Rival (5 page)

Three hours to dress for the party.
That seems excessive.

"The final round is Saturday
afternoon," I tell her. "If I make the finals, will you
come?"

Her eyes darken. "I don't know,
sweetie. I'll be finishing all the preparations for your
party."

It's your
party
, I want to say.

But I don't. At this point, I'm
desperate to fight in the tournament and scared to say or do
anything that might tempt her to stop me.

It's a blatant reminder how different
we are. She cares more about the party and keeping up appearances
for her friends than about me. The fighting—that’s not something
she can show off to her friends. In fact, if anything, it
embarrasses her.

Part of me wishes I could tell her
about what happened this afternoon. We could've died, but we won.
We beat them. I beat them.

But I don't dare.

I hate it that my own mom doesn't
really know me or care about what's important to me.

I wish my dad were still here. He was
like the glue that kept mom and me—so different—stuck together.
Like a family should be.

Now, we're just two strangers who live
in the same house.

8 - Brett

"So, you kissed me
yesterday."

I slide into the lunchroom chair next
to Emily, hoping my smile covers my wince of pain. Even that simple
movement feels like knives through my joints.

She shushes me, looking around
frantically. I'm guessing to make sure no one heard me.
Ouch.

But no one is paying attention to
us.

I shift, try to find some way to
alleviate the discomfort in my knees. I could go to the school
nurse for another pain pill, but I don't want to. I can bear
it.

I was right yesterday. My adrenaline
crashed on my way back from Emily's, and by the time I got home, I
had to pry my hands off the handlebars to hobble inside.

I crashed, overslept, and missed my
first two classes. My doctors and parents have communicated enough
with the school that my teachers understand, but it makes me mad
every time I have to make up work or miss something important
because of my condition.

What I wouldn't give to be a normal
guy.

I lean back in my seat, changing
positions again to try and get some relief. I throw my arm over the
back of Emily's chair to cover the move.

She glares at me, and I smack an air
kiss at her. "Ready to repeat?"

It's so easy to rile her up.

But she doesn't smack me with an elbow
in the gut like I expect. She turns red and goes back to her lunch,
stuffing food in her mouth.

Interesting.

"Erick!" Her quick exclamation gushes
with relief as her cousin plops into the seat across from
her.

He raises an eyebrow at me, a silent
question, but I shake my head minutely. I may have made an inch of
progress with Emily yesterday, but if he verbalizes anything, I'm
toast. I know her enough to get that.

"What happened yesterday, man?" I
ask.

He looks exhausted. Shadows under his
eyes like he didn't sleep much.

"Cops came." He glances at Emily and
something unspoken passes between them, just like it did yesterday
before she and I escaped the parking garage. Something's up, but it
seems to be family-only.

"They called my brother and my
dad."

"You in trouble?" I realize how dumb a
question that is and rephrase. "How much trouble are you
in?"

He shrugs, but there's something under
the surface, something he isn't saying. "When my bro went to get
the surveillance tapes, something happened, and they didn't work
right." He looks at Emily again. "So there's no proof you guys were
even there. They took fingerprints, but I doubt they'll find
anything on you two."

"But we were probably on video shopping
and eating together," Emily says.

"I told them Brett took you home
because you wanted some alone-time."

He waggles his eyebrows in an
exaggerated way, and her skin turns pink again. She drops her gaze,
suddenly inordinately interested in her food.

"What happened?" Erick asks.

"Nothing!"

"We had a moment."

Our words overlap, and she glares at
me. I slide my arm off the back of her chair—it wasn't even
touching her—to wrap around her shoulders. I snug her close to me,
and there’s that elbow in the stomach I've been expecting. I have
to let her go.

"That's the same impression we gave her
mom," I tell Erick, who has leaned back in his chair with arms
crossed, looking suspicious. "If the garage surveillance tapes were
destroyed, then they probably can't prove what time we left, and
her mom can corroborate the story."

I slide my foot next to hers beneath
the table. Only a bump of my boot against her shoe. I want to
remind her that I'm not going away, not after she opened up to me—a
little—yesterday.

But the movement sends pain shooting up
my shin.

I try to cover with a cough, but Erick
is watching me.

"What's up? You sore?" His words are
more dubious than concerned.

And Emily turns to me, eyes flicking
over me, cataloging me.

And not in the way she was checking me
out yesterday.

"I'm fine," I lie.

"You are kind of pale," she
says.

"I'm
fine
," I insist.

There's no way I want Emily's pity.
I've seen it before, plenty of times, with nurses and the grandmas
that also see my rheumatologist. They feel sorry for me because I'm
a fraction of their age and have the same awful chronic pain they
do.

I want Emily to like me for me, not
feel sorry for me.

I lean over the table, ignoring the
flame of pain up my spine. "You want to tell me what those monsters
were?" I ask Erick, attempting a distraction tactic of my
own.

It works. His eyes flare wide with
surprise before he blanks his face.

His silence is evidence
enough for me. "That's about what Emily said," I say. They both
know what those
things
were.

They just won't tell me. I've got some
suspicions, but it seems too fantastical to be true.

But there's no arguing with the fact
that the dudes were super strong. They wouldn't go down from a blow
that would've knocked a normal human being unconscious.

