We only have a few more practices before the Eagles’ big Thanksgiving tournament. It’s the first wrestling event of the season, my first chance to show Nick Spence I’m ready to win. I push myself at practice. When Coach tells us to jog, I run. When he says, “Twenty squat-jacks!” I do an extra five.
Mickey tries to keep up with me. She’s not bad for a noob, no matter what Josh says. He’s still mad at Coach for splitting us up. Josh grumbles about his new partner, a pudgy fifth grader named Milo.
“Milo’s strong, but he’s so slow, it’s like wrestling a bag of mashed potatoes,” Josh says. He glances at Mickey, who’s sitting by herself near the parents, snapping headgear over her braids. “At least she’s halfway decent.”
Isaiah nods. “She’d wipe the floor with him.”
I lean down to tie my shoes so Josh and Isaiah won’t see me blushing. Not because I like Mickey or anything gross like that. I’m embarrassed because, even though we’re partners and Mickey’s good for a first-year Gladiator, I still haven’t spoken to her much since the first practice. How would I even start being nice to her now?
“Coach should stick all the new kids together,” Isaiah says.
Josh sighs and stands up. “Uncle wants us to teach the noobs ‘The Gladiator Way’ or some garbage. If we show them how things are done around here, maybe we’ll get our old partners back.”
“The sooner the better,” Isaiah says. “I’m sick of you two complaining.”
We jog around the mats to warm up. Coach Billy blasts music to keep our energy pumping.
By the time I get home from practice, it’s nine o’clock. I’m glad Mom made me do my homework right after school. Even though it’s quiet in the kitchen while I eat my bowl of cereal, my head echoes with the music and noise of the practice room.
“Headache,” I tell Abba. My headaches are worse this season. The kitchen light is too bright. I close my eyes.
My father is my favorite person on the planet, but if I had to choose a second, it’s my Gran’s wife, my other Gran. I call her O.G. for short. She’s chill and fun and rides go-karts with me at the beach every summer.
O.G. is so calm and fun to be around, it’s hard to believe she helped raise my mom. Mom is always rushing from one emergency to the next. Sometimes the emergency is real, like when her best friend had breast cancer and Mom organized meals for her kids. And sometimes it’s just that no one in the house has clean underwear. But Mom acts as if everything needs her full attention Right Now. It’s worse since she went back to school.
Abba’s not like that. He is calm. He’s got black hair with silver streaks and rosy cheeks like a little kid. Abba’s father is from Israel. They lived there for a while, when Abba was my age.
Abba’s parents, my Saaba and Safta, retired to Israel. We see Gran and O.G. pretty often, but I’ve only ever been to visit Israel twice. I don’t remember much. Palm trees, desert, blue doors in Jerusalem. Every few years, Saaba and Safta come to Maryland and stay for a few weeks. It’s easier for them to come here, because of our sports.
I wonder if having a parent from another country is what makes Abba different. When I ask him a question, it’s like time slows down. Abba stops what he’s doing and settles in to listen.
Now he’s looking at me in the bright kitchen light. “Of course you have a headache, Lev, sitting in all that sweat.” He kisses my wet hair, which I still haven’t cut short for competition. “I’ll take care of the dishes. Go shower.” He pushes me up the stairs. “When you’re done, Dalia wants to talk to you.”
“She does?” My sister never wants to talk to me.
Abba shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
I find Dalia sitting on her bed, phone in one hand, homework spread around her. Grover is snoring on the floor. Dalia’s bare toes dangle above his furry back.
“Abba said you want to talk to me.”
I haven’t been in her room in a long time. Dalia has a new University of Maryland Field Hockey poster on her wall. She’s determined to go to UMD after high school. Her closet door is open. I see clear plastic boxes marked COLLEGE. I guess Dalia is as excited about leaving home as I am that she’s going.
Mom and Abba keep telling her that no matter how good she is at field hockey, sports scholarships are hard to get. She knows her best shot at money for college is good grades. So she’s always working. Whether it’s sports or school, Dalia has to be the best. One thing I like about wrestling? It’s something my sister would never do. Something she’ll never be able to beat me at.
