The Knockout

by Sajni Patel

  I turned to her, empowered by having stood up to Saanvi, of letting the truth out with Amit’s parents, of finding solace and comfort with my fellow female athletes. It was easy to speak to her now. She had words to say, but so did I. So I went first.

  “Look, I’ve apologized before for what I did. I wasn’t being shady. I asked you about Dev and you said you were over him. I even told you everything I was doing. I honestly did not think the other guy and I were still talking, much less dating. We were never dating. I get why you were mad, but I don’t get why you hated me. Especially for this long. I especially don’t get why you let Saanvi talk so much malicious crap about me. We both know those things aren’t true, and you’re way too nice to let that slide. So why would you rather be friends with her and not me? Or friends with her at all, even if not with me?”

  She sighed. It was hard to ignore Saanvi’s behavior, to pretend she hadn’t changed. Even Rayna couldn’t possibly see the better side of Saanvi right now.

  “I’m not going to beg for our friendship back. I’m over that. I’ve apologized and given you space and waited patiently for almost half a year. If you don’t think I’m friend material, then that’s too bad for you because I’m still an amazing person. It hurt to lose you. But I didn’t deserve to feel that way for this long. I don’t have time to waste on negativity. It was all a snafu and I did my part to try to make up for it.”

  “I know,” she said and chewed on the inside of her cheek like someone who knew they were guilty. Finally!

  “Sometimes friendships need time and space to heal. That would be awesome. And maybe the fact that it hasn’t bounced back by now means that it never would’ve lasted in the first place. And that’s too bad. But that’s all I have to say. I’ll always wave and smile at you in passing, okay? No more awkward glances or looking away like I’m dirt.”

  “I’m not mad at you anymore,” she said after a moment of silence. “You should be mad at me. I don’t know why it took me so long, but maybe because it felt weird to be the first one to say something. I thought we were over. And what’s the point of saying anything if we were?”

  I replied, a bit annoyed, “The point would’ve been to let me know so I didn’t feel like crap for so long. Also for closure. We’d know for sure, no guessing, no assuming.”

  “I was pretty mean to you.”

  “Petty as hell,” I muttered.

  “Deserved. I felt used, to be honest.”

  “Huh?”

  She shrugged and looked off into the distance when she said, “You used to ask me about Dev all the time when we were talking. Then I wondered if you’d only been asking because you’d liked him all that time. I got self-conscious.”

  “So you assumed crap about me and never bothered to clear it up? Were we even friends at all?” I asked curtly, crossing my arms and scowling.

  “Yes! Of course we were.” She heaved out a breath and went quiet, as if she tried to summon the right words. “I missed talking to you about everything under the sun. All the weird stuff that happens at work. Boys. College picks. Recipes.”

  “New ones?” I asked. Her dessert recipes were the best.

  “Yep. I made one for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a pink lemonade cupcake.” She slowly smiled, her grin getting wider until I got it.

  “That sounds good. Oh, wait. Did you make it up?”

  “Yes! Pink. Get it?”

  “Oh!” I laughed. “For Muay Thai?”

  “Yes! I know it’s your favorite color and it always reminds you of Muay Thai.”

  “That’s super cool.” And that meant that she’d been thinking of me all this time, enough to create a delicious concoction in my honor.

  “I miss how easily we talked to one another. I was a brat.”

  “You wanna use a stronger word?” I arched a brow.

  She laughed. “Yeah, I know.”

  She lurched forward and hugged me. “I’m so sorry! It wasn’t as big of a deal as we made it out to be! And not for this stupid long! I was pissed at first, but I didn’t want to accept that you were right about how it all went down.”

  She pulled back, and added, “Life is too short for this. Can we be friends?”

  “It really messed me up.”

  “I’ll do anything. This friendship can’t die.”

  “Rayna. I want to, but it’s hard to trust you after leaving me like that, siding with Saanvi, letting her talk crap about me. In the restroom? Remember that?”

