Girl in the Arena - Lise Haines [61]
—It’s my fault, I say, but I give Mark a look, like he has to stop acting so lame.
Lloyd goes over to his kit and adds more tape to both swords. When we’re back in position, he says, —This isn’t a social club, in case anyone’s confused here. Let’s see some fighting.
This time he blasts his whistle.
The minute I raise my sword, I feel like I can’t get any traction. It’s hard to explain, but watching Mark, the way he moves, it’s like he’s swimming in molasses. Each time I thrust, Mark meets me with a lethargic response, just enough to avoid injury. He makes almost no effort to use his sword and I know Lloyd is about to yell at him again. And as much as I try to throw a mental slide show of hated creatures up on my mind’s screen, I just keep seeing how ambivalent Mark looks and I finally shout, —OKAY!
Everything stops.
—LOOK, I say. —I’M GOING TO FIGHT UBER. So you have to get over yourself so I can do that. I need you to actually fight me.
—But you get how crazy this is, don’t you? Mark asks.
—So it’s fine if you want to fight, and not me?
—I’m not saying that.
—You’re not?
—I’m saying, his voice drops, —I’m saying I’d like you to stick around for a while.
—Then show me how to fight, damn it, so I can do that.
And in this moment I start to think about what Lloyd said. And I honestly don’t know if this should be about hatred. I don’t want to hurt Uber, and yet if I cave and marry him, and keep this Gladiator Wives thing going not just for my family, but for girls everywhere, as the ads say, that’s guaranteed sorrow at my door. I look at the black walls of the old dance studio, the black sink, and I wonder how the impulse came one day, to cover every last thing in black. Maybe they were listening to that early Stones song “Paint It, Black.”
I raise my shield and shout, —NOW!
The sounds of metal strikes begin in earnest. I can feel each vibration through my bones and into the floor. I hit his sword arm again, and this time there’s only a red mark, a welt, and I go for his stomach. Mark holds nothing back now. I feel the blows to my legs, my armored chest. And when he hits my throat for a quick second, barely grazing it, I feel it close up as I try to catch my breath. When he pauses momentarily to make sure I’m all right, I strike him across the brow. I see I’ve hit him pretty hard, the way he reels back. And I have this realization that all of us have too much power where life and death are concerned. But I don’t like to think about that much. And I’m about to go at Mark again before he gets his bearings when Lloyd shuts us down.
Maybe it’s the look I have, I don’t know, but he blows his whistle and I stop, breathing hard. He goes over to the cooler now and hands Mark a chill pack for his forehead. Then he throws me an orange Fanta. He tells me we’ll work on shield technique tomorrow. Zipping up his bag, he looks at both of us and says, —You make me proud.
CHAPTER
22
Like an ancient Roman column, the gladiator’s daughter is an essential support, holding up the structure of the Glad family, Bylaw 82.
I once asked Allison, when she recited this to me, if she thought I was more Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian. She didn’t think I was all that funny.
A couple of weeks before he died, I was down in the kitchen cutting up vegetables for salad when Tommy walked in. I had just gotten home from work and was starving for something fresh. He pointed out that I was still wearing that dopey paper hat they make us wear.
After I pulled out the bobby pins and tossed it his way, I realized that Tommy looked pretty keyed up. He had his computer open and he wanted me to see an online encyclopedia page. The subject: the Kali Yuga. He set it down next to the tomatoes to show me.
—Mark has that game, I think.
He laughed. —It’s not a game. Yugas are periods of time. See, it says here they’re defined in an ancient astronomical treatise.
—You’re reading ancient astronomical treatises these days?
Mostly he liked to read competition magazines and weapons catalogs.
—No, I just found this in the encyclopedia.