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don’t think he’s being sarcastic.
    “Thanks,” I say. “I mean, they did really good.”
    “You kicked their asses,” he says, looking around, probably for Al. He’s skinny, with kind of long hair for a guy as old as he is, and it’s curly and dark with streaks of gray. He sticks a finger in his ear and starts scratching with it. It’s just the two of them; Al’s mother died a couple of years ago. Cancer. Al’s got an older brother in the army who I haven’t seen in a long time.
    Kim waves at me from over by the exit, and I put up twofingers like a wave. I start walking toward the locker room. Tommy Austin is standing under the basket talking to three girls who wouldn’t normally have given him the time of day. But he’s wrestling JV and pinned his opponent, and everybody figures he’ll be varsity pretty soon. We’ve already stopped calling him Susan.
    Tim Royce—171 two years ago—sticks out his hand to me and I shake it. “You hurt?” he asks.
    “Nah.”
    “What’s up?”
    I shrug. “Kind of a bottleneck. I’m odd man out right now.”
    “Too bad.” He starts rubbing his chin. His T-shirt says PENN STATE ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT, but he goes to Weston Community College. And he’s obviously not wrestling there, as he’s up to at least 200 pounds. “Get tougher,” he says.
    “Yeah. See ya around.”
    I reach the door to the lockers, but I don’t have any reason to go in. Kim’s talking to one of her friends, but I know she’s waiting for me, even though we didn’t make any plans or anything.
    I duck into the door and head down the stairs to the locker room, which is already thick with steam. Music is blaring and guys are whooping it up. Coach spots me and he’s all smiles. “Ben-jee,” he says. “Benny-man. Great show tonight, huh?”
    “Fantastic,” I say, but my voice is flat.
    “Best team this school ever had,” he says, which may be so, but they’ve got an awful lot to prove first. Coach turns into his office and I head for the exit.
    Al’s by his locker, naked, with one foot up on the bench,and he’s drying between his toes with a towel. “Hey,” he says.
    “Hey,” I say back. “Your old man was looking for you.”
    “Oh, yeah? He still upstairs?”
    “I think so.”
    “Would you tell him I’ll be right up? I’ll meet him outside.”
    “Sure.”
    Hatcher’s standing there half-dressed, staring at Al. “You’re going home with your father?” he says, as if it’s the most unbelievable thing he’s ever heard.
    “Yeah,” Al says. “I had to cut weight today, remember? I ain’t eaten anything since six o’clock this morning. He probably hasn’t either.”
    “I thought we were gonna hang out,” Hatcher says.
    “Guess not,” Al says, drying his armpits as he walks away from Hatcher. Hatcher looks after him with a screwed-up frown, then yells over to Digit to see if he’s up for hanging out.
    I go upstairs and tell Al’s father he’s coming, then finally get out of there.
    In the parking lot I bump into Jerry Franken, which really sucks because I’m trying to get away from this. He puts a beefy arm around me, and I can tell he had garlic for dinner.
    “That Al is something, huh?” he says to me.
    “Sure is.”
    “Must be tough to watch.”
    I start nodding my head. “It is.”
    “Can’t you move up?”
    I’ve been through this a thousand times—with my father, with some of the teachers, with my non-wrestling friends.
    “It’d be a big jump in weight, up or down,” I say.
    “Yeah,” he says. “You got two, three really tough people there.”
    “Yeah, we do.”
    He shakes his head. “Just hang in there. You need a ride?”
    “Nah. I wanna walk.” I do. I could have gotten a ride from Al or Kim or my father or just about anybody, but I want to walk. I want to get out of here. I want to think about winning the state championship. About destroying Al.
    “See ya,” I say, and start crossing the lawn. Franken’s okay. He puts on wrestling