  Her eyes glistened. “Yeah. I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I’ll earn it. I saw you at Holi. I wanted to say hi, and it killed me that I didn’t.”

  “That was your own fault.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why are you friends with Saanvi? She’s the not the same person anymore. You’ve got to see that. She’s not the girl we played dolls with and practiced dance with and did sleepovers with. She used to smother us with hospitality, and now she wouldn’t give me a sip of water if I were dying at her feet.”

  “She has some good qualities.”

  I raised a sharp eyebrow. “Enough to be friends? Toxicity poisons everything it touches. She does that crap on purpose and there’s no reason to be a vindictive person.”

  “Let me talk to her. Maybe she’ll put it behind her and apologize and we can all be friends. I think that’s better than brushing her aside and letting her poison herself more.”

  And if only I’d gotten that sort of response and consideration from Rayna, but bygones were bygones. “I would never be friends with her again. And honestly, I can’t be friends with you again if you don’t see the truth here.”

  “Is that an ultimatum?” she asked.

  “Nope. Just telling you how it is. I can’t be friends with someone who is friends with a person as vindictive and cruel as her, or with someone who wouldn’t stand up for me if I were wronged. We can be friendly, but real friends are better than that. Whatever decision you make is up to you.”

  “I understand. I will talk to her, though. She at least owes you an apology.”

  I nodded, but I didn’t have any craps left to give for Saanvi.

  Rayna left for her table, where Saanvi sat, having watched the entire encounter with darkness in her eyes. Some people couldn’t be redeemed.

  Ignoring her, I opened my lunch tote and chowed down.

  A buzz filled the room, something more than the usual clamor of goofing around and stuffing hungry French fry holes. Amit had offered Lily to jump ahead of him in line, which meant she walked across all three tiers of the cafeteria before he finished paying for his meal. That left ample room for Saanvi to hop over to him. They exchanged a few words. He shook his head and glanced at me, then smiled big.

  “Ooh, are you two making googly eyes at each other from across the room?” Lily asked as she plopped down across from me.

  “No. And why are you sitting over there?” I asked.

  “Saving that spot for your boyfriend.”

  My cheeks turned hot. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Did you or did you not lock lips with him?”

  I flushed. How did she know! Oh . . . wait . . . “That was a peck on the corner of my lips over a week ago. Let it go.”

  She’d kill me later for keeping the juicy bits from her, but all this boyfriend talk had to wait an entire two weeks, until after USMTO . . . if I made it there.

  I looked around, curious from the noise and energy.

  Ah. Now it all came together. The table on the far side had turned into a booth, and a bake sale was going on. What a perfect place for it. Kimmy and three other girls from the soccer team waved excitedly at me. Kimmy walked onto the stage with a microphone and I froze. I sure hoped she wasn’t about to announce anything about my prospects.

  Amit sat down beside me with a s
ad tray of cheese fries.

  “Is that all you’re eating?” I asked.

  “Not much to choose from today.”

  I slid my lunch container over to him. “Have some.”

  He eyed my lunch skeptically. “Looks like slim pickings.”

  “It’s plenty for me. But I’m not that hungry. Eat.”

  He picked up one of the lettuce wraps and examined it with scrutiny.

  “It’s a bean sprout wrap.” And it was freaking delicious.

  He turned it one way then another, as if something would magically appear. “Where’s the tortilla?”

  “No bad complex carbs, and those tortillas are full of the wrong kind of calories.”

  He took a bite and said, “Not bad.”

  “I still deserve to enjoy my food, even if it’s healthy,” I said to him but eyed Kimmy as a line of girls stood behind her to the left and a line of boys to the right. They were all on stage.

  “What are they up to?” Amit asked.

  I narrowed my eyes and munched on my apple slices.

