The Harder We Fall

by Mina V. Esguerra

  The Harder We Fall

  Mina V. Esguerra

  Table of Contents

  The Harder We Fall

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  I wasn’t sure if it was time to call security, the police, the hospital, somebody.

  Sure I’d led a relatively sheltered life, and going to college at Addison Hill would only seem like an extension of that comfort instead of a crash course in the real world. But I had seen a riot before. An actual brawl. Inebriated guys at each other’s throats and limbs, before my eyes, and it wasn’t pretty.

  It kind of looked like what was happening on the field right now.

  I stepped onto the soccer field expecting it to be just grass and dirt at this hour; I was told it usually was, on Monday afternoons anyway. I went this way so I could get establishing shots in case I needed them, before the light went. But the field wasn’t empty. I found that out as soon as I made it to the grass, and someone sprinted ahead, past me, not so near but near enough. He turned my way, and I smiled at him, his shock of dark hair, his straining biceps, his powerful legs. I also waved.

  That wave part I didn’t mean to do, but it was like my arm was pulled up by unseen forces, the same ones that made my insides churn at the idea that I had his attention somehow. My brain took over and I pulled my hand back before anyone else could see it. The hesitation was enough time for one of the four or six or eight other guys behind him to grab his upper legs and knock him off his sure footing. The four or six or eight other guys made sure he was flat on the ground in no time later.

  “Oh God,” I said.

  A split second later and I heard the loud boom of guy laughter,a sign that they weren’t really killing each other. I shook my head and reached for my camera. They picked themselves up from the ground, tracking mud up to the round collars of their shirts, and started it all over again.

  I shook my head. This was rugby, apparently.

  ***

  The text message was short: Daria, meeting at Salty’s office at 4 pm. Internship contest.

  I stared at it longer than I needed to. All the words made sense to me, except for “contest,” but as I stood there thinking instead of talking, it all fell into place.

  It was another way of messing with me. Life did that, constantly, since I chose to go to Addison Hill in California instead of somewhere east. (The plane ride from LA to San Francisco was enough distance, I thought.) Since I chose broadcast communication as my major. Since my dad’s own career took off and various shows he had produced became respectable cable and web hits, and suddenly being related to him had torched my credibility in anything media-related.

  But he told me that this would happen. I told him that I would be ready to jump through hoops and over hurdles. I’d do it my way, with as little help from him as possible.

  This contest, yet another hoop.

  Last week, when I passed the last final exam ever in my life, I thought that would be the end of the unnecessary tests. I knew I had it in the bag, was cleared for graduation, and these final weeks would just be paperwork. Packing up. Looking for a graduation outfit, wondering where to take my dad to dinner after the ceremony. Assuming the best case scenario, I thought I would also be shaking the hand of the representative of the UNICEF-funded project team, having been awarded the only internship slot left for an American in their documentary crew.

  I was so sure I’d get it. I met the right grade point average. I attended the seminars on malnutrition and media. I did the extra credit work in the three public grade schools throughout two semesters, giving up a spring break for it. No one else who submitted an application did all of that. No one else proved more adept at communicating the message of ending child hunger, at least in this university of Hollywood wannabes.

  Department of Communication and Media chair Jordana Salt wasn't a Hollywood wannabe, to be fair. She was an editor-at-large for a major news website, and also a consulting producer for their video division, the same one she used to head until she took off and decided to teach instead. She was a kindred spirit of sorts; an older, slightly more jaded, and more theatrically inclined version of me. When she and I figured that out though, it made her a bit more careful, more self-conscious about ever appearing to favor me in any way. I would have considered her a mentor if she hadn't spent all our time together keeping me at a distance.

  But I didn't need a mentor. I already had one.

  I was not the only person to get the note. Eight other people were in Salty's office, presumably everyone who had applied for the privilege to work three months in Europe and Asia. I recognized only two of them from the malnutrition seminar, and then there was Kyle Lefferts.

  Ugh, Kyle Lefferts. Always the beneficiary of Salty's attempts not to favor me. His college career was quite stellar too, with half his accomplishments earned by trailing me and catching breaks I got disqualified for.

  Salty's office was set up like a viewing party at all times: rugs, bean bags, cozy chairs facing an entertainment center. When it was serious meeting time, she would sit in front of the flatscreen and be the focal point of the room.

  “You're late, DK,” Kyle said, casually, and sometimes I wondered if he believed we were friends.“We picked topics without you.”

  “What?” I couldn't have been late—but that was obviously my fault for not coming in early and preventing shenanigans. “What happened?”

  Salty nodded toward the empty seat that she expected me to occupy. “Because of the great interest in the single internship slot, the project team for the documentary asked if a contest could be held instead, with the winner to be chosen by a panel that will include me, the film producer, and the funding agency.”

  They had gone over this already, obviously, and it was being recapped for my benefit. The seat was pink plastic, strangely cold under me. “Why are there topics?”

