“This is serious matter,” says Grandmaster Huan. “I hear you hit another student at school. Is this correct?”
I stare at the living room carpet.
Mom returns from the kitchen and gently touches my back, but I shake her off and slowly raise my eyes to Grandmaster Huan’s. “Yes, sir.”
“This is not black belt behavior. What will smaller kids think when they hear you’ve been in fight?”
I think of Taylor, my sixth-grade student from camp, and my stomach hurts, like a bunch of golf balls are grinding against one another in my intestines.
“Mr. Huan,” says Dad (major faux pas—he’s a Grandmaster, not a Mr.), “there are outside circumstances, of which you are aware. Imogen saw someone killed right in front of her. She’s been under a lot of stress and pain, and she’s already made amends with the student she hit.”
This isn’t entirely true, because Ricky wasn’t there yesterday, but I’m not going to say anything.
Grandmaster Huan nods again. “Yes, I am sorry. Yes, very sorry.” He waits and thinks, and thinks and waits. “This is big problem. Very tough situation.”
I don’t know if he means for him or for me.
“Six month is standard. But this is different. I think you can come back January first,” he murmurs.
“Three months?” I blurt out.
He gives me a pointed look. “This is not the first time you are in trouble,” Grandmaster Huan says.
“What?” Mom cries.
“I’ve never hit anyone before,” I say, confused.
“This is not the first time we have discussion about proper Tae Kwon Do spirit,” Grandmaster Huan explains.
“Are you talking about the demo?” I ask. He’d pulled me into his office after he watched the footage last month. I figured he wanted to praise me; I’d gotten him fifteen new students, earning myself half a year of free lessons, but he didn’t even mention that.
“This is not what I teach you,” he’d said, frown lines all over his face. His computer screen was paused on Grant and Grant’s futile attempt to break the boards. “Tae Kwon Do is not show-off.”
I couldn’t believe he didn’t understand how annoying Grant was. “That guy was a jerk,” I’d protested. “A bully. Sir.”
“This is not what I teach you,” he repeats today.
“But—”
“What is first belt color?”
“White,” I mutter.
“What does white belt mean?”
“White belt signifies purity. No knowledge of martial arts,” I say by rote. “No room for pride, ego, or conceit.”
No room for the real world, I want to add. No room for guns.
I can’t decide if martial arts failed me or if I failed it. Probably the second one. It never claimed to keep me safe from bullets, but I made vows I couldn’t keep.
“I will improve myself mentally and physically, sir!
“I will respect my elders and teachers, sir!
“I will always defend the weak, sir!
“I will prevent unnecessary fights, sir!
“I will be a champion of freedom and justice, sir!”
So the decision’s been made, and it’s final. I’m stripped of my rank until January 1. Grandmaster Huan asks me to return my ID card, the one from the home office in Korea, and my belt certificate signifying first degree. It was the only one I didn’t shred, maybe because it was my secret way of keeping them all, since they all led up to it.
In return, he hands me the framed photo of me in my black belt uniform, the one they had professionally taken on the day of my test. Until recently, it was hanging on the wall of the dojang, the only one of its kind.
“January first,” he says, “We’ll put this back up. Be good, prove yourself, no bad behavior until then.”
Mom takes the framed photo from him. She knows it’s not safe with me.
I rise on wobbly legs and bow to Grandmaster Huan. His eyes look sad. It can’t feel good for him, kicking out his only teenage black belt. He bows back, just a flinch at the waist, and he also shakes my hand, which doesn’t happen very often. When you shake a hand in your TKD uniform, you’re supposed to use your other hand to press your sleeve flat against your arm, to show that you’re not concealing any weapons. Grandmaster Huan does this now, out of habit, even though he’s in a suit and tie.
He walks out the door, his back hunched and defeated, not straight like it was before.
Silence settles onto our house like a fumigation tent. We all just wait quietly to choke and die.
Dad clears his throat and says, “January first isn’t too far away.”
“Please don’t,” I say.
“Imogen …,” Mom says in warning.
