Lost Girls(56)

“Did you tell Dad?” I asked.

“I was worried about you, okay?” Kyle confessed, his chin jutting out and his gaze flicking away from me to stare out the window. “You’ve been acting all spooky lately, like the other night when you almost passed out in the garage.”

“Remind me to never help when you complain about guys picking on you at school.”

“Whatever.”

“That’s enough, both of you,” Dad said. “Get out, we’ve got work to do.”

We both slunk out of the car, avoiding each other, standing on opposite sides of Dad as we headed toward the gym. Once we were inside, he made us do half an hour of stretching and warming up. Then the real punishment began—eight brutal hours of martial arts training mixed with bare-knuckle boxing. He knew techniques I’d never even seen before and, time after time, I ended up flat on my back, the wind knocked out of me.

I think part of him felt bad, or maybe conflicted, about what he was doing, although I understood his motives. He wanted Kyle and me to be able to fight.

It didn’t take long for him to realize I had injuries from my fight last night, even though I never told him any details. He wrapped my ribs with a thick bandage and warned Kyle not to hit me there, telling him that if he cracked or broke one of my ribs it could puncture my lungs.

Kyle stared at me with his mouth open, his face flushed, something like fear or concern in his eyes.

After that we focused on kicks and jabs, careful not to touch each other. Even so, it was still a merciless workout that left me aching and moaning by the time we left. Once we got home, Kyle continued to avoid me, squirreling himself away in his room, glued to his video controller, the volume on his Xbox turned way down. He was probably trying to fly low, under Dad’s radar.

TV and video games were off-limits for me, however. Instead I got plenty of time to catch up on my homework. Dad hired some college-age nerd that lived down the street to come over both nights and work as my tutor, both of us sitting in the dining room with a virtual library of textbooks and spiral notebooks fanned out across the table.

It sucked—not just because I was exhausted or because I’d gotten in trouble—but because my memories were starting to come back, one by one, snippets that floated in here and there, leaving me disoriented.

I’d be trying to spar with Dad and I’d suddenly remember that Lauren’s dad hit her when she got bad grades—that’s why she was such an A-plus superstar. I’d seen the bruises that covered her torso one day when we were changing for PE. She tried to keep them covered up, but her spandex tank top accidentally came off when she pulled her shirt over her head. A couple of days later, I started training her. After a few weeks, Lauren was able to stand up to her father. He cornered her in the living room one night, fist raised and his lips curled in a snarl. Two kicks and one knee to the groin later and he smashed to the floor, knocking over a chair and breaking the coffee table. He needed five stitches on his forehead, and his right arm was in a splint for six weeks.

He never punched her again.

Then, when Kyle was lunging at me, spinning kicks and feigning jabs, I remembered how Stephanie had approached me, how she had confided that being big and strong didn’t mean people never picked on you. Even though she stood six feet tall, her older siblings always teased her, doing things like locking her out of the house when her parents went out of town, or writing curse words on her face with a marker if she fell asleep on the sofa. It was hard to teach her, since we weren’t matched in size, and it took longer than I expected, but after a few months she was able to stand up to the ringleader—her oldest brother, who was six-foot-five and weighed 220 pounds. Once she put him in his place, none of the others ever bothered her again.

At that point, I had enough trainees to start my own team. Within a few weeks, we became the Swan Girls, all of us with chips on our shoulders and something to prove. We were each either assigned a patron or chosen by one, and then were invited into the Gold Level. From the beginning, we had something none of the other teams had—grace, strength, and speed—and between us, we had a variety of weights, so we could challenge any of the other girl teams. It wasn’t long before we rose to the top, becoming a crowd favorite. Everybody knew our stage names and as soon as one of us stepped onstage, the chanting would start.

It was amazing and addictive.

But I didn’t remember how or why I got involved in fighting until we got back from the gym on Saturday night and Dad closed his study door, retreating from all of us, even from Mom.

His absence triggered something deep inside me.

I remembered one of the last times he left on a short-term mission and how empty the house felt when he walked out the door. Mom had her typical night shift at Methodist and Kyle was spending the night at a friend’s house. Then Dylan texted me, asking if I wanted to go to one of the local skate parks, and I said yes. I didn’t notice how sketchy the crowd was that night. All I saw was Dylan, how he crouched on his board, then dropped down the ramp and sped past me.

So I was caught off guard when a group of five girls wearing gang colors followed me into the bathroom. Maybe it was initiation night. Or maybe it was just time to pick on The Girl Wearing Pink in a world that dressed in black. I don’t remember exactly what happened, their punches and kicks came so fast. I think I may have screamed. Not that it stopped them.

But it did bring Dylan into the bathroom.