31. The Agent of Defeat

“It is important to understand that only rarely does the volume of stress defeat us; far more often the agent of defeat is insufficient capacity for recovery after the stress. Great stress simply requires great recovery.” —James E. Loehr

It was snowing in Michigan. Through the window of the airplane, Jen could see the white specks cutting a diagonal path across the dark pre-dawn sky as she arranged her books and carry-on bag for easy accessibility during the flight. The woman sitting in the window seat had boarded the plane already dressed for Los Angeles in a short skirt, her bare legs tightly crossed to protect her modesty. The cabin was chilly, and the woman hugged herself, rubbing her upper arms through her thin sweater.

Jen, who was always cold on airplanes, looked down at her own outfit: thick sweatpants that would serve as her pajamas in California, an old t-shirt, a giant, hooded sweatshirt. Even at the height of her fashion-consciousness, she had never dressed sexy when she traveled. She liked her airplane clothes to double as a blanket; once she got settled in, she would pull her hood up over her head, pull her arms inside the body of the sweatshirt, and try to sleep. Still, in years past, the sweatshirt would have been something more stylish: the top half of a matching designer terrycloth track suit, or perhaps a fashionably large cowl-necked sweater that she could sink her head down into while she slept and ignored the other passengers.

Usually flight attendants showered her with special attention, knowing that a complaint from her could get them fired. It had been years since she had flown without multiple inquiries as to her comfort: was she too warm, too cold, would she like more blankets, was she hungry, thirsty, did she need pills to sleep?

The male attendant on this flight seemed more interested in Jen’s short-skirted neighbor. “We have warm cookies,” he said to her, winking, looking right past Jen even as he handed her the warm face cloth that always marked the beginning of a flight in business class. “Let me know if you get hungry.”

Jen studied herself in the bathroom mirror as soon as she was allowed to rise from her seat. The flight attendant had looked right past her as though she were any one of the hundred anonymous passengers on the plane. Was she really so changed as to be unrecognizable? The dim, yellow light showed an athletic young woman whose muscular shoulders were apparent even under the bulk of sweatshirt. Her hair was still short; she had taken to cutting it herself, which she turned out to be reasonably skilled at. But this morning she hadn’t brushed it, so it clung to the side of her had in some places and stuck out at startling angles in others. She hadn’t bothered with dying it black after the first time. Without any coloring or highlights, it was the indistinctive color of dead leaves, a few shades darker than her face, which was still tawny from all the time she had spent practicing her forms outdoors before the weather had gotten too cold. Her jaw looked broad and strong, her eyes bright and focused below her messy hair.

She tried to remember what she had looked like before. It wasn’t so long ago—six months, she thought in awe, although it seemed like years—but she couldn’t get a clear image of herself with her long hair, her blonde highlights, her skinny limbs. All that came to mind were photographs from magazines, stylized images of exaggerated emotion: Jen looking sweet, looking angry, looking perturbed. Jen at her wedding, looking glamorous and happy. Jen after the divorce, tears streaming down her face, juxtaposed against a photo of Bradley rolling his eyes in exasperation.

No wonder the flight attendant didn’t recognize me, she thought, remembering the soft, sheltered look of her cheeks and neck in those photos, the frail femininity of her face. That sweet princess look was all gone now. It had been beaten out of her by six months of grueling workouts, of repeated blows to her face and body. And perhaps even more, by six months of life in a place where people didn’t care how she looked, where she hadn’t heard one comment, positive or negative, about her appearance, after so many years of constant scrutiny, cattiness, unsolicited opinions.

I look tough, she decided, pulling her sweatshirt hood up over her head and practicing mean fighter faces in the mirror until she remembered that there was a line of people waiting to use the restroom. It had been a relief not to always care about being pretty, about looking hot at this premier or that party, to know that her body was okay not because of how it appeared, but because of how hard and fast it could fly in and throw a kick at her opponent.

Back in her seat, though, doubt began to creep over her. She imagined how she would appear to her friends in Los Angeles, with her newly boyish physique, unkempt hair, and new secondhand wardrobe that had replaced her original clothing, which was not warm enough for winter and was all too small now at any rate. Her old shirts strained over her shoulders and biceps; her short skirts had gone from flirty to scandalous now that they barely covered her newly muscular behind.