“He’s a grandmaster, by the way, his name is Grandmaster Huan.”
“I’m sorry,” Dad says. “I didn’t remember—”
Before he can finish, I’m halfway out the room.
“Imogen,” Mom calls after me.
I dart upstairs to the bathroom, lock the door behind me, and turn on the shower.
The urge to purify is overwhelming.
I yank off my clothes and stand under harsh, burning water and I’m back at the police station, standing in the locker-room shower, nervous about my nudity, a thin plastic curtain separating me from the female cop, who sits outside to make sure I’m okay. She cleared the place out so I could have privacy, and she’s got a towel, sweatpants, and a T-shirt waiting for me on the bench next to her.
I will never get my regular clothes back. They are not clothes. They are evidence.
At the diner, the blood was sticky and weighed me down; I wanted to slither out of the blood and my clothes, rip all my hair out so I’d never feel that slimy again, but they wouldn’t let me. They had to cover the inside of the squad car with plastic wrap, and we had to ride to the station that way, and then another twenty minutes passed before they cut me out of my clothes and let me shower.
When I dunked my head under the water, it felt like blood pouring over me, and I was afraid if I opened my eyes and looked down at my skin, it would still be coated red.
Low to the ground is comforting; standing up is bad.
Low to the ground is comforting; standing up is bad.
After scrubbing as hard as I could with the soap, I squatted in the shower, nice and low to the ground, right by the gross drain, and let the water smack down on me from a distance, hitting just the top of my head and my back in a splat-splat rhythm until the female cop said, “You okay in there?”
Today, eleven days later, I slide down the wall of my own shower and curl up in a ball, tuck my knees under my chin, and wrap my arms around my head. I’ve taken showers since the diner, but this one’s different.
Get smaller. Small as you can be.
Low to the ground is comforting; standing up is bad.
Why is standing up bad?
What happens if you stand up?
(You don’t want to know.)
Reset button. Start at the beginning.
Gretchen’s in the bathroom when the gunman comes in.
I see the glint of his gun, and I hide under the table.
There’s Ricky, under a different table; he brings his finger to his lips. Shh …
It’s hard to breathe; my nose doesn’t get enough air, so I open my mouth to inhale and exhale, in-out, in-out, in-in-in. The water droplets from the showerhead catch the light on their way down, and little portions of them disappear, but you know they’re still there.
I’m starting to full-blown hyperventilate when there’s a pounding on the bathroom door. Hunter. “Hey, Imo, how long are you going to be? I have to shower before my date.”
“Gimme a sec,” I gasp out. Deep breaths. I slowly unfurl, not quite standing, just high enough to turn off the water. Then I wrap myself in a towel and sink back down to the floor.
Low to the ground is comforting; standing up is bad.
I don’t know how much time passes before Hunter kn
ocks again. “Seriously, I need to use the shower.”
I don’t want to get up. I want to crawl out of here on my hands and knees. I pull my clothes back on and scoot out into the hallway on my butt. Hunter flies past me into the bathroom and closes the door behind him.
It’s only seven o’clock, but I get into bed and pull the sheets and blankets up to my chin. There’s no reason to stay awake; there’s nothing I want to do except not be conscious anymore.
Mom comes in to check on me.
She presses a palm to my forehead. “Are you okay? Do you feel sick?”
I’m probably artificially warm from the shower. “No, just tired.”
“Well, when you come down for dinner, I’d like you to apologize to your father.”
“For what?” I ask softly, confused.
“For leaving the room before he’s finished talking. It’s become a habit of yours, and it’s rude. You just get up and leave, without waiting to see if he’s done. Okay? He’s in his office.”
When she leaves, I press the intercom button for broadcast and apologize to Dad. That way Mom will be a witness, too, but I won’t have to go anywhere.
I wish I could say I bawled my eyes out over Grandmaster Huan’s decision to kick me out. I wish I could say it gutted me and I couldn’t imagine my life without martial arts.
But the truth is, I never had any intention of going back.
ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, THE LAST DAY OF MY SUSPENsion, Hannah stops by before school.
Minus DJ.
Mom says we can visit for five minutes, but that’s it.
“I can’t stay long anyway,” Hannah says, shucking off her boots but not her coat. “So, what’s it like being suspended?”
“Where’s DJ?” I ask.
Hannah hesitates and then resets the barrette in her strawberry-blond hair. “She’s kind of not allowed to hang out with us for a while.”
“‘Us’? You mean me.”
“Because of the whole fighting-at-school thing.”
Ah. I’m a bona fide bad influence. I can’t really blame the Ajarajollamons, but it’s still a bit of a shock.
Hannah and I make the most of our five minutes by frantically looking up Ricky Alvarez in the yearbook. Strange that I, Imogen Malley, have a Boy Topic to discuss. It’s not exactly peach fuzz and roses, as Mom would say, more like battered knuckles and internal bleeding, but it’s mine. When no picture of Ricky pops up in the official class-photo section, we check the index, too. He’s not in it.
He must be new this year.
After Mom, Hunter, and Hannah leave, I knock on Dad’s office door.
“Come in,” he calls.
He’s sitting at the computer, files spread out on his desk, a mug of coffee and an empty box of donut holes beside him. My eyes fixate on that empty box.
“Hey.”
“Hey there,” he says. “How’d you sleep?”
“Okay. Hey, Dad, I was thinking. Since I’m not doing martial arts for a while, do you maybe want to do some weight training with me?”
He barely looks up from the computer. “Sorry, kiddo, I don’t have time right now. I’m on deadline.”
“Maybe in a few hours? Just, like, a twenty-minute break. I’ll do it with you. I’ll help you—”
He’s shaking his head. “I don’t think so. Not today. Too much to do.”
It doesn’t have to be right now, I repeat to myself. It doesn’t have to be today. But I can’t form the words.
When Dad got home from the hospital last year, we thought we’d have to move, but it was cheaper to cash in his insurance and remodel the house. Besides adding ramps to the front and back doors and a lift onto the minivan so he can still drive, Mom and Dad moved their bedroom into the first-floor den and converted the garage into a gym for Dad’s physical therapy.
I’m the only one who uses it.
We have a punching bag, a full-length mirror, a bar along the wall (just like at Tae Kwon Do), and a used elliptical machine. It’s like the weaker Dad gets, the stronger I get, but if I could take all of my strength and give it to him, I would.
Today I only pretend to work out in the garage. I blast “Flux” from Bloc Party, my standard workout song, and I give the punching bag a couple kicks out of frustration. But I’m too tired to exercise.
(Maybe that’s how Dad feels. Is that how Dad feels?
No.
He doesn’t even play his guitar anymore.)
Despite my awkwardness around Dad, the rest of the day passes quickly. We’re twin slugs, basically, ordering in heaps of food from the Indian place a few blocks over. I try curry chicken with naan and remember eating something like it at DJ’s once.
I put lots of vegetables on Dad’s plate, but he only eats half of them.
On Thursday, my first day back at school, I almost expect to be welcomed by a Shitty Committee: all the smokers, druggies, and pseudo-gangbangers who get into fights and terrify the administration. “One of us, one of us,” they’ll chant.
Hunter offers me a ride in, but I decide to walk. I need the exercise; I haven’t worked out in days and my legs feel tight. I make a detour past the train tracks and tilt in close when one whooshes by, even though the sound hurts my ears and the dirt and wind rip up my eyes.
When Hunter and I were kids, we loved playing hobos. We put bandannas on our heads and tied some to sticks and put stuffed animals inside, and we wore our dirtiest ripped jeans and smudged our faces with mud.
Dad thought we were dressing up like cleaning ladies. He told us it wasn’t nice to make fun of people.
Mom told us the train tracks were not a good place to play. After Current Events (which is like a mutant growth sprouting from the forehead of History for Dummies), I have study hall, i.e., counseling with Mrs. Hamilton. I make it all the way to her office before I admit to myself I’m not going in. The crack’s still there in the display case in the hall. They’ve swapped my newspaper photo with a newer headline, probably so they don’t accidentally glorify my punch, but they haven’t gotten around to fixing the glass.
