Page 94 of My Family

There it is.

First match. Top of the board.

MARSAL (Aspire) vs. DOMINGUEZ (Ridgecrest).

I look across the gym. The broad-shouldered fighter, Dominguez, is already looking at me, cracking his knuckles one by one.

Fuck my luck.

He rolls his shoulders like he's done this many times before and won most of them.

No time to watch others compete. No time to settle my nerves by seeing how the matches flow, how the refs call things, what the mat feels like.

I'm the opening act.

The first blood.

I feel so fucking sick. A hundred times worse than anything before.

Ethan's hand finds my shoulder one last time. "Remember what I said. Footwork. Guard. Breathe. You got this, baby. I'm very proud of you."

I nod. My mouth is dry, and I can't swallow, and I think I'll die because I can't swallow and I can't breathe. My heart is a fist, pounding against my ribs.

"I'm right here," he says. "The whole time."

I believe him.

I'm terrified.

The mat is blue like the ones back home. Left foot forward, right foot back, weight balanced. I walk toward the center, mouthguard in, hands up.

Dominguez up close is worse. He's so fucking tall, and he looks like a bull. His shoulders are twice the width of mine, his neck a column, his forearms roped with muscle. He has pores and a slightly crooked nose and a bead of sweat on his upper lip. His hair is black, like his eyes.

Everything feels like a dream, like I'm very, very high. I can't register things properly, and my brain is in a fog.

We touch gloves.

The academy circuit uses modified safety rules, so a clean knockdown gets a count before the ref decides whether you can continue. Griff went over all of this yesterday. Right now, I barely remember my own name.

The ref says words and then steps back, and the signal comes.

I swallow hard.

I move first.

I circle left, the way Ethan taught me, keeping distance, testing. Dominguez watches, patient, his guard high, his footwork minimal because he doesn't need to chase me yet. He knows he's bigger. He knows time is on his side.

I throw a jab. It pops off his guard, clean, quick, and his eyebrow twitches. I throw another, follow it with a cross that his guard absorbs but that pushes him back half a step. My hips rotate the way Ethan showed me, the power coming from the floor through my legs, through my core, into my fist.

Circle right. Reset.

Jab again, and this time I feint the cross and throw a hook instead, and it catches him on the side of his head with a sound like a hand slapping a watermelon. His head turns. Not much. An inch, maybe two.

Not so fucking bad, is it?

He comes forward, and I slip his jab, duck his cross, and counter with a body shot that lands clean on his ribs.

He grunts.