I love winter break. I love keeping my eyes closed and listening to the sounds of the house. There’s no school, no tournament, no reason to get up.
I hear Mom feeding Grover breakfast. His nails skitter on the kitchen tiles. He snorts as he swallows his food. The coffeepot gurgles.
Through my eyelids, I can tell the light is changing from sunrise to full-on morning. Today, there are no wrestling bags or field hockey sticks to pack. No lunches or jugs of water to get ready. No sweat-stinking uniforms or singlets we forgot to wash.
I wander downstairs, following the scent of pancakes. Grover snuffles over and gives me good-morning licks. Mom is at the stove. She turns to smile at me. “Morning.”
“You’re making pancakes. I’m happy,” I say, wrapping my arms around her middle.
“Because you slept.”
“Because pancakes.” I pull the comics out of the newspaper. Watching Mom do normal parent stuff—cooking a hot breakfast instead of getting up early to help me pack—I wonder what our family would be like if Dalia and I didn’t do sports all the time. Maybe we’d take more walks down to the frog pond together, or play card games like Uno every Saturday night, or start inviting people for Shabbat dinner again.
“The sun feels nice,” I say, looking out the back door.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Wrestlers are like vampires. If we go in the sun, we shrivel up and lose all our strength.”
“And the drinking-blood thing?” Mom flips a pancake.
I don’t want to think about that. “I’m writing a poem for my mythology project. It’s just a draft.” If I still like it by the end of break, I’m going to show my poem to Mr. Van.
Mom puts a stack of pancakes in front of me. “What are you up to today?”
“Dalia said she’d help me pick out a Hanukkah present for Evan.”
Mom’s eyebrows shoot up like twin rockets.
“I know he’s not Jewish, but he took me out for ice cream for my birthday, remember? I owe him one.”
It happened before school started. Dalia thought I was hijacking their date, but Evan said he couldn’t enjoy eating ice cream if they left me home on my birthday. He bought enough for my parents and insisted we bring it back to the house. Mom called it an impromptu party. When the ice cream was gone, Evan pulled me into the family room, grabbed me behind the leg with his scruffy red head in my side, and lifted me into a fireman’s carry. Grover got so excited, he actually woofed.
“No wrestling in the house,” Mom said. “Grover doesn’t like it.” But she was laughing.
After breakfast, my sister and I sit in Abba’s basement office. We argue over who gets the leather desk chair and who sits in the kiddie chair from Dalia’s old tea party table. It isn’t that I’m afraid of her. I could take Dalia in a fight. But she has me beat when it comes to stubbornness. If I insist on having the good chair, Dalia will leave me to pick Evan’s present by myself.
We used to get along better, even after she started field hockey. Then one day, when I’d been wrestling for a while, she was chasing me in the backyard, tickling me. I told her to stop, but she wouldn’t. I turned around so fast, she didn’t know she was supposed to get out of my way. I shot a foot behind her ankle, a perfect wrestling trip. Dalia toppled straight back like a falling tree. Her head hit the ground. Not very hard, but Dalia didn’t talk to me for three days, not until Abba made her say she forgave me. I don’t think she ever trusted me after that.
I pull the kiddie chair closer and sit on my knees so I can see the screen. Dalia scrolls through wrestling T-shirts.
“What are you getting Evan?” I ask.
“None of your business.”
“It’s just a question.”
Dalia sighs. “Look. I’m glad you and Evan are friendly, but he’s my boyfriend. Some things between us are private.”
My ears feel like they’re on fire. I wish I still had my long hair to cover them. “Forget it,” I say. “I’ll ask Mom to take me to the mall.”
Dalia rolls her eyes. “You want to get Evan something he likes, don’t you? Mom will talk you into a self-help book, Surviving Your First Year of College, something she thinks is useful.”
I shrug. “I guess.”
“What about this one?”
She points to a shirt on the screen. It’s light gray, with dark red writing. “Tell me what you see when your face hits the mat,” I read. “Sounds brutal.”
“That’s why he’ll like it. He’s always talking about the rush he gets when he knows he’s got a kid beat.”
“He is?” My legs are cramping. I catch myself from falling off the chair.
Dalia sighs again but gives me a hand up. “Evan says he can feel it when his opponent gives up. It’s like in field hockey, when I see a lane open up for a breakaway.” Dalia glances at her pinging cell phone. I’d better pick a shirt before she disappears.
