1st 5 Pages February Workshop- Shae

Name: Britney Shae
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Title: Fearless

As I walked into the convenience store, the first thing I noticed was the old TV sitting behind the attendant’s counter. I immediately recognized what was playing—the fight. Shit.

I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt over my head, hoping to hide as I slipped into the candy aisle. I scooped up a bag of Skittles for Margie and then turned to the refrigerator and reached for the milk. The store was dead quiet except for the low hum of the TV. I heard the announcers talking—Her first professional fight. Her chance to win the Junior U-18 MMA title. And so soon after her brother, fellow MMA fighter, Marco Armani, was killed in an unfortunate car accident.  Look at her eyes—have you ever seen such intensity?

I slammed the refrigerator door too hard and cringed as the sound echoed through the store. I didn’t want to give myself away.

Pulling out a wad of bills from my back pocket, I slowly approached the counter. The clerk’s attention was on the TV.

 “Gimme one sec.” His gaze never left the fight. “This girl’s gonna throw a punch like nothin’ I ever seen before.” He chuckled, the fight reflecting in his gray eyes.

I cleared my throat.  “That fight happened two days ago. Everyone knows who won.”

 “I can’t stop watching that punch. It’s gone viral. Can’t go anywhere without seeing it.”

I almost scoffed out loud. Ain’t that the truth.

At that moment came the punch. Just as it had in real time, my stomach lurched as my opponent crumpled to the ground, nothing but dead weight.

The clerk let out a low whistle, shaking his head in awe. “She just won her first title, but there’s no smile, no elation—nothin’. If you ask me, I think that’s the sign of a champion. She knew she was going to win from the moment she stepped into that ring.”

My chest froze. The panic surging through me was an unexpected reaction to this man’s confidence in my abilities—even if he hadn’t realized it was me who had savagely thrown a fist into that girl’s right cheek, knocking out one of her teeth and giving her a concussion that was still causing her problems.

I didn’t feel like a champion. And I hadn’t known I was going to win—especially that easily. From training and watching various fighting matches, I knew that knockouts came down to a lucky punch, but it still seemed surreal my first punch had been the K-O.

As the man began ringing up the milk and the Skittles, I glanced back up at the TV and right into my own blank eyes.

 “What if she didn’t know?” My voice came out before I could stop it. “What if she didn’t know she was going to win? What if she doubted herself even after she threw that punch?”

 “That girl?” He scoffed. “She’s a champion. You don’t just throw that kind of punch from nowhere.” He handed me my change.

I stared at him for a second. My head rang, Yes, you do just throw those punches out of nowhere.

 “Thanks,” I mumbled, taking my items and turning to leave.

It wasn’t until I reached the door that I heard the man exclaim with wonder, “Well I’ll be damned…” He had likely seen the embroidered letters adorning the back of my sweatshirt advertising Donovan’s Fight Club, the premier mixed martial arts—MMA—facility in Philly where I trained. I let the door close behind me and walked away as quickly as I could.

#

           

Loud music pumped through my earbuds as I walked into the gym, greeted by the familiar smell of mustiness and sweat. I’d only been absent for a few days, but god did it feel good to be back.

           

Donovan’s Fight Club was my escape from reality. My purpose for being at the gym was to train, but that wasn’t why I was there. I was there because when I was punching the bag, music from my brother’s iPod playing in my ear, I could forget everything happening outside the brick walls. Fighting and training had been my brother’s hobby, his passion. But for me, it was more than that—it was home.

           

I wasn’t sure what I listened to, other than that it was a playlist curated by my brother, which he creatively titled “Angry.” I listened as the singer screamed out his words, the guitarist fiercely strumming his riffs, the bass thudding.

           

This playlist was perfect because I was angry. I had been angry since inheriting Marc’s iPod two months ago when he died. Inherit wasn’t exactly the right word—there hadn’t been a reading of the will. There hadn’t even been a will. Instead, it had been handed to me at the hospital by a police officer, taken from the wreck of Marc’s car. Unlike Marc, the iPod wasn’t destroyed. It wasn’t even scratched.

           

Donovan’s was a three-story, expansive brick building converted into a boxing gym in the 1950s. I headed straight for my usual punching bag, the one tucked away in a room off the main gym on the first floor, almost completely hidden.  I threw my bag on the ground and pulled out the grappling gloves Marc had given me nearly a year ago, when we had first started getting into MMA after years of karate and martial arts training. I started my warm-up, switching between punches and kicks.

           

I grunted as I landed a solid kick and watched as the bag swayed. Maybe this anger was just one of those stages of grief like the school counselor had tried to talk to me about following Marc’s death. I had only half-listened to her as she spoke, expressing her concern over my plummeting grades. Marc’s death wasn’t the reason for my slipping grades, but of course the school counselor used his death as an excuse—it took the blame off of my small private school and its lack of enforcement against bullying.

           

We don’t need to justify anger, Anna-Maria, Mom always said. We don’t have to justify anything we feel.

           

As I went through my standard routine, a few guys poked their heads in from around the corner, looked at me, and then turned to each other excitedly. I knew why they were there.

           

I had just won the mixed martial arts junior U-18 title, beating out four-time champion Taylor Heery. Except they didn’t know the whole thing was a fluke. I wasn’t supposed to win.

           

The track on the iPod switched from the screaming, bass-heavy, drum-fueled song to something surprisingly low-key, almost as though the playlist had switched from “angry” to “melancholy.” I had only been at it for about ten minutes, but sweat already dripped down my face. Maybe I’d gone at it a little too hard for a “warm-up.”

           

Grabbing my bag, I decided to head to my locker, where I kept my hand wraps. There was no “locker room,” exactly, but there was a room of lockers on the partially underground bottom level.

           

I walked down the narrow stairway and immediately turned right, which took me to the lockers. To the left of the stairway, across from the lockers, resided a row of offices. The closest office to the locker room housed Chris Matsumoto, the owner of the gym, and my trainer. I saw light coming from behind his door.