Kung Fu High School (20 page)

To top off yet another great day, I got called out on the afternoon circle. I was the first one. It was Merrick again, still a Hunter, now a new Blade. He was ready to make his name and get his revenge, not just for 'Fredo but for Karl. So I was an easy enough target.

"You gonna do this?" It was Jimmy. Everywhere else in the quad was absolutely packed with people, but there was a six-foot radius of emptiness around him. Kids just backed up when he got near.

"Got to," I said.

My hip was better but still numb, then again, maybe that was to my advantage. Knee stiff enough that my left leg kicks wouldn't have much power. What was really bothering me was the hole I had in my jaw where my tooth used to be. I should've rinsed more. Ah well, I'd do it when I got home. I tucked my flannel in, tied my hair back even tighter, and wrapped my wrists and hands. One of the freshman Wolves was my corner-man and he helped with everything. Double-checked that my laces were tied and tucked in. That was always a sucker's way to go out, tripping over your own laces. I stretched real quick and did two simple breathing exercises to get the blood up. Merrick was already waiting.

When I took my first step in, it started. Of course, it took Merrick all of two seconds to break the rules. He pulled two fleshhook kinfés on me when he spun out of the corner. Everyone in the quad went: "Kooori, kooori," real loud, all at the same time. Typical shout. Birdcalls meant danger, as if I hadn't seen them. Probably the tradition was stolen from some movie about gangs or something. Roll over it. Dress it up. Put a flag in it.

See, the whole crowd knew weapons were illegal in a normal roll but at Kung Fu, we didn't have referees, so the fight went on but the stakes got higher. If he won, he'd be punished; if I won and chose not to end him, he was in trouble with his own family. I switched my forward-facing stance to lateral and winked at Jimmy. Just so he knew I had this taken care of and didn't need him to come rushing in and paralyzing this guy before I could finish him.

"You're gonna bleed, bitch," Merrick said, then spat on the ground in the grand tradition of 'Fredo. The crowd hissed. I let them. I had no words for him. I told myself that this guy, this boy, right here in front of me took my brother away. I saw red then, but a controlled red. A background-type of red that only fueled the right strikes and didn't push me into unnecessary action. I'd like to say I was going to take it easy on him until that came out of his mouth, but I wasn't. He was going to get his anyway for taking my big brother from me. For being party to it. I tasted Cue's blood on my tongue sharper than it'd ever been, more bitter.

See, Merrick had one weakness, and it was a really big one. His first attack with a kinfé was always a lunge. Just looking at his stance and the semi-wild look in his eyes, I could tell it was coming. That was a downfall of fighting someone who used to be in your family. He moved toward me, real slow, then two quick steps, quick, quick, then slow. We were dancing as the circle screamed for us to come together, to draw blood. The wind blew his flannel open. He really should've taken it off or tied it down. It also threw his hair into his face so he had to push it back and I feinted like I was going to take advantage of his stupidity in not being ready and he backed up and looked clumsy. That got some laughs.

After that, I couldn't hear the crowd anymore, couldn't smell the factories. Only tasted Cue's blood in my mouth. Like it was fresh and still liquid. Merrick circled. I kicked out at him with my left foot to keep him on his toes. And he looked perplexed but not for long, see, once he'd gauged me, gauged the distance between us and where he thought I'd block to, he faked like he was going to rear back and instead, just shot his right hand in, blade aiming for my belly button. A toothy grimace played on his face as he lunged. He didn't even know what was coming.

I turned my body sideways, one foot directly behind the other, to get as skinny as I could as the kinfé slid right past me like I was a matador. The kinfé cut a rough arc right through the plaid of my billowing flannel. Merrick ducked his head as I grabbed his right wrist and jammed my thumb into the topside of it, right on the joint, bringing all four fingers in on the underside, and bending his hand backward on itself as I used his own momentum to guide the kinfé and the hand attached to it away from me. I stepped to the side so I could bring it up hard behind his back.

