11. BEATDOWN
Lawson—
I’ve fought multiple opponents before. I should be ready for the speed of the attack, to be struck over and over and from every direction. I’m not ready for the pain, for the shame of being hit by people who resent me, who want to see me suffer, instead of by friends.
This is nothing like sparring. This is for my life.
CAUTION. The word flashes in my brain.
The first time I saw caution tape I was young enough that Mama towered into the sky, overshadowing Dad, overshadowing everything. We walked past an old building that was undergoing major renovations. It was the weekend, no contractor or workers in sight. Just a whole playground of fresh plywood, flaking paint, and shadows.
Mama grasped my hand too tightly. Her whole fist wrapped around mine, holding me back from the neon tape that seemed made to duck under.
“Ow,” I said.
She looked at me in surprise.
“Let him go, Sally.” Dad got down in front of me, one hand braced flat on new cement, blue eyes level with mine. “It’s not safe in there, Lawson. Do you understand me?”
I nodded.
“And do you still want to go in?”
I nodded again. Dad looked up at Mama. He had glasses, loafers, and an untucked button-down shirt, but Mama was military precision, muscles highlighted by her black sleeveless top. With Dad on his knees in front of her, he and I seemed of one perspective, two kids at the feet of a force of nature.
“You see?” he said. “Inquiring minds need to learn for themselves. Let him make mistakes while his messes are small enough that they won’t get him killed. You’re going to stunt his growth, make him too easily controlled—or a rebel without a cause. You’re too protective.”
Mama’s grip tightened around my hand. “He’s just a boy.”
“And you’re just a woman.” Dad hopped to his feet and dusted his hands on his slacks. “But we never let that stop us.”
I’m pretty sure Mama never let go of anything so fast as she let go of my hand right then.
I miss her now, while fists hit me like two-by-fours. Ten attackers means too many to keep track of. No time to line up and anticipate as kicks jackhammer in from behind. Adrenaline offers no help, only makes my heart flutter and my vision waver.
The pain from separate blows blends across time and space—a punch to the side melds with a boot to the shin; head strikes minutes apart bleed together. Flavors of agony overlap like countries with no clear borders. I’ve got a stinging split lip, throbbing jaw, headache.
I close my eyes, dizzied, and when I open them again the red anarchy symbols on the As dirty white t-shirts are crisp like when the sun comes out after a spring rain. My skin feels like one cohesive canvas, holding all sensations at once.
Amazing to realize some parts of my body don’t hurt. My right thigh, my left bicep, both heels.
My field of vision widens. My muscles relax. I stop trying to anticipate and just move.
So this is the secret to how Lin fights. Just stop thinking. My body senses the blows coming before I do. I duck, spin, block. Each of my strikes lands with precision. The As are too slow, too disorganized, too incautious. For a blank space of time the phrase on top of the world makes sense.
Power thrums through my veins. My body, muscle and bone and sinew, is pure perfection. Then someone hits me. I miss one punch coming into my kidney and I go down, palm then cheek on the cement.
It’s only one blow. It shouldn’t matter. It almost doesn’t.
A boot touches down on the side of my neck, just resting there, just hard enough to grind tiny pieces of gravel into my face, just enough pressure to let me know how easily my neck can break.
I’ve still got one foot planted for leverage, but I can’t even squirm as another boot slides up my thigh and steel-toes my groin. My stomach clenches, and sweat breaks out under my arms. A whimper catches on my locked teeth.
Then they let me up. That’s what does it. They all step back to give me breathing room, while understanding sinks razor-sharp claws into my belly. We aren’t fighting for my life, after all. The As don’t want my life. They want something a whole lot more precious.
They want my pride. And I’m already on one knee in front of them.
People have been shouting, cheering and jeering, but as the As pull back there’s a collective intake of breath filled only by The Dance.
Boom—boom—boom.
My heart probably keeps that tempo, after all this time, probably will forever.
Aidan’s voice, shrill and desperate as I’ve never heard it, screams the most unhelpful advice possible.
“Don’t fight!”
Clear as if someone wired our brains together, I get the message. I’m on one knee now, but it’s just starting. I’m going to be on both knees in a moment. Before too long, I’ll be on the ground, face covered in blood and snot and tears that I’m powerless to prevent.
