The Wednesday Wars Read Free

Sometimes even true love can be suspicious.
    "Just because."
    "'Just because' isn't much of a reason."
    "Just because there might be a surprise."
    "For who?"
    "For you."
    "For me?"
    "For you."
    She lifted the desk top. She looked under
English for You and Me, Mathematics for You and Me,
and
Geography for You and Me.
"I don't see anything," she said.
    I looked inside. "Maybe I was wrong."
    "Maybe
I
was wrong," said Meryl Lee, and dropped the desk top. Loudly. "Oh," she said. "Sorry. I was supposed to wait until you put your fingers there."
    Love and hate in seventh grade are not far apart, let me tell you.

    At lunchtime, I was afraid to go out for recess, since I figured that Mrs. Baker had probably recruited an eighth grader to do something awful to me. There was Doug Swieteck's brother, for one, who was already shaving and had been to three police stations in two states and who once spent a night in jail. No one knew what for, but I thought it might be for something in the Number 390s—or maybe even Number 410 itself! Doug Swieteck said that if his father hadn't bribed the judge, his brother would have been on Death Row.
    We all believed him.
    "Why don't you go out for lunch recess?" said Mrs. Baker to me. "Everyone else is gone."
    I held up
English for You and Me.
"I thought I'd read in here," I said.
    "Go out for recess," she said, criminal intent gleaming in her eyes.
    "I'm comfortable here."
    "Mr. Hoodhood," she said. She stood up and crossed her arms, and I realized I was alone in the room with no witnesses and no mast to climb to get away.
    I went out for recess.
    I kept a perimeter of about ten feet or so around me, and stayed in Mrs. Sidman's line of sight. I almost asked for her rain hat. You never know what might come in handy when something awful is about to happen to you.
    Then, as if the Dread Day of Doom and Disaster had come to Camillo Junior High, I heard, "Hey, Hoodhood!"
    It was Doug Swieteck's brother. He entered my perimeter.
    I took three steps closer to Mrs. Sidman. She moved away and held her rain hat firmly.
    "Hoodhood—you play soccer? We need another guy." Doug Swieteck's brother was moving toward me. The hair on his chest leaped over the neck of his T-shirt.
    "Go ahead," called the helpful Mrs. Sidman from a distance. "If you don't play, someone will have to sit out."
    If I don't play, I'll live another day, I thought.
    "Hoodhood," said Doug Swieteck's brother, "you coming or not?"
    What could I do? It was like walking into my own destiny.
    "You're on that side." He pointed.
    I already knew that.
    "You're a back," he said.
    I knew that, too. Destiny has a way of letting you know these things.
    "I'm a forward."
    I could have said it for him.
    "That means you have to try to stop me."
    I nodded.
    "Think you can?"
    I suppose I could stop you, I thought. I suppose I could stop you with a Bradley tank, armor two inches thick, three mounted machine guns, and a grenade launcher. Then I suppose I could stop you.
    "I can try," I said.
    "You can try." Doug Swieteck's brother laughed, and I bet that if I had looked over my shoulder, I would have seen Mrs. Baker peering out her third-floor classroom window, and she would have been laughing, too.
    But the thing about soccer is that you can run around a whole lot and never, ever touch the ball. And if you do have to touch the ball, you can kick it away before anyone comes near you. That's what I figured on doing. Doug Swieteck's brother wouldn't even come near me, and I would foil Mrs. Baker's nefarious plan.
    But Doug Swieteck's brother had clearly received instructions. The first time he got the ball, he looked around and then came right at me. He wasn't like a normal forward, who everyone knows is supposed to avoid the defense. He just came right at me, and there was a growl that rose out of him like he was some great clod of living earth that hadn't evolved out of the Mesozoic Era, howling and roaring and slobbering and coming to crush me.
    I expect