers in the locker room.
Danny’s fight was the last one of the evening. Lacey was getting
ready in another locker room, on the other side of the
building.
    “Now remember,” Ralph whispered to Danny when the
teacher left them alone, “get in close, grab him, trip him up, push
him off-balance. Then hit him with everything you got! Elbows,
head, everything. You got a good punch, so use it.”
    Danny nodded.
    The crowd roared and broke into applause. He could
hear the bell at