Mrs. Hamilton says it’ll be helpful if we go through the events of the diner in detail, step-by-step, a little more each week until we’ve covered the whole night, but I don’t want to do that. I can’t even do it by myself, in my thoughts. I always stop when I get to the point where the cops show up. The wall around that memory is getting higher; I can’t see over it.
She wants us to try breathing techniques, but I already know breathing techniques. She wants us to try meditating, but I already know how to meditate.
“I’ll tell you anything about how I feel,” I say at last. “But I can’t, um, talk about certain details because I don’t remember them.”
My gaze darts back and forth between Ricky and Mrs. Hamilton. Their faces are open, encouraging.
“So, um … I guess I feel … like nothing I do matters. If I eat junk food or watch TV all day instead of exercising, it doesn’t matter.” I trip over the words, trying to get them out quickly while they still make sense inside my head. “All the things I was before and all the things I thought were important didn’t stop this from happening. So what does it matter?”
When the bell rings, I get up, but Mrs. Hamilton says, “Imogen, you have lunch now, right? Can you stay a bit longer?”
I was hoping for a moment alone with Ricky, so I could apologize in person, and find out what’s going on with him.
“Imogen?” she repeats.
“Yeah, I can stay.”
Ricky’s already out the door anyway. Opportunity lost.
“Tell me a little about your family.”
Why? “Um, my older brother, Hunter, is a senior. My mom is a concierge, and my dad’s a writer.”
“How’d your parents take your suspension?” Mrs. Hamilton asks.
“Okay, I guess.”
“Your dad’s disabled, right? That’s why he couldn’t pick you up on Monday?”
“He has type two diabetes and he’s supposed to be on a diet, but—” I clam up. I’ve already said more than I intended to.
“But what?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
Mrs. Hamilton starts over. “What did your parents think about you getting your black belt?”
I shrug.
“I’ll bet they were proud,” Mrs. H. says.
“My dad didn’t come to my black belt test.” I look away and tap out a rhythm with my fingers on the edge of her desk.
“Oh? How come?”
“’Cause Glenview Martial Arts doesn’t have an elevator.”
She nods. “That must have been really disappointing for both of you.”
It killed me that he wasn’t there. I didn’t really stop to consider what it did to him.
“It wasn’t his fault,” I say quickly. But I guess I did sort of blame him, at the time; if he had taken better care of himself, he could’ve been there. But telling Mrs. H. this would sound monstrous.
One of his toes had to be amputated after a fungal infection turned gangrenous. His foot could be next; both of them are numb and tingling, making it difficult to walk. If you get diabetes after the age of forty, it takes eleven years off your life.
Talking about him feels like a betrayal. I’ll talk about the diner; that’s fair game, as long as Ricky’s here, too. But my family’s different. They need to be protected.
At lunch, with only fifteen minutes left in the period, I scan the cafeteria for a place to sit. I look for Ricky until I remember he’s a senior and doesn’t have the same lunch period.
Hannah and DJ are at band rehearsal. Not like DJ would be sitting with me anyway, apparently.
Shelly’s sitting by herself near the window, five steps from the exit, which is a good spot because you can see everyone coming and going and, if necessary, plan an escape route.
My fake heart pulses madly.
Shelly Eppes, in the flesh, wearing her faded gray cashmere ballet wrap—a gift from her grandmother—and holding her lunch bag, which is nylon with Aqua Teen Hunger Force characters on it. I used to covet it.
It’s been five weeks since I’ve acknowledged her existence in any way.
“Is it okay if I …,” I murmur, hovering at her table.
She kicks the chair opposite her, the least possible effort to invite me to sit. Good enough for me.
“Sucks, doesn’t it. Everyone turning on you,” she says softly. There are big pauses between everything she says. “You were right, by the way. Hunter never called me.”
I swallow.
“What bothered me was that you never did, either,” she says.
It’s cool outside, and the heating grate is at my feet, so my lower half is too hot and my upper half is too cold. I breathe onto the window and watch it fog up.
I look down at what passes for my lunch today: a brownie, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and two cans of pop, all stolen from Dad’s stash. The old me would have gagged. I’m sure Shelly is grossed out, too. We used to cook together on Sunday nights, great big bowls of pasta primavera, and bring the food to school throughout the week to reheat. For us, school was beside the point—the day job. Our real lives were before and after, with goals and dreams that surpassed anything contained within these walls.
“Hannah and Deej still eat in the band room?” She nods her head in that general direction.
“Yeah. Wind-ensemble practice. And DJ’s not allowed to hang out with me anymore,” I add, rolling my eyes. “Because I might snap or something. So.”
“Well, that makes two of us.”
“Wait, what? DJ’s not allowed to hang out with you? I thought she just, you know, didn’t want to,” I say.
“She told her parents I had sex, which is of course the ultimate evil no-no. And I’m pretty sure she does the slut cough whenever she sees me.”
“You’re not a slut,” I say, surprised.
“I know that,” she snaps.
“I can’t believe DJ blabbed to her parents.” I didn’t even tell my parents about the Hunter-Shelly Horror. I just let them think we’d drifted apart. “What’s wrong with her?”
