Save Me from Dangerous Men (Nikki Griffin #1)(79)

I had let my parents die. I hadn’t been there for my brother.

I had failed everyone in my life who mattered.

The thing that separated me from all those characters in my books was that unlike them, I was helpless to help myself, let alone anyone else. At that time, I was filled with many different unpleasant emotions, but the helplessness was the worst. I hated it so much. I opened my eyes each morning thinking about Jordan Stone and Carson Peters opening their own eyes. I pictured them eating breakfast, walking around, talking, laughing. I didn’t talk much to anyone. Mostly I read, and thought, and remembered. But as I read, as the summer days passed, I began to hate myself a little less. I had books to thank for that. Books saved me, that summer. If it had been up to me, I never would have left the library.

Instead, the summer ended and there was school.

From the first day, I had a hard time making friends. Talking about boys or complaining about biology homework seemed impossible. I pretended, wishing I could care, and my disinterest was noted. I joined the soccer team and hated it. Rumors about me swirled. Even though I was pretty and athletic I was branded a loner, a misfit. The problems started immediately, those first few weeks of ninth grade. A boy announced that the people I lived with weren’t my real parents. That afternoon the Hammonds joined me to talk to the principal, who explained that while playground scrapes were to be expected, it wasn’t normal for a boy to leave school with a broken tooth and needing stitches, even if he had instigated things.

The Hammonds took me home and talked about self-restraint. They were called in again a few weeks later. Different kid, different details, basically the same outcome. “Nikki has been through a horrific tragedy,” the principal acknowledged. “And I gather that her last foster experience was … very difficult and ended quite badly. We all want to help, but she stuck a sharpened pencil about an inch into this boy’s arm. He’s lucky there wasn’t nerve damage. And what if it had been an eye?”

The Hammonds lingered at the dinner table that night, talking in hushed voices. Before I went to bed that night I packed my clothes. Came down to breakfast the next morning with my suitcase. The two of them exchanged glances. “Where are you going, Nikki?” Elizabeth asked.

“You’ll send me back,” I said. “So I’m ready to go.”

I hadn’t meant to make her cry. She hugged me. “We never will,” she said. “I promise.”

That day after school, instead of me walking to the library, Jeff Hammond picked me up and we drove to a shabby building marked by a red pair of boxing gloves painted on plywood. Inside was a blue-floored square ring surrounded by a triptych of red padded ropes. Two older boys circled each other in the ring, gloved hands flashing out, bodies shifting subtly. I took in the cylindrical black heavy bags, patched with electrical tape. In front of a mirror a man faced his reflection, ducking and moving. Another guy jumped rope.

I didn’t know it then, but Jeff Hammond had boxed in the navy as a young man. “Nikki,” he said, “hundreds of years ago, boxing began as a sport of violence, where the bigger, stronger men always won. Gradually, other men began to study movement and technique. And then the stronger, more violent men started losing to the boxers who possessed control. A lot of violent people have come to places like this gym and learned control. I think it would be a good thing if you could, too.”

I took another look around. “They’re all guys in here.”

Jeff Hammond followed my gaze. The trainers, the boxers—I was right. All men.

He looked back at me. “What’s your point?”

I thought about it. “I’m not sure.”

That day he didn’t do anything but show me how to tape my hands up. He gave me a pair of cloth hook-and-loop wraps and wrapped my hands for me, starting at the wrist, working up around the back of the hand and over the knuckles. Then he unraveled the strips of black cloth. Did it again. Then had me try. Ten times, twenty. Until I could have wrapped my hands with my eyes closed. That night I slept with the hand wraps next to me in bed.

The next afternoon I was back in the gym. Jeff Hammond showed me how to place my feet, how to hold my hands, how to move. I was left-handed. That was the first time I heard the word “southpaw.” He didn’t let me throw a punch for a week. I didn’t put on actual gloves for a month. By that winter I was sparring, mostly against older, bigger boys. I was naturally good and got better. I started competing in amateur fights. At school, the problems stopped.

I wasn’t able to become Brandon’s legal guardian until I was eighteen. By then it was too late. Drinking and pot and disobedience had given way to harder stuff, worse misbehavior. I didn’t buy the gateway argument. I figured whatever gateway Brandon had gone through, it had been a long time ago. Now there were just the symptoms. He ran away three times before he started high school. By the time I began my freshman year at Berkeley, Brandon had more or less stopped going to school. He was past the point where I had any idea of how to help.

By my senior year he had discovered heroin.

I did my best to get him out of trouble. He made it to my graduation. Sitting in the audience with the Hammonds as a stream of important speakers explained all the great things we’d go on to do. Everyone clapped. People liked a narrative, especially if it involved their own success. As for me, I had no idea what I wanted to do after college. No idea of what I might be good at or find value in. No idea about what I was supposed to do with my life.