Bruised

by Sarah Skilton

  The phone rings at 6 a.m. It’s Grandmaster Huan, calling from Korea, which is fourteen hours ahead. He’s been there all month for his daughter’s wedding. Mom answers and tells him I’m asleep, even though she sees me coming down the stairs when she says this.

  “Why’d you tell him I was sleeping?” I ask after she hangs up.

  She clears her throat. “He’ll be back in a week. You can talk to him in person then.”

  She says I can stay home from school, and she stays home from work again, even though I tell her she doesn’t need to. Hunter brings me my homework, but I don’t even look at it.

  Tuesday morning Hunter offers to drive me, but I’d rather walk. I forget to wear my coat, so Mom comes running out behind me.

  On the way to school I see billboards for three different movies and a video game:

  A woman in a bikini, holding a handgun behind her back

  A man kicking down a door and firing a sawed-off shotgun

  A man dropping out of a helicopter and aiming a machine gun

  Two people pointing sniper rifles off a building

  When I get to school, I have to pass the display case filled with sports trophies and team photos. Hunter’s photo is up there twice, MVP awards for baseball and lacrosse, his dimple on full display.

  The last four issues of the Glenview High Spectator are also tacked up. One of them is about my Tae Kwon Do demonstration, which was last month but feels like a million years ago now. My picture’s on the cover, an action shot. I’ve left the ground and I’m hovering in the air, my hair blown back dramatically, right leg extended, the exact instant the ball of my foot smashed through three boards. A BLACK BELT IN OUR MIDST! reads the headline.

  I cringe, barely recognizing myself. The girl in the photo looks like she could handle anything.

  The hallway fills up with faces of every color, all of us not-quite-Chicagoans living on the edge of the city. Glenview is somewhere between suburban and urban. Robberies and vandalism happen sometimes, but a shooting is still a rare event, and I hear people whispering about me—about what happened at the diner. I know it isn’t paranoia. When I look at their faces, mashing and mawing, their mouths go into slo-mo and their lips form the words “Im-o-gen” and “Did you hear?”

  When time returns to normal speed, Gretchen’s there, her hand on my shoulder. Her hand feels firm and guiding, and I wonder what it’d be like to be one of her little sisters. Better than being Hunter’s sister.

  Her hair is curled and sprayed, her makeup impeccable. Did she spend all morning using her curling iron? That’s either amazing or psycho. I haven’t dragged a comb through my hair in days.

  “I called you a hundred times this weekend,” she says in a low voice. “Why didn’t you call me back?”

  I figured she just wanted an excuse to talk to Hunter, but right now it’s obvious that’s not true, and I feel stupid. “Sorry. I didn’t call anyone back.”

  Every sentence I utter now begins with “Sorry.”

  “And why are you telling people you called the cops?” she says. “That’s not what happened.”

  Dozens of eyes find me. The bell hasn’t rung yet. I should have taken my time walking, should’ve waited till the last possible second before grabbing stuff from my locker.

  “She hid under the table,” Gretchen explains to the crowd. “It was really brave. I probably would’ve started screaming.”

  She actually thinks she’s doing me a favor.

  I close my eyes, utterly humiliated, and try to breathe.

  A hand on my shoulder. Gretchen again. I open my eyes and let her blurred face come into focus. “Are you okay?” she asks.

  Before I can answer, Hannah and DJ emerge from a different packed hallway, either coming to my rescue to lie on my behalf, without realizing they’re lying, or to join the condemnation. Either way I don’t want them to reach me. I turn my back and start digging all of my books and notebooks out of my locker, frantically gathering a pile in my arms.

  The bell rings and the crowd breaks up. I turn around and bump into Hannah.

  “What the fuh? Why’d you tell us you were in the bathroom?” she asks gently. Hannah’s brow is wrinkled in confusion, and her eyes are moony and sympathetic, ready to pull the truth out of me. Or so she thinks. Some other kids hang back, their necks straining, waiting to hear my loser explanation.

  How can I explain it was just easier? That if I’d told them anything but a lie they’d have said things I don’t want to hear, that I can’t hear, in soft, downy voices that would make me want to cry?

