Straight Punch (8 page)

Photographing what was in the building across the street was a cool idea, but this view was interesting too. Being up here gave me distance, helped me see the beauty in an ordinary street scene.

The constant clicking of Cyrus's camera finally stopped. “Come look over here,” I called out to him.

Cyrus came to stand behind me. He put his hand on my neck and massaged the dip between my shoulder blades.

“Don't you think this would make a good photo too?” I asked Cyrus.

He looked out at Chinatown. I hoped he'd see what I had. “It doesn't do much for me,” he said. “Hey, where's my tripod?”

“Relax,” I told him. “It's right there. On the lawn chair.”

“Okay, okay,” Cyrus said. “I just got a little worried. You know what they say about that Gitzo tripod. It's the—”

“Ferrari of tripods.” It wasn't hard to finish Cyrus's sentence. He was almost as obsessed with that tripod as he was with his camera.

“Have a look at what I shot,” Cyrus said.

Cyrus had caught the pair of pigeons. He'd also caught a mop leaning, like a tired person, against a metal filing cabinet. Cyrus might not be as hot as Randy, and he was possessive and jealous and he talked a lot about himself, but when I saw his photos, I was…well…dazzled. How could I break up with a guy who still dazzled me?

After we left the building, we decided to get dumplings on de la Gauchetière Street. Dumplings had two things going for them: they were quick and cheap. The dumpling place was tiny, with a white linoleum floor. Red paper lanterns hung over the tables. We ordered at the counter. The door to the kitchen was open, and I could see a team of Asian ladies in hairnets busily shaping dough.

We were standing at the counter discussing what to order (I wanted vegetarian dumplings; Cyrus wanted the lamb and coriander) when someone pushed open a door behind me. I stepped aside to make room.

Out came a small woman pushing a large metal bucket on wheels. The bucket was almost as big as she was. She pushed too hard, and the mud-colored water inside swished and slopped over the top. You could tell she was in a hurry.

The black nail polish and the weird haircut gave her away.

“Jasmine?” I said. “Is that you?”

“No,” she answered in a voice that was so cool and dry it could only belong to her. “It isn't.”

It wasn't easy to eat our dumplings with Jasmine washing the floor nearby.

Finally, she stopped washing and came over to our table. Her black nail polish was so chipped, there were more pink spots than black ones on her nails.

“Can you sit down for a few minutes?” I asked.

“No fraternizing with the customers,” she said. Then she turned to Cyrus. “I just wanna know one thing. Why're you looking at me like that?”

“I …uh…I…wasn't looking at you like anything.” Cyrus sounded more like Randy by the second.

“What about you?” Jasmine looked at me. “You got a problem with me working here?”

“No, of course not. It's just…”

“Just what?”

“It's just…I heard you inherited a lot of money. You know, when your parents died. But maybe that was just gossip.”
I'd never let on before that I knew Jasmine's parents were dead. I hoped she wouldn't be angry I'd mentioned it.

Jasmine dipped her mop into the gray water. “It's not gossip,” she said. “I did inherit a shitload of money. But my aunt had signing privileges on my trust fund, and she helped herself to most of it. So now you know why I mop floors six days a week for minimum wage. If I save everything I earn, I'll be able to afford my own place by May.”

Chapter Twelve

I can always tell what's on my mom's mind from the library books on her night table. This week, there were three:
A Simple Plan to Help Your Teenage Vegetarian Get Enough Protein
,
The Boxing Diet
and
Moms and Daughters: How to Build Genuine Intimacy
.

She'd made red-bean burgers on whole-wheat rolls for dinner. Mom just about glowed when I asked for a second burger. Boxing makes you hungry.

I told Mom about Jasmine and her aunt. Mom was horrified. “Imagine frittering away a child's inheritance! It's immoral. Why don't you invite Jasmine over one of these nights? There's a recipe for tofu lasagna that I want to try out.”

Mom and I weren't rich, but we weren't poor either. She'd worked her way up from a job as bank teller to assistant manager of a branch near our house. “Maybe we could invite the aunt too—and I could give her some pointers about handling her finances,” Mom said.

I could just see Mom turning Jasmine and her aunt into a new project. “No way,” I told her. “That would put Jasmine over the edge. As it is, she's already teetering.”

Because we lived on a single salary, I tried not to ask for too much stuff. Mom believed that people didn't really need a lot of the stuff they bought. Most of the time, I agreed with her. A guy I knew at Tyndale collected sneakers—he had over a hundred pairs. It was obscene.

But there was one thing I wanted badly: my own boxing gloves. All of the other kids at New Directions had their own. I was still using the banged-up ones Big Ron had lent me. The stitching was coming loose, and every time I put them on, I imagined the hundreds—possibly thousands—of other sweaty hands that had been inside them.

So I brought it up after dinner. “How much are they?” Mom wanted to know.

“Fifty for the polyethylene ones. A hundred for leather. The leather ones smell amazing,” I added hopefully.

