THERE WAS A RHYTHM IN my fists.
Pop pop
It told a story.
Pop pop
Everybody thought they knew the story. They’d seen it before. He’ll get over it. It’s a phase. Give him space. But they only knew fragments. They didn’t want to hear the rest….
Oh, you do?
Hmm.
Well, what if I told you that I went to war over my dead best friend’s glowing journal? Or that I battled monsters big and small, with powers I didn’t know I had, with gods I didn’t know existed. Would you believe me?
Nah, you wouldn’t. You got your own problems. You don’t wanna hear about my struggles. Right?
Oh, you do? Well, I gotta warn you, it’s a wild ride, so buckle up, champ.
Let me give you some truth, and I hope it returns back to me.
“Tristan! They’re here.”
Pop
Mom’s shout interrupted my groove. I stopped pummeling the small punching bag Dad had installed in my room and loosened the straps on my boxing gloves with my teeth. The gloves fell on the bed, and I dropped down next to them. Eddie’s journal sat on my tiny desk in the opposite corner. Still glowing. Still unopened since his mother had given it to me after the funeral two weeks ago.
My room was so small I could’ve reached out and grabbed the leather book, but that would mean dealing with it, and who deals with their problems by choice?
Pffft. Not me.
“Tristan Strong!” my dad yelled from down the hall.
I hated that name.
It made me appear to be something I’m not. My name should’ve been Tristan Coward, or Tristan Failure, or Tristan Fake. Maybe Tristan How-Could-You-Lose-Your-First-Boxing-Match.
Anything but Tristan Strong.
Mom’s footsteps echoed through our tiny apartment, and then soft knocking sounded on my door. “Tristan, baby, did you hear me?”
I cleared my throat. “Yeah, I’m coming.”
The door opened and Mom peeked in. She was still wearing the TEAM STRONG T-shirt from last night. I don’t think any of us had gotten much sleep after we came back from my first bout. I stayed up nursing my pride, the only thing I really injured. My little fan club—Dad, Mom, and my grandparents on Dad’s side—had tried to cheer me up, but I could see the disappointment written on everyone’s faces, so I pretended to go to bed while they held whispered discussions into the wee hours of the morning. And now it was dawn, time to get this show on the road.
Mom’s eyes took in the organized chaos of my room and crinkled when they landed on me. She crossed the floor in two steps—avoiding yesterday’s untouched dinner in the process—and sat down on the mattress. “It’s only for a month,” she said, not even playacting that she didn’t know what was wrong.
“I know.”
“It’ll be good for you to get away.”
“I know.”
She rubbed my head, then pulled me into a hug. “The grief counselor said it would be good to get a change of scenery. Some fresh air, work around the farm. Who knows, maybe you’ll find out you were meant to work the land.”
I shrugged. The only thing I was sure of was that I wasn’t meant to be a boxer, despite what Dad and Granddad thought.
I pulled free of Mom’s hug, stood, grabbed my duffel bag, and headed out to start my month of exile.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Mom asked.
I turned and she held Eddie’s journal out to me. Her hand and wrist were bathed in the emerald-green glow that was coming from the cover. But, like everyone else I’d shown the journal to, she didn’t notice any strange light.
Mom mistook my confused frown for apprehension as she slipped the book into my bag. “He wanted you to have it, Tristan. I know it’s tough, but…try to read it when you can, okay?”
I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I nodded and headed to the front door.
The decision to ship me to Granddad and Nana Strong’s farm down in Alabama had been made without my input. Typical. My parents had talked about it a few times before, but after Eddie’s death, and my third school fight in the final two weeks before summer break, well, I guess the time was right.
At least I’d held my own in those school fights. Unlike in the ring last night.
It was just my luck that my grandfather had been there to witness my humiliation.
“You outweighed that other kid by seven pounds!” Granddad had said after the match, in his growling rasp of a voice. “Set the family name back by a decade.”
That’s me—Tristan Disappointment.
Son of Alvin “Wreckin’ Ball” Strong, the best middleweight boxer to come out of Chicago in nearly twenty years. I had Dad’s height and Granddad’s chin, and boxing was supposed to run in my veins. I’d worn Granddad’s old trunks, and Dad had worked my corner. The Strong legacy was expected to take another leap forward during my first match.
Instead, it got knocked flat on its butt. Twice.
“You’ll get him next time” was all Dad said, but I could tell he was let down.
And that hurt almost as much as getting punched.
An early summer heat wave greeted me with a blast of humidity as I left the apartment building with my backpack over my shoulder and my duffel bag in hand. Thick gray clouds huddled in the distance, and I added that to the list of totally not ominous things. Glowing journal? Yep. Storm on the horizon? You betcha.
Dad and Granddad stood at the curb while Nana (no one ever called her Grandma, not if you wanted to eat) knitted in the car. Dad towered over his father, but you could see the family resemblance. Deep brown skin like mine, a wide jaw, and a proud stance. I got my hair from Mom’s side of the family, thankfully, because both Strong men had identical bald spots peeking through their short afros.
“Get him in the fields, put him to work,” Granddad was saying. “That’ll put some fire in his belly.”
Dad shrugged and said nothing. To be fair, no one did much talking when Granddad was around. That old man could yak a mile a minute.
Nana saw me coming down the stairs, dropped her knitting, and rushed out of the car. “There he is! How you doin’ today, baby? Are you sore from last night?”
She gave me a hug that muffled any answer, then shooed Granddad to the side. “Get the boy’s bag, Walter. Alvin,” she said, addressing my father, “we’ve got to hit the road before that thunderstorm hits.”
Granddad looked me up and down. “Is that all you kids ever wear?”
I glanced down. Black Chuck Taylors with gray untied laces. Loose khaki cargo shorts, and an even looser gray hoodie. That hoodie went with me everywhere—it had a picture of a flexed bicep on the back in faded black ink. Call me sentimental, but it’s what I always wore when Eddie and I were hanging out. He called it the Tristan Strong uniform of choice, perfect for all occasions.
So yeah, I wear it a lot.
Nana shushed him and pulled me into another hug. “Don’t listen to him, Tristan. I can’t wait to have you back with us on the farm. You were so little last time, but them chickens you used to chase still haven’t forgotten you! I packed a lunch and even rustled up a new story or two for the ride….”
And so, just like that, with a clap on the shoulder from Dad and a hug from Mom, I was someone else’s problem for a month. Good-bye, Chicago, and all your glorious cable TV, internet, and cell phone service. I hardly knew ye.