If I keep asking questions, maybe I can keep our conversation going a little bit longer.
“Sex and violence,” Shelly says, holding up her bottled water for a mock toast. “That’s us.”
She taps her bottled water to my can of pop, and I feel disgusted about what I’m filling my body with: toxic syrup and empty calories and endless lists of synthetic ingredients. I want to trade with her, take her bottled water and down it in one gulp, cleanse my insides, every vessel and vein. Maybe then I’ll get my old heart back.
“I got your text,” I say. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t sure you’d take my calls, but there’s something I want to tell you,” Shelly adds.
I’m about to respond—I’m dying to hear what she has to say—but before I can, the bell rings and she gets up and walks away, her back straight and graceful as always, gliding along like a slide ruler, perfectly perpendicular to the floor.
Hunter performed the Shelly-ectomy with surgical precision, no anesthesia. Is it possible I could still graft her back on, restore the ampersand between our names like a bridge?
As much as I’ve missed Shelly, I’ve missed Shelly&Imogen even more.
After school, I’m determined to find Ricky, but I don’t have to look far; he’s waiting for me near my locker, one of his legs bent, one old sneaker pressed flat against the wall, the way we’re not supposed to stand because it leaves a mark.
“Why’d you cover for me?” I ask. “Why’d you tell Mrs. Hamilton we’re friends?”
He launches himself off the wall, and I meet him halfway to my locker. “Listen, the way you punched me—it was crazy,” he says.
I look down. “I know. But I didn’t—” I break off. “I’m really sorry,” I concede.
He waves it off. “That’s not what I mean. I’ve never been punched like that. I mean, I’ve been in fights, I’ve been hit, but never like that.”
I forget guys live in a world where some o
ther guy might actually haul off and hit them at any moment. Girls don’t really have to worry about their friends doing that. We have other ways of inflicting pain.
“It was like a brick wall,” Ricky continues. “You know how in cartoons they see stars and birds chirping and shit? That was me.”
I’m proud, but I don’t want to come off that way. It’s disrespectful of Grandmaster Huan. Although, in another way, it’s the best compliment anyone could give me.
Ricky and I lock eyes, searching for the intensity of what we felt that night in the diner. The rush of not knowing if we’d be alive five minutes from now.
It was a high I never asked for, but now I can’t forget it, because it was the last time I felt anything other than numbness. Looking in Ricky’s eyes changes that. It pulls a thread inside me that unspools faster and faster until I feel a ball of heat hovering inside my belly.
I watch his lips while he says, “I want you to teach me how to fight.”
“THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO REMEMBER IS THAT IT’S not your fist that’s punching.”
“Are you already Zening out on me?”
We’re in the garage gym at my house, both clad in sweatpants and tank tops (me with a sports bra underneath), facing the mirror along the wall.
Ricky can probably fight on the level of an orange or purple belt; he’s taken boxing classes and works out once a week. He also plays a lot of basketball with friends from his old school.
I want to peel off his tank top and see what his chest looks like.
Wow, okay, backtrack for a second.
Let’s see …
During the week that we’ve been meeting here after school for lessons, I’ve learned a lot about him. He and his mom moved here from Lake Bluff in May. Mrs. Alvarez is running for Congress next fall, and she thinks she has a better chance of winning in a different (read: poorer) district. That’s why they live with his abuelita. Funny—and/or disturbingly racist—how I considered Ricky’s apartment building to be in a not-okay part of town when really it’s not that far from my neighborhood, and they moved there deliberately. God only knows what Ricky thinks of my block.
His dad, the marine, won’t be home until Thanksgiving. His abuelita could’ve sold her place a long time ago and lived in style with Ricky’s parents in Lake Bluff, but she’s stubborn and likes her independence. Ricky wasn’t too happy about the move, considering he used to live in one of the nicest suburbs of Chicago.
Some of Mrs. Alvarez’s opponents say she’s cheating the system by moving her campaign a few miles away and pretending to be someone she’s not, but she says, “familia is the most important thing to me.” She wants to serve the community where she grew up, where her mother lives, blah blah, rah rah, political memoir. But his old school is probably better than Glenview High, so that’s not really serving Ricky. I don’t know. He didn’t say all that last stuff, but he didn’t have to.
It felt nice learning about him, little details I could fold up and place in my pocket to take out later and examine.
I ask why he was at the diner last month. He says he was filling out an application for a part-time job; his mom thought it’d be good for him. She doesn’t believe in free rides. He has to pay his own way for everything.
“But now it’s closed and I don’t have to work there,” he says. “Score!”
I know it’s horrible, but we both laugh. Like, hysterically. I never thought I’d get to hear it again, our laughter commingling, twisting together like ribbons and rising.
I usually have crushes on the cute, thin Justin Timberlake / Hayden Christensen types with fair skin and high cheekbones, but after being around Ricky four straight days after school, I’m thinking of converting for him.
Ricky with his warm maple eyes and his cute face that’s almost too boyish for his tall body and broad shoulders. Ricky with the contagious laugh who shares my macabre sense of humor.
Ricky, the only one who understands.
And did I mention his muscles? ’Cause damn.