Shane had taken her to the giant secondhand store where the college students shopped. There Jen had found plenty of cute and practical things to fit her new climate, physique, and lifestyle: multiple pairs of running pants with stripes down their legs, thick long-sleeve t-shirts that could be worn on sunny autumn days, warm hooded sweatshirts, a puffy vest that she loved because it fit so neatly over a sweatshirt for extra warmth. And just as it had gotten too cold for the vest, and she had begun to pile two and even three sweatshirts under it along with a scarf and hat and gloves, she had found a perfect winter coat, long, puffy, filled with down, and in a style that seemed to be fashionable amongst the college-student crowd; “Score!” Shane’s girlfriend Brittany had cooed after Jen found it hanging alongside rows of pilled pea coats and boldly-colored ski jackets.

They are going to laugh at me in Los Angeles, she realized, imagining her appearance from Becky, Paula, and Chase’s perspective. Was she going to attend Becky’s shower in secondhand sweatpants? Even her “nice” outfit, which she had remembered to stuff into her suitcase the moment before she left the lake house, the stretchy black pants and tailored tank top with a pretty Asian design on it, would appear to her friends as hardly more than a glorified sweat suit. Yet in Michigan, this was as fancy as anyone she knew ever dressed. Of course, she still had several closets full of her old clothes at the house, she reminded herself, although they would be too small. Worse, she realized, they were over six months old, which meant that they would be laughably out of style.

Don’t think about it, she told herself, pulling her newest chess book from the seat-back pocket in front of her. It was the last in a series of three by Thomas Fo; The Meaningful Endgame, it was called.

By the time the flight arrived in Los Angeles, Jen was dreading the reaction she would receive from her friends when she met them in the airport. She could just imagine Chase eyeing her hair skeptically, telling her not to worry, that something could be done to salvage it.

But as she passed the security gate, only Becky was waiting for her. Jen could see her from a distance, staring into the crowd of arriving passengers. She looked remarkably unchanged for a woman who was eight months pregnant. Her trim figure was barely altered, except for the large, round belly filling out her stretchy tunic. As Jen walked up to her, she saw that her face still bore the same combination of girlishness and shrewdness that it always had, except with a bit of added rosiness in the cheeks, and tired-looking crinkles around the eyes that Jen did not remember having seen before.

Becky looked at her blankly for a moment before her face lit up with recognition. “Oh, hi!” she said, reaching out to enclose Jen in a warm, tight hug. Jen hugged her back, marveling that this pregnant lady who she could barely fit her arms around was her best friend of so many years.

“I can’t believe you’re pregnant,” Jen said. “You look just the same.” She realized too late that her statement invited commentary about her own changed appearance.

“So do you,” said Becky, automatically, before determining that her statement was too obviously false to stand unedited. “I mean, you look different, actually.”

“I’ve been working out a lot,” said Jen, trying to smooth over the awkwardness she had caused by bringing up this topic.

“Yeah, I can tell,” Becky said. “You look…” She paused to find a word. “Strong,” she decided.

Jen wasn’t sure if this was a compliment, directed at a woman in Los Angeles, but she decided to take it as one. “Thanks,” she said.

“So it’s just you?” Jen asked, as they walked towards the luggage claim.

“What do you mean?” said Becky.

“I thought Paula and Chase would be with you,” Jen said.

“We’re going to meet Chase for dinner,” Becky said. “Paula won’t be back for a few days, though. She’s on a retreat.”

“What kind of retreat?” Jen asked.

“I don’t know, some kind of sex cult,” Becky said.

“I thought she was celibate.”

“Oh, she’s celibate,” said Becky, her tone indicating that this had been a frequent topic of conversation. “But she’s into this tantric thing now. She’s got this new partner and I guess they’re into this tantric non-penetrative intercourse thing.”

“Partner?” Jen asked. “Is it a guy or a girl?”

“Well,” said Becky, “That’s kind of complicated.”

Normally, Jen would have found this response mysterious, but now that she had been hearing all about Shane’s intended transition from female to male, she understood the general idea without further questioning. She could find out the specifics from Paula when she returned.

Back at the house, Becky helped Jen find a suitable outfit for dinner. “I think this shirt will fit,” she said, pulling a sheer striped blouse from the closet. “It was a little big on you before.”

Jen tried it on and shrugged; “It’s fine,” she said, but Becky wrinkled her nose and began fussing with the sleeves, which were bunching awkwardly over her upper arms.