I picture Mrs. Hamilton at her desk, glancing at her clock on the wall and wondering where I am. I picture me and Ricky sitting there on Monday, laughing together, and I can’t go in. I picture Ricky’s head hitting the display case and causing that crack. I don’t blame him for wanting to get the hell away from me, but if I can’t talk about the diner with Ricky, I don’t want to talk about it at all.
Mom’s all over me when I get home.
“Your counselor called, said you never showed up. She blocked the time off for you, sweetheart.”
“It’s voluntary, and I don’t want to go,” I say, opening a bag of chips and shoving a fistful in my mouth. One less thing for Dad to eat. I used to think chips were disgusting, all greasy cholesterol, free radicals, blah blah blah. I used to eat carrots and peanut butter if I needed a snack after school or before TKD, something with protein. I used to think I was better than this, but now I know better. I am this. I am exactly this.
“I think you should reconsider,” says Mom, staring at my hand as it goes back into the bag of chips for more, crinkling the bag and emerging coated in grease and crumbs. “I think talking to someone, a professional, about what happened is a good idea.”
“Talking doesn’t change anything.” My tongue snakes out and licks my lips.
“It might change the way you feel.”
I grab a third fat fistful before she yanks the bag away.
On Friday, I find a piece of notebook paper, folded a zillion times so it’s thick and triangular, shoved into the grate of my locker.
The paper is ink stained, the note written in messy, back-slanted cursive, a scribble I will cherish forever.
It says, “I liked the star cookies best. Meet me at Mrs. H’s?”
I glance down the hallway, both directions, to see if anyone’s watching me. I could pretend I never saw the note. It could have fallen out and been kicked down the hallway until it landed in the janit
or’s swept-up pile of trash.
But it didn’t fall out.
It wasn’t kicked down the hallway.
Ricky’s giving me a second chance. I take off jogging, backpack slamming against my shoulder blades.
Mrs. Hamilton pretends it’s no big deal I’ve decided to show up. Must be reverse psychology. She doesn’t want to scare me away by being overly enthused.
Ricky and I sit across from each other. I’m breathing hard from my sprint. He’s still got a black eye, but his nose is back to normal for the most part. I shudder thinking of the damage I could have done. His gorgeous face, shifted and rearranged beneath his skin.
He wears a blue T-shirt that reveals his muscular arms, the word “Marines” stretched tightly across his chest. I can’t stop looking at him, just drinking him in, especially his rich, kind eyes. They’re brown like maple leaves, with gold filaments inside that make me think of bonfires flickering, warm and inviting. I’m so much less anxious in his presence.
Is it the same for him? Is that why he invited me, why he’s been drawing me in his sketchbook?
“I understand you and Ricky had a long talk and that you’ve cleared the air since Monday,” Mrs. Hamilton says.
Um, no. But I’m not about to clarify. I glance over at Ricky and then back at Mrs. Hamilton, trying to sound confident. “Yeah, we talked it out.”
She holds my gaze for a moment, then adds, “So you both feel comfortable with a joint counseling session?”
“Yes,” I say immediately, then blush.
“Very good. Well, Ricky was just telling me it’s hard for him to concentrate in class.”
“If someone drops a book or the teacher slams the door shut, it sounds like a gun blast,” Ricky says, his voice kind of flat. “But if the teacher doesn’t close and lock the door, I constantly picture a gunman walking inside, so I’m screwing up in classes where the door is open the whole time.”
Mrs. Hamilton makes a note of that; I bet she’ll privately ask those teachers to close and lock their doors. I hope they do.
It’s my turn, I guess, but I don’t know what to add. I’m probably getting F pluses in most of my classes, but not because I think a gunman is going to come through the door. Maybe if Daryl had been a teenager I would feel that way, but twenty-eight is too old for me to associate him with a school shooter.
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