Pinned (2 page)

The back door slapped against its wooden frame. Ivan's father stood in the kitchen with a
Daily Record
in his hand. He was old, silver-haired long ago, but still a bull of a man. Ivan stepped inside, sat on the floor, and began untying his running shoes. His father unfolded the newspaper, nodded, and tapped a page. "Did you see today's paper? There is an article about you." He set his glasses and began reading, "'The township of Lennings—'"

"Papa, not now."

"You will listen," his father said. He again looked down at the newspaper. "'The township of Lennings is nearly invisible on a map of western New Jersey. Hidden on the southern shore of Round Valley Reservoir, fifteen miles from the Pennsylvania border, it is a world away from the bright lights of Philadelphia and New York City. A blue-collar community with small-town ideals, Lennings is again buzzing with excitement for one of its own, Ivan Korske, the odds-on favorite to win the 135-pound state title.'" Then his father said, with a firm nod, "Very nice."

Ivan said nothing. He pulled off his running shoes, tossing them to the corner, then stripped to his underwear. His sleeved shirt and long johns fell to the floor with a wet slap. Sweat glistened on his skin.

"It says teams start practice tomorrow," his father said. "But not Lennings?"

"Remember the
tradition?
"

His father did not.

"That stupid-ass tradition," Ivan muttered, "where we start practicing a few days after everyone else—as a handicap to our opponents." He rolled his eyes. "Someone forgot to remind us we've had four straight losing seasons."

His father sat down heavy in the chair, as if he, too, was very tired. "Are you ready?"

"Ready?" Ivan said, annoyed. "Yeah, I'll be fine."

"Good," his father said, "very good." He then went on. "The coach from Bloomsburg telephoned earlier."

Ivan looked up for a moment, then away.

"He wished you good luck for the season," his father said. "He would like us to drive out for a visit. We will take a campus tour. Before Christmas, perhaps. I think this would be a very good university for you."

A drop of sweat gathered at the end of Ivan's nose, quivered, then dropped to the kitchen floor. "I'm gonna shower," he said, bending down to gather the wet clothing into his arms. Without another word, he slipped into the dark of the dining room and climbed the stairs to his bedroom.

His heart pounding, Bobby Zane stood. The thirty-second rest between round-robin shots was hardly enough time to sit down and get up again, let alone catch his breath. But Bobby understood no amount of weight lifting or miles of running would have prepared him enough for the first practice of the season. He slipped the plastic headgear over his head, shifting the halo and earpieces into place, then snapped the chin strap secure. Sweat ran down his cheeks. A drenched long-sleeved shirt clung to his body like a second skin.

"Time!" Coach Dean Messina's voice boomed from the front of the Millburn High practice room. "Look up front!"

Bobby and his teammates turned toward their coach, the most celebrated wrestler in school history, a two-time New Jersey state champion whose wrestling legend crossed county lines as far north as Sussex and as far south as Cape May.

"You guys are
not
executing on your feet," Coach Messina said. He cleared space on the mat. "There are four parts to a single-leg. Stance. Setup. Drop step. Finish."

Coach Messina recoiled in a powerful stance, then lunged forward with his left leg, down to his left knee for a split second, sweeping his right leg under his body and forward along the mat. In an instant, he was back on his feet with the lower leg of an imaginary opponent secure, in a perfect position to finish off the two-point takedown. "Any questions?"

There were none. Or perhaps, Bobby thought, no one dared ask.

"Another set of round-robins, new partners," Coach Messina said. "Seventy-five percent for right now. I want you guys working technique. Perfect technique, understand?"

Wrestlers crisscrossed the mat, motioning for partners. Bobby pointed to Kenny Jones, a returning starter at 135 pounds, whose blond hair and freckled skin seemed better suited to a beach than to a Wrestling room. But Kenny was a talented wrestler, who rarely put himself in vulnerable positions on the mat. More than anyone else on the team, he pushed Bobby hard during practice. Bobby liked that.

"You and me," Bobby said.

Kenny nodded.

Bobby then gestured to Anthony Molinaro, hunched over at the side of the mat. "You, me, and Kenny. I'm A"

"B," said Kenny.

Anthony nodded, wearily. "Guess I'm C."

"A and B, on your feet!" Coach Messina barked. "Everybody else off the mat."