They’re going to hurt me, and I’m not going to be able to stop them.
I’m going to be just like Aidan.
I must have thought they’d let me get all the way to my feet, because the next blow—a straight up punch in the nose—shocks my head backward and leaves me scrambling for balance instead of fighting back. Hot blood gushes into my mouth.
I have an image of myself, superimposed over this experience like two pictures that won’t line up, of me fighting off all Aidan’s attackers the other morning. The other morning when Aidan refused to fight back, and I…I just stood there. And Aidan almost died.
Unforgiving sunlight hits the concrete bones of the old world and the dirty faces of the lost children. A leering face snaps into focus. He was there.
My priorities shift. No matter what they do to me, they can’t make me stop fighting. Or maybe they can. Maybe they can break me. Maybe they can even make me beg. Probably not in an hour.
Please, not in an hour.
But that guy? He’s going down.
He’s got russet skin and dust-dulled black hair and, for a moment, widening dark eyes as I lunge at him. I go for the collarbone, easy to break and slow to heal, and am rewarded with a snap. They yank me back, but not before he stumbles away, clutching his shoulder. My lips pull back from my teeth in a feral grin. At least one A retreats, in addition to the one I just injured.
Then they attack again, because they’re As, and that’s how they deal with insecurity.
They hit me harder this time, crowding closer, stepping on each other’s feet. Now they’ve seen I can do damage, they’re serious, less concerned with teaching me a lesson. It’s time to get on with hurting me.
For a minute, I almost meet them, but I’m out of sync like a beginner dropped into the advanced class. One of my ankles turns over, stinging all the way to my hip joint. There’s no choice but to transfer all my weight to the other foot. Dammit. Better to lose the use of an arm than a leg, but it’s not like the guy in the middle gets a say. Just when I think I’m muddling through, someone calls, “Change!”
Like this is a sport’s match or something. The As turn and walk off. All I can do is brace my hands on my knees and gasp for breath, grateful for the break, as ten new fighters step into place around me.
They crash through my weakening defenses. Fists batter at my midsection. The whole expanse of my stomach softens. Muscles seem hard but in the face of steel-toe boots aren’t hard enough. My lower back—I should have been working out harder. I am constantly winded. My head pounds and spins. The insides of my thighs cramp up, all those sensitive places that make my stomach tense when caressed.
Someone finally kicks me in the groin, an explosion of red that folds me in and over. The pavement rushes toward my face like déjà vu—falling again, hasn’t this already happened? Things are being done to my body that might never be put right.
The earth seems to quiver, but it’s only me, caught in my own personal quake.
It’s not like bedbugs or dirty hands, this violence
. Pain is not a minor discomfort. No matter how much agony I’m already in, every new body part can still suffer, and then can be made to hurt even more.
There is no limit to pain. But there’s a limit to how much pain you can take. That’s not fair.
Aidan can take more than I can. That one’s whole body is injured, almost broken. And yet each new bruise and cut only makes that one seem more indomitable. That is the paradox of Aidan.
Eyes and grins surround me. Rows and rows of teenagers, all skin colors and tribal marks and uniforms, every one of them watching, no one helping.
Ring around the bleeding guy. Kick him. Hit him. Make him cry.
Laughter rings out, a wash of noise that seems separate from the closed mouths and hollow eyes around me. I’ve lost track of where the strikes are coming from, which agonies are new and which old. Blood splashes the road and my feet. I should be worried. I stopped counting the hits to my head at seven. Too many. No sleeping tonight.
Knuckles strike my temple. The temple is a sweet spot; that’s what Mama called it when she taught me to fight. What would Aidan think of that? But it’s true, so tender the pain is almost sweet, spreading through my head like water.
I fall into a new territory inside myself where I am small and alone and at everyone’s mercy. I land on my back with a view of upside-down sky. Someone should rush over and ask if I’m okay. Instead, boots crash into my sides, my stomach.
I can still see Aidan lying in the street that first night, not too far from here, jerking with the rhythm of an A’s kicks. It wasn’t the worst beating I’d happened upon in D-town, but my steps still stuttered.
Don’t get distracted.
My fingers knotted as my feet dragged. Another kick landed.
Damn, damn, damn.