Of course, as he was being turned he attempted an awkward stab across his body, at my ribs with his other hand, but I caught that one too and bent that wrist inward so that his arm stayed bent at the elbow and pulled tight across his body, while the wrist plus kinfé got stuck in his other armpit and cut the backside of his arm, right on the triceps. Flinching, he bit down hard in pain. But I was nowhere near done. I kicked in the backs of his knees, both at the same time, with my left foot just hard enough to get him to the pavement and then I switched my stance to my stronger right leg and kicked him in the jaw: once, twice, three times a lady, knocked him out then, felt his spine sag but I went through with a fourth on the bridge of his nose and a fifth that he caught with his eye orbit. When he slumped fully and awkwardly onto the concrete, it was done. There would be no more talk of retribution for Karl or 'Fredo. I took Merrick's f leshhooks but not before wiping his blood off one of them on his shirt. They were mine then: spoils of victory and all that.

It was Melinda who looked the most impressed on our side of the circle and she even stopped talking to Jimmy about Hong Kong to offer her congratulations. Jesus, had everyone heard about HK but me?

"Well done, Tigress," she said. "Couldn't've done it better myself. Almost looked like he told you what he was going to do."

"Thanks," I said. Even though I didn't feel like saying anything to Melinda, I knew pretenses had to be upheld until I could figure out exactly what to do. "He did."

Melinda just laughed. Jimmy gave me another look. The kind that was disapproving and approving at the same time. Out of anyone, I wouldn't have to explain to Jimmy how someone could dictate their movements before doing them.

I dropped Merrick's kinfés in my backpack and threw my jacket on even though I was real warm already, but with the wind as it is was, I knew I wouldn't stay that way for long. Caught sight of Bruiser Calderon and his purple-black raccoon eyes across the circle and he just nodded to me so I nodded back. Not a downward head tilt, an upward one.

"You coming?" I asked Jimmy. Melinda had her legs around him and she was making she-bear noises. To her, it must've looked playful. To everyone else, desperate. She was a good actress, pretending like she didn't know what I told her in the morning. Like she was carefree as usual, sitting there on one of those square concrete blocks.

"Yes," Jimmy said, and he attempted to step away from Melinda but she wouldn't let him go.

"Just try me and see," she said.

Well, Jimmy said, "Please."

But of course, Melinda said, "No, you have to free yourself."

So he did. Jimmy put his hands on her legs real gently then must've put his thumbs in the right spots because her legs opened right up like a clamshell and she got a look on her face like it hurt but she liked his show of force at the same time.

"See you tomorrow, Mister Man," was all she said. I didn't need to look in the direction of Mark's and Rico's sunglasses-covered eyes to know how they felt about the whole thing. Same as me probably.

The crowd backed up as Jimmy and I walked out; I can't say it was a bad feeling, that residual power rubbing off on me when I was near him, within his circumference. I looked up at the second-floor window. Ridley wasn't at his usual spot. Something was stirring. I didn't think about it too long though. I had to go ice my hip and find out if my dad was hanging from our living room ceiling.

Jimmy and I were almost home, just crossing the last street before mine, when a big chunk of sadness landed on my skull and soaked in. Like it dropped down out of the sky, a snowflake the size of Remo's car. I could see the house. I could see the street as I walked, lugging the thing inside me. Melting down to gelatin at the base of my skull and thickening, a memory tumor capable of affecting my breathing and heartbeat, shutting down systems on my brain stem with the spun-out truth I was intent on not thinking about: my brother was gone forever.

There were no cars. No kids out. I didn't see a single bird. Even though Jimmy was just behind me, crunching in the gritty, freezing slush still left on the side of the sanded road—the stuff pushed all the way to the rain gutters by passing car tires that hardened when it got to twilight—I wasn't all there. Still, I stepped and he stepped too. When boots landed in the grubby snow mush, they crunched. Water not yet frozen pushed away from our soles in thin, chocolate milk swirls. Shards of ice, with trapped pebbles and sand grains inside, broke and settled in the empty space of the uneven boot prints we left behind. The dirt would just have to wait for the melt before it was free. For those moments of walking in unison, it kind of felt like Jimmy was tagging along on this journey, like we were kids again, but then we were there too quickly, thirty feet from where it happened, moving closer in a gray daylight so different from that night, and I wasn't much more than a ghost skirting the ground beside him, carrying nothing.

