Radiation Face

  ‘So...everything?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s a lot of work.’ Sam looks at me and has a wide smile across her face. ‘But with the right coaching I think you can pull it off. Get it done in seven weeks, easy.’

  ‘Great. Know any good coaches. I’m ready.’ I say.

  ‘Yeah. Me.’

  ‘You?’ I look at her. She’s still smiling widely.

  ‘Yes, me. I can coach you.’

  ‘You?’ I repeat. ‘What do you know about coaching?’

  ‘Plenty of stuff. I know all kinds of drills and effective training schedules. And I know this sport.’

  ‘Look, I’m really glad you helped me as much as you have. You know, letting me know about the tryouts and everything, but there’s a big difference from watching something and coaching.’

  ‘I know. And you should let me coach you.’ Her smile fades and a serious look slowly replaces it.

  ‘Uh, no.’ I get up and walk out of the locker room and gather my gear from the floor where I left it. I pack everything up and walk out the door. Wait for the bus and head home. I just walk upstairs and go straight to bed. I don’t bother with a shower.

  #

  Thursday, I woke up and walked down the stairs. My mom freaked out and started to baby me. I hadn’t been to the mirror yet so I had no idea how I looked. It wasn’t great. I was covered in bruises and dried blood. My sheets were soaked in a thin red soup. I stayed home that day and nursed the wounds I had. Mom drew a bath for me and I soaked myself for a few hours.

  My mind was trying to keep the pain away from me but I kept thinking about every blow that was delivered to me. I knew the fights I was in before were sloppy, but I never knew I was so outclassed.

  When I fought in Middling it was with core group of my friends. There was Rob, Dobbie, Keith, Ben, and Matt. All mutants. Some worse than others. Someone’s older brother had a few fightng magazines lying around and we started reading them. We’d skip school and hang out at the local gym all day, trading punches. Trying to do what we saw in the mags. We got pretty good. Well, we thought we got good. So Keith decided we needed to fight other people, and he had a cousin over in Zionsville who he fought with. That cousin had a friend in Butler. And that friend had someone in King’s Harbor. And that’s how our little fight league started.

  We didn’t have prize money or anything like that. We didn’t have any coaches. We had each other. We had those magazines and whatever else would come into the zone. What we had most of all was nothing better to do. We would spend every weekend fighting. Every weeknight training. It was better than going to school and going home most of the time. We would stand and beat the shit out of each other as the crowds grew each week. And I loved every second of it. Every second.

  The rest of Thursday dragged on. And I went to bed early.

  This morning, I wake up still as sore as the day before, but I get up early and go for my run. It goes as expected. But I run as far as I had in the past. It just takes a little longer than before. I figure it will take me a few weeks to get back up to being able to breathe without pain. But I should keep up with the training. This is just a small set back. I’ll have to train a little better. A little smarter. I’ll need to figure out how to do all that shit I saw in the ring.

  I finish running. I go home and get ready for school. My mom keeps checking in on me to make sure I’m alright. She knows I was out fighting Wednesday. Dad doesn’t. He thinks I was just sick all day. Mom tells me to expect to see him tonight. I’m more upset about the loss than anything else. Dad never really said much about my fighting. He liked that it kept me out of trouble. I could have ended up like my neighbors’ kid. Drugged up and drunk every day by fourteen. She was a mess. She was taking everything that wasn’t nailed down straight into her arm.

  Her skin was a sickly green and her hair fell out in clumps. She grew boils that looked like small ridges across her skin. It’s a shame. She was very pretty, but there’s nothing worse for a mutant than taking drugs. The radiation in our bodies does something to that shit. People think we look bad now, they should have seen her before she died. It was something out of a freak show. I try not to think about her too often.

  I get to school and it’s like my first day all over again. The stares are endless and the looks are priceless. You’d think Satan himself was walking down the halls. Or that I had my balls out, swinging them around. There was a difference, though. Between today and my actual first day.

  I’m smiling today.