  DJ hugs me. “We’re just happy you’re alive. But why didn’t you tell us what really happened?”

  “Because I didn’t want to talk about it with you,” I explode. “I just wanted you guys to leave, to stop breathing down my neck! And maybe because I didn’t want to spend the next six hours analyzing why Philip didn’t kiss you, okay? I had more important things on my mind.”

  DJ looks like I slapped her, and I feel stunned as well when I turn and walk away.

  I didn’t mean to say any of those things, and I don’t understand how they poured out of me without my consent.

  First period is a freebie.

  Second period English is when it starts.

  Grant Binetti takes the seat behind me and pokes me in the back, hard, in the shoulder blade.

  When I turn around, he puts on an innocent expression like he didn’t do anything. I swallow and face front. He pokes me in the other shoulder blade, harder.

  “Knock it off,” I hiss.

  “I’m just curious,” he says to no one in particular. “What’s the point of having a black belt if you don’t do anything during a robbery?”

  There are a few guffaws and a “Damn,” and a bunch of murmurs as people consult one another. (“What’s he talking about?” “You didn’t hear?” etc.) Someone, I’ll never know who, comes to my defense. “He had a gun, asshole.”

  “It’s like one of those decoy cars,” Grant continues. “You know, where they stick a cop car by the highway but there’s no one inside? That’s probably how Gretchen felt. She thought she was safe, having a black belt with her, but she’s the one who had to call the cops.”

  I know why he’s doing this. We all know why he’s doing this. At my demo the first week of school, he heckled me from the audience, so I called him up onstage and let him make a fool of himself. Still, just because I know why he’s doing it doesn’t make his words any less true.

  “You’re right,” I whisper. “I agree with you.”

  Grant’s eyes narrow suspiciously and he has no retort, until after fifth period, when I discover a copy of the Spectator taped to my locker. In response to the headline A BLACK BELT IN OUR MIDST! someone’s written in the margins: “Liar,” “Lame,” and of course the catchall phrase, perfect for any occasion, “Bitch.”

  It hurts, but I don’t know why; the words are laughably tame compared with what I’ve been thinking about myself for the past seventy-two hours. Doesn’t Grant know there’s nothing in the world he can write or say that will make me feel worse than I already do?

  There were hints and warning signs long before this. I’m not a complete idiot; some of the stuff we learned from Grandmaster Huan was never going to be useful. It was taught only because it’d always been taught, because it was a challenging exercise, because it made sense in olden days, or because it looked cool, like Tiger Stance.

  I might be small, but I’m athletic and toned. When I’m in the groove, spinning and kicking during class, I glow; I’m a power conductor, I’m electric impulses, I look like I really could beat the crap out of people. And maybe I can; but when we spar, we have to abide by certain rules. No hitting above the neck. No fighting before you hear “Charyot” (“ready position”) and “Joon-bi” (“begin”). There’s bowing and protective padding and tapping out so the other person knows to stop.

  Real life doesn’t have a whistle and Charyot and Joon-bi and bowing and protective pa
dding and tapping out.

  Why did I think it did?

  When I get home from school, Mom and Dad have an update for me. The cashier’s out of the hospital, recovering from surgery, and the gunman’s funeral is scheduled for next week. It’ll be a private ceremony—probably because of the condition of the body.

  The cops don’t need me to come back in, at least not yet, but they dropped off some info on counseling services. Mom also got a call from Principal Simmons, who told her they have a specialist coming in part-time from another district who I can talk to during school if I want. Mom thinks it’s a good idea.

  I sort of tune her out, though, because baseball play-offs are on and Dad’s acting like himself again, hooking up the new TV (it’s a tax write-off for him, since he writes about sports). He’s sprawled on the floor like he’s repairing a car—but he can’t quite bend the right way to reach under the speakers.

  I don’t like watching him struggle like that, so I head to the kitchen for some water. When I get back, he’s sitting on the couch, tray on his lap, eating a blueberry Toaster Strudel, complete with icing. Why do we even have those in the house?