“I hear you’re wrestling with Evan’s sister. Mikayla, right?” Dalia asks.
Is that her real name? It makes Mickey sound like one of the lip-gloss-wearing, giggling girls in my homeroom.
I nod.
“He says she’s a good wrestler.”
“She’s okay.”
“Is she better than you?”
“No.” Bryan would call my laugh a scoff.
I lean down to pet Grover’s ears. He rolls over for a belly rub, so I sit on the floor next to him.
Dalia raises one thin eyebrow at me. “Evan wants you to be nice to her.”
“What do you mean?” As if I didn’t know.
“It’s not easy for her. Her best friend quit. Evan said they’ve been training partners for years. Mikayla’s never been the only girl on her team before.”
I shrug. “Her problem.”
Dalia nudges my shoulder with a bare foot. Her face is all bones and angles, especially when her dark hair is pulled back with athletic tape. She undoes her braid, combing it out with her fingers. “Evan says he’d hate to see her quit wrestling.”
“She wants to quit?” That’s what I wanted, isn’t it? But my eyes feel hot. I try closing them. The headache pounds. “What am I supposed to do about it?”
“You’re the softie in the family, Lev, not me,” Dalia says. “You could start by talking to her.”
“Maybe,” I say.
Yesterday at school, Nick stuck a paper heart on my locker with the initials LS + MD. If I’m nice to Mickey, what if Josh and Isaiah stick hearts in my wrestling bag or make kissing noises behind my back at practice? Forget that.
When I get into bed and take out my notebook, I can’t concentrate on what I learned at practice tonight. I’m thinking about Dalia, how things used to be before she turned into Miss Annoyed Teen USA.
The two of us used to play Uno 500 every summer. We brought our cards everywhere and kept track of points in the loser’s hand. The first person to get five hundred points was Loser of the Year. We played on the long car ride to the beach house we rent with Gran and O.G. We played after lunch on rainy days. It took the whole summer. The last time we did Uno 500, Dalia was Loser of the Year. She didn’t even get mad. She laughed and said she’d get me next time.
Then Dalia started summer field hockey, going to Disney World tournaments with her club team instead of coming to the beach house. That’s when our family changed. One of our parents was always driving or flying somewhere with my sister. And because she had practice, or her team was going to a tournament out of state, we hardly ever had Shabbat dinner on Friday nights anymore.
Abba, Dalia, and I used to bake challah on Thursdays after school so the bread would be ready to eat on Friday. Every Thursday, I’d rush home to get my homework done. Dalia put all the ingredients out so when Abba got home from work, we could start baking. Sometimes he let me proof the yeast. That was my favorite part. I loved watching the dried flakes of yeast plump up and fizz in warm water, knowing that they were going to turn our flour into delicious bread. This past summer, Abba and I only made challah a few times. Dalia wasn’t there to help.
Our family is changing. We’re busy with wrestling, and field hockey, and the papers Mom has to write for graduate school. I miss Friday nights when we sat and ate and talked about the week. I think I’m the only one who’s noticed we’ve lost the habit of making special bread for Shabbat, saying our Friday night prayers over candles.
Mickey’s mother shows up at the next practice. I watch her from the bleachers. Ms. Delgado is kind of chubby, but otherwise she and Mickey have the same square face, minus the braces and wrestling headgear. My mom hardly ever stays at practice. She says she’s not the wrestling mom type. Which is dumb because I’m a wrestler and she’s my mom. But Mom says she’ll never get used to this sport. It’s too violent for her. She doesn’t come to practice, doesn’t make friends with the other parents. Abba brings me to meets and tournaments. He doesn’t mind hanging out with team dads.
We have a preseason scrimmage against the Eagles tomorrow. Coach wants us to wear our Gladiators singlets. He takes every meeting with the Eagles seriously. Billy the Kid used to be assistant coach for the Eagles. He left so he could head up the Gladiators. Josh says his uncle and Nick Spence’s dad argued. I guess Dr. Spence wanted Coach Billy to be his assistant forever. Now our two teams are rivals. There’s nobody Coach Billy wants us to beat as bad as the Eagles.