  Today feels a little better. A little different. I’m walking on a cloud. Or red velvet. Or some shit. I just don’t feel anything. I don’t hear the whispers. Or the names. Or feel the pushing. Or the loneliness. I’m invincible walking in that school. I know pain that they don’t. That they probably never will.

  Melanie tracks me down pretty quickly. I guess the rumors of what happened to me flew threw the school pretty quickly. She looks me up and down and wants to run off to our little spot right then and there. I want the same thing. That invisibility is making me feel like I’m the king of it all. That feeling lasts until I’m alone with Melanie and she asks me what happened. I tell her I got into a fight. She asks if I won. I don’t say anything. I want to lie to her. Just to get her to shut up. But I really want to tell her the truth, but she’s not the girl you tell the truth to. She’s the girl you lie to. So I say, “Sure.” So she smiles and starts to kiss me. I just stand there and start to think about the pain in my arm and in my shoulder and how it felt as I was on the mat. And I think about seeing all those faces past the cage and wondering what I was doing there.

  Melanie keeps going. She says something again. I don’t hear it. She keeps kissing me. I don’t feel it. She strokes my cheek. I don’t want it. But I go through the motions. I unbutton the shirt myself. I let her do the rest. I keep going through the motions. I stay there as long as she needs me to and I leave before she gets her panties back on.

  I walk out the door and back into the real school. I still don’t hear anything. I don’t feel anything. I’m still invincible. But I’m not smiling. I go through my morning classes. Each one has something to it. A kids says something in the back of the class when the teacher asks me what happened. Someone trips me on the way out of another. Another asks me to sit out in the hall because I upset her. I say okay and head out to the hall.

  I sit out there in the silence. The sun reflecting off forever buffed floors. I sit there and I go through everything from the other night. I go through it and I don’t know where to start. How to start. What to do. I don’t know anything. I see myself going back and doing the same thing over again. I feel like emptying my head out on the floor. I feel like I don’t even want to go back home. I don’t know why or where or how, but I know it all seems pretty useless. I feel this nervous sickness swelling up at the pit of my stomach and making a beeline to my throat and I want it to end. I just want it to end. But more than that I want to fight. Just to fight. So I think about that and that nervous sickness that was twisted up inside me slowly unwinds. I just have to focus on that and keep the rest out.

  The bell rings and I head to lunch to eat my sandwich and think about fighting. Sam joins me half way through. She doesn’t talk about the other night. She just sits there eating. I try to think of something to say, but nothing comes to mind. So I just sit there eating.

  Finally she says something.

  ‘Still sore?’ she asks.

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  ‘I figured it was pretty bad if you didn’t come to school yesterday.’

  ‘Hold on there. It wasn’t that bad. I just needed to catch up on a little shut eye.’ I lie.

  ‘I see.’ She pauses for a moment. ‘Did you think about my offer at all?’

  ‘Not really, but do you know someone?’

  Sam sets her food down and stares at me. ‘Really? You’re going to ask me that? Just completely dismissing my offer?’

  ‘Look. You seem alright, but I’m not going to put my life in some
girl’s hands.’

  She looks back at me with a completely straight face and slowly nods. ‘Alright. I’ll have to show you.’ She stands up and walks away from the table, towards the large glass doors leading out to the courtyard where all the popular kids are eating. I watch her through the large windows as she heads straight to Kevin, Joosh, and Dweebil. They are surrounded by a bunch of other kids. Melanie’s in the next table over.

  Sam sits down next to Joosh and she says something. He laughs and looks at the rest of the table. They laugh along. She says something again. He shrugs. She says something again. He looks a little irritated then she turns her back to me and I see him getting angrier. He looks around the table again and everyone’s laughing again, but I know it’s not with him. He finally stands up places himself over her. He’s trying to get her to move just from intimidation. She looks up and says something else then she stands up and gets right up against him. He’s about a head or two taller than her and he just stares down at her.

