The Hilltop by Assaf Gavron

Ofir (Yotam closed his tally at seventeen dead black beetles), I’m standing on the edge and looking at Eyal, his friends are looking at me and smiling, but I am looking directly at him, and he is no longer smiling. I don’t look down at the green water but straight ahead, whoosh, an arc, an easy and simple dive into the water, and emerge from thewater with my hair dripping, Yotam and Ofir are lying down on their stomachs on the speckled tiles in the sunshine, but I want another go and head straight back to the steps of the diving board, reach the top, and walk slowly to the edge. He and his friends are now jumping off the small board nearby, I pretend not to look, but check out the scene out of the corner of my eye, and see him say something and look at me and laugh, and his friends laugh, too, he probably said “Jaws” or something else ingenious, I wait, watching from the corner of my eye, waiting for him to jump into the water, if you jump from the big board to the left, you can land in the area of the small one, there’s the boom-boom-boom of the basketballs and the eek-eek-eek of the screeches, and I take a few steps back to gain some momentum, and, again out of the corner of my eye, I see Eyal take his jump, and while he is still in the air, I make my dash and jump down on top of him, right on him, take that, brave man. I hear nothing while I’m in the air, no boom and no eek. I hear only the air in my ears and feel only the sun on my back, and the water that is still dripping from my previous dive. I’m in the air, my body folded over, my legs stretched forward, and I land on his head. I’ll show you what Jaws is all about, ha-ha, big hero, very funny. Jaws? Take that, take a bite from Jaws, here I come, you worthless prick, enjoy second grade.

The Falcon
    G abi took to walking more and more on his own to the mountain that lay beyond the perimeter road, beyond the fence, beyond the plum orchards. That was many years before his nighttime hours of solitude on distant hilltops, before he knew that solitude was a supreme virtue, and the greatest of them all. Back then, there were other reasons. Roni had finally reached the age at which the four-year gap between them could no longer be bridged. Gone were the years in which Roni was the big brother who watched out for his smaller self, who took him into his bed, who drew strength from his all-powerful abilities in relation to him—all-powerful in speech, all-powerful in comprehension, all-powerful in the strength of his muscles that allowed him to imposehis will unchallenged. And thus Gabi remained a boy, with Roni, in his own eyes at least, already a small man, slowly but surely falling hopelessly and deeply in love for the first time. Yifat, from a neighboring kibbutz, was in the same year at the regional school, and he’d known her since first grade, but in tenth grade, they suddenly hooked up and stayed that way. Yifat’s roommate on the kibbutz spent most her time with her soldier boyfriend in Haifa, so Roni and Yifat would go back to her room after school, and after dinner they’d go to the pub and drink beer and play darts with the volunteers, and they went to a Tislam concert in kibbutz Ayelet Hashahar, and to a HaGashash HaHiver show at Kfar Blum, and a Shlomo Artzi concert at Tzemach, and one by the Bootleg Beatles at the kibbutz pub, and to the home games of the Galil Elyon basketball team with its deadly sharpshooter, Brad Leaf (Roni, meanwhile, was no longer an active player, much to the dismay of Baruch Shani and his other fans on the kibbutz). Yifat visited their kibbutz two or three times, but Roni didn’t introduce her to his little brother, or to Mom Gila and Dad Yossi.
    They, too, were another reason for his frequent hikes to the mountain. Mom Gila and Dad Yossi’s room wasn’t a home. They still lived there, shared a bed, went together to the dining hall, but Gabi knew they hardly spoke to one