“You’re sure he’ll like it?”
“I know he will, Lev. Honestly, he’d like anything from you. Evan likes being your hero.”
But when I read the shirt, I hear Spence’s voice saying, I’m going to crush you. Evan’s not like that, talking smack and messing with people’s heads before a match. Coach says we have to have the killer instinct, to dominate our opponents on the mat, but we’re also supposed to protect them. When we practice lifts, Coach reminds us it’s our job to make sure the other guy lands safely on the mat.
“Sure,” I tell Dalia. “That one.” But I can’t shake the thought of Josh covering his bleeding mouth.
Over winter break, Gladiators practice is optional. My parents are having a date night, so Dalia drives me. I can tell she’s mad because she doesn’t turn on her music when we get in the car. She’s always mad lately.
A couple of days ago, Dalia tried to skip out on the first night of Hanukkah. I was like, “Dalia, presents,” and she told me to grow up.
She wanted to go to a movie with some girls from her club team. When Abba said no, we were celebrating Hanukkah as a family, Dalia threw a fit.
“Latkes are disgusting,” she said. “My hair reeks of oil and onions for days.”
Now, as she turns the car out of our neighborhood, I ask, “Do you like field hockey more than you like us?”
She keeps her eyes on the road. “What are you talking about?”
The other night, when I lit the menorah with Mom and Abba, Dalia sat at the table with her arms crossed and her lips in a tight line. Her eyes looked like she wanted to shoot lasers into the empty air.
“It was weird saying the Shehecheyanu without you,” I tell her. “We always say the first-night prayer together.”
“You’re too young to understand,” she says. It’s one of her favorite sayings, but this time, maybe because we’re alone in the car, she explains. “When I started high school, being on the field hockey team made everything better. I had friends before classes started. Upperclassmen from the team looked out for me.” She slows the car at a red light and turns to look at me. “You’ll see when you wrestle in high school.”
“What if I decide not to?”
It’s the first time I’m saying the thought out loud. Right away, I want to take it back. I’m a wrestler. I’ve been a wrestler since I was seven years old.
“Why would you quit?” Dalia asks. “Evan says you’re really good.”
“He does?”
“All the summer camps you’ve done, moving up to the travel team. It’s all prep for high school. That’s when the real competition starts.”
“Coach Billy says that too.”
The light changes. The car is quiet and I think Dalia’s done talking to me until she asks, “Don’t you like wrestling anymore?”
“I like practice—drilling with my friends. I like the kids on the team.” I like Mickey. She’s a good partner, even if she is a noob. But ever since Josh and I knocked into each other at practice, live wrestling isn’t fun.
“It’s not that kid from the Eagles, is it?” she asks. “Don’t let him mess with you. Evan says he’s still giving Mickey a hard time.”
In all the tournaments we’ve gone to this season, if Nick’s there, he finds a way to avoid wrestling Mickey. Sometimes I sit in the stands and watch her matches. The way kids and parents talk about her is changing. Since the first couple of competitions, she’s been getting better, winning more close matches. People are impressed. Strangers cheer for her, because she’s a girl and she’s good. Coach says Mickey’s going to place at a tournament any day now.
A tow truck passes. Its flashing yellow lights make Dalia’s face look almost soft.
“I thought you wanted to make States,” she says.
“What if I don’t qualify again this year? How am I going to be a state champ like Evan?”
Maybe she doesn’t know what it’s like, being a boy in middle school, always trying to measure up to the other guys who brag about football and lacrosse, who’d rather get the girls to flirt with them than get good grades.
“Careful what you wish for,” Dalia says. Does she try to sound like a parent, or does it just come naturally for older sisters?
“What do you mean?”
“Evan made state champ in eighth grade, and he’s been trying to live up to himself ever since, trying to prove he’s still the best. I think it makes him unhappy.”
I don’t get it. How could being state champ make anyone unhappy?
“You’re eleven, Lev. You’ve got plenty of time to make it to the state tournament. If you don’t earn a spot this year, you’ll keep trying.”
Dalia pulls up to the back door of the school where we practice. Instead of driving away, she rolls down the window. “Stop worrying so much. Have fun. Wrestle hard.” She smiles. It’s the second time this week my sister has smiled at me.