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wearing a heavy gray sweatshirt with the hood pulled up, and there’s only one other car at the pumps. But she’s at that car, and it’ll look pretty odd if I pull up behind her and wait. There’s a fuzzy older guy standing on the open side, and I know he’ll be filling my car if I pull over there. I consider driving up the road a mile or so and coming back when she’s free, but I’ve already turned into the station so I just say the hell with it and go to the other side.
    I roll down the window and tell the guy to give me ten regular, and at least I have a good look at the girl. The other car is already pulling away, and if I’d been thirty seconds later I could be over there now, talking to her. She doesn’t look my way, standing there counting bills.
    She steps over to the back of my car to talk to the older guy, who runs the place, and I can see her from mid-thigh up to neck level in my side-view mirror. Miraculously, the phone starts ringing inside the station, and the guy rushes over to get it. “He’s getting ten,” he yells to the girl, which means she’ll be completing the transaction. I get a surge of adrenaline, like when they call you onto the mat for a match.
    She takes the pump out and hangs it up and screws the gas cap back in place. “Okay,” she says with a really sweet smile, and I hand her the ten. I can smell gasoline on her hands. Shetakes the bills out of her pocket and folds the ten around the wad.
    “How’s business tonight?” I say, surprising even myself.
    She tilts her head and brushes some stray hair back into her hood. “Regular,” she says.
    “Cold,” I say.
    “Not too bad,” she says. “We’re outta here in ten minutes.”
    “Yeah,” I say. I start the engine.
    “ ’Night,” she says and turns to a guy in a pickup truck who’s pulled up on the other side. I wave to her.
    I turn back onto 6 and turn up the volume on the radio, but I keep the window open and lean my elbow out. “Wooooo,” I say, pretty loud, feeling really good all of a sudden. Feeling pumped up. Thinking about Al.
    Flexibility is one thing, balance is another, and strength and instinct are essential. But desire is something you can’t place a value on. Desire can overcome all those other things, can turn a sheep into a tiger. Loosen up, I tell myself. Want it. Want it more than he does.
    I’m gonna kick his butt on Monday. And I’m gonna come back and talk to this girl again.

My best matches:
    won final of East Pocono JV Tournament by pin
    freshman year, pinned guy from Wharton in 18 seconds
    last year, lost wrestle-off to Al, 9–4
    My worst:
    got pinned in first period vs. Laurelton last year
    puked on mat after winning a match two years ago
    lost first-ever varsity match, 13–3
    Not sure:
    church league soccer game last month—hit that pompous, hypocritical jerk with a couple of good ones before they dragged us apart, thought I’d be going to jail

CHAPTER 5
    Sunday afternoons my father’s mother comes over for dinner and to watch “Pocono Polka” at six. She doesn’t have cable at her house.
    By six my father’s ready for cheese and beer, and the three of them sit in the living room to watch people from up the valley dance to the best polka bands around. I usually stand at the edge of the room, trying to prod myself to leave but staring at the set, mesmerized as if witnessing a horrible accident: Puffy women in “Lackawanna Polka Dots” jackets dancing with their sisters, and stiff old guys in polyester bowling shirts with big guts. They televise this, I swear.
    Probably the last time my parents danced was when my aunt got married ten years ago.
    A commercial comes on, and I go out in the kitchen. The oven-stuffer chicken is still sitting on the counter, and I bend down to get a sheet of foil to cover it. My grandmother comes in and yanks a hunk off the bird and shoves it in her mouth. “Best part about a chicken is snitching some later,” she says.
    Yeah, Grandma. And it’s