Chapter 2
The sound of hospital monitors and chatter fills my ears.
“I know it’s a bad time, Derrick, but there’s nothing I can really do. My dad is going to need more care when he gets home and with my sister still in school I can’t make it work. I’m so sorry.”
“Only part-time, though? And from home? Mari, we have so many projects,” my boss whines. “I really need you full-time right now.”
I sniffle dramatically as I turn the knob on the car stereo to make the beeping louder. “I’m sorry, I just—” I let out a choked sob. Derrick sighs. “I already sent the paperwork to HR.”
“Okay, well, if you can come back to full time earlier, please do so.”
“I’ll try,” I say before hanging up as I pull into the parking lot. I turn off the “ambient hospital sounds” playlist that I assume only exists for lying to your employers.
The high-rise hotel looms above as I pull my stiff body out of my car.
I’m running late thanks to traffic on the six-hour drive here.
My body spent the last few hours molding its unstable joints into the seat, and it protests at the new vertical position.
I breathe through the pain as I straighten my spine and align my hips, letting everything fall back in place.
My bad knee cracks ominously, and the valet looks ill at the sound.
“Hi, I’m here for Circuit Smack,” I tell him.
He nods, green around the gills, as I reluctantly hand him the keys before grabbing my suitcase, backpack, and cane. The 1968 Chevrolet Chevelle was lovingly restored for me by my father for my eighteenth birthday. Besides my pink leather jacket and my robots, it’s my most prized possession.
“Great. Your car will be in the employee lot so you can access it at any time,” says the valet.
I repeat the same introductory line to the receptionist, who hands me a room key and directs me to my room in the block set aside for Circuit Smack teams. At least the hotel is covered by the show.
I hobble to my room, my cane’s pink glitter sparkling in the glow from the wall sconces, and will my stiff body to loosen up. I don’t need my cane all the time. It’s a newer addition to my life, and one I’m still getting used to being seen with, let alone remembering to use when I need it.
When I was first prescribed my cane, I felt like a failure.
Like, somehow, it was my fault my body refused to work the way a non-disabled person’s body works.
But the reality is, I have hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and try as I might, I cannot overcome a connective tissue disorder.
I tried everything to fix it. No matter what I did—the physical therapy, medications and supplements, unsustainable (also unwanted and unhelpful) weight loss, careful movements, the desperate bargaining with the universe—none of it matters to the hEDS.
Doctors didn’t help my attitude about acquiring a mobility device.
Despite telling me a cane would likely help me, they were also quick to warn about becoming “too reliant” on it.
I was too young to “need it too often.” It’s hard to be torn in two like that, to be constantly told, “You need it but try not to.”
The sentiment echoed my dad’s later struggles after his car accident.
When doctors determined he could walk again “if he tried hard enough,” they told him to keep pushing even though he couldn’t walk very far and it caused him significant pain the entire time.
They insisted that if he used a wheelchair, “he’d never walk again.
” After months of trying to heed their advice and eventually realizing he’d never walk meaningfully again anyway, he begged his doctor for a chair. It instantly gave him his life back.
Even with my dad’s example, I still sometimes struggle to accept that maybe my life would be easier if I used my cane more often.
I’ve been disabled for most of my life. In a rapidly changing body, my journey down the path of acceptance can’t quite keep up with the downhill decline.
The judgment of being a young, fat person with mobility aids is a tough pill to swallow.
The layered societal biases stack up, each with more derision and anger layered on.
Not to mention, I’ve never seen another visibly disabled builder on Circuit Smack.
It’s easy to ignore my ring splints, the ring-like braces I wear on each of my finger joints and my thumbs.
People think they’re jewelry. I can even explain away sitting during matches by saying it’s for focus, which it technically is.
Otherwise, I have to focus on keeping my body from collapsing.
Sticking out isn’t a bad thing, but I don’t want to be an oddity.
Even so, if I need an accommodation, I need it.
