Slot Machine by Chris Lynch

wrapped my hands tightly around my calf and held the stretch. It burned my muscles to hold that for thirty seconds, but I did, smiling too, as I looked at the pen mark I’d made after yesterday’s stretch. I was an inch closer today.
    I did the same thing to the other leg, then looked up to see Frankie. He had the purple lotterylike sick-bay vouchers in his hand. “Here,” he said. “Take a day off.”
    “I don’t want a day off. I want to wrestle.”
    “Then wrestle tomorrow. You need a rehab day today.” He pushed the vouchers at me.
    I stared at them, then at him. “That’s really nice, Frank. But I’m not seeing the nurse today.”
    He shoved them into my hand. “Then keep them for when you do need them.”
    “They’re yours,” I said.
    “What am I gonna do, El, injure myself putting? Or drinking raspberry lime rickeys?”
    I was incensed. “You guys get raspberry—”
    “Somebody makes a run now and then to the Brigham’s in town. Just keep the vouchers. To make me feel better.”
    “You could probably get five bucks apiece.”
    He nodded. “To make me feel better,” he repeated.
    Mikie was already munching a bran muffin when we walked into the dining hall. His two pints of milk were already empty, and he was starting on the grapefruit juice.
    “Unsweetened? How can you drink that stuff?” I said, sitting down with two miniature boxes of Rice Krispies, two blueberry muffins, and six strips of bacon.
    “They really are great guys,” Frank went on, as if we’d never left the table from last night’s conversation.
    People were picking up and moving on all around us. We were about the last ones in, what with Frankie’s sleeping in and my palsy. So everybody was in a hurry, and it was one of those edgy mornings when nobody’s interested in what the other guy wants to talk about.
    “How old is this cereal?” I demanded to the room at large. “They’re all duds. Hardly a crackle or pop in the box.”
    “These guys, they’re the kind of guys who can really set you up, really improve your situation in the school,” Frank said. “We’ll be cool.”
    “Basketball Sector’s okay,” Mike answered a question nobody asked. “But some of the guys’ll drive you crazy. I have this one guy, I don’t know what it is, but he reminds me of you, Elvin.”
    I lifted my head from listening closely to the Rice Krispies. “Mikie, no one has ever been reminded of me by any basketball player. What’s wrong with the guy?”
    “I’m not sure. I keep giving him the ball in perfect position, and he keeps giving it right back to me. He could be really good, though. I’m working on him. I’m working on him hard.”
    “And they’re a lot more fun than all these eighth graders around here,” Frankie pushed. “Bet they have lots of real man-size fun planned for tonight. It’ll be cool. We’ll be cool.”
    “Do we really have to, though?” I asked, being uncool enough to ask such a thing. “Do we really need to be cool?”
    He didn’t puff up. He didn’t joke. He didn’t brag. “I do,” Frankie said evenly.
    Mikie stood up with his tray. “I have to go,” he said. “My venue’s all the way across the campus. And I have to walk.” He winked at Frank.
    “Oh, cut it out. They don’t send the golf cart for me. We just get to drive it around on the course sometimes. Jeez, you guys.”
    “Go then,” I said, pushing Frank along. “Get going. I have to sweep the floor here before I get to start.”
    “Oh ya,” Frank said, seizing the opportunity. He hopped up and followed after Mikie, bending his ear about going tonight. It was funny, and somehow made me feel a little safer, that as big as he talked, Frankie still needed Mikie to okay it.
    “Remember,” Coach Wolfe stressed, “these exhibitions are for the purpose of getting you fellas some live-action experience, a chance to try out what you’re learning, and to test your own readiness. They are not auditions for the school’s