Taken By Surprise

by Jessica Frances

  ***

  The next day I’m ordered to go on a treadmill while the others go on ahead with training. I have wires stuck all over my body monitoring my pulse and, while I at first walk slowly, Harold continues to put the speed up until eventually I’m running. I’m barely running for ten minutes before I can hardly breathe and Harold is turning the speed right down. I’m not sure what the others have run, but I’m certain it’s more than ten minutes. Back at home, I barely did any exercise and I definitely never ran unless it was to make it to the bus stop on time. Even at school, I was never involved in any sports and gym class was always torture for me.

  Harold stops the treadmill and I eagerly get off so I can sit down. My legs feel like jelly. I’m told to stretch which I awkwardly do, not really knowing what muscles I’m supposed to be stretching or how to do them properly. If I hadn’t been ogling Charlie so much yesterday I might have remembered some of what the others had done.

  I smile, thinking about Charlie. I don’t think I’d be at all together right now if it wasn’t for him. I didn’t want to get attached to him, yet without realizing it, I already sort of have. When I woke up early this morning, after having a nightmare-less sleep, I found we were still holding hands. I didn’t want to leave that moment, however Stan interrupted us minutes later and we had to get up.

  Since I’ve been so quick with my fitness test I manage to not miss the circuit with the obstacles. Stan barks at me to join in while he speaks to Harold. I groan, knowing this isn’t worth fighting over and join the others. I can only climb half of the tall bars, it takes me ages to crawl under the low netting, I have to stop halfway through jumping in the hoops to catch my breath and I get stuck when it comes to climbing over the hurdle. The worst one is the large wall that looks like what you might use to train for rock climbing. Rose and Charlie seemed to struggle with this one yesterday, only Will had climbed it with ease, however I can’t even reach the first groove to pull myself up. I jump three times before I manage to get a grip, but lose it seconds later.

  “Need a leg up?” Charlie huffs next to me while leaning over, trying to catch his breath.

  “I suck at this.” I frown, feeling annoyed that I’m not better.

  “Come on, you can do it.” Charlie puts his hands together and makes a step for me to use.

  I take a deep breath, put my foot in his hands and then propel myself to the first groove. The wall isn’t very high up and with the mat underneath we can’t really hurt ourselves if we fall, although there is a rope that we attach around ourselves just in case. My arms ache from using them to lift myself and it takes an eternity to reach the top. Yesterday, the others had propelled themselves over the wall and used the rope to glide down to the bottom on the other smooth side. My arms and legs don’t appear to agree on how to get over the wall and instead I lose my grip and fall downwards, the rope slowing me down enough to grip ahold of an exposed groove.

  “It’s okay, Zoe. Just drop; you’re nearly at the bottom,” Charlie calls out, I let go and he steadies me when my feet don’t appear to want to hold up my weight. “You okay?”

  “I hurt everywhere,” I complain.

  “Welcome to the club.” Charlie smiles at me, seeing it is almost enough to make me forget where I am.

  “Stretch!” Stan yells out. He’s looking over some documents with Harold.

  We all move to sit on the massive mat in the middle of the room and I lie down, trying to catch my breath while the others laugh at me.

  “How can any of you be walking right now?” I complain.

  “Don’t worry; tomorrow you’ll feel a lot worse,” Rose promises.

  “Thanks.”

  “Practice some one-on-ones. Black Eye, you go together; Muscles and Hacker go easy on each other. I’ll be back and I’ll know if you’re slacking off,” Stan calls out before walking out a different exit than the one we’re allowed through. Harold goes with him.

  “You told him about Black Eye?” I ask Rose.

  “He thought it was funny.” Rose shrugs and smiles sweetly at me.

  “Where did he go?” I ask Charlie, letting him help me up. Rose and Will begin fighting and while I know it’s not the most intense fighting you can imagine, it still looks a lot more sophisticated than what I’m capable of. Am I expected to fight like that against Charlie?

  “I don’t know. He sometimes disappears like that. Come on, you ready?”

  “No, I’ve never done this before.” I look back over to Rose and Will which makes me feel even more nervous.