I’m not always great at recognizing when I need one, but I know I need them sometimes. Like sitting when I fight.
Lost in thought, I almost walk past my hotel room but notice just in time.
I push open the door to the room. It’s the nicest place I’ll probably ever get a chance to stay.
The king-sized bed has soft sheets; there’s an absolutely luxurious bathroom with a huge walk-in shower, and a beautiful view.
Maybe I could roll around on the bed for a solid forty-five minutes and pretend traffic was terrible?
No, I should get to the Bay and meet the team.
I hesitate. I’m less stiff now that I’ve had a chance to stretch. I could leave my cane here, and I doubt anyone would know the difference. I don’t know how many people know me from my reputation. Leaving it here gives me one less thing for people to judge.
No. There’s no way I can handle the next month without using it.
Well, two weeks if we don’t make it past the qualifying competition.
A month if we make it to the championship.
God, I hope we make it. I’ll have to decide if I want my cane to be seen on camera.
Behind the scenes is one thing; even if there are a couple hundred people, it’s different from the millions of people watching on TV.
I grab the Circuit Smack handbook left on a table for me and leave the cool comfort of my room.
I leaf through the book one-handed on the elevator ride, the other resting on my cane.
Three minutes to fight. Judging on aggression, defense, and damage if it goes to the judges instead of a tap out or knockout.
If you win by knockout or tap out, you earn the full amount of points.
Ten-second pin maximum. Typical rules and regulations for robots and battles—something I brushed up on before coming.
However, the list of teams is something I couldn’t prepare for.
Thirty-five combat robotics teams from across the globe will compete in the qualifying competition.
I recognize twenty-six of the robots and their teams, and the others are new this year.
My team and robot, ZetaMax, are among the newcomers.
One name sticks out to me, and I groan, slumping against the elevator wall.
Of course.
Of fucking course, he would be here.
I’m foolish for not even considering it beforehand. He might be twenty-eighth on the list, but he’s always a favorite to win. Jacob Moore and his bot, Kilowatt.
I have meticulously avoided Jacob Fucking Moore for years.
It’s been made easier by his move to Columbus, Ohio, about six years ago.
But before he left, I rarely entered the same events as him, even when it meant missing out on tournaments and championships.
I’ve only seen him a few times since then, and every time sets me on edge.
After what he did to me, I dread being in the same room as him, let alone post-match interviews.
I can’t believe I used to have a crush on that guy. Sure, he’s hot as sin and one of the smartest people around, but he turned into such an asshole.
My only saving grace is that Jacob is in a different competitor group to start.
The teams are split into seven groups of five teams, with the teams in each group fighting four other teams during the qualifying competition.
The two top-ranked competitors in each group move on to the sixteen-contestant Circuit Smack World Championship.
One spot in the championship goes to last year’s winner—this year, that happens to be Jacob’s team.
The final spot in the championship goes to the winner of the Last Shot Bot Trot, an optional tournament for people who didn’t perform well enough for automatic entry into the championship.
Unless ZetaMax makes it to the championship, I won’t have to fight Jacob at Circuit Smack.
Until we make it, that is. We will make the championship. We have to.
Maybe Jacob will have such an embarrassing loss and be so disgraced he’ll drop out of the championship, then never come back to Circuit Smack or any other combat robotics event, and I'll never have to see him again.
Okay, so maybe that isn’t the kindest fantasy. But to be fair, Jacob hasn’t been the kindest to me either. With a couple hundred people here, maybe I’ll be able to avoid him entirely. Here’s hoping.
As soon as I make it through the hotel’s event center to the Builder Bay, the hangar-sized warehouse that holds the workstations for every competing team, I hear an approximation of my name called.
“Marit!” Joel’s too-loud voice calls. I try not to cringe as most of the builders in their rows of workstations look my way, their heads popping up from their cubicle clusters of workstations like prairie dogs in the grass.