It was nice to spend time with Becky in the house like this, Jen thought. Despite her initial hesitance to break from her training schedule, once the trip was arranged, she had actually been looking forward to it. Shane had stopped training altogether while she got ready for her move to Ann Arbor, and the school was lonely without her. Jen realized that what had felt like a rich social life in North Middleton actually mainly consisted of her training sessions, plus an occasional evening at Shane’s apartment with her friends. Without Shane, Jen was only training with Master Park, either alone or in the advanced class, which consisted solely of college-aged men and Rob. Now, it was the thought of returning to Michigan, rather than the thought of leaving it, that was filling her with anxiety.

Once Jen had tried on half a dozen outfits and Becky had finally deemed one of them acceptable, Becky drove them to meet Chase for dinner. The restaurant used to be one of Jen’s favorites. It had everything she used to enjoy: tiny portions, fussy ingredients, minimalist-chic décor. It’s pretty, Jen thought, eyeing the concrete tables and pale blue glass lamps as she and Becky waited to be seated. But all the careful thought that had gone into the decorations seemed to her now like a waste of effort and resources. Why spend so much energy on all of these hand-made tables and bars and lamps? She knew this was a silly train of thought, that decorating was not a waste of energy any more than taekwondo or yoga or brushing one’s teeth. But she couldn’t stop thinking of all the more valuable things that could be accomplished rather than getting these decorations just right; that kind of attention to detail could lead someone to throw a perfect roundhouse kick, she thought, or open a homeless shelter, or find a cure for a horrible disease. Even the people in the restaurant seemed excessively thought-out in their casual-but-stylish clothing that clung to their bodies just so, as though they had all come directly from a photo shoot for a yoga supply catalogue.

“For four,” said Becky to the hostess, who took them to a concrete table in the corner, lit by a steel lamp hanging overhead like some kind of Spartan boom mike.

“Who’s the fourth?” Jen asked, as she sat down across from Becky.

“Chase’s boyfriend,” Becky said. “Eduardo.”

“Oh,” said Jen, surprised. She hadn’t heard anything about Chase having a boyfriend. She wondered how this detail would affect her vision of Becky and Chase’s perfect co-parenting situation.

“What’s he like?” Jen asked. She had no idea what sort of men Chase was attracted to. She envisioned him towering over a petite, feminine hairdresser, then dwarfed by a strapping leather daddy.

Before Becky could respond, Chase was walking towards the table, followed by a tall, broad-shouldered man in a stylish olive suit. The man had the self-important air of an investment banking executive or advertising mogul. As they navigated between the tables she saw the man discreetly place his hand on Chase’s hip; if not for this small gesture, Jen would have assumed that this was not the boyfriend but some stranger on his way to the bathroom, the sort of stranger who had a trophy wife at home and a couple of buxom administrative assistant mistresses at work.

Becky and Jen stood to great them as they reached the table. Chase leaned in to give Jen a hug. He looked the same as ever, beaming handsomely in his casual-but-expensive designer sweater.

“Jen, this is Eduardo,” said Chase as he released her, smiling proudly as he looked his boyfriend up and down. The guy was pretty good-looking, Jen thought, in a kind of overly-put-together way that matched her feelings about the restaurant.

Eduardo leaned in and kissed her on one cheek and then the other before sitting on the seat next to her. “So nice to finally meet you,” he said. “I’ve heard so much.”

“Likewise,” said Jen, hoping her expression wouldn’t belie the fact that she hadn’t known of his existence until two minutes ago.

Eduardo reached across the table to Becky and laid his hand over her round stomach. “How’s our little mama?” he asked, giving her belly a rub.

Jen winced, expecting Becky to shake his hand off and offer some withering comment in reply, but she just smiled politely. “Pretty good,” she said. “Ready for baby to make her grand debut.”

“It’s a girl?” Jen asked. She hadn’t even thought to ask about the baby’s gender. That shows how disconnected I’ve been, she chastised herself.

“Oh yeah, I didn’t tell you?” Becky said. “I guess we really haven’t talked much.”

Jen wanted to ask more—what names was Becky thinking of? Had she been hoping for a girl or a boy? Was she going to dress the baby in pink or in more unconventional, unisex clothes? But Eduardo spoke first.

“Chase and I are so excited about the baby,” Eduardo said, as he pulled out the chair next to Jen, waited for Chase to sit, and then seated himself next to Becky. “I keep telling him how lucky we are that Becky is having a daughter for us. So many men have to adopt or get a woman to have a baby for them, and here we just stumbled into it. It’s a perfect way to get a baby, without any of the work.”

“I did some of the work,” Chase said.

“Oh, I forgot,” said Eduardo, patting Chase’s hand over the cold concrete table. “You are very manly.”

