I forget all about the conversation at sparring because the gym is packed and sweat is pouring off us. Nobody can think of anything but getting a good few rounds in. Kru is in a good mood today, so we’re working on spinning elbows and Superman punches—the flying ones. This is the flashy stuff that you don’t pull out in fights. You only do these if you get hired to do stunts on a movie set or something. Can’t spin my elbow for shit, but I get some nice height on my Superman.
Soon we’re dizzy and airborne.
It’s all going to our head. Jason, the guy I beat at the demo, is terrible at Supermans—
Supermen?
—but I think he’s having the best time out of us all. I’m even smiling, which I haven’t done since the night Dad died. I’m smiling so much I see other people doing it, too, and it doesn’t go away, this feeling, until I get home.
My gear is so disgusting that I throw it all in the washing machine as soon as I walk in the door. There, next to the washer, I look at the sliding back door. Right. A couple days after Dad died, Columbus told me it was broken. The door blocks he put there are still in place, though. I think they work just fine to keep anyone from getting in, but we should probably fix it.
“Ma?” I say, coming up the stairs. “We need a new latch for the back door.”
“What?” she calls from the kitchen. Her hair is piled high on her head and she’s zoning out at the kitchen table, looking like she’s not even in the same world.
“The back door. A couple days after Dad died Columbus told me it was broken but I forgot to tell you. Sorry. Columbus put in door blocks but we probably need a new lock.”
She blinks at me until what I’m saying registers, even though it’s a pretty basic thing. Broken. Back door. New lock. Not complicated.
But a whole heap of emotions flit across her face. Maybe it was the easy way I brought up Dad’s death. I should have found a different way to put it. “Did you see the door blocks Columbus put in, Ma?”
“No, Trisha. What a question. If I knew, I would have known the door was broken and asked you to help me fix it,” she says, yawning. “Go to the hardware store tomorrow after school, get a new lock and we’ll put it in.”
“I wonder how long it’s been like that, though. I haven’t been in the basement since the last time I washed my gear, which was the day before Dad died. And the lock definitely worked then.”
“Is that so?”
“So it must have broken sometime between just before he died and when Columbus saw it a couple days later.” “Alright, Nancy Drew, will you please stop with this? I just asked you to get a new lock, okay?”
I flinch. I mean, all I’m trying to do is make a point. “Okay. Can I have some money for the lock?”
She passes over her purse and doesn’t even seem to notice how much I’m taking. So I pocket a little extra, because I’m strapped. And I’m gonna pay it back eventually. It’s not like she doesn’t know where I live.
She goes to bed with a glass of water and two extra-strength painkillers and I do my homework in the living room.
I go downstairs to do some laundry. And that brings me back to what happened with the lock on our back door. If I didn’t break it, and Ma sure seemed to be oblivious, who did? It’s not like it broke itself.
Did someone try to break in here or something?
I can’t think about this now. Ma doesn’t want me to and none of it makes sense, anyway.
After homework and laundry, I watch playback of my first fight with the Brazilian girl from Buffalo. I’m trying to learn from my mistakes but all I can see is how much damage she inflicts. She’s a lighter shade of brown than me and moves so fast when she’s of a mind to do it that she’s just a beige streak of motion. But I’m stronger. You could see it from the jump. I could have stopped her at any point. She’s fast, but I’m letting her catch me. In the video I look tired, but not as tired as I feel these days.
Why am I so run down all the time now?
I bet I just need to be faster. Yeah, that’s it exactly.
“Kru,” I say, the next day. “I need some speed training.” I came to the gym right after school, almost bursting with this insight. I couldn’t sit still in economics and narrowly avoided being handed detention for trying to get away early, but important things like speed training can’t wait.
He looks at me for a moment and then takes me into his back office where we set up a schedule. Amanda sticks her head in to say something and he motions her inside. “I’m starting you girls on speed training, all of you.”
I can’t keep the disappointment off my face. Amanda can’t stop grinning, the bitch. Soon Noor will get in on this and I’ll have to share him with someone else.
But Noor is the least of my problems because two days later Imelda Isaacs shows up and things get from bad to worse.
* * *
Some people might not like to hear this, but it’s a common myth in Scarborough, the east end of Toronto, where I live, that white girls are easier than every other kind of girl around—and there are lots of different kinds of girls, because it’s Scarborough and you can’t throw a stone without hitting someone from a country you’ve never even heard of before. Even though it’s not true (I’ve personally seen plenty of skanks of both the male and female variety in every colour of the rainbow), the myth exists. I mean, I thought everyone knew about it, but apparently nobody ever told Imelda Isaacs, the new girl at the gym. Imelda’s a ginger so pale that her eyelashes are invisible. All you see of her eyes are wide open blue. She has a kind of Noor effect because everyone who spars with her has to stop themselves from drowning in them.
Everyone around her is spun, even me, and I can’t hate her even though I want to because she’s so much better than me.
“How did you get so good?” I ask her.
“Oh, I used to do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, so I’m used to really intense training,” she says, and she’s smiling for no reason at all because that’s the kind of person she is and we’re all finding it impossible to hate on her for it.
Now everyone wants some BJJ classes at the gym and everyone is asking Imelda for tips on how to improve their ground game. Kru is a staunch Muay Thai guy, but even he sees a financial opportunity when one slaps him with a speed bag. So we’re doing BJJ now, recreationally, and some idiot tells Imelda the whole white chicks are easier thing and she knocks his ass straight into a wall of mirrors, which is understandable but unfortunate. The mirror cracks, sending the whole thing crashing down. Shattering into a thousand little pieces. There’s glass everywhere and the whole gym is a lawsuit waiting to happen…I mean, if this wasn’t Kru’s gym. Nobody would ever sue Kru. Wouldn’t even dare.