“You got to feel weak to get strong,” he said.
“Huh?”
“Your uncle Nick used to say it. Means if you want your muscles to get strong, you got to push them until they’re weak. It’s like that for most things in life. If you feel strong all day, you’re probably not getting any stronger.”
She nodded.
“Now you ready to start learning for real? You sure?”
To tell it true, she wasn’t. She wanted to run and hide. She didn’t want to feel weak even if it led to being strong. But the girl with watermelon hair couldn’t hide.
“I’m sure,” she said.
He shoved furniture around so they had enough carpet to move on. He got down on the floor.
“We’re going to start with chokes,” he said. “There’s two kinds of chokes. There’s strangles and blood chokes. What’s the two kind of chokes?”
“Strangles,” she said, “and blood chokes.”
“Strangles, you know that word strangling, right? It means can’t breathe. Strangles are okay. They work all right. But do me a favor, hold your breath for as long as you can.”
She breathed in, sealed her nose, let her cheeks puff out. He did the same. She felt like a balloon, like her butt was connected to the ground by a string and that was the only reason she didn’t float away. Her dad’s eyes bulged, like holding his breath was killing him, and Polly’s breath burst out in a laugh.
“No fair,” she said. She felt jumpy, something like a jagged sugar rush.
“You did pretty good,” he said. “That’s the problem with strangles. Air chokes, strangles, they take a long time to work. Now the other kind of choke is a blood choke.”
He moved her around so his chest was against her back. She breathed in. The smell of him made her feel bulletproof.
He snaked his left hand under her chin so that his elbow cradled the center of her throat. His bicep pressed against the left side of her throat, his forearm against the right.
“You take the left hand, your choking arm, and you grab your right bicep. It’s just for leverage,” he said. “I’m going to choke you now. When you feel it, just tap my arm. What are you going to do?”
“Tap your arm,” she said.
“Right. When you squeeze a choke, you squeeze with your whole body. Like this.”
The arm around her throat tightened slowly, and his chest pressed into her back all at once. And there wasn’t any pain or anything like that. It was just that the world started to get smaller and farther away. And it was only right before the world disappeared all the way that she understood what was happening. She tapped his arm. The pressure on her neck went away and the world came back.
“You okay?”
She nodded. At least maybe she did. She felt a stranger in her own body.
“Tap sooner than that. You don’t need to go to sleep to see it works. Did it work?”
She nodded like yeah. So weird that nothingness was so close to her, always, and she’d never even known. She wondered what else she didn’t know, and the sugar rush intensified.
“We’re starting with chokes,” he said, “because you’re small. Chokes, you don’t have to be big and strong. See, all you’re doing is squeezing those two little arteries at the side of the neck that go up and feed the brain. And even a little girl like you is strong enough to squeeze them.”
He turned around.
“Now you do it to me.”
She moved behind him. She stood on her knees. He leaned back against her so she could get her arm around his neck.
“Start at the back of the jaw,” he told her. “Under the ear. Move your hand all the way under my neck. Your arm will fit better.”
She put her left hand to his jawline and moved her hand under his chin until her elbow hooked around his Adam’s apple. Her face pressed into the fuzz at the back of his head. He hadn’t shaved it in a while and the fuzz was soft when she put her cheek against it. It smelled like boy soap and sweat.
“Now grab your other bicep with that hand,” he said. She did it.
“Your other hand, the one that’s not under my neck, put it behind my head so the back of your hand is against my skull. And what you’re going to do is, squeeze against the sides of my neck with the one arm and push against the back of my neck with the other. Squeeze it from all sides. Like a snake.”
“Okay.”
“Now squeeze,” he said.
She squeezed.
“With your body too,” he said, his voice thin. She leaned her chest into his back, felt her whole body as a single thing, like a snake, she thought, and she squeezed and he tapped her arm, two sharp taps. She let go. He leaned forward. He coughed. When he turned to her she could see his eyes were watery.
“You did it,” he said.
“I did? For real?”
“For real,” he said.
She felt something strange, a thrumming in her muscles, a thrumming in her mind. It took her a second to find the word for what she felt. It was a word she hadn’t got to use for herself in a long time. The word was power.
“Show me more,” she said. He nodded like hell yes.
18
POLLY
HUNTINGTON BEACH
It wasn’t until they’d been training and hunting for two weeks that they reached the ocean, and their prey. One moment they were in the never-ending sprawl of the city—Polly had already been in L.A. long enough to feel like the sprawl went on forever—then the road they were on ended at a T, and beyond, a great blue darkness stretching out forever. Polly never would have thought something so big could come without warning.
They walked toward the roar of the ocean. Polly took off her shoes at the edge of the sand. They stopped at a fruit cart and bought fruit bowls. Melons and papayas and mangoes. The woman squeezed a lime over the bowl, and salt and chili pepper too.
“Gracias,” Polly said. The bear blew the woman a kiss. The woman laughed.
Overhead, gulls did lazy circles. A group of girls walked by in bathing suits. Her dad watched them.
