Chapter 32. Ethan
The second match is cleaner. Easier.
Jab to measure distance. Cross to the body when he drops his lead hand after the hook, which he does every time. Slip his counter, reset, repeat.
The fight lasts two rounds before the ref steps in, and I feel satisfied.
A job well done.
Liam is waiting at the edge of the mat. His face is bruised, his left cheekbone swollen and painted in shades of purple, his lip split where the mouthguard pressed during impact.
He looks like he lost a fight, which he did, and he looks like he doesn't care, which might be the more impressive achievement.
He holds up his fist to me, and I bump it with my glove.
He grins.
"Show-off," he says.
I chuckle and go back to the athletes' area.
I warm up for the third match, but I'm tired. I know I won't perform as well now because I lack the focus Reed has. He's sitting there, staring at his feet like an assassin, not even blinking, and I know he's going to be champion again.
Four years in a row or something.
The Westlake fighter's name is on the scoreboard, but I don't read it. He's built the way Reed is built. Giant. Probably on steroids. A rock.
We touch gloves.
He doesn't smile.
Neither do I.
I slip his jabs, parry his crosses, circle away from his power hand, and counter with combinations that land clean but don't move him.
That's the problem.
My punches land, and he absorbs them like concrete. I could win by decision, but I have a feeling he's going to knock me down.
I hit him with my best cross, the one that put the Westlake kid down in the first match, and his head turns an inch and comes back.
His eyes don't change.
Nothing changes.
He walks forward, and I move.
In the second round, he finds me.
A right hand comes through my guard and lands on my cheekbone with a detonation that reorganizes my inner ear. The gym tilts. The referee separates us, and I reset, but the reset is imperfect because I'm still a little dizzy.
He finds me again.
Body shot. Left hook. Overhand right.
Each one lands square.
I don't go down.
That matters to me.
But I get my ass beat for nine minutes straight, until the decision is unanimous and his hand goes up.
Mine doesn't.
I walk off the mat, and the world doesn't end.
To be honest, I don't even feel particularly bad. I feel sore but alive, and I want to sit next to Liam more than anything.
I drop down beside him, and he puts an arm around me. He hands me the ice pack he's been holding. It must've been refilled recently because it's full and freezing.
The cold against my cheekbone is great.
"Welcome to the losers' bench," he says. "We have melted ice and tears."
"I'll take both."
He chuckles and leans into me, laying his head on my shoulder. He doesn't move even when Griff comes to check on me.
Griff knows.
Everybody knows.
He doesn't care, which is amazing.
"Tyler's up," Liam says, nudging me.
I look up.
My brother is walking onto the mat, and he looks great.
Alive, the most important thing.
Three months ago, Tyler was in a hospital bed with tubes in his arms and machines around him.
Now he's here.
On a mat.
And I'm so happy my heart could explode.
He's my little brother, and I'll always see him as an annoying four-year-old.
His opponent is Ridgecrest's best. He's fast, technical, the kind of fighter who makes you work for every opening. Tyler can't get to him and ends up losing.
But when he joins us on the losers' bench—Liam's words—I couldn't be prouder of him.
The championship match is announced, and everybody is screaming.
Reed walks to the mat looking psychotic, as usual. He doesn't bounce, doesn't shadowbox, doesn't perform.
His opponent is Ridgecrest's champion.
Dominguez.
The one who beat Liam.
Liam looks shocked to see him.
"See, you lost, but you lost to the best," I tell him.
He giggles excitedly, like a little kid.
"I knew there had to be an explanation," he jokes.
Dork.
They touch gloves.
Reed lets the Ridgecrest fighter come forward first.
This surprises me. It's not his usual style.
The Ridgecrest fighter obliges. He throws a jab-cross that could knock me down easily. But Reed parries the jab, catches the cross on his glove, and doesn't move.
Not a step.
His feet stay planted, his center stays low, and the Ridgecrest fighter's best combination does nothing.
Then Reed goes to work.
Punches start to rain. He gets the kid, breaks his guard, drives a knee into his chin once, twice, three times, then punches him in the face again.
Dominguez turns, trying to escape.
Reed takes his back, locks in a rear-naked choke, and drags him down with him.
It's a bloodbath, and within seconds, Dominguez is tapping out.
Skill is what I do.
What Reed does is something closer to instinct.
The guy is ridiculous.
Reed stands in the center of the mat. He doesn't raise his fists, doesn't prowl. He pulls his mouthguard out, rolls his shoulders once, and turns.
His eyes search the crowd.
He finds Tyler.
Tyler is standing by my side, his curly hair damp and unruly.
Tyler and Reed exchange looks.
Then Tyler looks away.
Too fast.
Fuck.
We're all screaming then because the referee raises Reed's hand, declaring him champion of the inter-academy tournament.
Then it's all over.
Officials confer over clipboards, tabulating points and placements. The mats are being cleaned and rolled up at the edges where they're no longer needed, creating a clearing at the center of the gym. The scoreboard displays the final standings in white text.
Aspire Academy: second place overall.
We lost to Ridgecrest.
Griff stands at the edge of our group with his arms folded, but he looks soft and content.
Proud of us.
A Westlake administrator reads the placements into a microphone that feeds back every third word, and medals are distributed. There are only three academies competing, so everybody gets a medal, but it's better than nothing.
Maybe it's part of their therapeutic approach: you're all champions for showing up.
Aw.