My nails pierced the skin of my palms. Don’t interfere. I pulled back into the shadows, wiping my hands on my clothes. I turned my face and pressed my cheek against the rough wall. Wet sounds of impact blended with the beat from The Dance. I should have left, but I couldn’t.
Thud. I cringed inside, steeling myself against the cry to follow.
No cry came.
The one on the ground wasn’t making a sound. My pores prickled with alarm, pulse throbbing against the base of my throat. Was the Bee already dead? Unconscious didn’t seem likely. The As liked to cause pain. Unconsciousness dulled suffering, so they tried to avoid knocking out their victims.
I strained for the rasp of a breath, the thud of a heartbeat. Boom-boom-boom went The Dance. I cat-stepped closer, risking exposure. But what would that matter, really? I might get a reputation for liking to watch, but the Real Deal didn’t strictly forbid voyeurism. We didn’t forbid much.
But at least we didn’t beat people for fun.
I crept around the pair for a view of the in-between’s face. I didn’t know then that I’d see those bruises and cuts for weeks, every time I closed my eyes. The Bee’s eyes didn’t open, nor did they squeeze tighter. That one didn’t even wince as the blows landed. The in-between looked so peaceful, like one asleep, or…
I have to do something. I gathered myself, ready to launch forward.
A light pink tongue slipped out to moisten dry lips, and I exhaled in relief. Alive. That one must have detached from the pain.
Another blow, and the crease in the forehead deepened, then smoothed out. More love on that bruised face with the swollen eye than I’d ever seen. My lungs burned. The back of my throat stung. I surged forward—
“Hey, Law! Was the little Bee worth it?”
At the shout from the crowd, the image shrinks like a punctured balloon. The As are just stamping and kicking now, smashing me into the ground. They have to keep me down, down, down. They want to crush me through the cement, make me feel like nothing. Because they’re used to making the Bees feel like nothing, and I got in their way.
A vice grips my throat. Not humiliation, not yet. It’s that soft look Aidan gets in the face of attackers. Aidan’s automatic response to hurt is love.
It’s the weirdest, most screwed up, most frustrating thing.
It’s worth more than my pride.
I let my eyes fall shut—so tired—and reach again for the image of Aidan’s compassionate face. That picture just won’t reform. Instead my adopted sister stares back from behind my closed eyelids.
You promised! Tab accuses.
I’m on the edge of consciousness already, and it’s the easiest thing to slip back into memory. Back in my early days in D-town, I needed a place to hide my supplies, so I snuck out every morning before dawn. I kept getting lost. I’d walk in circles in the rising light, trying to pinpoint the source of the techno beat that seemed to come from all directions.
One morning, my nose caught on a burned smell, and my feet itched to flee. So instead I followed it.
The scent led me to a burned out restaurant tucked away on a side-street just inside the Boundary. A restaurant was exactly what I needed. An old-world eating establishment meant an airtight, industrial-sized fridge. Inside, I fished my flashlight out of my pocket and swept the beam over destroyed tables and chairs, charred walls…a pale human face.
I swung the light back and, yup, there was someone there. A…an in-between. There in the dark I had my first experience of not being able to tell a boy from a girl. The face was round, with flattened features and too-young eyes.
I stared, and it stared back.
“Boo!” said the face.
It took a while, but I talked the ghost out into the light. She was just a girl, adolescent in body at least. And alive, if barely. Her name was Tabitha.
She had been surviving from the very same fridge in which I wanted to hide my supplies. She rationed the food, combined it with D-town scraps, and tricked any wanderers into thinking this restaurant was haunted. Or so she believed. Probably the truth was that no one wanted to bother with her.
I tempted her home with promises of nourishment and warmth. When we stepped into D-town proper, her fingers bit into mine with odd strength, nails digging in like claws, and she shook her head. I just draped an arm around her shoulders.
“You’re okay,” I said. “I’ll always protect you.”
Tab’s grown so much since then, but those watery eyes haven’t gotten any older. Whether due to genetics or trauma, Tab stopped maturing before we met. Tab’s D-town age never changes, never will change.
I am all she has in the world, and I promised protection.
So I flip over and make it as far as my side. My knees draw up to shield my stomach, but I force them straight. I have to get up, because Tab is too young to understand broken promises.
I just have to keep on getting up.