Bobby faced Kenny and shook his hand—a ritual indicating each was ready—then crouched in his stance. Kenny did the same. At the whistle, Bobby shuffled laterally, head up, elbows in tight, hands out in front. An opening for the takedown was a sliver wide, but that was all he needed. He attacked, drop-stepping across the mat, his hands clasping behind Kenny's right knee and pulling it tight to his chest. Before Kenny could react, Bobby stepped up.

"Run the pike," Anthony said.

But for Bobby, finishing off a single-leg takedown was as automatic as breathing. He dropped his head from Kenny's chest to Kenny's thigh and stepped back with his left leg, pulling his teammate to the mat and covering on top.

Kenny slapped the mat.

Bobby offered a hand, but Kenny pushed at it, stood up, and turned away for a moment, straightening his headgear and tugging at a knee pad. When Kenny turned back, Bobby extended his hand again. "Ya cool?"

Kenny shook it. "Yeah, sure."

Immediately, Kenny shot a single deep, catching Bobby flat-footed. But Bobby recovered with a heavy sprawl, leaning every bit of his weight on his teammate, driving Kenny's head to the mat and spinning hard. Kenny hung on until the whistle sounded. The two wrestlers slumped against each other.

"Didn't know we were goin' all-out, state finals, hundred-and-twenty percent," Anthony said, putting on his headgear.

"Me ... neither...," Kenny said, between breaths.

Bobby said nothing. He wanted to stay out on the mat for every shot.
No pain, no gain.
Still, he was feeling the pain, the exhaustion that sucked every bit of strength out of him until even lifting himself up off the mat was a struggle.

"B and C, on your feet," Coach Messina said.

While Kenny and Anthony squared off for the next thirty-second shot, Bobby sat against the wall, gazing beyond the condensation on the windows, catching the last moments of fading daylight. He ignored the brutal heat that rose off his back and the choking humidity that thickened the air.

Things—bad things, sad things—filled his head, and in a weaker moment, he might have let them bother him. But this was his senior year, and nothing was going to distract him during Wrestling practice, nothing was going to derail his season.

He stared around the room, feeling little pity for the new wrestlers as they stumbled their way through drills, complaining too much, talking too often, naive to the grueling months that lay ahead.
No need to straighten their asses now,
he thought. In another week or two—if they hadn't already quit—they'd be as dead serious as the veteran wrestlers who would fill Millburn's varsity lineup.

Conference champs again, the Millburn
Item
had predicted. Essex County champs, too, Bobby was sure.

Still, that wouldn't be good enough, he had decided. An entire wall of Millburn's gymnasium was dedicated to the Wrestling program, honoring the school's finest teams, with their captains' names stenciled in fiery-red letters: Dean Messina, Bob Nuechterlein, Bill Miron, Buzz Wagenseller, John Serruto, Mark Serruto, Mike Kauffman, Paul Finn. They were names that drew wide eyes and reverent words from the Millburn wrestlers who followed.

That's what Bobby wanted. He wanted his name to stand as prominently as these others, so that in five or ten years, some Millburn wrestler might look up at the wall and say, "Bobby Zane, yeah, I heard about him. One of the best captains the school's ever had."

The thirty-second shot ended. Bobby's heart was still racing, sweat still flowing. He stood and took in a deep breath, waiting for Kenny and Anthony to separate, so he could step in.

The round-robins continued past five o'clock. Bobby's lungs ached; his muscles quivered. Coach Messina had drawn a threshold of exhaustion for each wrestler to cross; Bobby knew he was approaching his own. He saw his teammates looking forlornly at the clock, and even caught himself glancing over once. Then, annoyed, he thought,
Keep pushing...

"Come on, Millburn!" Coach Messina's voice rocked the room.

The wrestling stopped.

"You're tired, I know. You're sucking wind, I know." Coach Messina walked among the wrestlers. "Fear is creeping in. Fear of trying new moves when you're tired. Fear of taking chances. Fear of pushing yourself to that very edge. Some of you feel like puking, I'll bet. Arms are dead, legs wobbly, lungs burning. What're you going to do when you start cutting weight? When you haven't had anything to eat in days? When you need to drop that last half pound and still practice hard? How're you going to stop that fear?

