Boot Camp by Eric Walters

links. Neither Kia nor Jamal were one of those links.
    Despite being last, Jamal wasn’t giving up. I had to hand it to him. He was gaining, getting closer and closer. As he touched the wall and started back, I could see that he’d made the turn before three other teams. If he could pass just one more team, we could avoid having to do push-ups. I wanted to yell out encouragement, but I knew that would annoy Kia and I didn’t want to upset her—well, not right now.
    Jamal was digging deeper and deeper, moving faster and faster, getting closer and closer and—the ball bounced against his leg and skittered away from him!
    â€œUgggg!” Kia yelled at the top of her lungs.
    I looked up. Jamal was just standing there, frozen, as still as a statue. Why wasn’t he chasing after the ball? The first teams finished—to cheers and screams—while the last place teams all raced past Jamal. Slowly he started to move— at least he was moving now. He walked…no, he sauntered across the floor to where his ball had come to rest against the wall. He stopped overtop of it, drew back his foot, and then he kicked it the length of the gym! It flew through the air and smashed against the far wall with a thunderous crash.
    The cheering stopped. The conversation stopped. The only sound in the gym was the ball as it bounced back across the floor. He picked up the ball, and then he began dribbling it— slowly—toward where we all stood. Every eye was on him, including the coaches. Their mouths were wide open, as if they couldn’t believe what he had just done.
    He handed the ball to the first kid in our line, and then he walked to the back.
    Sergeant Push-Up walked to the front of the teams. “Five push-ups for the seventh place team,” he said, pointing at the group right beside us. “Ten for eighth place. Fifteen for the ninth place team, and finally, thirty push-ups for the last place team,” he said, pointing right at us.
    â€œThirty?” Kia questioned. “It’s supposed to be twenty?”
    â€œDid I say, thirty?” Sergeant Push-up asked. “I should have said
thirty-five
.”
    â€œThirty-five?” Kia gasped.
    â€œTwenty for finishing last, plus ten for kickingthe ball and finally, another five for questioning what I just said.”
    â€œThat’s not fair!” Jamal protested.
    â€œDo you want to make it forty?” Sergeant Push-up asked.
    â€œYou can make it fifty if you want,” Jamal said defiantly.
    â€œFifty it is!”
    Before Jamal could say anything else, Jerome held up his hands. “Time-out!” he yelled. “Everybody who has push-ups to do, finish them off, and then go get a drink and get ready to go home…everybody except this team,” he said, pointing at us.
    I stood there with my teammates and waited as everybody else did their push-ups and walked away. I wanted to walk away—heck, I wanted the floor to just swallow me up.
    â€œSergeant Kevin, Sergeant Josh and Johnnie, could you leave as well, and make sure nobody enters the gym. We need some privacy,” Jerome said. The coaches all walked away.
    â€œEverybody sit down,” Jerome said.
    We all slumped to the floor. We waited quietly while everybody else gathered up their things from the bleachers and headed out to the foyer.
    I turned around. Jamal was still standing, his arms folded across his chest, a scowl plastered across his face. Finally he sat down. I figured that was his way of doing what he was told but being defiant at the same time.
    I leaned back, looked up, way up, to Jerome standing over top of us. From that angle he looked like the tallest man in the world, and the tallest man in the world didn’t look too happy. What was he going to say to us?
    â€œI thought you’d like a little privacy while you do your push-ups,” he said.
    He turned and started to walk away. “That’s fifty,” he said.