We all strip down to our boxer shorts and pull on the singlets that Ms. Delgado and Mrs. Oliver are handing out. Our singlets are red, with the gray and black Gladiator logo on the chest. Down our backs, there’s one word, written in gray: GLADIATORS.
Josh and Isaiah are whispering. I roll my eyes at them. Nobody cares that we’re walking around in our underwear. Wrestlers weigh themselves at every competition, sometimes at practice too. There’s no privacy, but we’re used to it. Or we were, when our team was all guys. Over by the parents, Mickey’s mom is handing her two singlets. She points to the gym door. I forgot. Mickey can’t try on her singlet in here with the rest of us.
I don’t like the way Josh and Isaiah are watching her.
Dalia said Evan wants me to be nice to Mickey, so I shake my head at the guys. Why can’t they leave her alone, act like she’s not here? Mickey’s not making a big deal about seeing us all in our underwear. But Josh and Isaiah are.
“Let’s follow her,” Josh says. “I want to see where she’s going.”
“She’s going to the girls’ room to change, you idiot,” I say.
Josh ignores me and stands up. Isaiah follows him out of the gym.
Stay out of it, I tell myself as I step into a singlet and pull it over my chest. I check to make sure the shoulder straps aren’t too loose, that the elastic on the thighs isn’t too tight. But then I remember what Bryan said at lunch, that day we argued. Why don’t you cut her a break?
I leave the gym in my singlet and jog down the hallway. Isaiah’s leaning against the girls’ room door. Mickey tries to reach past him for the door handle, but he shifts his long body to block her. Josh grabs the singlets out of her hands. He holds them behind his back, where she can’t reach.
Mickey sticks her chin out. Her hands are in front, ready to make a grab.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she tells them.
“Leave her alone,” I say.
Isaiah scoots away from the door, says, “C’mon, Josh,” and goes back to the gym.
Josh glares at me from under his dark bangs. “I thought you wanted to be my partner.” He hands over the singlets. Mickey slips into the girls’ room.
“I don’t have much choice,” I whisper, in case she’s listening. “She’s a decent wrestler. We should give her a chance.”
“Whatever,” Josh says. “Come on. If we hurry, we can wrestle each other while she’s changing.”
I shake my head. “I’ll wait for Mickey.”
He gapes at me like I’m a traitor or something, then runs to catch up with Isaiah.
Did I do the right thing? Mickey’s tough. Maybe she won’t like me any better for sticking up for her.
When she comes out in her shorts and T-shirt, she holds the singlets behind her back, as if I might grab them. “Are you okay?” I ask.
“I’m used to it.” Her eyes are bright and glassy, the way Dalia’s are when she’s had a fight with Evan.
“I’m sorry.”
I wanted Mickey to get annoyed and ask for a different partner. But that was because I didn’t want to wrestle a noob. I didn’t want to deal with the guys teasing me for wrestling a girl. How did ignoring her turn into this?
I can’t look her in the eyes. “I should’ve been a better partner.”
“Obviously.”
I follow Mickey to the gym. “My sister said you’re thinking about quitting.”
“What do you care?”
“You’re good,” I tell her. “For a first-year Gladiator, you’re really good.”
It’s true. I beat Mickey most of the time when we’re live wrestling, but that’s because I’m stronger. She’s quick, and she picks up new moves faster than I do.
“I have to be better than good if I want your friends to leave me alone.” Mickey stops outside the gym door. “So you’re on my side now?” she asks. “For real, or because my brother asked you?”
Better than good. That’s what I have to be if I’m going to beat Nick Spence and make it to States. That’s when I realize, she may be a noob and a girl, but Mickey is the best partner for me. Every time she walks into practice, she has to prove herself. She understands better than anyone what it means to work hard and push yourself.
“For real,” I say. I put out my hand. “Shake on it.”
Mickey’s grip is tight. “Partners.”