Can I assume they weren't human at
all?

"Is there any chance some of them will
come after me?" I ask, voice low.

Emily stands up, picking up her empty
tray. Is she going to just walk away from the
conversation?

"Not if you stay away from us," she
throws over her shoulder.

Truth, or dare?

9 - Emily

Thwack!
My tape-wrapped fist connects with Brett’s blocking elbow,
giving a satisfying smack.

"So you kissed me
yesterday."

"Ssh," I hiss at him, settling back
into a half-lunge, in preparation for a second offensive. I shoot a
look around the large room with its padded walls and floors.
Nobody’s paying particular attention to us. Probably, nobody heard.
Still… "You said that already," I remind him,
whispering.

There are five black belts in our
class, and we regularly rotate as sparring partners. And joy of
joys, today is my day with Brett. After our interesting and
embarrassing lunch conversation.

He fills out his
white
gi
through
the shoulders. I look down, trying not to stare, and get a glimpse
of his muscular thighs.

And I can't quit thinking about what I
saw in the bathroom yesterday.

"You're imagining me shirtless, aren't
you?"

His question—his intuitiveness—startles
me and I miss his move and end up flipped onto my back.

"Distracted by my hotness?" he teases
as I push up off the mats.

We reset again, and this time, angry at
myself for the distraction, I launch at him and take him down with
a quick sweeping kick.

I lean over him, hands on my knees,
panting.

"Easy, Tiger," he says, voice low and
even.

Is it me, or is he limping a little
when he gets up? His expression doesn't show any hint of pain, but
I'm sure he moves a little gingerly.

Just like at lunch.

"You okay?" I ask as I slowly settle
into the starting position again.

"Yeah, why?"

But because I'm watching so closely, I
see the faint white line around his slightly-pinched
lips.

I straighten up, make a T with my hands
to call for a time-out. "I need some water," I tell him, and nod
toward the co-ed locker room, off the training area and
semi-private.

He follows me, and this time I'm sure
he's limping. Not because he looks like it, but because I can hear
the slightly-longer scrape of one bare foot on the carpeted
floor.

Between the rows of lockers on opposite
walls are two low wooden benches, lacquer worn off from so many
butts sitting on them. I go to my backpack that I forgot to throw
in a locker and rummage for the water bottle I'm hoping I didn't
forget.

Not there.

Something yellow appears in front of my
face.

I look up to see Brett extending his
lemon-flavored bottled sports drink to me.

"No, thanks," I say.

He raises both eyebrows. "You'll swap
spit with me but you won't share my drink?"

I grimace, glancing behind him, but
none of the other trainees or our sensei are paying
attention.

"Would you stop saying things like
that?" I whisper.

"Why? You
did
kiss me."

He's totally straight faced but his
eyes glint with humor. "Is that all I am to you? A
distraction?"

He has no idea.

I turn to the drinking fountain and
lean over it to slurp some water. I'm not that thirsty. I just
wanted to see what was up with Brett and his limp.

Before yesterday, I hadn't even given
him a serious thought since we stopped being friends two years ago,
just after my dad died.

But after fighting with him, and
everything that followed... I can't stop thinking about
him.

Which isn't good. I've got to focus on
my endgame: get through mom’s stupid party, win the tournament,
convince Uncle Felix I should be Chasing. I don’t have time for a
distraction like Brett.

I turn back to him, wiping my chin with
the back of one hand. "Can't we just forget about it?"

He watches me. Too closely. "Is that
what you really want?"

He shifts his feet. Slightly, so very
slightly. Another sign that he's in pain. But this is the second
time today I've asked if something is wrong and he isn't admitting
it.

He couldn't be sick, could he? He's so
transparent about everything, I would be shocked to find out he's
keeping a secret like that.

"Emily?"

I love the sound of my name on his
lips, like it belongs there. Like all my life, I’ve been waiting to
hear my name in his voice. Crazy. He’s said my name before. But
this…this is…

He lifts his eyebrows, and I realize
I’m staring. I turn away. "I don't know."

He stands beside me, shoulder to
shoulder, and we look together at the sparring area in front of us.
He speaks low to keep our conversation private.

"You might not know what you want, but
I do. I want to go out with you—for real. Think about
it."

He walks past me onto the mats, then
looks back. "But don't take too long. I'm not going to wait
forever."

10 - Brett

"Emily Santos versus Sam Reyes,” the
announcer says over the loudspeaker, late Friday afternoon. “Second
round black belts, single elimination."

I watch from the competitor's warm up
area at floor level in the arena. Yesterday, in the first rounds,
there were five mats set up as the double-elimination competition
got started. Today there are three. Tomorrow afternoon for the
final rounds, there will be one.

And I know Emily wants to be
there.

She faces off against another girl I
recognize vaguely from a previous competition. She doesn't train at
our dojo or attend our school, but Austin is big enough, she could
be from another district. Sam Reyes looks like she could be Emily's
cousin, with dark hair down her back in a braid and the same
Filipino complexion Emily has.

Emily seems to know her. They have
words just before the referee joins them on the mat. And they don't
seem to be happy to see each other.