“Bathing suits didn’t used to look like that,” he said, and Polly didn’t know who he was saying it to but it sure wasn’t her. She put a piece of mango to the bear’s snout. It waved a paw over its snout like hot chili pepper.
Polly walked with her head up. When they first got to L.A. Polly had been worried about being recognized. She knew the police were still looking for her and her dad. Then one day she saw her face on a billboard. It wasn’t like the time she saw herself on the news. It was like a stranger looking back. She stood right under it without fear, people passing and not knowing it was her. She looked up at her dad with his beard and fuzzy head and sunglasses. She knew then she was safe from being seen.
They reached the wet sand. They padded to where the water could lick the sand from between their toes. Sea foam glided across the wet sand. It hugged its way around her foot. Colder than she ever thought it would be. The water sucked sand with it as it fled back to the ocean. She liked the feeling of it, the sharp air and cold water and rough sand.
She looked up at her dad, found him staring down the beach again. Probably more girls, she thought. But then she saw them. A group of men and women drinking beer in cans. The men in cutoff jeans, the girls in tiny T-shirts. The men had tattoos, mostly dark blue, scribbly, like the ones all over her dad.
Young bodies, hard eyes.
She gave her dad a look like them?
“Yeah,” he said.
They waited for the party to wrap up. Polly watched them side-eyed. It seemed like the way a spy would do it, or a ninja.
Her dad wasn’t as sneaky as she was. He took peeks. He watched one of them in particular. A woman. Her hair was cut boy short, with long bangs that that flopped over her forehead. She had green eyes too big for her face. She didn’t wear a swimsuit, just cutoffs and a T-shirt, tight so it showed off her boobs. And she was with the group, but she wasn’t really with them. She was just outside the circle, and she sat w
ith her body facing a bit away from everybody else. Polly was good at noticing stuff like that. She wondered if that’s why her dad was looking at her. Or maybe it was just her boobs. The thought gave Polly a feeling she didn’t like. She had to hunt for the word. Doom. Doom was the word.
Beach cops walked by. The air changed. The party got quiet. Next to her, Polly felt her dad go still. He pulled down the sleeves on his shirt to make sure the ink was covered. He ran a hand over the week’s worth of fuzz on his head and face.
“We’re not doing anything,” Polly said.
“The one thing I’m scared of,” he said, “is being locked up again. Out here I can fight. I can keep you safe. Inside it’s all over.”
“They don’t recognize us.”
“Just takes one is all,” he said. “And everything goes to shit.”
The people they were watching seemed like they felt the same way. Even when the cops walked on their moods had soured. The group broke up, headed up the sand toward the parking lot.
“Who do we follow?” she asked.
“Her,” he said, pointing to the dark-haired girl. The one Polly knew he was going to pick.
“Why?” Polly said. “Don’t we want one of the tough guys?”
“We’re hunting,” he said. “When you hunt and you find a pack, you got to find the loner. The weak one. The one you can split off the fold. She’s the one. We stick with her.”
It made sense to Polly. After all, Polly had noticed that the girl was an outsider too. It was even scientific choosing her, the way he said it. So why did it sound like a lie?
19
NATE
NORTH HOLLYWOOD
The next morning he taught her how to take a punch.
“Today is going to be hard,” Nate said to her as she sat across from him, sheened with sweat from their warmup. He was talking to himself as much as Polly. He tried to say it calm and easy. He remembered the day when he’d been the one on the receiving end of this.
“Are we going to watch that woman today?” she asked. They’d followed her—the woman with the green eyes that struck Nate right at the centerline—from the ocean to her house the night before.
“Soon,” Nate said. He finished wrapping her hands with cloth. He hadn’t been able to find boxing gloves her size. She knocked the padded fists together. She had changed in the few weeks they’d been together. She moved like she wasn’t thinking about every single move before she made it. It was a start. It wasn’t enough.
“Put up your fists,” he said. She raised them. Some of the meek girl still there inside her. That was what Nate had to burn out of her if she was going to stay alive.
He fixed her shoulders, tucked in her elbows.
“The hardest thing about a fight is learning to get hit.”
“You mean how not to get hit?”
“You’re going to get hit,” he said. “Life ain’t a video game or a school test. There’s no doing it perfect.” Word for word the way Nick had said it to him. “You’re going to get hit. When you do, your body thinks what’s happening is that you’re being murdered. And who knows, maybe you are. So your brain dumps a bunch of chemicals into your body, like rocket fuel.”
“Fight or flight,” Polly said. She was smarter than Nate had been at eleven, or fourteen when Nick had done this to him. Sometimes he thought maybe she was smarter than him now.
“Yeah, that’s it,” he said. “Either fight back or run, your body says. Only we aren’t cavemen anymore. The world wants to teach you to not fight back, or even really run away. The world wants you to stand there and take it like a punk. So your brain dumps this rocket fuel into you and you don’t do anything and all it does is make you burn right where you stand. You know what I mean?”
He listened to himself, to his tone. He couldn’t hear the wavering he felt inside. He hoped she couldn’t either. A thing like this was dangerous. You get it wrong the first time and you might not ever get it right. You might break something inside them.