We all look ridiculously proud of our silver medals, and Jack keeps biting his like it's a real gold medal.
Ridgecrest takes the team trophy.
Aspire takes the trophy for second place.
Westlake, third, which seems cruel in their own gym, but they accept it.
Individual awards follow.
Best Fighter goes to Reed Hoffman, Aspire Academy, and we scream and jump. Jack even tries to jump with Reed, but Reed looks at him like prime prey, so Jack comes to jump with Liam instead.
Reed walks to the center, accepts the medal with a nod and a handshake that looks like it might leave bruises, and returns.
We're all so tired, but everybody is stupidly happy.
We look like warriors after a war we technically lost. We're sore and bruised, but we did our best, and we're together.
We walk out of the gym.
The afternoon light hits us, and I realize we're starving. We lived off bananas, sandwiches Griff got us from the vending machine, and protein bars.
The van doesn't take the highway.
I immediately notice something weird.
We should be turning east toward the hotel, toward the Holiday Inn with its missing L and its thin walls. But instead, the van swings west, and the late-afternoon light pours through the windshield at the wrong angle, painting everyone's faces in amber that makes even our bruises look warm.
Jack notices too. His head tilts, and he looks at me. Then Liam notices our reaction and frowns.
Griff has been watching us and speaks from the front passenger seat without turning around.
"We're making a stop."
That's all he says.
The van turns into a parking lot, and I see it: a neon sign in the shape of a pizza slice, glowing orange-red against the deepening sky.
The building is small, flat-roofed, the kind of pizza joint that exists in every town in America.
And God, the smell.
Even through the van's windows, it reaches us, making my mouth water immediately.
Garlic, tomato sauce, pizza crust.
My stomach growls.
We're too stunned to speak.
This is the silence of people who can't quite believe what they're being told.
"Out," Griff says, opening his door. "You have sixty seconds to stop looking at me like I grew a second head."
We keep looking at him the same way.
"Pizza?" Jack says. "That's… are you… is this… pizza?"
"Sixty seconds is generous," Griff amends. "Three seconds. Three… two…"
We pile out of the van with urgency.
Jack actually trips over Santana's leg in his rush to the door, catches himself on Cedric's shoulder, and uses the momentum to propel himself forward.
Tyler is close behind, his eyes wide and bright with the disbelief of someone who's forgotten that places like this exist.
Liam climbs out laughing while I compete with Reed to see who gets out first.
He wins.
The motherfucker pushes me back.
Inside, there are tables everywhere. The walls, floors, and ceiling are wooden. It's warm, and it smells divine. There are pictures on the walls, framed photos of someone's Italian grandmother, and a chalkboard menu with hand-drawn pizza slices that have faces for some reason.
Griff negotiates seating with the host, a teenager whose expression suggests he's reconsidering his life choices as he processes the logistics of a table for eleven.
We end up in the back, at a long table assembled from three smaller ones pushed together.
The two guards take seats in the middle of the table like regular people. Santos picks up a laminated menu and studies it. Patterson orders water.
Griff takes the end of the table, rests one elbow on it, picks up the menu, scans it once, and sets it down.
Decision made.
And we are loud. He lets us be loud. Jack is on his feet before the water glasses arrive, reenacting Reed's championship finish. We all watch him.
Cedric is correcting him: it was jab, jab, hook, not hook, jab, hook.
Dan is already arguing with Cedric, saying he just made that up.
Liam is laughing, watching it like it's a spectacle.
Reed is rolling his eyes, huffing.
Tyler is watching Reed and scowling at him, as usual, but without the bite.
Santana is talking loudly to no one about pepperoni.
It goes on, chaotic.
"Hey!" Griff exclaims. "Three pepperoni, three cheese good with everybody?"
We say some variation of "yeah, yes, fuck yeah" and keep discussing the matches.
Even Liam's.
"Liam, when you hit that guy Dominguez in the fucking FACE! I screamed so loud, I'm still hoarse," Jack says.
"That was insane, man. I thought he was going to kill you right then," Santana says, nodding.
Liam seems a little embarrassed, and it's so cute to see.
My little shy puppy.
"He did try to kill me after," he says, and we laugh.
"He tried to kill me too," Reed says, and I'm surprised.
Reed really likes Liam, a fact that makes my stomach burn.
"But you got VENGEANCE!" Jack says.
He's always saying that word because deep down, he believes he's Batman.
Reed actually chuckles.
When the pizza arrives, the table goes quiet for the three seconds it takes for everyone to process that the food is real, is here, is happening.
Then it goes loud again as we attack it.
Jack takes two slices before anyone else touches the pepperoni.
Tyler gets one, then looks at me, rolls his eyes, slides his plate over to me, and gets another slice for himself.
I'm actually pretty shocked he'd do that.
I get a piece of each for Liam.
He beams at me, immediately biting into the cheese one.
Jack makes a noise that's basically a full moan.
"This is the greatest pizza in the history of human civilization," he announces, mouth full, cheese stretching from his lips to the slice in a string. "I want to be buried with this pizza."
"There won't be enough for that," Liam says.
Santana explains to the table that his spirit animal for the tournament was a panther, not a lion. He's revised the dream, and that's why he lost.
"You can't just revise a prophetic dream after you lose," Dan says.
"Spiritual interpretation evolves," Santana replies.
Liam laughs again, so I chuckle too.
This was a good day.
A damn good day.