  A small straw hat, upside down, was handed to me by some random person to my left.

  “I wrote down one topic per internship applicant. Stuff I haven’t seen you cover in your student film projects,” Salty explained,“so you all don’t end up recycling footage.”

  First of all, the lazy bum who’d recycle footage to win a spot into a film crew bent on ending child hunger should be yelled out of the competition, not coddled by having him pull a “new topic” out of a hat. I peeked in and saw a folded piece of paper inside. “So this is mine?”

  ***

  There were a few more details discussed. Video had to be ten minutes max. Digital. Three weeks to do it, which was practically all the time we had left before graduation. All the video topics were things “of interest within the campus” so no extra resources were needed. Some people asked questions, and I inferred from those what their topics were. Someone needed access to the library’s historical fiction archive. Someone said it was the first time he’d learned that there was an actual person named Addison Hill; he’d thought the school was named after the hill you had to drive up if you came in from the city. I waited until everyone else filed out of Salty’s office before even opening my piece of paper, and yes, it said rugby.

  Salty had moved to her desk and was watching me absorb this information, amused. “Do you know what it is, Daria?�
�

  Well yeah I did. I wasn’t that sports-deficient. “I didn’t realize we had a rugby team.”

  She nodded. “They’re considered a non-varsity club team and don’t get enough attention. But we do have one.”

  Why did I hang back and wait until she was alone? What was I going to say? Are you done punishing me for being so much like you?

  “Anything else, Daria?”

  “I…” I sighed. “I didn’t realize there would be a contest.”

  Salty knew what I meant. She nodded and sat down. “I couldn’t have just given it to you. You know that.”

  “But I did everything I could to earn it. I knew about this since sophomore year. I specifically asked what I could do to be the best candidate and I did it. Everything.”

  Salty’s eyes darted in a way that reminded me of how a mom would have done it. Which was strange because Salty looked nothing like my mother, was tall and blond and stiff in places where my mom had been smaller, darker, softer.

  Or that was a child’s memory talking. My mother passed away when I was very young. The pictures confirmed though that apart from the dark hair, which I'd kept long like she did, and the eyes, I was growing up to look more like my dad and his side of the family. At twenty-two I was already five inches taller than she had been (“almost five one”). I held my own on the jogging path, but that was the extent of my workout. My dad's casting agents said I had “beautiful,”“exotic” eyes but they weren't looking for eyes; I'd get easy money and a job if I dropped a few inches everywhere. They were right about my pretty eyes, and the rest was horseshit.

  “Daria,” she said, “you are, no doubt, one of the best students I’ve had.”

  This is not going to end well.

  “But,” Salty continued, “I also want the others to know that they have a shot at things. I don’t want people to roll over and give up because they know you’re up for something.”

  That didn’t stop people like Kyle, who wised up on Salty’s actions early on.

  “What are you worried about?” Salty said. “If you’re the best, then you’ll win this. Your summer plans don’t have to change.”

  She was right, though.

  “I didn’t think I would be working right before grad,” was my lame retort.

  Salty smiled slyly. “Have you seen the rugby players, Daria? You obviously don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Chapter 2

  Eventually I backed up and stepped on a row of bleachers so I could get a little elevation and film from a safe distance. When I first developed a love for this kind of storytelling, cameras were much larger. Today I was wrapping my palm around a digital video camera so small that I kept it on a chain around my neck so it wouldn’t accidentally get knocked out of my hand by a gentle breeze. When I zoomed into the guys, all I could see were muddy legs connected to muddy bodies. I pulled back and wondered a bit where that specific guy was, the one I waved at. He was wearing a yellow shirt when I first saw him, but at least three other guys were too, and also the dirt was invalidating even that.

  I didn’t follow sports. I found this soccer field only after asking two different people where it was, and I had spent four years at this school. Salty wasn’t kidding about the recycling footage thing. I shot so many videos per semester on a variety of subjects and couldn’t think of a time when I was here to capture a game or a crowd shot.

  The same instincts were needed anyway, regardless of what I was filming. Establish the setting. Get group shots. Get interviews. Talk to enough people. Let the heart of the piece come out. Edit around that pulsing heart, short of exploiting it.

  Surely there was a pulsing heart inside of this stinking pile of guys on the ground. Massive, sweating, dirty, powerful, virile pile of...what?

  My eye and my camera were trained somewhere else, so I didn’t see it, but to the right side of my LCD screen two guys slammed into each other, the thud of it flat and loud enough for me to know that it was worse than a regular thud. There was a tangle of arms and legs, a fall, another guy falling.

  “Monk’s down!” someone yelled. “Monk’s out!”

  The guys stopped and converged onto the one who was still on the ground. I stopped filming. A minute later and one of them was limping toward the bleachers, toward me, while the rest continued on like no one had almost been crushed.