"I see you looking at the clock. Wondering if practice is ever going to end. Push yourselves! Leave everything on the mat! Break that fear today, so we won't have to worry about it tomorrow. Or next week Or the rest of the season!"

Coach Messina circled the room. "This is Millburn Wrestling, don't forget that. Since 1965, there hasn't been a more respected program in all of New Jersey. Only a few—the chosen—ever get the privilege of wearing a Millburn varsity singlet." He let that idea sink in. "
Each
of you has a chance to be part of that elite group."

These were the words Bobby waited to hear each season. Ever since he was third-string on the Millburn Midget team nine years earlier, he had dreamed of a spot on the varsity team. In that time, Wrestling had slowly but unquestioningly become a part of him. He had, at first, tasted it. Then chewed and swallowed it. Until it was inside him and a
part
of him. To the point where he never questioned tearing his body down practice after practice, or dehydrating himself so he had too little saliva to wet his mouth, or losing so much weight his rib cage cut sharp ridges across his torso.

It was what a wrestler did.

After a final stare, Coach Messina said, "Grab a partner for double-legs."

Bobby and Kenny paired off again, alternating takedowns. Afterward, fifteen minutes of stairwell sprints, then push-ups, sit-ups, and leg lifts, until—finally—three hours after practice had started, Coach Messina put down his whistle. "Everybody up front."

Bobby sat with his teammates in a semicircle in front of their coach. He had physically given everything. Salty sweat touched the corner of his mouth; some blood, as well. His lips curled into a faint grin. He had stomped all over that threshold.

"Sit up, or sit on your knees," Coach Messina said. "Never crawl, never he down. Never show you're tired. Not in this room."

He pointed to a stack of papers by the door. "Schedules. Grab one before you leave. It's pretty simple. A match against Morris Catholic in mid-December, the Hunterdon Central tournament during Christmas break, then matches every Wednesday and Saturday until the district tournament. That's it—that's the season. Of course, there is a notable stop along the way." Coach Messina gestured to Bobby. "February tenth."

Bobby nodded. "Rampart High."

"They're back on the schedule," Coach Messina said. "They'll probably be undefeated."

"So will we," Bobby said.

Then Coach Messina, an intense man, turned more severe. "During the regular season, we compete as a team. But starting with the districts, you wrestle for your own glory." His voice was unyielding. "Each one of you should be thinking about being a state champ. It's not beyond anyone's ability. It takes a season of absolute dedication. But it starts with a dream. If you can't
dream
of being a state champ, you won't
be
a state champ."

He held his stare. The room remained pin-drop silent.

"Jumping jacks, then roll up the mats." Coach Messina gave Bobby and Kenny a quick nod. "Captains up front."

Bobby and Kenny faced the other wrestlers. On Bobby's command, the team shouted the count. "One! Two! Three!..." At fifty, he and his teammates collected their clothing, knee pads, headgear, and schedules, and dragged themselves down the hall, past the empty classrooms and administrative offices, to the locker room near the gymnasium.

No one spoke.

The season had begun.

Black ASICS wrestling shoes dangled over Ivan's shoulders, bouncing against his chest as he walked down the school hallway. "Mr. Korske," he heard from behind him.

Ivan recognized the voice; how could he not? Garrison Holt, who wore the tide of new school principal as arrogantly as he wore his pin-striped suits. Yet, despite the fancy clothes, mirrored shoes, and air of pomposity, something was always a little askew. Some days, it was his breath. Other days, a slight body odor.

"I'd like to speak with you," Holt said.

Ivan continued down the hallway. "Gotta get to practice."

"Mr. Korske," Holt said. "I understand it's almost three o'clock, but you can—and will—spare a minute of your time. We both know very well, practice won't start without
you.
"

Ivan stopped.

Holt put a hand on Ivan's shoulder and turned him, semi-politely and abruptly. Then he stood, fists at his waist, with the lapels of his suit jacket flared out, material bunched at his elbows—the superhero pose students at school mocked in private.

"We're expecting big things this season," Holt said. "The school, the town—everyone's looking forward to victory after victory. I think there'll be plenty of articles written about you this season. Newspaper reporters, cable TV people, college scouts all visiting Lennings High." Holt grinned. "So," he said, "are you ready?"