  “Hey, don’t sweat it. I completely suck at this, just ask Rose, she’ll love to tell you all about it. Now make sure your hands are always up like this.” Charlie makes two fists with his hands and holds them in front of his chest close to his chin.

  I mimic him and feel like a fraud doing so.

  “Good. Now sort of bounce on your feet. You need to be able to move quickly to dodge and move about.” Charlie moves lightly around the mats and I try to do the same. My legs protest, feeling sore from my run and the circuit. I groan and stop moving. Not wanting to look completely inept in front of Charlie, I bite down on the pain and jump around again, ignoring how much my legs dispute the movement.

  “Shouldn’t we be supplied safety equipment? Don’t people usually wear helmets and gloves for this?”

  “Stan said out in the world we won’t always be equipped for a fight, so we should train like that.”

  “Sounds dangerous.” My voice shakes as nerves set in.

  “I won’t hurt you, Zoe.”

  “Then this is going to be a very boring fight.”

  “Come on, take a swing at me.” I weakly throw my arm out at him and he knocks it away easily. “You need to have more force than that. Keep your elbow slightly bent and make sure you keep your hand in a fist. You have to jab your arm and then bring it back in front of you to protect yourself.” I nod that I understand. “Try again.”

  I punch out again and this time, when Charlie knocks my arm away, I’m quick to move it back.

  “Good, now you just have to try and do that when I’m not expecting it. Move around a bit.”

  I bounce around on the mats, knowing I’m slow. Perhaps if this had been the first thing I’d done today, I might be better.

  I take another swing at Charlie, he ducks easily and manages a quick rebut by kicking out at me. I have no way of getting out of the way in time and Charlie stops his leg right before he hits me.

  “We’re kicking, too?” I complain.

  “Hands up, Zoe,” Charlie reminds me and I quickly bring them back up. I already feel them moving away from me straight away. It’s such an effort to remember to keep them up. “You’re doing great, Zoe. Just keep attacking.”

  Attacking? I’m not an attacking type of person. I’m never going to be able to do this.

  Charlie lets me take the lead and I know he’s not bothering to do much, letting me find my own rhythm. He ducks and blocks all my attempts and my energy level starts to go down fast.

  “Maybe you need some motivation. I bet you can’t hit me, not even if I was blindfolded.”

  I roll my eyes at him, but do feel something fire up inside of me.

  “What’s at stake here?” I ask, watching his feet moving quickly along the mat.

  “How about, if you can get a hit, you get however much of the quilt you want tonight. If you can’t manage a hit, then I can hog it.”

  “Deal.” I smile at Charlie, bringing my arms back up to protect myself.

  For at least a minute, I punch out several times to no avail. I’m beginning to lose hope when Stan of all people gives me an opening. I watch Charlie’s arm begin to drop and I punch out with all the energy I have left. Charlie’s attention moves away from me, though, as Stan’s voice booms through the gym, announcing he has returned. My fist makes direct contact with his jaw and he falls back in surprise. Pain radiates through my hand and I quickly pull it back.

  “I’m so sorry. Are you
okay?” I panic at seeing him holding his face in his hand.

  “That is some right hook you have there.” Charlie grimaces.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t think I would actually hit you.” I rest my hand over his own hand that is holding his injured jaw.

  Stan walks over and forces me to move back as he leans over and examines Charlie. “Nothing broken.” He then turns around and grabs my hand. He moves my fingers around and I bite down on my lip in pain. “You’re both fine. Go get some lunch and be back in an hour,” Stan dismisses us and then leaves to talk to Will and Rose.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” I ask Charlie who’s gone back to rubbing his jaw.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Guess I lost the bet.” He sounds miffed.

  “Only from one lucky punch. If we’d been having a real fight, you know you could have had me a hundred times over already,” I reason, not wanting him to feel bad about it.

  “True, you were sucking pretty badly.” Charlie pokes his tongue out at me.

  “Keep talking and maybe tonight I won’t be in the sharing mood when it comes to the quilt.”

  “You make a fair point.” Charlie laughs.