“Yup. Have been for over thirty years. I don’t get up and down like I used to, but I still have a few tricks I can teach the boys.”
“My old teacher was a wrestler too,” I said. “He had me try the sport last year, but it didn’t go so well. I’m afraid it’s not in my genotype. Two of my former classmates were good at it, though.”
“Who would they be?” Mr. Brobur asked.
“Peter and Jeffrey.”
“Ah, yes. They’re on the team. And doing quite well, I might add. You know, Zack is a wrestler too. He’s on the varsity squad.”
“That’s nice,” I said without interest.
“That old teacher of yours must be Mr. Terupt.”
“Yes, how’d you know?” I perked up. Now I was interested.
“He’s been to a few of our practices,” Mr. Brobur said. “A very nice man, a wizard on the mats, and from what I hear, a truly special teacher.”
“Yes,” I said. “Very special.”
“He’s the sort of guy we need to keep around here.”
I wasn’t sure what Mr. Brobur was talking about. Mr. Terupt wasn’t going anywhere. He was getting ready to welcome a baby. Mr. Brobur was showing his age.
“Well, Luke, I’d help you with this mess, but my old knees have enough trouble bending at practice, and besides, it looks like you’ve got some friends to give you a hand. I’ll see you in class.”
“See you in class,” I said. Then I turned around and found several of my classmates picking up my papers.
“Luke, that was awesome,” Jimmy said.
“I can’t believe you did that!” said Rachel.
“Did you see that? Zack didn’t know what to do,” Alex chimed in.
“That was awesome!” Jimmy said again.
I got my things cleaned up, and then, for the first time all year, I didn’t walk to my locker all by myself. Suddenly, I had a group of kids with me. I dropped off my supplies, and then we headed to the student government speeches. Little did I know, more of the unexpected was yet to come.
LUKE’S SEVENTH-GRADE SURVIVAL GUIDE
TIP #9: Use your brain. There might come a time when you need to stand up for yourself. This can be scary, so remember, in the battle of brains vs. brawn, brains win. Use your brain.
Like, what can I say? I went too far at our campaign party. Things didn’t go the way they were supposed to, but, like, what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t play chicken and cry stop. I saw that it wasn’t going right when Jessica and Jeffrey came out of the closet, but it wasn’t until we opened the door on Peter and Danielle that I felt it wasn’t right. And there was no one to blame but me. There was a time when I wouldn’t have thought twice about how other people felt, but that wasn’t the case anymore. Like, I was really upset about the mess I’d created with everyone, which is why I decided to do something drastic. Who knows, maybe I would’ve tried to do something more to help us get back together, but I was about to be dealt another lump that would make me forget all about that.
All of seventh grade gathered in the gym after sixth period to hear speeches from those of us running for student government. Mr. Smith started things off, stepping up to the podium. “I’ve been doing this for over fifteen years,” he said, “and I can honestly tell you these were the best-run campaign efforts I’ve ever seen.”
Luke and Jessica would’ve been the best for any of the positions—including president—but rather than enter the race, they had spent all their time helping Lexie and me. They were the real reason Mr. Smith had said that.
When Mr. Smith concluded his remarks, the kids up for treasurer, secretary, and vice president went next. I didn’t listen to a lick of what the other candidates had to say. Not only did I not care, but I was busy rehearsing the words I was about to speak—and they weren’t the ones Luke had come up with. I was ready to say some things that even Mrs. Reeder would’ve qualified as important—and they were my own words.
However, before I got my chance, Lexie took hers. And when she got up there it was a different story—I wasn’t too distracted to listen. We hadn’t said a word to each other since the party, but one thing you can say about Lexie is that she commands attention. She stepped up to the podium, adjusted the microphone, and dropped the bomb. “I’m withdrawing my name from the ballot,” she said. “Thank you.” And with that, she walked out of the gym, never once looking back.
You could’ve heard a mouse fart after she did that, but as soon as she stepped out the door, the student body erupted in whispers and chatter. Everyone wanted to know the same thing, teachers included: what had just happened? I couldn’t believe it, either. I knew how badly Lexie had wanted the job.
Doing his best to regain order, Mr. Smith stepped to the microphone and introduced me as the next—and only other—candidate for president. Lexie had just handed me the presidency. There was only one problem. I didn’t want it.
“Ahem.” I cleared my throat. “The success of my campaign, the words I had prepared to speak today, all of it, was the work of Luke Bennett, my campaign manager. Luke’s the best person I know when it comes to projects—or anything in school for that matter. He works hard, and he gets the job done.
“That’s why Luke’s the person you should all write in as your vote for president. I’m not your guy. Luke is.”
I sat there, dumbstruck. Had Peter just told everyone to vote for me? My jaw dropped, and I couldn’t move. That’s when my new friends started patting me on the back. My luck had officially changed.
The story of me getting the best of Zack had already spread like wildfire throughout all of seventh grade, making me instantly popular. And since we all knew this was a popularity contest, I was the guy. Everyone went ahead and voted for me.
LUKE’S SEVENTH-GRADE SURVIVAL GUIDE
TIP #10: Despite what your teachers might say, student government elections are a popularity contest.If you want to win, you better do something that makes you popular.
