When he was finished, Danny slumped back in the padded seat. His head hurt, he felt tired. And he knew he had done poorly.
The door to the booth opened and Mr. Cochran pushed in. Danny saw, past him, that the classroom was now empty.
“How’d it go?” The teacher leaned over and touched a few buttons on the desk top. Numbers sprang up on the screen.
“Not good, huh?” Danny said weakly.
Mr. Cochran looked down at him. “No, not so very good. But, frankly, you did better than I thought you would.”
Danny sat up a little straighter.
“Look,” Mr. Cochran said, “I know Friends in the City is a kind of dumb book. But why don’t you just work your way through it? Read it in your room. You don’t have to show up here in class every morning. SPECS can help you when you’re stuck on a word. Then, when you think you’ve got it licked, come in and take the test again.”
“How long will it take?”
Cochran waved a hand. “Depends on you. Three, four days, at most. You’re smart enough to get the hang of it pretty fast, if you really want to.”
Danny said nothing.
Mr. Cochran stepped out of the booth and Danny got up and went outside, too.
“Look,” the teacher said, “reading is important. No matter what you want to do when you get out of the Center, you’ll need to be able to read well. Unless you can read okay, Dr. Tenny won’t let you leave here. So it’s up to you.”
“Okay,” said Danny. “Give me the book. I’ll learn it.”
But as he walked down the hall to his next class, Danny told himself, Let ’em think I’m trying to learn. Then they won’t know I’m working on a break-out.
CHAPTER TEN
Danny went to two more classes that morning: history and arithmetic. He fell asleep in the history class. No one bothered him until the teacher poked him on the shoulder, after the rest of the boys had left.
“I don’t think you’re ready for this class,” the old man said. His thin face was white with the struggle to keep himself from getting angry.
The arithmetic class was taught by Joe Tenny. To his surprise, Danny found that he could do most of the problems that Tenny flashed on the TV screen.
“You’ve got a good head for numbers,” Joe told him as the class ended and the boys were filing out for lunch.
“Yeah. Maybe I’ll be a bookie when I get out.”
Joe gave him that who-are-you-trying-to-kid look. “Well, you’ve got to plan on being something. We’re not just going to let you go, with no plans and no job.”
They left the classroom together and started down the hall for the outside doors.
“Uh… the history teacher told me not to come back to his class. I… uh, I fell asleep.”
“That was smart,” said Joe.
“Well, uh, look… can I take something else instead of history? Maybe learn Italian… I already talk it a little…”
“I know.”
Danny felt his face go red. “Well, what I mean is, maybe I could learn to talk it right.”
Joe looked slightly puzzled. “I don’t understand why you’d want to study a foreign language. But if that’s what you want to do, okay, we’ll try it. Just don’t fall asleep on the job.”
Grinning, Danny promised, “I won’t!”
After lunch, Danny went up to the gym. One of the older boys showed him where the lockers were. Danny changed into a sweat suit and went back onto the gym floor. He lifted weights for a while, then tried to jog around the track up on the catwalk. He had to stop halfway; it got too hard to breathe.
Got to get one of those pills.
He went back to his locker and took a pill. After a few minutes he was able to breathe easily again. He went back to the gym and found a row of punching bags lined up behind the ring. No one was using them. Lacey was nowhere in sight. Danny felt glad of that. Ralph Malzone came from around the corner of the ring, though.