Sports & Recreation
For the first time in his life, Matt knew terror. He had heard of being frozen with fear. Well, now he was. He could not move. He tried hard to see into the darkness. He tried to hear if the wolf was coming nearer. But he could see nothing. All he could hear was the sound of raindrops landing all around him. Then, right in front of him, a white form took shape.
The driver shut the motor off and just sat there, very still. We froze in our places. He pulled off his helmet and looked around without leaving his machine. It was too dark to see his face, but he looked big. My heart was hammering like a drum. Surely he could hear it. I looked sideways at Sam and the others. Their breath was coming out in tiny streams. Nobody moved a muscle, not even Spider.
"All I'm saying is that if you took it down a notch or two, you'd make the jumps and save the injuries."
"I always makes the jumps," I argued.
"What are you talking about?"
"I make the jumps. It's the landings that I'm having trouble with."
The Sharks called us "pond scum."
I breathed deep, like I always did before a race, filling my nose with the smell of chlorine. The Sharks were about to see that this pond scum could swim.
He dug in again, sinking his cleats into the soft clay of the batter's box and getting set for the next pitch. He was determined to hang in there this time and not back away, no matter what happened. White went into his long, deliberate windup. It seemed like forever, but in fact it was only a couple of seconds before the older boy uncoiled and sent the ball again in a flash toward the plate.
This time, Matt stayed in the box, swinging at the spot where he anticipated the baseball would cross. But this pitch was slightly inside. It nicked him on the index finger of his right hand and ricocheted off his cheekbone. The pain shot through his finger and the left side of his face at the same time, but Matt stayed on his feet.