  Finally, he pushes her away. She grabs his arms and twists one of them and kicks his back knee in and he hits the ground. She wraps her legs around his other arms and neck and starts to pull. I look at his face and he’s trying not to show any emotion, but his face is getting red and he’s not looking too happy. She leans back a little more and he finally yells out. And she jumps off him and heads back inside. The teachers don’t bother to notice. They don’t police the outside.

  Sam sits back down breathing just a little heavy and with a large smile across her face. ‘Well?’

  she says.

  ‘Where did you learn that?’

  ‘Did I get the job?’

  ‘Tell me where you learned that move.’

  ‘Not interested in telling you anything. Unless it’s how many miles you’re going to run.’ She takes a deep breath and calms down. ‘Now, yes or no. Did I get the job?’

  I try to think of a good reason not to have her coach me, but I can’t. I’d really go somewhere else, but I can’t afford to hire anyone. And she knows it. She’s sitting there and smiling while I’m trying to come up with something good. And I finally say, ‘Okay.’ And I realize, as she starts rattling possible training schedules and all the things I need to work on, that my nerves have finally calmed down. And I haven’t thought about the loss or anything else since she sat down.

  The bell rings and I pack everything up. Sam gets up with me and says, ‘Tomorrow, we’re going to start. You can come over to my place I’ve got some stuff to train with. Here.’ She hands me her address. It’s a few blocks from my house. ‘Run there. Eight in the morning. Don’t be late.’

  ‘Alright, but this is just on a trial basis.’ I smirk for some reason and we split as the hall makes a “T”.

  I start to get excited and pump my fist quickly to my side in excitement and let out a little whimper as my ribs send a jolt through my chest. I go to class and count the minutes left in school.

  #

  I walk through the door and I realize I had forgotten about Dad. Crap. I did not feel up to talking to him. But I have an actual coach now. Yes, it’s a classmate I met at the fight, but it’s something. Maybe she’ll be horrible, but I could at least learn a few moves from her I’m sure. I don’t know if he’d see it that way.

  I shut the door as quietly as I can and set my stuff down by the door. I head towards the stairs and up to my bedroom. Hoping I’ll be able to get up there and buy myself some time before they realize I’m home.

  I get a few steps in and ‘Honey, is that you?’ Mom shouts from the backroom.

  ‘Uh, yeah!’ I shout back.

  ‘Hey, could you come here for a second.’ She says.

  ‘Yeah, we want to talk to you.’ I hear my dad’s voice say.

  ‘Alright.’ And I make my way towards them.

  Mom’s sitting there with some more baby books surrounding her. Mixed with the baby naming books are a bunch of other ones with words like “care”, “infant”, and “learning” somewhere in their titles.

  Dad looks at me and he is visibly wincing. He seems to be counting the bruises on my face.

  ‘They look worse than they actually are.’ I tell him.

  ‘God, I hope so cause they look awful.’ he tells me.

  I stand there with my hands in my pocket.

  He breaks the short silence. ‘So this “job” was really a fight I take it?’

  ‘Well, yeah, it was more of a fight tryout, really.’

  ‘And did it go well? I ask somehow knowing the answer.’ he replies.

  ‘Well, not great. It wasn’t horrible, but I just didn’t do what I needed to do.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Well, win.’

  ‘I see.’ He nods.

  He asks me to sit down and Mom keeps looking through the baby books like no big deal.

  ‘So...’ He says. I cut him off before he gets something else out.

  ‘I don’t see what the big deal is. I used to fight back home all the time. You liked that if I remember right. You were pretty happy I did that.’

  ‘I was, son, but this isn’t Middling. You don’t have to do that to fill your time. I moved us all up here so you’d have other opportunities than going out and getting into a fight.’

  ‘It’s a little more than just getting into a fight, Dad.’ I say.

  He raises his hands and nods his head. ‘I know that. But still, this isn’t something that you need to go out and do. I’d rather you go and get a job.’

  ‘Well, the tryouts were kind of like a job interview.’

  ‘Abe, I’m not that stupid. You know when I say jobs, you know what I mean. Fighting to me is not a job. And that tryout or whatever you did was not an interview. It was just a tryout. Right?’