I should’ve been feeling happy. Happy to have this honor, happy to have my classmates as allies, and happy that Zack had decided to leave me alone—for now. But what I felt was sad—sad that I couldn’t celebrate any of it with the gang.
Shortly after the election, I attended my first student government meeting. It was nothing more than a chance for Mr. Smith and the current members to formally congratulate and welcome the new people, so we had a second, more official meeting only a few days later.
This meeting was an opportunity for us new people to observe how the older students conducted business. There were special rules to learn called parliamentary procedures, things like motions and seconds and calls to order. It was all very interesting, but in the end nothing substantial got accomplished. Why? Because we didn’t have any money in our class accounts. That was one thing our school didn’t have—extra money.
I wasn’t feeling very confident. A president is the person you are supposed to be able to count on to rally people together and get things done. The person who is in charge and can save you, will keep you safe. I didn’t know how to do any of that. I wasn’t at all like those great figures I studied in Washington, DC. Mr. Terupt was the only one I knew who could do those things, and I didn’t know when we’d see him again.
To my surprise, Luke actually got the job. After hearing about what had happened, his victory not only made perfect sense, but it also gave me something to smile about.
There were stories going around about the epic trick Luke had pulled on Zack. It wasn’t hard to believe Luke could outsmart that buffoon, but some of the things I was hearing sounded a bit farfetched. There were kids claiming Luke had unleashed scary karate moves—which I definitely knew wasn’t true—and then others were talking about the secret substance Luke had smeared on his papers. Supposedly, whatever it was got all over Zack’s hands and made them stick together so he couldn’t pull them apart, which made him defenseless. According to the stories, that was when Luke made him get down on his knees and beg for forgiveness
. I didn’t know what really happened, because even though I’d helped him win the election, Luke wasn’t talking to me, but I would’ve paid money to see him getting the best of that moron.
Other than these tall tales, the only thing I had to feel good about in December was wrestling, which had finally started in November. That was the only time I could forget about everything else. When I wasn’t on the mats, I walked around feeling lost. The gang was no more.
We saw each other across the classroom and passing in the halls, but we never spoke. I wasn’t mad at anyone, but they seemed mad at me. I felt bad. Even though only a few of us had gone into that closet, we’d all been hurt. And worse, hurt by each other. How do you get over that? I didn’t know. I was good at messing things up, not fixing them.
I glanced at Lexie every time I walked past her locker, hoping she might look back at me, but she never did. It was like I was invisible. Instead, what I found one day was Zack leaning on the wall of lockers, flirting with her.
If I had Luke’s guts, I would’ve marched over and told Zack to get away from her—but I don’t. So I watched him lean in closer, flexing his biceps and stroking his mustache as if to show Lexie he was a man, not a boy with peach fuzz like me. And then I saw her sheepish smile. I felt like I’d just been punched in the gut. There it was again, a girl falling for the bigger, older guy, just like with those field hockey girls at camp. I gave up walking by Lexie’s locker after that.
Even Jeffrey and I had little to say to each other. We talked at practice, but that was about it—and only about wrestling, never the gang. The Central Connecticut Holiday Wrestling Invitational, which we hosted, was fast approaching, and that was all anyone on the team could think about. This was going to be our first time seeing Scott Winshall, who, according to legend, was the toughest, meanest kid we would come across all year. I heard he’d all but torn the limbs off three of our guys last year at the junior high competitions. He finished the season unbeaten, with all his victories coming by pin. This was impressive and scary, because it meant Winshall had tossed his opponents around like rag dolls until he’d decided to put an end to the match by gluing their shoulders to the mat.
“You better hope you don’t get Winshall,” Chris warned us. “Winshall wins them all. He’s nasty. The kid’s pure muscle.”
No one knew what weight class he would be in this year, so everyone on the team hoped he wouldn’t be in theirs.
“Winshall had a beard as a seventh grader,” Mark said. “The kid’s an animal!”
“I heard he got a tattoo this year,” Adam said.
“I heard he eats raw meat for breakfast,” Mark added.
Jeffrey and I just listened. Chances were, one of us would have this Winshall kid in our weight class. Neither one of us had lost a match so far, and we beat Chris and Adam and Mark every day at practice, but Winshall sounded legit. I shrugged like I didn’t care, but I had all sorts of crazy images in my head. I kept picturing this muscle-bound kid with a beard and tattoos, and I thought about Zack with his mustache and Lexie’s smile. Having facial hair instantly elevated your status with girls, and it scared your opponents on the mat. It was an advantage in both arenas. So was having a tattoo, but my mother would’ve killed me if I showed up at dinner with one of those. Leaving practice that night, I made a bold decision.
“I need you to stop at the store,” I told Miss Catalina on our way home. “I need to get some more energy bars and high-performance drinks.”
“Okay,” she said.
Miss Catalina never questioned me. She knew I was serious about wrestling, so asking for these foods made perfect sense. I did need more of them…but there was something else I really wanted to get.
“You can stay in the car,” I told her. “I’ll be right back.”
“Okay.”