So far I’ve taught him stances and three types of kicks: front-straight rising, front snap, and roundhouse. The sweatpants factor is seriously distracting me—we’re just one drawstring pull away from seeing underwear.
Focus, focus!
Apparently Hunter’s not the only sex fiend in this family.
The only way I know how to teach anyone anything is by duplicating Grandmaster Huan’s class. So we go through all the motions, the routine I could do in my sleep: twenty laps around the edges of the mat, twenty jumping jacks, twenty arm rotations, twenty hip rotations, and twenty seconds of leg stretches, each side. That’s the warm-up. Ricky’s not even winded, which makes two of us. We’re well matched.
I skip the part where you bow to the flags and teachers and all that, and as a result I blank on what to do next. Normally we’d do some light gymnastics and practice how to fall, so you don’t break your wrist or your neck if you’re shoved or thrown.
But Ricky doesn’t want to learn that stuff.
I don’t really blame him, so I move into a horse stance in front of the mirror to demonstrate a proper punch, which is when he tells me I’m Zening out on him.
“It’s not that,” I reply. “I just don’t know any other way to explain this. It’s not your fist that delivers the punch. It’s the fact that you pull your other hand back at the same time. It’s the torque, the twist of your body, catapulting through your punching hand, that gives it strength.” I grab air in my left fist, yank it back to my side, shift my weight, and throw a punch with my right, all while giving a kiyap. Ricky watches me intently in the mirror, like he’s committing my words and movements to memory.
“Yelling isn’t for show,” I add, before he can ask. “It’s to force yourself to exhale when you land the punch. It also startles your opponent.” I bring both hands back to my sides. “And that’s how someone like me can knock out someone like you,” I say.
“Wait, who said anything about knocking me out?” He looks annoyed for a second, but then he grins. “Okay, almost. My feet might have left the ground.”
The truth is, we’re not here for the same reason.
He wants a shortcut to black belt territory, which is impossible, and I want to know what it feels like to be in a real fight, the kind I was denied at the diner.
I’m training a worthy opponent. I’m going to teach him all the nasty stuff we never get to do, and then I’m going to unleash him on me.
It’s too soon to tell Ricky what I’ve got planned, though. Today we’ll just practice punching in front of the mirror, switching left and right until our arms ache. We do this for half an hour. He never shows signs of boredom.
I correct him a few times, pulling his shoulders back. “Don’t let your shoulders follow your arms or turn sideways; keep them level.”
“How will I know if I’m doing it right?” he says.
“Well, give it a try,” I tell him. “Punch me.”
He snorts. “Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious. Punch my arm. I’ll tell you if it hurts.”
He hems and haws. “Nah, I’ll just use the punching bag.”
“I’ve been doing martial arts half my life; I can take it. And don’t you want revenge?”
“I can’t just punch you,” he insists.
“Well, I’m not gonna show you anything else if you don’t.”
He balls his fist and lurches toward me, completely disregarding everything I’ve just taught him, so we have to start over.
I teach him to twist his fist at the last second, to add extra power, and to square his shoulders so the center of his body is an immovable block at all times, no matter what his arms are up to.
“Try again,” I say.
“Are you sure?”
“Just do it!”
Still he hesitates!
I roll my eyes. “Here.” I punch him in the ribs.
He coughs and staggers—“Oof”—and when he straightens up again, his eyes have clo
uded over with rage. Before I can express any glee at his transformation, he twists at the waist and pops me in the upper arm.
Freaking ow!!
“Yes.” I choke out my words. “That was good. You got it.” My arm throbs like hell, the muscle exploding beneath my skin. While Ricky’s trying to decide if he should be proud or horrified, I drop in a spin and sweep his legs out, cracking his shins like dominos and knocking him to the floor.
He grunts when his back hits the mat. I crawl over him to gloat, and he reaches up to grab my wrists and pull me down.
We look at each other and my gaze drops to his lips. I’m hovering above his body, my arms propping me up, shaking with the effort of not collapsing on top of him. I wonder what it would be like to let my arms drop, to place my head on his chest or slide my legs through his. But he’s not here for that. He’s here because he wants to learn what I know, not what I don’t know; and what I don’t know about kissing could fill a book.
Besides, what if we kissed, and then he didn’t come back? Hanging out with him in the garage is the only thing I look forward to. I can’t risk it just because I’m curious, or horny, or whatever. That’s the kind of boner-headed thing Hunter would do, and if there’s one person I refuse to emulate, it’s Hunter.
I know I’m not imagining the heat between us, though. Ricky feels it, too, and he laughs. It’s a nervous habit of his, he explained to me earlier. He didn’t mean to laugh about my black belt that day. It’s kind of annoying, but it’s flattering, too: I make him nervous.
I roll over on my back so we’re side by side, staring at the ceiling. Not touching.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” he says.
Ha, please. But I guess it’s a good sign that he can’t tell. We don’t look at each other; we both keep looking at the ceiling.
“No,” I manage to get out with a straight face. “You?”
“No boyfriend,” he teases.
I roll my eyes. “Girlfriend?”
“There was someone at my old school, but we didn’t want to do long distance.”
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