Lev finds me in the hallway, studying the updated bracket sheets. There’s an F for Fall next to his name. Pinning a guy in your first match of the season. I bet that feels awesome.
“How’d you do?” he asks, trying to see around me.
“I won.”
“You did? You don’t sound happy about it.”
I point to my next match on the bracket sheet, number fifty-three. Lev’s name is right under mine.
“Oh,” he says. “That stinks.”
“You’d better not go easy on me just because you’re my partner. Pretend you’ve never seen me before in your life.”
“Quit worrying. Josh and I have wrestled at tournaments plenty of times.”
“I thought you’d be all about the Fearsome Threesome today,” I say as we walk back to the gym. Lev tilts his head toward the cafeteria. Josh and Isaiah are in line, waiting for hot dogs, chili, and donuts. Once weigh-ins are over, wrestlers love their junk food.
A kid passes us. The slogan on his T-shirt says On the Mat, Beneath the Light, That’s Where Real Men Come to Fight.
“Give me a Sharpie,” I say. “I need to fix that shirt. It should say That’s Where Women Come to Fight.”
“You can have this.” Lev pulls a pen out of his special notebook.
“You’d give me the pen from your journal? I’m honored.”
He grimaces. “It is not a journal. It is a notebook. Besides, I agree with you. Coach Billy says wrestling is for anyone tough enough to step on the mat.”
“Then he’s full of it.” I take a long drink from my water bottle.
“You don’t think that’s true?”
“If you’re a boy. I have to work twice as hard as everybody else in the practice room.”
The other day at lunch, Lalita asked me if I like Lev, and not just as a partner. “Is he boyfriend material?” she wanted to know. She shivered, which made her hair bow shake.
Kenna scowled at her. “Do we have to talk about boys?”
“Exactly,” I said. “We’re eleven.”
“I’m not eleven,” Lalita said. “I turned twelve in October.” She leaned across the table and told us in a low voice, “My sister got her period when she was twelve.” Lalita shivered again and smiled with her electric blue braces showing, like this was the most exciting news ever.
I guess Lalita might call Lev cute, but I think he was cuter with long hair. He looks younger and goofier with short hair and those funny ears. I think it makes me like him even more. As a friend.
“Are there any Eagles in our bracket?” I ask Lev.
“Spence is here today, but I don’t see his name.” He scratches his short hair where his headgear made a cowlick. “He’s supposed to be wrestling ninety-five, like us.”
In the hall, a vendor is selling Maryland State Wrestling hoodies. I spot Nick Spence in line with his little sister. Her pink T-shirt is exactly like one I had before I started wrestling: Wrestler’s Sister: Stay on My Good Side.
Nick glares at us as we walk by.
“I like your wrestling shoes. Pink is my favorite color,” his sister says to me. Her blond hair is in two French braids, just like mine. Nick tries to pull her away, but she tells me, “I’m going to wrestle like my brother.”
“In your dreams, Anna,” Nick says to her, but he’s smiling.
I get a good look at the number written on Nick’s arm before we go back to the gym.
“Did you see that, Lev?” I ask. “Eighty-nine point three.”
I was right. This morning, Nick was trying to sweat off a couple of extra ounces before weigh-ins.
“Spence is cutting weight,” I say. “He’s wrestling in the ninety-pound weight class.”
“Why would he do that?” Lev looks confused, but I know exactly what’s going on.
“So he doesn’t have to wrestle me.”
I don’t say anything to Dad, but I think about Nick Spence the rest of the day.
I was at a dual meet with Cody once, when he was on the Eagles. We were in the stands watching a match when one of the older boys went into convulsions. His dad laid him flat on the bleachers. Dr. Spence ran up the steps with another doctor, a mom from the opposing team. EMTs had to take the kid out on a stretcher. Mom told me later, he’d been cutting weight. The convulsions happened because all the fluids and chemicals in his body were out of whack. It was scary. I will never cut weight. Mom says it’s not healthy for me if I want to, as she puts it, “develop.” Sometimes Mom reminds me of Lalita Parsons.
After Lev and I warm up, he finds Coach and I get my dad. Dad’s going to coach me so Lev can have Billy the Kid in his corner.
I tuck my braids into my cap and put on my headgear and mouth guard. I back into Dad’s chest like I’ve seen Evan and Cody do a million times. He wraps his arms around my shoulders, lifting me off the ground with a squeeze that stretches my muscles.
“Go get ’em,” he says.
I put on the green ankle cuff, my lucky color, praying I make it to the end of the match without getting pinned. Lev wraps the red cuff around his ankle. Even though I’ve already won a match today, I think, I’m going to freeze. I’m going to forget how to do this.