  I let out a sigh. ‘Yeah, I guess.’

  ‘Now, I know you like fighting. And that’s fine, but you can’t just go out and do what you were doing in Middling. You’re going to get yourself killed. Why don’t you go play soccer or football or something at school.’

  ‘That’s not my thing.’

  ‘Well, try and make it your thing.’

  ‘Fighting is what I like to do, Dad.’

  ‘I know, son. I know. But you need to get something else to do. Something that’s not going to leave you looking like that. If you don’t want to do one of those sports then you definitely need to get a job. It’s one or the other. No fighting. But if you need to get out some aggression then play football. I was a teen once too. I remember all that crap going through your head.’

  ‘I’m not going to join football.’

  ‘Then you need to get a job like I’ve been saying. A real job. One that is steady and doesn’t leave you looking like that.’

  ‘I got a trainer.’ I tell him. Mom finally looks up from the baby books.

  ‘Okay...’ Dad just looks at me.

  ‘So I’m kind of committed now. I can’t just walk away.’

  ‘And where did you get the money to pay for a trainer?’

  ‘Oh, it’s free.’

  ‘Free?’

  ‘That’s how much he believes in me.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. Why? You don’t think I’m any good?’

  ‘No, I think you’re okay. I really can’t judge that sort of thing. But nobody ever gets something for nothing.’

  ‘Well, I am. Free training. It’s true.’

  ‘I believe you. I do, but I think your mom and I should probably meet this trainer.’ Mom nods in agreement.

  ‘Alright, I’ll talk to him. See what kind of schedule he has this week.’

  ‘Alright. I still want you to get a job. This fighting thing is not something you can do forever. Or make any money at. But I’ll let you train since this person was nice enough to give you his time. It’s only fair.’

  ‘Awesome! Thanks, Dad. Thanks, Mom.’

  ‘But we want to meet him. Sound good?’

  ‘Yeah, sounds great. That’s awesome. And I’ll de
finitely start to look for a job. I will.’

  ‘Here. You can start now.’ Dad hands me the classifieds and I take them and head upstairs. Mom gets back into reading her book and Dad waits until I’m headed up the stairs before he and Mom start to talk. I can’t make out what their saying, but I don’t really care.

  I walk into my room and throw the paper on the floor and flop into bed. I stand back up and start throwing my fists through the air. Jabbing and blocking. I get a few punches out before my arms start to ache and my body starts to shoot little pins through the brain. I stop and lay back down on the bed and wait for dinner.

  I eat then I watch some movie with the folks. I don’t remember much of it. When it’s done I get up and thank Mom and Dad again about the training then head up to bed, change, and try to fall asleep. It happens faster than I expect.

  #

  I open my eyes and look over at the clock. It’s six-thirty. I close my eyes back up and try to get a little more sleep in before I need to get up. But it doesn’t happen. I get up, get dressed, and head downstairs. I’m a little less stiff than I was yesterday morning. And it gets easier to move the more I do.

  I try not to load up on anything heavy. I grab some fruit and some toast. I follow that with a glass of water and start looking through the fridge to pack a lunch. I don’t know how long Sam’s going to keep me there. She seems serious. So I don’t want to risk the chance of not eating. I make myself a sandwich and some fruit. I’ll grab a drink at her place.

  I sit down with an hour left before I have to be at her place. I stand up and pace the living room until I feel the urge to use the bathroom. I waste a few more minutes getting everything out for the morning and then go back to the living room and pace the floor a little more. Mom and Dad are still in bed so I write them a quick note to let them know where I’ll be the rest of the day.

  I start to write that I’ll ask the trainer about meeting them, but I decide against it and erase what I wrote. I don’t want them thinking about it. If they ask, I’ll just put it off until I can figure a way to tell my dad that I’m being trained by a fifteen year old girl. And that it’s not a waste of time to be doing this. That last one is going to be the key to winning whatever argument comes up later.