  While the national anthem plays, Dad draws a C for the Cubs on his Toaster Strudel with the icing, holding it up for me to see.

  “One day,” he says. “Just you wait.”

  “In my lifetime, hopefully,” I add. I take the other Toaster Strudel off his tray so he can’t eat both of them, and I draw a Y for the Yankees on mine. I squish the tart until something pretending it was once a blueberry oozes out. Blue and white, perfect. With my nail I draw a slash over the Y.

  “Excellent idea,” says Dad. “Voodoo.”

  Doesn’t matter who’s playing the Yanks, we always root for the other guys.

  We settle in for the game, our feet up, and I let myself relax. From my peripheral vision, Dad’s wheelchair in the corner isn’t so different from his easy chair, so for a moment everything feels familiar, the same as last year’s play-offs, before he got diagnosed with diabetes.

  But then he drops the remote and the batteries pop out, scattering under the couch.

  I can’t bear to watch him get down on the floor again and flounder around for them, so I dart down and pick them up and pop them smoothly back into place.

  ON WEDNESDAY, WHEN THE BELL RINGS AFTER FOURTH period, I stay in my chair until everyone else leaves. Mr. Donovan, my statistics teacher (yes, I’m a junior in statistics, the training bra of math), looks at me over his glasses, eyebrows raised, but doesn’t say anything.

  Crowds in the hallway make me feel claustrophobic. I just need them to shift open a bit before I make my way out there.

  I wait another couple minutes and then suck in some air and gather my nerves. I trudge through the hallway carefully, eyes down. I’ve become one of the slow movers who amble along without purpose. For the first time I can remember, there’s absolutely nowhere I want to go.

  I pass the water fountain and there’s me and Shelly, notebooks open, charts and diagrams, standing around like research assistants in a lab. Freshman year. She’s writing an investigative report for the Spectator, rating each of the school water fountains. I’m helping her. I’m the control group.

  “Temperature?” she asks.

  “Lukewarm.”

  “Tepid, would you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Taste?”

  I make a sour expression. “Metallic.”

  “Height?”

  “A bit high for me, and the arc of the spray always nails me in the nose.”

  “Convenience of location?”

  “Eh. It’s central, but there’s always a line. The one outside the art room’s a better bet.”

  “Breaking up” with Shelly was simple because we don’t have any periods together except lunch. It was simple, but it wasn’t easy. I see her constantly in my head, like the hallway’s a portal to every time we walked it together and at any moment I might run into a different time-line version of us.

  At lunch, I hide in the gym. I sit in the bleachers, all the way at the top, and pretend I’m watching my demo from a month ago.

  It was the best day of my life.

  It was everything this year was supposed to be: a series of goals checked off one by one. The demo was first on my list, and I’d already made it come true. I’d assumed all my goals would come true. Now I don’t even remember what they were.

  There’s comfort in reliving a day when I was completely in control of my actions, like maybe it’ll provide clues on how to proceed from here.

  I’m late arriving because there’s a crowd at the gym door, and they all want to wish me luck; even a couple of my teachers are waiting to get in. The air is charged with excitement and anticipation.

  I scan the bleachers for signs of obnoxiousness, threatened earlier by my friends, and see Hannah, DJ, and Shelly bobbing up and down, arms stretched high, doing a three-person wave. My face relaxes into a smile.

  I gather my teammates, put my hand in the middle of the circle, and say, “Go Demo-licious!” It’s silly, but they look nervous, so I want to make sure they have fun and don’t freak out. I’m the oldest so I feel responsible for them.

  Two whole minutes pass before the audience settles down and finds their seats. Looks like three hundred people showed up—that’s ten percent of the school! When it’s finally quiet and Principal Simmons walks over to the mic, Hunter cups his hands over his mouth and yells, “Go Imogen!”

  Laughter fills the gym, centered on Hunter and his lacrosse friends in the first row, rippling out from them to the farthest corners of the gym. I laugh and cover my mouth.

  “That’s my sister!” Hunter yells, standing up, pointing at me and egging on the crowd. “She’ll kick your butt! She’ll destroy you!”

