Underdogs Read Online Free PDF Page B

just as usual at home. Pretty good.
    “Are you sure?” they asked. As if I’d lie. Maybe I should have told them I ran into the door or fell down the basement stairs. That would have been a laugh. Mainly I just told them that I did boxing as a recreational sport and that I hadn’t really become too good at it yet.
    They clearly didn’t believe what I told them because on Thursday afternoon my mother got a call from the school, requesting a meeting with the principal and the head of welfare.
    She came on Friday at lunch and made sure Rube and I were there as well.
    Outside, just before she went into that welfare office, she said, “Wait here and don’t move till I say you can come in.” We nodded and sat down, and after about ten minutes, she opened the door and said, “Right — in.” We got up and went in.
    Inside the office, the principal and the welfare officer stared at us with a kind of amused, measured repugnance. So did Mum, for that matter, and the reason for this became quite clear when she reached into her handbag and pulled out our boxing gloves and said happily, “Okay, put them on.”
    “Ah, c’mon, Mum,” Rube protested.
    “No no no,” insisted Mr. Dennison, the principal. “We’re very interested in seeing this.”
    “Come on, boys,” my mother egged us on. “Don’t beashamed….” But that was the whole point. Embarrass us. Humiliate us. Shame us. It wasn’t hard to see what was going on, as each of us put our glove on.
    “My sons,” my mother said to the principal, and then to us. “My sons.”
    The look on our mother’s face was one of bitter disappointment. She looked ready to cry. The wrinkles around her eyes were dark-dry riverbeds, waiting. No water came. She just looked. Away. Then, with purpose, she looked at us and seemed ready to spit at our shoes and disown us. I didn’t blame her.
    “So this is what they do,” she told them. “I’m sorry about all this, to waste your time like this.”
    “It’s okay,” Dennison told her, and she shook hands with both him and the welfare woman.
    “I’m sorry,” she said again and walked out, not even looking at us again. She left us standing there, wearing those gloves, like two ridiculous beasts in winter.
    Don’t ask me why, but I’m in Russia, sitting on a bus in Mo
    It’s crowded.
    The bus moves slowly.
    It’s freezing.
    The guy next to me has the window seat and he’s holding some kind of rodent that hisses at me even if I so much as look at it. The guy nudges me, says something, and laughs. When I ask him if this really is Moscow (because of course I’ve never been there), he starts havingthis long drawn-out conversation with me, which is a miracle because I can’t even say a word to him on account of not knowing the language.
    He’s unbelievable.
    Talking.
    Laughing, and by the end of it, I actually like the guy. I laugh at all his jokes by the lines they make on his face. “Slow bus,” I say, but of course he has no idea. Russia.
    Can you tell me what in God’s name I’m doing in Russia?
    The bus is freezing as well — did I mention that already? Yeah? Well, trust me, it is, and all the windows are fogged up.
    Shiver.
    I shiver in my seat until I can take it no longer. Stand.
    I try to get up but I seem pasted down. It’s like I’ve actually been frozen to the seat.
    “Get up,” I tell myself, but I can’t. I can’t!
    Then I see someone amongst the crowd in the aisle hobbling toward me.
    No.
    Oh, no.
    It’s an old woman, and since being in Russia, I’ve realized that these old women really get into the thick of it. And worse still, she’s looking right at me. Right, at me.
    “Help me up,” I say to the guy next to me. I beg, but he does nothing. He even turns away to sleep, squashing his rodent up against the window. It gags.
    She’s still coming.
    No.
    A nightmare.
    She grimaces and fixes her eyes on mine, silently telling me to get out of the seat.
Get up!
I shriek inside me. I can’t, and she