Saturday morning Will woke with a cricket sharing his pillow, chirping like a cheerleader. He left the cricket to enjoy the warm bed while he got ready for the tournament. They had to be at school by 8:00 A.M. to set up the main gym, but he wanted to get there early to set up tables for the Buck-a-Bug fund-raiser.

Light was just fuzzing the edges of dawn when Will and Dad swung by to pick up Eloy. Though Will was stuck with the middle on the bench seat, it was nice to be with a friend his age as they went to meet up with all the older guys on the team.

The ants had made Will’s and Eloy’s first official matches a joke. This tournament felt like the first real time he and Eloy would wrestle as Cobras. He wanted to prove himself, though the guys didn’t care if he won or lost as long as he brought everything he had to the mat.

First he had to help roll them out.

Triton had four wrestling areas, which meant four matches could happen simultaneously so the tournament could move along at a good pace. But it also meant their mats took up so much space, the bleachers could be opened only halfway. It had never been a problem before, since usually only family and girlfriends came to tournaments, but now Will looked at the rows of unfolded seats and wondered if he wanted to need them or not.

He wanted Buck-a-Bug to do well, and he’d love to see lots of people come out to support the wrestling team, but if the event was a bust, he’d rather not have all of Triton on hand to make fun of him.

The guys were mostly quiet, still waking up, but by 9:00 A.M. the other four teams had arrived. The refs began weigh-ins and skin checks for the planned 10:00 A.M. start. When Trey and Max coached the refs to be extra careful about checking Will and Eloy for bugs, everyone perked up, a bunch of guys from the other teams already having been told about the fund-raiser and the story behind it.

Will supposed that was Coach Van Beek’s doing, which was either a really cool thing to support Will and make sure the other teams weren’t caught off guard or a not-cool thing at all because it greatly increased the number of people who might laugh at Will about eating bugs.

He lucked out when the match order was set to start with the 195 weights. A random draw determined the first weight class to wrestle, with the rest of the classes following in order. Starting with the heaviest class meant they’d loop back to the beginning for the second round, which meant lightweights Will and Eloy.

If they had gone first, everyone would have been watching them, and Will would have been even more nervous than he was. But going second was perfect. It meant there’d still be one or two heavyweight matches going on by the time he was up but that he’d have his first match done by eleven or so. There was a mandatory one-hour rest period after each one. Will would have at least two matches today, hopefully more if he wrestled well, but the match order meant he’d have a window of time right when he needed it for the promised noon start of his bug event.

Before Will or Eloy was allowed to put on his singlet, the guys made a big show about inspecting the spandex uniforms for ants. Will figured he was meant to act offended, but he couldn’t pull it off with the goofy grin all over his face. A big part of him was nervous about what might happen in the next few hours, but right now he was just one of the guys.

The feeling lasted about three minutes. He left the locker room and entered a packed gym. Which he should have expected. A five-team tournament was small by tournament standards but big for Triton. There was a crowd, and it already included his family.

“I thought you weren’t coming until eleven,” he said to them.

“You’re the one who kept saying that, dork-face,” Hollie said.

“Of course we want to watch your matches, too,” Mom said.

“How are you feeling? Nice and loose?” Dad asked.

Will had been so focused on bugs the last few days, he hadn’t been very focused on the wrestling part. Back on that first day he’d met Eloy, Will had been reading Wrestling for Dummies, how wrestling in the right mind-set meant staying focused and mentally tough. He needed to remember that for the entire six minutes of his match. And he’d need to remember that even more at noon.

Mom pointed to where his grandparents were, so Will made his way up the bleachers to say hi. On the way, some guy, like someone’s dad, asked, “You that Bug Boy?”

He surprised Will into stopping, and suddenly lots of people were calling to him.

“You really going to eat a scorpion?”

“Will the poison in the stinger kill you?”

“I can’t wait to post it on my YouTube channel.”

“It’s disgusting. No one should let a child do something like that.”

“You should be on one of those Survivor shows!”

Will turned his head toward each new voice, making himself dizzy. He wanted to be excited by the crowd’s interest. He knew he should joke and tease and dare them to come out and try a bug for themselves. But he was too high up in the bleachers, surrounded by too many faces with too many words flying at him like a swarm of midges.

He started to feel queasy, and queasy was never good for him. He’d puked up the stinkbug and nearly puked after the earthworm jerky. What if it happened again?

He had been nervous but mostly feeling okay about his plan. Now, though, the feeling was very, very bad.