  Eighteen

  “Hey, hey, hey!” Kimmy boomed, stopping conversations across the cafeteria dead in their tracks. “You’ve heard the buzz since yesterday morning. We’re going to be doing a lot of stuff in the next couple of weeks, so don’t miss out! We’ve got a Friday night movie bash on the football field with lots of goodies to eat. Prom committee is selling flowers, corsages, and chocolates with special pop-the-question cues. We’ll be having bake sales at lunch every day and at all the games, so don’t walk right by us! Heard someone’s mama made mini buttermilk pies, y’all!”

  That earned a huge hoot because we all knew Lizzy Stanley’s parents owned a delicious bakery and her mom was citywide famous for the best pies this side of Texas.

  “Twice a week, we’ll be doing either an auction or raffling off some majorly cool things. Today’s auction is probably the reason why most of you opted out of off-campus lunch.”

  I glared at Lily, who shrugged guiltily but turned her full attention to the stage.

  “We’re auctioning off dates to prom!”

  What the crap? Was this even legal?

  “Speaking of prom dates . . .” Amit winked at me.

  “Oh, no. Dances are not my thing. I can’t dance to save my life, remember?”

  “It’s a rite of passage. Get to dress up, eat fancy food, hang with your friends who are also dressed up and eating fancy food.”

  “I’ve never been to a dance and don’t intend on starting with prom.”

  “Just breaking my heart all over the place, Kareena.”

  “Wait. Are you asking me to prom?”

  His cheeks flushed. “Guess so.”

  “Is that how you ask a girl to prom? I was expecting a little romance or doves or something.”

  He grinned. “I don’t think you could handle me getting romantic.”

  Did someone turn up the heater in here? Thank goodness for Kimmy’s auctioning because that was the only thing that pried Amit’s eyes off me.

  “Now, the rules are each person pays for their own ticket and meals unless anyone is inclined to do more. Don’t expect them to otherwise. No hanky-panky. Don’t expect to get to any bases. They don’t owe you anything more than a friendly prom and dancing and eating with you at your table of friends. But you know these guys, and they love to dance and take pictures and are always the life of school parties. Be nice to them because they’re volunteering to do this. You can make arrangements after the auction.

  “Auction starts in five minutes, so get your giant green auction hand from our table if you haven’t already. Then please return them when the auction is over. You have twenty-four hours to pay in full or you lose your claim and the student date goes to the next highest bidder for up to three bidders. So don’t make these awesome dates feel bad!”

  The guys made broken hearts on their chests, and some of the girls, including Lily, went wild. She had the hugest crush on Jared up there. And she had a giant green hand ready to go. Girl meant business.

  “This auction was approved by the PTO and the principal, but if we have problems, they’ll never let the student body do this again. However, we need everyone to be safe and respectful, so if any of the participants have an issue, bring it to me ASAP. Bidding begins at ten bucks. That seems like a great price for a great date, but I know we can do better! All proceeds go toward a great cause!”

  My cheeks flushed. Oh, boy. Here it came . . .

  “Did you know that one of our very own athletes is going to the US Open?”

  The crowd gasped and excitedly looked around.

  “Which athlete could it be?” Kimmy asked.

  Amit grinned at me. I wanted to hide. So much attention . . .

  “Hint: She’s a girl. A very badass girl.” Then she mouthed to the teachers and coaches watching from the door, “Sorry!”

  The crowd laughed.

  “Any guesses? Well, her sport is . . . get this . . . Muay Thai!”

  More gasps. More fervor.

  “A female, national-level fighter right among us! You might’ve never known. She kept this awesomeness to herself for a long time, but we found out! Okay, she finally told us! She doesn’t play any school sports. She’s a senior. She’s sitting on the top tier right now.”

  I groaned. That narrowed it down to about thirty girls. Some eyes landed on me and they guessed correctly. Maybe it was my slumped, please-don’t-look-at-me posture, or Amit grinning like a fool beside me, or Lily bouncing in her seat.

  Travis had heard. Surely they’d heard too.

