Wrestling Sturbridge by Rich Wallace

Author:Rich Wallace [Wallace, Rich]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-56128-2
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2011-08-24T04:00:00+00:00

I go with Mom and Dad and Grandma to the 5:00 P.M. service on Christmas day. I stopped at Kim’s house for a few minutes just before. She gave me a tape of her psych-up music. I got her a ceramic whale.

So we’re driving to the church and Mom asks me about her. “I guess you two really like each other?” she says.

“I guess.” I’m not exactly sure. I mean I like her fine, but nothing seems to be happening.

“Seems like a nice girl,” says Dad, who met her after the last home match.

Grandma snorts. “I hope she knows how to keep her legs crossed,” she says, just oozing with Christmas spirit.

Me and Mom and Dad just look at each other and roll our eyes. We’ve reached the church. Jerry Franken and his wife are the greeters. His wife winks at me and smiles a big toothy smile. Jerry gives me a light punch on the arm. “We knocked off some big boys yesterday, huh?”

“We’re number one,” I say, kind of ironically, I think. It’s hard to be bothered by this guy.

“See you Tuesday?” he asks.

“Sure.” School’s closed this week. We’re putting on a clinic at the Y for little kids.

We sit in a pew and wait. I check my watch and it says 5:06, and I can see we’re in for high comedy again. Reverend Fletcher and the wimpy youth minister, Paul Long, will show up in about three minutes, bursting through the doors singing “Joy to the World” at the top of their lungs. They’ll be just so surprised to see the church full of people, having completely forgotten that they’d scheduled a service for this afternoon. “We were out caroling,” Fletcher will say, removing a red-and-white striped scarf.

“Did we schedule a service?” Paul will say, looking at a little girl in the front row. She’ll laugh and say yes. He’ll turn to the Reverend in surprise, and they’ll say in spontaneous unison, “Well, then let’s have a service.”

Maybe you can sense that they’ve done this before.

I hear them coming up the steps. They’re singing “Hark the Herald Angels …”

Get me out of here.

Things that I’ve mastered:

talking to myself

staring down an opponent

not getting pinned

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