Mom put one finger over her mouth the way she does when she's adding numbers in her head. “I'll give you the money for the polyethylene ones.” Then she looked at me and I could tell she knew what I was thinking. “I don't want you working part-time. I want you to concentrate on school. That's what matters most. More than leather boxing gloves.”

It was when we were doing the dishes that I asked Mom if she wanted to see my boxing moves.

“Sure,” she said, though she didn't sound enthusiastic.

I made her sit at the kitchen table. Then I stepped back into the dining room so I'd had plenty of room and she'd have a good view.

“Here's a straight punch,” I said as I demonstrated. I stepped toward her, rotating my hips with every punch and keeping my guard up. Big Ron would've been proud.

“Wanna try?” I asked Mom as I got closer.

“Boxing isn't really my thing,” Mom said.

“It wasn't my thing either,” I told her. “C'mon, just try a couple of moves. Here, let me show you.”

Mom forgot to keep her guard up. She also forgot to rotate her hips. But even so, her punch had power. I ducked in time—otherwise she might've connected.

What I didn't expect was for Mom to laugh after she threw that punch.

I'd never heard her laugh so hard.

Soon she was out of breath—from the punching, but also probably from laughing. “It feels better than I expected,” she managed to say.

Later on, when I was going to my room to study, Mom was lying on the couch, reading
The Boxing Diet
. “I'm glad about the boxing…” she said when she saw me in the hallway, looking at her.

I could tell from the way she let her voice trail off that there was more she wanted to say.

“Is it hard for you?” she asked.

“Boxing?”

“Not just the boxing.” She was watching me the way I'd been watching her before. “Being around violence.”

I knew she was remembering the hockey riot. It was something we never talked about. Maybe Mom figured not mentioning it would help me forget. But now I wondered if maybe I wasn't the only one who had been traumatized that night. Maybe Mom had been too. Maybe that was why she never brought it up.

“Violence still makes me feel panicky inside,” I told her. “But less than before.”

She adjusted her glasses. “Tess…” She stopped to take a breath. “I'm sorry about what happened the night of the…” She couldn't even say it. “I should have done a better job of protecting you.”

I hoped she wasn't going to cry. In all my life, I'd never seen my mom cry. Not even that night.

“You got more banged up than I did.”

“Oh, that”—Mom wiped the side of her face, the side where, if you looked closely, you could still see the faintest scar—“that looked worse than it was.”

“It was my fault.” I said it so quietly, I wasn't sure Mom would hear.

But she did. “Your fault? Of course it wasn't your fault. You don't really think that, do you?”

I looked down at the floor. “I let go of your hand.”

“Of course you let go of my hand, Tessa. We were caught in the mob. You couldn't have held on to my hand—not with all those people.”

For a second, I could feel the bodies pressing in on us the way they had that night. “Do you remember Rachel?”

“Rachel?” Mom looked puzzled.

“From camp. She was staying with her grandparents down the street—when we lived in our old apartment.”

“Oh, that Rachel,” Mom said. “The autistic girl. She thought the world of you.”

Rachel thought the world of me? No, she didn't. Not after what I did—or didn't do.

“Why are you thinking about Rachel?”

At first, I couldn't say anything. I was remembering the YouTube clip. The girls screaming and laughing as they sent the recycling bin flying down the street. The bin
crashing against a wire fence. Rachel didn't come out at first. She must have been too afraid—or too banged up. When she finally did come out, the girls recorded that part too. You could hear them jeering in the background.
Loser! Weathergirl! Retard! Hope you enjoyed the ride!
Rachel on her knees, looking dazed. One hand over her face, like she was afraid someone was going to hit her. Calling my name.
Tessa? Tessa, are you okay?

That might have been the worst part of it. That even after everything that had happened to her, she'd been more worried about me than about herself. She'd been a better friend to me than I'd been to her.

“Tessa?”

“The other girls at camp tormented Rachel. One day, Rachel and I were walking home and they trapped us. They—” I could feel the words catching in my throat. This was the first time I'd ever spoken about the memory. “They pushed her into a recycling bin and sent it flying down the street. With Rachel inside.”

Mom covered her mouth, the way Di did the morning she vomited. “Oh, Tessa,” she said. “That's so awful. Did they hurt you too? Did they? Is that why you never told me?”

“They didn't hurt me.” It was hard to go on, but I knew I had to tell the rest. “I ran away. But I watched it happen. More than once.”

“More than once? What are you talking about, Tessa? How could you have seen something more than once?”

“One of the girls recorded the whole scene. She posted it on YouTube.”

Mom groaned. “Was Rachel badly hurt?”

I shook my head. “She seemed more dazed than anything else. When she crawled out of the bin, she called for me.” There, I'd said it.

“Oh, Tessa,” Mom said, and I could see that she was crying. Not for me—for Rachel. I walked over to the couch and sat down next to her. Then I took her hand and squeezed it.

“I should have…”

I could feel Mom watching my lips, waiting for me to finish my sentence.

I swallowed. “I should have stood up for her.”

