Total Knockout (11 page)

“Not what you do? Well, then,” Mom said, exasperated. I hated it when they fought in front of us. I'm pretty sure there's something in Parenting 101 that says you should never fight in front of the kids. “I'll continue to do everything around here until the perfect job just lands in your—”

“Enough,” Dad said. He looked at Henry and me as if
to remind Mom we were there. For that, I was grateful.

Mom sighed and dug into her dinner, spearing each bite. “Lucia, Henry,” she said. “I need to cut your chore money down. At least for a while.”

“Okay,” I muttered, not wanting to upset Mom any more than she already was.

“We're cutting back on everything,” she continued, keeping her eyes on her plate. “You're still expected to do your chores.” I guess I let out a sigh or a moan or some sort of noise, because Mom snapped, “And no attitude!”

I clenched my jaw and kept my eyes on my half-eaten dinner. I sort of got that Dad didn't want to take a job that had nothing to do with his skill set, or whatever, but I couldn't help but think,
He's the adult
. He's supposed to take care of us. And he's burdening Mom every day. Didn't Dad know that he was the reason Henry had started those breathing exercises? The meditation? The sitting positions that were supposed to relieve muscle tension? A ten-year-old shouldn't be that stressed, even a kid genius who skipped second grade and was still in all honors classes.

Dad reached across the table and rested his hand on top of mine; I snatched it away. I hadn't meant to react so sharply, but there it was.

I avoided looking at him when I asked, “May I be excused?”

“Rinse your plate,” Mom said.

Back in my room, I laid on my bed, clutching Paddy and staring at the wall. I wanted to understand Dad. I didn't know what it was like to have a real job and support a family, but I did know what it was like to work hard and have people depend on you.

Dad used to be a fighter; he used to train hard every day, sometimes twice a day, to be the best junior middleweight fighter he could be. I never thought about his job as an accountant, but I couldn't imagine anything being further removed from boxing than that. What if what I loved doing was taken away from me? I clutched Paddy and tried to think of a scenario in which my presidency could be snatched away from me without my permission. My bending the rules wasn't exactly a high point in my presidency, but it wasn't so bad that it would destroy me. Dad had always taught me to fight for what I wanted, and to keep fighting until I got it. But he wasn't fighting anymore. He wasn't even trying.

A poll about the vending machines appeared two days later. I was surprised it took that long—the school's server must have been down or something.

 

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE NEW VENDING MACHINES?

5 – Delicious! I could eat from them every day!

4 – There are one or two things I like to buy from them.

3 – I haven't tried them yet.

2 – I tried them once and didn't like what I got.

1 – The food is horrible and I haven't met one person who likes them.

A whopping 75 percent selected answer number one. But I didn't need a poll to tell me that people hated
the food. If you just walked by one you could see for yourself. Someone had wrapped the one by the cafeteria in fake biohazard tape.
CAUTION
! it read.
TOXIC INGREDIENTS!
On the machine by the front lobby, someone taped a printout of a skull and crossbones. Oh, sure, someone always took it down—usually me—but it was always back up the next day.

Most of the old vending machines had been returned to the company we'd leased them from, but somehow one lone old machine was in the coaches' temporary offices on the edge of the athletic fields. Word in the halls was that the candy and chips in it were now hot items. Melanie said she heard a rumor that Coach Fleck had the key to it and had become the school's black-market dealer, stocking the machine himself—and keeping the profits. She said he was running himself a fine little business out there. When I asked her if she'd ever bought anything from him, she conveniently had a coughing fit.

Before I could come up with a solid course of action, Ms. Jenkins said she wanted to meet with me.

I kept positive thoughts, telling myself it would be a good day despite the cold wind that blew prematurely fallen leaves across our front lawn. After combing my
hair, I rolled my backpack through the dark living room toward the kitchen. I stopped in the middle of the living room, spotting a huge lump on the couch. As my eyes adjusted, I realized it was Dad. His bare foot hung off the end and his back was twisted at an awkward angle. I wanted to think he'd fallen asleep watching TV, but it looked pretty deliberate.

In the kitchen, I poured a bowl of generic Bran Bites (which were growing on me), and Mom came in to make the coffee.

“So,” I said, trying to act like I wasn't freaked out. “What's Dad doing on the couch?”

“Oh.” She paused for a quick moment as she took her IntraWorks coffee mug out of the cabinet. “I was up late reading and the light was bothering him, so he came out here to sleep.”

I told myself this was totally reasonable. Mom was always reading or working, and who could sleep with a light on? Not me, probably.

At school, when Ms. Jenkins was ready to see me, I entered her office and parked my backpack against the wall, lowering the handle as I did so. When I sat down, I told myself that this was just a meeting between two
colleagues to discuss options—no,
new opportunities
. She probably just wanted to brainstorm.

“Lucia,” Ms. Jenkins began, her voice a little stern for a colleague-to-colleague chat, “it's not working.”

She didn't even have to preface herself. My stomach churned even as I told myself that every problem has a solution.

“I don't even think anyone is using the machines,” she said, digging through papers on her desk. It was like she wasn't even talking to me. “We had to restock the other machines every two weeks, but maintenance says they haven't needed to yet. We need a solution, and quick.” She didn't seem to find whatever she'd been looking for on her desk, but she finally looked up at me. Was that panic I saw in her eyes?

An absurd thought flashed through my mind—I was glad Nicole wasn't around to hear this. The last thing I needed was more bad publicity in
View from Above
.