I found the health food section and got the bars and drinks first. Then I went to the men’s care aisle. That was where I found what I was really looking for.
When we got home, I went straight to my bathroom and carefully read all the directions on the box. I read them twice! Luke would have been proud. And I followed them step by step—except for the preliminary forty-eight-hour skin-allergy patch that was recommended. I skipped that. The only other thing I did differently was use a little more than it suggested, but I wanted to make sure it worked, and fast.
It tingled a little bit, which I figured was a good sign. But by the time I went to bed later that night, my face was starting to burn. I looked in the mirror and could see my upper lip and chin were redder than normal. I told myself it was just mat burn from practice. Or windburn and chapping from the cold winter air. Or anything else that would be better after a good night’s sleep. But that wasn’t the case.
By morning, there was no more hiding the truth. When I awoke, my face felt like it was on fire—and it looked like it, too! Whatever ingredients were in the beard and mustache dye had caused my skin to have an unpleasant reaction. I only wanted to make my peach fuzz look darker, like a real goatee, but instead I ended up with chemical burns all over my face. This was a hundred times worse than having Mount Everest on your nose!
The last thing I wanted to do was go to school, and Miss Catalina actually asked if I wanted to stay home, but if I skipped, then I couldn’t go to practice, and I had to go to wrestling practice. The Holiday Invitational was right around the corner.
—
There must’ve been fifty kids who asked me what had happened before first period even started. I had to get creative because there was no way I could tell anyone the truth. I told everyone Miss Catalina had bought a new soap that caused the reaction. People seemed to buy it, but it didn’t make everything better.
“If my dog had a face like that, I’d shave its butt and make him walk backwards,” one of Zack’s losers crooned.
“It looks like you’ve been sucking face with a toilet plunger,” Zack said.
His followers started cracking up. I didn’t think it was possible for my face to grow any redder, but I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. And there was no one around sticking up for me. No one who had my back.
“Is that what you do since you can’t get any girls?” Zack said. “You make out with the plunger?”
I made a beeline for the nurse, where I probably should’ve gone in the first place. She gave me some cream and a lecture. And then she handed me a note so I wouldn’t get penalized for missing practice—I wasn’t allowed to go. What a waste.
This disaster ranked right up there with the world’s worst wedgie. The results did not make me a heartthrob or intimidate my opponents on the mat or help me with Lexie. Turns out it would take something way worse than chemical burns to get us talking again.
Wrestling was my outlet. It was how I got out all my anger and frustration. I wanted to forget about Anna and Jessica and everything, so I worked my tail off. I was undefeated, a perfect 5–0 entering December, a perfect 8–0 heading into our Holiday Invitational. There were twelve teams participating in the event, and it was one of the biggest competitions on our schedule. I had been preparing for it all fall, rising early to run and do my hundred push-ups and crunches before school each day.
The tournament took place on the third Saturday of the month. It was held in the high school gym because our junior high gym didn’t have enough space to put down four full-sized wrestling mats. Matches ran nonstop throughout the day. I won my first bout pretty easily. After a quick takedown, I cranked the kid over and pinned him with a strong half nelson. In my semifinal match I met tougher competition, a kid from Madison. We were tied going into the third period, and that was when all my extra work paid off. My opponent got tired. I escaped from the bottom and then hit a quick single-leg, which I finished by tripping him to his back, leading to another pin. That sent me to the finals against Scott Winshall, the kid who wins them all. The eighth graders on our team had been telling stories about “Wins All” since day one. He had kicked the tar out of three of our guys last year. I t
ried watching him in one of his earlier matches, but he ended that one in twenty seconds. I didn’t get to see much.
I did my best not to get nervous, but that was impossible, especially after Coach Terupt showed up. Anna didn’t come. She had signed up to be a volunteer at one of the scorer’s tables weeks ago so she’d be able to see Asher, take yearbook photos, and watch me, but she had obviously changed her mind about all that. I was still upset about the party, and I guess she was too. I was mad for even thinking about any of that at a time when I needed to focus on my finals match, but my mind kept wandering, and that did nothing to calm my nerves.
Sometimes when you really want something, you’re scared to go for it. You’re scared to let go and try. You hold on too tight. That was what happened in my match. That was why I didn’t execute my moves. I let my nerves get in the way. I lost 6–3 to Winshall. It was the closest match he’d had in two years, but I didn’t get up and run all those mornings before school so I could take second. I lost, and it hurt.
Peter won his weight class even though he’d had to miss practice recently. He was great. He had to attach this awful face mask to his headgear because of his burns, but that didn’t seem to faze him one bit. He took first place, while I finished in second and had to kiss my perfect season good-bye. The older kids on our team tried to tell me what a great job I had done by going so close with “Wins All,” but that didn’t make me feel any better.
Peter worked hard, but I had trained harder. Even he would have told you that. I wished he had lost. I didn’t want to feel that way, but I did. I wondered, what kind of friend did that make me? What kind of friend was I to Luke, to Anna, to the whole gang, when I went into that closet with Jessica? I sat on the lowest bleacher holding my second-place trophy that I didn’t want.
Saving Mr. Terupt Page 9