It was the first time I'd actually looked at my neighborhood in I don't even know how long. Before, it was just something to pass through as quickly as possible: walking fast, always on high alert, watching my back and everyone else's, not concerned with the squat houses in seventeen different shades of brown, not a single one over a story tall. Most had cracked driveways. None had front porches. All had tin screen doors. All had chimneys but none worked. Only two trees grew, each in ill-defined yards for a whole block to share. No fences in those front yards. No grass. It used to be just those things—wood, brick, concrete—but now it was marked by something invisible. A place I had to pay respects. Soiled ground. Every house looked to me like it had moved a few inches closer to the edge of the cul-de-sac and huddled, or maybe each one had imploded a fraction of an inch, had constricted to its foundation a little, all with windows as eyes, sagged and sad. I was losing it. It was all in my head. Had to be.

Halting at where I thought the edge started, where asphalt met the slope of the curb, I was almost floating in the spot. The big spot. I purposely didn't look in its direction the last few days. Maybe that way, it wouldn't be any realer than it was. You know? If I didn't look, it wouldn't be there. Wouldn't be the rough size and shape of a kiddie pool and the color of squashed plum skin. The opposite of an ostrich, I'd kept my eyes buried up, on everything eye level and higher, away from the street. Maybe that's not such an opposite. The tumor was becoming a headache.

A late snowfall on Tuesday night had taken most of the big bloodstain with it. The last of Cue, for real. At that moment, I was kind of glad that the lazy cops hadn't bothered to clean it up. It'll snow, they must've told each other over one last cigarette before going home to their wives and lives. Only a vague circle remained visible on the blacktop, underneath the milky-clear slush layer. To someone else looking, it could've been anything. Old oil, maybe grease, an exploded carton of grape juice that fell from a ripped grocery bag. Somehow, it was comforting to see. Like he wasn't quite gone yet. Part of Cue was still there, preserved and frozen, under the tooth-width of ice.

Low and stupid and sentimental, gaining form, Ghost Jen evaporated and left me there to deal with what was left. I turned, feeling my soreness, the weight of my backpack, and fatigue. I'd gotten sloppy with the last kick to Merrick's face and I was pretty sure I jammed my right big toe. I always did that. It's never been the same since I broke it a year ago. Checked the mailbox even though I knew we didn't have any, but we did: a small manila envelope for Jimmy, from his mother. Weird that she'd write and not call. I handed him the letter and he put it in his pocket without opening it. My hand shook while unlocking the door.

First thing I noticed when it opened: the heat was on, and not from the oven because I couldn't smell casserole. Dad was in the living room, sitting down and leaning over an old easel on the portable table. With his back the way it was, he couldn't paint at an angle. It needed to be flat. He looked up and smiled at us, just a little one but I could see the vein in his neck move. It was the best sight I'd seen in a long time.

"Why's the heat on?" I put my bag down and moved in behind him to see what he was painting.

"Remo got it turned on. Said we were ruining the oven," Dad said.

He was laying down a real thin white line over a darker brown background: for my shirt. He was painting from a picture, an old family portrait that we had taken in some crappy studio at least five years ago. My hair was all frizzy and Cue's ears were too big because he hadn't grown into them yet. Mom wore her hair up and had taken her glasses off for the picture. You could see the double pressure marks from them on the sides of her nose. Dad was wearing a shirt that was too tight and he had huge sideburns but he looked strong, real strong. I hadn't seen the picture in years.

"Heat is heat, but he's right," I said. "Is that where you got the paints too?"

I couldn't believe Remo did it. If he got the gas on so fast, it meant he used a credit card or something.

"Yup, he was here on his lunch break." Dad put his tongue back in his mouth to say it, then stuck it out again, and leaned close to the canvas, putting the first brushstroke in on my nose.

"Make it good and crooked," I said.

There was a real big difference between my nose and Jen-the-ten-year-old's nose but sometimes when I look in the mirror, I can't remember what the old one looked like. It takes pictures to recall, but why bother? Paint that kid how I am now. I didn't tell Dad that, just left him to his painting, his re-remembering. Can't say I completely approved of the subject matter. Maybe a landscape would've been more relaxing or productive but I wasn't going to tell him what to paint. I wish I knew what Remo had said to him.