Mom wiped her eyes. “Oh, honey, it's such a sad story. Poor, poor Rachel. You're right though—you should've stood up for her. But I guess you were too afraid.” She shook her head. “If only you'd come to me before—when they first started teasing her…” I could almost see Mom's brain working, trying to envision a different outcome. One in which she could have fixed things.

How could I explain that with girls like that, Mom's involvement wouldn't have helped. It might even have made things worse. I could almost hear Angela and Megan jeering, “Tessa's such a wuss! She had to go and get her mommy to protect her!”

Mom's eyes locked on mine. “Maybe,” she said gently, “it's time you forgave yourself.”

I nodded. What Mom said made sense. Why didn't it make me feel better?

Maybe it was because I was still picturing the dazed look on Rachel's face when she crawled out of the bin.

“I didn't know how to protect Rachel—or myself,” I said. “But now I'm learning how.”

Mom's not much of a night owl. So when the phone rang a little later and one of her friends from the bank asked if she wanted to go for a drink, I never would've expected her to say yes. But she did. Well, I figured, good for her. Only it felt weird to be the one left at home, waiting.

I was in my room, reading
Death of a Salesman
for English. Man, was that ever depressing! Miss Lebrun said Willy Loman represented everyman. I sure hoped that didn't include me. Imagine working your whole life and then seeing it all fall apart.

Last year, I would have called Cyrus to discuss the play. I'd have tried to explain why I didn't trust the values I saw in the world around us—we were supposed to make successes of ourselves, but what if you did? Then what? What if, after all our hard work, we still screwed up, the way Willy Loman did?

I was lying in bed thinking all that when I heard what sounded like footsteps in the hallway inside the apartment. We lived in an old building. The noise was probably coming from the pipes.

Only then I heard it again. It was the sound of the floorboards creaking. Our floorboards.

“Mom?” I called out. Maybe she'd forgotten something or come home early. But then I'd have heard her key in the door. And wouldn't she have called out to me when she came in? “Mom?” I called a second time. My voice was as high as a bird's.

No answer.

I heard the floorboards creak again. This time, I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. Someone was in the apartment. And it wasn't my mom. I was sure of it.

When the floorboards creaked another time, I thought my heart was going to pop out of my throat. Some maniac was about to ransack our apartment and quite possibly rape and kill or, at the least, maim me. I eyed my closet. I could try hiding in there.

Now I heard the thud of footsteps. I swear I could taste the fear at the back of my throat—dry and metallic. I was too frozen to move. The fear was paralyzing not only my body, but my brain too.

For some reason, I imagined saying that to Big Ron. And then I heard Big Ron's answer bellowing in my head:
The fear isn't paralyzing your body or your brain. You're letting your fear do that to you. Snap out of it, Tessa Something-or-Other. You're a boxer, aren't you?
I nodded my head the way I might've if Big Ron was in the room.

“Who is it?” I called out. Just the fact that my voice worked gave me a little more courage. Then I grabbed my cell phone from my desk. But my hands were shaking too hard for me to tap out the numbers 9-1-1. Then I started getting angry. At whoever had broken into our apartment, but also at myself, for being so afraid that I couldn't use my own cell phone.

The anger helped unfreeze the rest of me. I heard two more steps. Whoever it was was coming closer. In another minute, he could be opening the door to my bedroom. Get into boxing position—now! I told myself. Left foot at…

Then I heard a familiar whistle. “Don't go freaking out, Tessa Something-Or-Other,” a voice said from the hallway.

I could feel the tension seep out of me like air from a balloon.

“You're an asshole,” I told Pretty Boy, and for good measure, I threw a jab that hit him in the ribs.

Pretty Boy groaned. “Now what'd you do that for?” he asked, rubbing the spot where I'd punched him.

“That's for fucking with me. By the way, you're lucky as hell my mom's not home. She'd have had the entire police force here by now.”

“I waited for her to leave.”

“You
waited for her to leave?
How did you even know what she looks like?”

“In my line, you gotta do your research. I saw her drop you off the first day of school. I happened to be walking by tonight when I saw her leave the building. I figured you could use a visitor.”

“Haven't you ever heard of knocking?”

Pretty Boy winked at me. “Breaking in,” he said, “is way more fun. Hey, I like your pj's. They're very Zen.”

I looked down at the pajamas I was wearing—they had cartoon pictures of a dog doing yoga on them. “It's not so Zen to think some nut has broken into your apartment,” I told him.

“Some nut
has
broken into your apartment. So, you coming or not?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I'm talking about.” And, of course, I did. Pretty Boy was wearing a magenta feather boa and carrying his backpack. I could hear the cans of spray paint clanking inside.

“I don't know,” I told him. “I promised my mom I'd stop tagging. Not to mention that I don't want to end up in youth court.”

“How could you make a promise like that? It's a stupid promise. You are a tagger, Tessa Something-or-Other. It's your calling, your
métier
.”

I laughed when he called tagging my
métier
. “D'you have time for a cup of tea?” I asked him.