Jen looked over at Becky to see if she was troubled by this line of conversation, but Becky’s face was impassive as she studied the menu.

“Champagne!” said Eduardo, as the waitress appeared to take their drink order. “Something mid-priced, not too dry. We need to celebrate.”

“Should I bring four glasses?” the waitress asked.

“Three please,” said Eduardo. “None for mommy.”

“I’ll have a glass,” Becky interrupted. “One drink is okay.”

“And I don’t need one,” Jen added. “I haven’t been drinking.”

“Oh, champagne doesn’t count,” said Eduardo. “We’ll take three glasses.”

“I guess it counts for me,” Becky said in a quiet voice that it seemed only Jen, sitting directly across the table from her, could hear.

“You can have mine,” Jen mouthed to Becky as the waitress left.

His order completed, Eduardo turned sideways to face Jen. “So great to see you in person,” Eduardo said. “Chase and I just watched Love at Dawn.”

“Oh?” said Jen, not really wanting to talk about it. It was a big-budget tearjerker drama and it hadn’t received great reviews. She had played the lead’s troubled-but-insightful best friend. She had only done it for the money; it was right before the divorce, and she had felt worried about her finances.

“Not great casting,” he said. “I liked you better in Meeting Elizabeth. You’re not really cut out for dramatic roles.”

Jen wasn’t sure how to respond. Everyone agreed she was best suited for romantic comedies, from her old acting coaches to her former agent to Becky—but they didn’t usually tell her so bluntly, especially when she had just met them.

“Eduardo is a casting director,” said Chase. “He’s a total rock star, very in-demand. I need to book weeks in advance to get a date with him.”

“Don’t listen to him,” said Eduardo, waving his hands to erase Chase’s words, as though they were floating in the middle of the table.

“Didn’t I schedule this dinner with your secretary?” Chase asked.

“Stop it,” said Eduardo, giving Chase’s hand a little slap.

“I want to hear about Jen’s fight,” Becky said. She turned to Eduardo and said, “Jen’s been in Michigan studying taekwondo.”

“That’s right, you told me that,” said Eduardo to Chase.

“She’s really good,” said Becky, despite the fact that she had never seen Jen fight or even train. “She practices every single day.”

“That’s fascinating,” said Eduardo. “So that was to study for a role?”

“No,” said Jen, annoyed to be returning to the subject of her movie career after Becky had so skillfully steered them away from it. “I’m taking a break right now.”

“The new look is interesting,” Eduardo continued, without seeming to have heard her response. “Different, but I’m into it. Kind of butch. I could see you playing something like a gym teacher. Or something military, like a chick in the army or something.”

“Oh, that would be so bad-ass,” said Chase. “Could you get her something like that?”

“Thanks, but I’m actually not looking for work,” Jen said.

“You know I can’t just ‘get’ people roles,” Eduardo said to Chase. “I mean, I could keep an eye out in case anything comes up.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Jen.

“Don’t mention it,” said Eduardo, giving her a little squeeze around her shoulders.

As they ate their healthy meals of sashimi and kale and frisée, Jen asked Chase and Eduardo where they had met.

“I had heard of Chase, of course, but we had never met in person. I called him in for the lead in this movie called For Better or For Hearse, and the first thing I thought when I saw him was that he was perfect.”

“So you’re doing a film?” Jen asked Chase. She knew he had been struggling for roles and hadn’t had work in a year or so. She was excited for him, though it seemed odd that Becky wouldn’t have mentioned it.

“No,” said Chase, shaking his head.

“Well, ultimately the director and I decided he wasn’t perfect for the role,” said Eduardo.

“Too old,” Chase said.

Jen expected Eduardo to contradict him, but instead he said, “Well, we did go with somebody a little younger and fresher.”

Jen turned to see Becky’s reaction, but Becky was still smiling pleasantly.

“But,” said Eduardo, “I mean I thought he was perfect in general. Perfect for me.”

“What did you like about him?” Jen asked, hoping to elicit some compliments to counteract Eduardo’s harsh words about Chase’s lack of youth and “freshness.”

“He’s so masculine, you know. So discreet. Just very typically male. I hadn’t met any guys in Hollywood like that.”

Jen was incredulous. Was he saying that the main thing he liked about Chase was that he didn’t seem gay? Jen turned to Becky, waiting for her to come to Chase’s defense, but she was smiling politely as she chewed her frisée. She looked at Chase; he was looking down at his sashimi as though it wasn’t him who was being talked about.