“Well,” I began, telling myself I could help the situation, and Ms. Jenkins. “I haven't seen the sales stats yet. But I'm sure if we just give the machines—and the student body—some time, people will get used to them and see how great they are. They'll see how much better they feel, how much more energy they have—”

“I don't have time,” she said, shaking her head. “I'm starting to think I made a huge mistake in doing this.” She said “
I
made a huge mistake,” but what I heard was “
You
made a huge mistake.”

“Lucia, I called you in here to ask that you and your council come up with some possible solutions. The school board president is down my throat about this because it's so costly.” I realized then that Ms. Jenkins might actually be freaking out. Which made me feel freaked out. “The school is losing money,” she said. “Vending machines are an important source of income for us. Do you understand?”

I wasn't sure that I understood, but what my mind told me was that if we—if I—didn't come up with a solution, Ms. Jenkins would lose her job. All because of me.

Two nights later, a new poll was on the school website:

Which vending machine would you rather have in the halls of Angus?

- The healthy machines. The food takes some getting used to, but it makes me feel great!

- The old ones! With so little to look forward to
at school, those Snickers bars really help get me through the day.

The vote was 92 percent for the old machines. I wondered who the 8 percent was that voted the other way. Probably someone who had nothing better to do than skew the polls. And, okay, I admit I did vote more than once for the healthy food, but not more than five times, so it wasn't just me who made up that 8 percent. I wondered if Cooper had helped, or maybe even Melanie.

I clutched Paddy, my only source of comfort these days, willing myself to believe this.

The next day, and for a week after that, I started using what was left of my meager chore money to buy food from the vending machines. It wasn't exactly the solution Ms. Jenkins was looking for, but it was all I had at the time. I bought a carob-iced spelt doughnut first thing in the morning, and I always got carrot and celery chips on my way into the cafeteria. I'd ask to go to the bathroom in several of my classes throughout the day to buy a chocolate gilk (goat's milk) or Sogurt (soy yogurt). I put the food in a cloth bag in my locker; by the end of one week, it was filled to capacity, and a month's worth of chore money was already gone. I
couldn't keep it up alone. It was financially impossible.

At home that evening, I sat on my bed and tried to come up with a game plan while eating some cheese puffs I'd found in the back of the pantry. As I wrote and ate I had to keep licking the orange flecks off my fingers. Even though they were loaded with trans fats, they were tasty, and besides, I couldn't take any more health food.

I sat on my bed with Paddy beside me and wrote and scratched out ideas. I wondered if I could hold some sort of boxing exhibition, maybe teach students the basic moves for a small fee, the money going toward the machines. No one at school except Cooper knew that part of me—I wondered what everyone would think if they knew? Would they think I was a freak? Would they think it was cool? As I pictured myself showing Lily Schmidt how to throw herself into an uppercut, and gaining more confidence as she did so, another image appeared of someone accidentally clocking sweet, quiet Lily in the jaw, sending her to the shiny wood floor of the gym, out cold.

As I worked out other ways to make people use the machines and save my approval rating, Cooper called, inviting me to come down and box.

“It's weird,” he said over the phone, “but I feel great
lately. Like, lots of energy, and my mind has been so sharp, like I could work all day. And the only thing I'm doing differently is eating from those vending machines.”

Cooper was the worst liar, but I played along. Just knowing he was trying to make me feel good set me at ease, at least a little.

Down at his house, I wrapped my hands, then started on Cooper's. I turned his hand flat, working the fabric around his wrist, then up across this palm. As I worked the wrap through his fingers, giving him extra protection across his knuckles—even though he would never hit me hard—I realized that I probably knew his hands better than any other girl did. Maybe even better than he knew them. He always had rough spots across his knuckles, and his right index finger crooked slightly to the left from when he broke it in fourth grade catching a basketball. And like every time I wrapped his hands, we didn't talk, but this time, up close, I noticed that he had a little splattering of freckles on his nose. They looked nice on him.

When I finished we pulled on our gloves and set the timer, and Cooper bounced more lightly on his feet than usual. He cricked his neck as if he were about to fight for the heavyweight championship of the world.

“You're going down!” he cheered as we started the round.

In the past, when I felt down about something, boxing helped get me out of the funk. I looked forward to shoving all that negative energy out of my body and getting my thoughts focused again. But that didn't happen this time. I just felt tired. Cooper swung a lot of fakes at me, waiting for me to hit. I took a few swings, and even landed a couple of soft punches to his arms, but it wasn't the same. I just went through the motions of pushing my arm forward and pulling my body away.

“Come on,” he cheered, punching his glove just before my face. “Fight back!”

In the middle of the second round, I lowered my gloves. I had worked up a mild sweat, but my heart wasn't in it, and my head was somewhere else.

“Oh, fine.” Cooper relented. “Want something to eat?”

Ever since Mr. Nixon had started up his restaurant, their house always smelled of delicious, spicy foods cooking and simmering and baking. Their large kitchen, which was filled with top-notch appliances, spilled into the living room, so whenever someone was cooking, you always felt a part of it. It looked nothing like our kitchen,
which was its own isolated room and had a broiler that hadn't worked in months. It drove my mother crazy, but she said there were better things to be doing with our money, like trying to keep up with the mortgage.

At the Nixons' there was a counter between the kitchen and the living room, and Cooper and I parked ourselves at it on the living-room side and leaned over, watching Mr. Nixon stir something in a big, shiny pot. The scent alone made me glad I had come over.