“So when you’re in a fight, a couple of different things happen. You get that crazy boost. That rocket fuel. It makes you wild, or it freezes you up. Either one is bad. You got to learn how to ride the rocket.”
He put on his boxing gloves. He looked over to the bear, who she’d positioned to watch over their training. He nodded to the bear like what up? He’d been catching himself doing shit like that more often. The girl had a trick of making you forget the bear wasn’t alive.
Nate hunched down close as he could to her eye level. He lifted his fists. She did the same. Polly mirrored him.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
He didn’t say it. He couldn’t even show it on his face. He had to keep his face calm, so she’d think this was okay.
He shot out a feather jab. It just touched her face. He watched it set off earthquakes inside her. He felt them too. He saw her lock her breath up inside her.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked her.
“No.”
“Then don’t act like it. Put up your fists.”
He raised his fists. Polly raised hers. He flicked out the jab again. A little harder this time. He felt the connection. Her eyes went wide.
“That burn you feel inside you, that’s the rocket fuel dump.” He cut an angle, popped another light jab. She swatted at it, wild.
“That’s adrenaline. That’s a gift from the deep down part of your brain.” He double-pumped the jab, first a high feint then a low jab, tapping her stomach with the second. Animal panic in her eyes. He pushed past the voices telling him to stop. He listened to the ghost of his brother.
Either you teach her how to take a punch or the world does.
“Adrenaline isn’t bad,” he said. “Just don’t let it use you.”
He bopped her on the nose. She slapped away his fist. Still wild, but better.
“When the bullies came after you, when they hurt you, it wasn’t the hurt that you were scared of. It was what you wanted to do, what you could do, that’s what scared you.”
He threw a left to her ear, harder than he meant it. Her breath clicked fast as a sewing machine.
“Get mad if you’re mad,” he said.
He threw a jab. She moved her head so it just grazed her cheek.
“That’s right,” he said. “You got to get free of it. Whatever it is that’s stopping you from fighting. You got to climb out of the cage.”
He one-twoed, let her catch them both on her forearms. He felt her breaking point coming. He didn’t want to push her past it. He didn’t want the lesson to be lost.
“The world wants you to sit on your hands and take what it gives you.” He popped jabs at her, stinging her, stinging him.
“The world wants you scared of yourself. You have to let the blows come. You have to take them. You have to be ready. You can’t go crazy. You can’t freeze up. You got to take the punches. And then you got to punch back.”
He pop-popped her on the eye. Saw rage bloom. He threw a light hook to her belly. He left his other hand low. He gifted her his face.
She swung. Her left fist fit in his eye socket. His teeth clipped in his skull. He sat back on his ass and caught her next swing. He watched her come back to the world.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Eyes wide and deep.
“No,” he said. “That’s just how you do it. But don’t let the mad take you.”
She swayed on her feet.
“Breathe,” he said.
She broke and ran for the bathroom. He listened to her empty her stomach. With her out of sight, he let himself cover his face with his gloved hands. He stood like that until he heard her flush the toilet. He knocked his gloves together loud to let her know he was coming. He walked into the bathroom. Polly sat facing the toilet. She wiped a wrapped hand against her mouth.
“We’re doing it again tomorrow,” he said. “And the day after that. Until you learn that a punch don’t kill you.”
She had tears in her eyes. But behind them, fire.
/> 20
POLLY
HUNTINGTON BEACH
It was Polly’s first kidnapping. From this side of it, anyhow.
They sat in the green monster outside the woman’s house. Polly wore a baseball cap to cover her watermelon hair. When she ran into the liquor store for sodas, the old woman behind the counter had called her a little boy. She almost corrected the woman. But she let it ride. It didn’t really matter, and she was undercover, after all.
Polly’s muscles groaned under her skin. Aches were a constant thing now. Under the sore muscles her bones hummed like power lines. She felt them stretching at night. She’d need new clothes soon.
They drank sports drinks and bottled water. They peed at the taqueria down the block. They ate mulitas stuffed with steak. Polly ate as much as he did. She was always hungry these days.
They watched people come and go from the woman’s house. Men with shaved heads, tattoos on their faces and necks. Women too. Her dad had explained the tattoos to her. How sometimes they had numbers, but it was like a code. Like how 88 stood for HH stood for Heil Hitler. That the Woody Woodpecker tattoo they saw down a man’s muscled bicep meant he was a part of Peckerwood Nation. The green-eyed woman, the one they watched, with her hair shaved everywhere but her bangs, Nate called that a “featherwood.”
The green-eyed woman opened her door to all of them. From where Polly sat across the street, it looked like the woman said hello with her mouth but not with her eyes.
“It doesn’t look like she likes them,” Polly said. “Why do they come visit her?”
“She’s a spider,” Nate said.
“A what now?”
“A spider—she’s at the center of a web,” he said. “She’s a connection between the inside and the outside. There’s somebody she’s close to who is in jail. A brother or a husband or something like that, somebody who is plugged in nice and tight with Aryan Steel. And she’s passing him messages, and getting messages back. Probably running a bank account too.”
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