The voices in the crowd go fuzzy as I take the mat. Then the whistle blows, and Lev and I are grappling. My hands grip his arms, pushing him back without letting him loose. He puts a palm on my forehead, then pulls my head down. When I react, he takes a shot and grabs me behind the knees, his head in my middle. Then my feet are off the ground. I land hard on my butt. I scramble to turn and base up.
“Two!” the ref shouts. I see his red cuff flash above me. Lev’s winning already.
Once I’m in down position, I tuck up and stay there. Lev tries to force my shins apart with his knees and flatten me out on my stomach, but I won’t let him.
A faraway voice says, “Time!” The ref signals us to get up.
I’m panting when I get to Dad’s corner. He smiles and cups a hand behind my head. “You’re putting up a great fight out there. That’s your partner?”
I nod.
“He’s a good wrestler.”
I don’t last the full three periods. Early into the third, my stomach’s pressed to the floor. Lev has his elbow in my back. I can’t let him pin me, but the score is 15–0, enough for Lev to earn a technical fall. The ref stops the match. When he raises Lev’s hand in the air, I’m too embarrassed to look at him.
After I shake hands with Lev and Coach Billy, I jog to my dad’s corner of the mat.
“Did he have to tech me?” I ask.
I must sound like I’m whining. Dad’s jaw tightens. He is not happy with me. “You went defensive,” he says. “Next time, take a shot instead of tucking up and stalling.” Dad hands me a tissue. “No crying on the mat, Mikayla. Go clean up and get back out there.”
I splash water on my face in the girls’ room. I haven’t lost a match in almost a year. Last time a kid beat me this bad, Kenna was the one who found me in the bathroom. She rubbed my back and handed me tissues until I stopped crying. Now she’s having fun at Lalita Parsons’s amazing house, and I’m hiding in a high school girls’ room.
I dab cold water on my eyes one more time before going back to the gym. Then I climb to the top of an empty bleacher with a book and try to forget about getting creamed.
“Hey, Mickey. Nice view.” Lev pulls himself up to sit next to me.
“I’m not speaking to you.”
“Why?” He looks surprised. Lev holds out an open pack of Twizzlers. “Because I beat you?”
“Teched me. I didn’t even score one point.”
“At least it wasn’t a pin,” he says. He pulls out one red twist of candy and chomps it. “You told me not to go easy on you.”
I ignore him and open my book.
“You’re upset.”
“How’d you guess?”
He pokes me in the chin. “You do this thing with your face when you’re mad. You push your chin out.”
I’m not sure I like that Lev knows this about me.
“Hey, it’s your first tournament,” he says. “Stay mad at me if you have to, but take it out on your next guy. You don’t want to be done for the day.”
I grimace at him. My lips peel back from my braces. “Mad enough for you?”
“It’s a start.” He holds out the Twizzlers again. “Best candy for wrestling,” he says, pulling another twist out of the pack with his teeth.
“You’re gross, you know that?”
“That’s what all the girls say. And by ‘all the girls,’ I mean my sister.”
I laugh and take a Twizzler. It’s sweet and just chewy enough to make me feel better.
Later, when I lose another match, Coach Billy tries to cheer me up.
“You won one. Not bad for your first time out,” he says. He puts his hand up for a high five. I slap it but don’t give it much oomph. Coach peers into my face. “Where’s the firecracker I see at practice?” he asks. “You did a good job, Mickey. For your first tournament, you killed it.”
Dad’s not into fake enthusiasm. He’s used to being with Evan and Cody. They always bring home trophies. I can tell he’s disappointed when we leave the tournament early. He’s quiet as we walk out of the building.
“I heard what that last kid said when he was walking off the mat,” Dad says. He pulls a ski cap over his ears. They’re puffy and messed up from wrestling in high school, and now from his jujitsu gym.
“I didn’t hear anything. What’d he say?”
“Some garbage about how the match was close because he didn’t want to hurt a girl.” Dad opens the door for me. Outside, the sun is already setting. “You wrestled with a lot of heart today, Mickey. Boys like that, they’re making excuses. They don’t want to look bad in front of their friends. It’s a guy thing.”
“I know, Dad. If I win, they say they went easy on me. If I lose, I’m not good enough to wrestle them.”
“I admit, I wasn’t sure moving you up to travel was a good idea. You’ve shown me different. You’re a winner to me.” Dad wraps an arm around my shoulders and squishes me against his side. As we get in the car, he says, “Donuts on the way home?”
“Really? Evan and Cody only get donuts when they win.”
“Can’t a dad take it easy on his only daughter?” He laughs.
This is what I wanted. Me and Dad, talking like we see each other every day.