Girl in the Arena - Lise Haines [35]
Leona slapped her six-pack abs, and told me to go for the gut—the one area that’s never protected. Then she reattached the dummy’s arms and repadded the chest. She turned the speed up a little, adjusting several controls. I wasn’t a pacifist then as I am now, and I meant that innocent dummy no harm, but when the bell rang again, I suddenly had the whole crazy life up on the register, all the things kids had said to me about being the daughter of savages. I don’t tell any of this to my mother, of course.
—The weird thing is, I turned out to be really good at it, I say.
—Good at fighting a dummy?
—Yes, I was.
With the short sword, I peeled back the dummy’s shield and went up under the ribs and into the heart, which popped out of its chest like a biscuit flying off a Teflon pan. The trainees who watched joked around, some gave me kudos. I felt a heat gather in my bones. A bead of sweat ran down the outside corner of one eye. Taking over, Truman said I should try the net and trident this time. Something Mouse hadn’t taught me, and I thought: Good, I’ll make a complete clown out of myself. Then Truman will be happy to head for the car, and we’ll be done.
But once I took a stance, I felt the weight of the chain in my hands, the balance of the trident. I whipped the net out, like snapping a dishtowel, and in one shot I detached the chest armor. Then I plunged the trident into the guts.
Of course I don’t burden Allison with these details either.
—There is such a thing as beginner’s luck, she says.
That’s what Truman claimed all the way home in the car. He had the kind of bruise that settles into the ego.
—But what if it’s hardwired in my circuits? I’ve actually thought about that sometimes, I say.
—Are you thinking of becoming a regular gladiator or a nonviolent gladiator?
—I’m thinking I didn’t ask for any of this.
CHAPTER
12
She smooths out the wrinkles in her skirt and goes over to the large aching desk. We have lived in this house for ten years, and I have never seen her use this desk, not once.
She sits in the swivel chair. —I probably shouldn’t tell you this so soon, but we’ve pretty much lost everything.
Now she shows me the face I’m helpless to defend against. Oftentimes that face cycles through and the enormity of her situation hits and then I see the trapped person, the woman who is starting to go mad from anxiety for herself and her kids. For all the stuff we go through, Allison and I have always been tight and quick to anticipate each other’s moves. At one point we did everything together. The distance between us was like a one-second filmstrip, so brief you couldn’t replay it or the machine might jam. And though I could rail on her for all of her stupid choices—and God knows I’ve done that more than once—I heard the master-bedroom arguments when each one of the fathers, except Tommy, accused her of putting Thad and me first.
So I want to say, okay, well, go a little mad. Just don’t go too mad.
A couple of times she’s had what you could call faux deaths. They’re faux because she always makes sure she’s rescued in time. She has checked herself into a hotel or used a friend’s house to get into this ritual kind of death. I didn’t know most of this until Tommy filled me in about a year ago. And he didn’t realize I didn’t know and then he felt horrible for bringing it up. Allison often puts such a good face on things. I had no idea she had thought about leaving this world.
—We’ve got the books—we can sell them as a collection, I say, looking around the library shelves. —And we don’t really need all this furniture.
She starts as if I’d said she didn’t need her children.
—The helmets alone would bring in enough to support us for a year, and I’m going to be working . . .
—Take a breath, dear, she says, which is her way of saying STOP. Looking me straight in the eyes now she pulls a hand-delivered letter out of the top desk drawer. She hands me the sheet of official Caesar’s Inc. letterhead.