“And he has such a nice, dominant energy about him,” Eduardo continued. “The broad shoulders, the deep voice, the messy hair.” Eduardo reached across the table and cupped Chase’s chin in his hand. “That strong jaw.”

“You’re embarrassing me,” said Chase, blushing.

“It’s all true,” said Eduardo.

“So, Becky,” said Jen, unable to take any more of this. “Have you thought about names for the baby?”

“I like Tamlyn,” said Eduardo. “Very hip.”

For the rest of the meal, they discussed baby business: the shower, the ultrasounds, the due-date, Becky’s heartburn and sciatica. Eduardo offered his viewpoints liberally, while Chase quietly munched his dinner. Jen thought Eduardo’s involvement in the baby planning seemed awfully presumptuous, given that he couldn’t have been dating Chase for more than six months. But Becky seemed untroubled by his invasiveness, smiling at his suggestions, pleasantly answering his bold questions. As they parted ways in the parking lot, Becky gave Eduardo a hug goodbye before he climbed into the driver’s seat of Chase’s S.U.V. and drove them away. If Becky likes him, Jen thought, that’s what matters. Oh, and also if Chase likes him, she reminded herself.

When Jen lay down in her room that night, her bed felt like every bit of the several thousand dollars she had spent on it. She lay on top of the covers with the lights on, still in her dinner outfit, staring up at the tastefully painted ceiling. But as her back sank into the thick mattress, every inch cushioned yet supported, she found herself missing the ascetic plainness of the rickety single bed that she had been occupying for the last seven months. This feels like a hotel, she thought, stretching her arms above her head and wondering if she should read a bit more of her chess book or just get undressed and go to bed.

She heard footsteps in the hall, a knock at her door. “Hey, Jen,” Becky said, opening the door before Jen could respond.

“Come in,” said Jen, sitting up, but Becky had already entered the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. In her oversized pajamas, she looked more like a little girl than a grown, pregnant woman. She stared past Jen at the wall, chewing anxiously on her lip. She looks sad, Jen thought. She wondered if she was jealous of Chase’s relationship.

“You know what I was thinking of on the flight over here?” said Jen, hoping she could cheer Becky up. “That time we got caught shoplifting. Do you remember? We had to wait in that security office, and we were banned from the mall for life.”

Becky was still looking at the wall, unsmiling. Then she looked straight at Jen. “You need to move back,” she said.

“What?” Jen asked, startled.

“It’s time for you to move back,” Becky said. “You’ve been in Michigan for more than twice as long as you were supposed to. You were only supposed to go for the summer.”

“I know,” said Jen. She had hoped that no one had noticed her extended absence; she had been choosing to imagine that life in Los Angeles had been progressing smoothly without her. The revelation of Becky’s pregnancy had only confirmed her belief that Becky and Chase were getting along just fine without her, setting up an idyllic little life in which Jen would be nothing but a disruption.

“I’ll come back soon,” she said, and then, feeling bad about lying, added, “eventually.”

“It’s so lonely by myself here in the house,” Becky said. “This house is really huge for one person.”

“What about Chase?” Jen asked. “Doesn’t he keep you company?”

“Chase,” Becky repeated, spitting his name scornfully through her teeth. “I don’t get any time with Chase. He’s always with Eduardo.”

“You don’t hang out with both of them together?” Jen asked. “Eduardo made it sound like you were all one big happy family.”

“We are not one big happy family,” said Becky. “I can’t stand that guy.”

“Really?” Jen asked. “Why were you so nice to him at the restaurant?”

“I have to be nice to him,” Becky said, her voice pained. “Otherwise I’d never see Chase again.”

“Oh,” said Jen, relieved. “I am so glad you don’t like him! The way he was rubbing your stomach, it was just…” She paused to find the right words.

“Completely inappropriate,” Becky said.

Now Jen felt free to air all of the complaints she had suppressed during dinner. She shifted up on to her knees and began to laugh at the absurdity of their dinner conversation.

“I can’t believe he was trying to pick your baby’s name,” Jen said, laying her hand on Becky’s knee. It was hard to speak through her flood of relieved laughter. “Like it’s his baby. How long has he been dating Chase, a few months?”

“Five,” said Becky.

“And that thing with the champagne,” Jen said, catching her breath. “He acted like he was your doctor or something.”

“You need to move back,” Becky said, her solemn tone interrupting Jen’s waning hilarity. “You can do taekwondo here. There are schools in Los Angeles. I looked them up. There are at least thirty of them.”