  Sometimes I reviewed life as if I were in my own editing bay. You know when a guy is walking toward you and it’s like he’s walking in slow motion?

  Except he was injured, and limping, and actually walking slowly. As he inched closer I recognized him, him again, the guy I waved at, underneath the grime and the streak of mud that covered half the right side of his face. It sure wasn’t his day. He had seemed like a wall of a guy when he had brushed past me earlier but compared to everyone else, wasn’t the beefiest of the bunch. I mean he was big, but not a wall. That was wrong of me. I mean, he was probably hard as a wall, because he looked like—maybe I shouldn’t say hard—

  “What’s that for?” he said, and I realized that the slow-motion walking had stopped and he was actually within speaking distance.

  He was pointing to the camera.

  “Oh this. Video project. I’m with Jordana Salt’s class. Are you the rugby team?”

  He shrugged, and he winced, both actions obviously giving him pain. “I used to be. Alumni. Holy fuck.”

  “Do you...is there a paramedic when you have games?”

  With some difficulty he bent from the waist, and reached for a bag that had been on the bottom row of bleacher seats. I blinked myself out of stupid mode and skipped down a few rows to help him get it.

  “No paramedic,” he said. “And this isn’t a game...the guys are just having fun.”

  Fun. Like how bears roll around in...whatever bears rolled around in. I kept that thought to myself and instead grabbed the bag out of his hands to unzip it, because it seemed like he couldn’t. “What do you need?”

  “The, uh, that one. Blue bottle. And the towel.”

  A plastic sports bottle rolled around in the bag. I pulled it out and held it up, waiting as he grunted his way out of his shirt. At first he tried to gingerly pull it up, and it looked like one grade short of agony, and then he grunted louder and powered his way through.

  I was so close to asking if he needed help. So close.

  He took the bottle and gulped down the water inside, and I had the difficult job of trying not to look at everything the neck down, and then failing, because water had started to drip from his chin and his collarbone, to the chest that was heaving with each gulp, trailing into the tight mass I’ll politely refer to as a six-pack.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  No, thank you.

  He twisted slightly so he could see his back. “Ah shit.”

  I saw it too—a nasty abrasion starting from his waist, as wide as someone’s foot, breaking skin in narrow wounds in some parts. He looked like he had been dragged over a rock. “That looks—oh God. Do you need a doctor?”

  “No.” Before I could do anything else, he had twisted the bottle cap off and had thrown half the water left onto his back, splashing a little at me.

  I leaped, instinctively holding the camera out of the way. “Hey!”

  This was when he realized through the haze of pain that I was there, and he was half clothed and wet, and I was probably looking at him like he was a steak. He smiled, and unseen forces made me smile too.

  “I’m very sorry,” he said. “My name is Nicholas. I think I need your help with something.”

  ***

  At first it was a simple job. Could I clean him up a bit, use the water and the towel to rub at the places he couldn't reach? Of course. And why not. He straddled a bench, bent over, and only the telltale twitching of those corded muscles let on that this was stinging a bit. I had no experience cleaning up wounds and apologized every time.

  His skin felt so warm.

  “No one else is concerned about you?” Not t
hat I was complaining, but his buddies didn't even call for a break.

  “Nah,” he said. “This happens a lot.”

  When the water ran out I pressed the damp towel one last time against the very edge of the injury, already clean, and even he probably figured out that I was stalling. “Do you have bandages or something?”

  “How bad is it?”

  “You probably don't want it infected.”

  “Is it bleeding?”

  “No.” The worst of the gashes looked bad, but had started to clot. “But I'm not the expert.”

  “There's a first aid kit in the bag. If it'll make you feel better.”

  Did he say that with a smirk? I didn't see it but sensed it was there, and threw one of my own toward the back of his head. Indeed there was a small bag in there with Band-Aids that looked tiny and inadequate when held up against the expanse of his back...but as cover-up for the wounds, they'd do.

  “I avoided majoring in investigative journalism because of this,” I couldn’t help but say, because the silence was stretching out for too long. “But blood keeps pulling me back in.”

  He laughed a little, making his back muscles ripple and I had to pause. “Should I apologize?”

  “Oh no, not all. I guess I can’t help it if my destiny is this.”

  “You’re doing fine.”

  “Am I?”

  “You have very talented hands.”

  Oh seriously. He couldn’t possibly…

  “Good strategy,” I said, “kissing up to the person who has her hands on your blood and guts.”

  “I’m not kidding. I bet you’d be a better full-back than Wilson.”

  “I’m sorry for Wilson, but thank you.”

  “What were you supposed to be doing? Before my injury rudely interrupted you?”

  But this wasn’t a rude interruption at all, I thought. If anything it would be my Monday highlight. “I thought I’d be reading up on travel guides to Switzerland, Turkey, maybe Vietnam this week, to be honest. And maybe extra light reading on malnutrition and school food programs.”