  My teammates all laugh now, too, looking happy and less nervous. I don’t even mind that Hunter’s stealing attention from my moment. He can’t help it. The spotlight’s usually fixed firmly on him. Besides, he’s probably responsible for half the audience being there.

  Principal Simmons clears his throat and says, “All right, Hunter, thank you for your enthusiasm. With your permission, I’d like to start by introducing Glenview Martial Arts’s very own demo team, led by Imogen Malley.”

  I tap the remote to my iPod and the Kill Bill sound track rips out of the loudspeaker. Since I organized the rehearsals and it’s my “territory” (like I’m a drug lord or something), Grandmaster Huan thought I should get a chance to choose the music.

  I call “Charyot! Joon-bi,” and my teammates and I snap our arms to our sides and bow. Then Thomas and I move out of the line. He’s just a freshman, but he’s already a dark blue belt and knows the demo cold. Our sneakers screech loudly against the gym floor. At the dojang we always practice barefoot, but the high school won’t allow it for sanitation reasons. Our uniforms look wrong with sneakers, a too-stark combo of ancient and modern.

  Grandmaster Huan always makes guys the attackers and girls the defenders, because it looks awful to see men punching and kicking women and heaving them to the ground, but it’s funny and awesome to see the opposite. And Grandmaster Huan wants to prove that his classes teach the weak to defeat the strong, no matter how unlikely it seems at first.

  Thomas swoops at me with a left hook and I glide to the side, blocking his punch, grabbing his wrist, and yanking him forward, off-balance. I’m practically behind him now, and I feign a sharp kick to the back of his knee. I can feel the crowd lean forward in their seats, impressed.

  The two yellow belts—I forget their names ’cause they were added at the last minute—demonstrate a simple front snap-kick block and a drop-sweep of the leg.

  We exchange discreet high fives as they return to ready position. Their faces are flushed and exhilarated.

  Even though everything’s a blur, I try to slow time down and acknowledge the moment and remember exactly how it feels.

  Thomas flies at me with a right straight punch and an immediate lef
t. I redirect his fist using a crescent kick—echo-SMACK—spin around, and finish with a right ax kick to his shoulder. He recovers, gripping my shirt at the collar of my stiff cotton uniform, and I jab his armpit with my fingertips, which seems like nothing but is actually one of the most painful things I know how to do, then nail his side with a roundhouse kick and throw him to the floor.

  The crowd gasps, then applauds, so I run a few maneuvers like my favorite block, where I do a cross-step hop and stamp on Thomas’s foot, pinning him in place so I can pretend-bash him in the nose with the back of my fist. We never actually hit each other in the face, not even in sparring class. It’s a rule.

  “Should we do the flip at the end?” I ask him as he moves into a solid front stance and positions two boards high with both hands.

  “Only if you break these,” he says, adding a third to the stack.

  I smirk. Triple-boards is supposed to look badass, but it’s not any harder than one or two if you’re used to it.

  I take a few steps back, pause, and count to three. I close my eyes and visualize kicking all the way through the boards. I can do this. I open my eyes, right at the crescendo of the Kill Bill music, and take a running start, springing into a jumping front snap-kick, and YES—all three boards are cracked in half, causing six pieces to fly through the air.

  Thomas looks alarmed for a second (he’s supposed to hold on to them), but the fact that the force of my kick basically exploded the boards is a plus in my mind.

  The crowd goes nuts, stamping and cheering!

  Thomas catches my eye and gives me a nod. We’ll be doing the flip. A totally unnecessary maneuver that nevertheless manages to make us look like superheroes. He bends at the knee and lowers his back so it’s straight but parallel to the floor. I leap toward him, spinning in the air so my back rolls over his. I feel our vertebrae skid lightly across each other’s as the world goes sideways, and then I land on the gym floor in perfect splits.

  Standing O!!! The crowd leaps to their feet. They love us forever; they’ll follow us off cliffs!!! I’ve never had so many people cheering for me before—I mean, people who matter. Not mall moms or kids at fairs.