  “Even more exciting, if you’re wondering why we’re raising money for her to go to the Open, aside from it being a fabulous, rare opportunity that she worked very hard for and will be the first student at Connally to go. If she does well at the Open, she has a real shot at trying out for the US World Championships team.”

  An applause.

  “And finally, a shot at the Olympics.”

  An all-out explosion of applause and chatter and cheers broke through the cafeteria. A myriad of hands came at me, some to pat my back, others to hug, some to high five. A tangle of students amassed in our little corner with me at the center.

  It was a lot. Like hyperventilating a lot. I grabbed Amit’s hand beneath the table, which he then squeezed and held.

  I was about to lose it. God, Kareena, don’t cry in public.

  “All right! All right!” Kimmy reeled everyone back to the auction. “Make sure you show your support whenever you see our fighter; in the halls, in class, in the car, walking down the street, at the store! Make sure you help make history by showing support at all the fundraisers, which we guarantee you’ll enjoy and get something out of too. You’re not paying for just her. Eat some pie, watch a movie with your sweetheart, surprise your prom date, and right now, raise those green hands as we start the bidding. First up! Jared!”

  The girls went wild, leaving me alone to go after him auction-style, including Lily.

  “Jared is soccer royalty, a straight-A senior giving his prom night to a special young lady.”

  Jared walked to the front of the stage in his soccer jersey and jeans, flashed a dimpled smile, kissed two fingers and then raised them toward me with a wink. Jared was a hot commodity and he went quickly. To Lily. She had the biggest smile on her face, and no one could say others didn’t get something from helping me get to USMTO.

  “You okay?” Amit asked, glancing down at my white-knuckled hold suffocating the blood flow to his fingers.

  I released the death grip. “Sorry. Yeah. It’s all so much. I wish Kimmy would’ve told me about this beforehand. I mean, it’s amazing and I’m blown away, but a better hint would’ve been nice to brace myself with.”

  “It’s awesome.”

  “It is, no doubt, but so much
at once. Look at them. They’re popular, gorgeous, accomplished athletes sacrificing something as special as prom with their girlfriends and boyfriends for me.” I blinked back tears. Dang it!

  Most of the volunteers were my friends, but we weren’t that close. They hadn’t known about Muay Thai before. We never hung out outside of school.

  My entire body flared hot as I fought back tears. “I need to go to the restroom.”

  “You can’t leave. This is all for you!” Lily said.

  Jared shot her a wink and she just about crumpled.

  She was right, though. This was all for me and it would be rude to leave.

  I took my hand from Amit and wiped the clamminess against my jeans. I kept my hands there and his hand landed on top of mine, warm and secure, an anchor.

  My brain struggled to find something to distract myself with. Thinking of Papa only made me sad because he hadn’t gotten any better. Thinking of Mama made me emotional because she would cry when she found out about this. Thinking of anything Muay Thai made me want to happy cry because it was within real reach. Thinking of Amit and how wonderful he was made me want to sob. What else was there?

  Saanvi, with her gaping mouth and incredulous, confused gaze helped. Could we actually be friends again? Would the winter fairies hovering over her head stop sprinkling so much frostiness?

  For the next thirty minutes or so, my thoughts honed in on Saanvi. The auction ended on prom queen nominee and star track and fielder, Amanda. The props came and went, and I happily thanked everyone, but I could not get out of there fast enough. As soon as the bell rang, I sprang out of my seat and nearly jogged to class, leaving Amit and Lily behind.

  The halls filled with an upheaval of congrats and even when I walked into class after managing to grab my books and maneuver through the adoring crowds, everyone in comp-sci applauded when I arrived, startling me. Even though Kimmy told them to do this, it wasn’t something I’d get used to.

  My steps faltered and I was pretty sure I looked like a deer in headlights. Being in Texas, I’d seen them plenty of times. They froze in the middle of the road as a racing car approached. Their mouths dropped and their eyes went wide and glazed over. It was an “oh, crap” moment. Very much like this one.