Thinking of how her life in North Middleton was about to change, how lonely the academy would be without Shane, seeing how lonely and sad Becky was, Jen felt a strong wave of desire to say yes, to make Becky happy, to help raise the baby, to be with her friends. Moving back would fix everybody’s troubles all at once.

But she also knew that moving back would leave too much business unfinished. She hadn’t mastered anything she was working on: winning a fight, learning chess, even living in the Midwest.

Becky must have sensed her moment of weakness. “You’ll think about it?” she asked.

“I’ll think about it,” Jen said, and she wasn’t lying. She would think about it. She was pretty sure she would think about it all week, all through Becky’s baby shower, through evenings with Chase and Eduardo and Paula, and even as she packed her things again, drove to the airport, and got on the plane back to Michigan to resume what was now her life.

Chapter 32

Please Note...

I normally post chapters every two or three weeks, with my longest interval being a month. I have had a lot going on this past month, and have needed a break. I will be back soon with the next chapter, sometime in the next two weeks.

30. Feelings of Insecurity

“We were taught to channel anger, rage, feelings of insecurity—to channel what would be negative energy masochistically. We were taught not to do it directly—not to go out and hit someone, for example—but to do it so we’d hurt ourselves.” —Kathy Acker

The summer after sophomore year, Becky and Jenny spent almost every Saturday at the mall.

When they got off the bus, they would start at the store that sold lotions and strong-smelling candles. Then they would shop for clothes, first at the store with the cool clothes, then at the store with the ugly but cheap clothes where you could sometimes find a good deal.

After lunch—croissants and coffee at the bakery—they would go to the discount store that had cheap makeup.

The hulking, cranky security guard would eye them suspiciously as they entered the store, and Jenny could imagine how they looked to him: two teenagers, one with crazy purple hair and petticoats, the other seeming by contrast a typical Westchester County girl, tame and appropriate, a follower. Becky never seemed to notice, but Jenny always felt horrible under his disdainful gaze.

Jenny had wanted a new lipstick all summer, and one Saturday she found the right one on a display that had samples of lipstick and eye shadow in sparkly, pastel tones. The display’s cardboard backing was decorated with a photograph of a bride, her luminous skin painted in the subtlest imaginable shades of peach and baby blue under her graceful veil.

“Why are you looking at bride makeup?” Becky asked.

“I’m just looking for light colors,” said Jenny.

“I hate light colors,” said Becky. “They’re so non-committal.” She was holding a bright magenta lipstick up to her cheek, the color glowing assertively even through the layers of plastic packaging. “What do you think of this one?”

“It’s cool,” said Jenny, and she wasn’t lying, even though she would never wear such a startling color. It would look probably good on Becky; Becky could pull off crazy stuff like that.

Jenny rubbed her finger along her favorite lipstick in the bride display. It was lavender, with a metallic, iridescent sheen. She lifted her finger to smear the pigment across her lips.

“Do you want to get married?” Becky asked her.

Jenny rubbed her lips against each other to distribute the color. “I don’t know,” she said. “Do you?”

Becky blew out air from between her teeth to indicate that this was a stupid idea.

“Hey, that’s kinda pretty,” said Becky, pointing at Jenny’s face.

“You think so?” asked Jenny. Becky almost never approved of her relatively pedestrian choices in cosmetics or clothes.

Becky nodded, but her attention had already shifted to a bottle of acid green nail polish, which she held up, raising her eyebrows to show her pleasure at this unusual find.

“Well,” Becky said, “Maybe I would get married just to have the wedding.”

Jenny was surprised. “You want a wedding?” The thought of Becky in a white dress, her face painted in these gentle peachy colors that she so despised, made Jenny laugh out loud.

“Yeah, totally,” said Becky. “Not with my parents or anything,” she added, scoffing. “Just my friends.”

“What about the guy’s friends?” Jenny asked.

“What guy?” Becky asked. “Oh, right, you mean my fiancé? Sure, he can bring his friends, too, I guess.”

Jenny studied the lavender lipstick in the thin strip of mirror at the side of the display, pursing her lips and moving her head around to see her face from different angles.

“I’m going to decorate everything in black and purple,” Becky said. “At the wedding. The tables will be covered in black lace. And there will be giant purple candles everywhere.”

“Wow,” said Jenny, as she traced her finger over the rows of lipsticks under the display, like looking up a book in a card catalogue, until she found the lavender one.

“Wouldn’t that be pretty?” Becky asked.

“Sure,” said Jenny, pulling the lipstick out of its little cubby.

“You don’t sound like you really think so,” said Becky.

“No, it sounds pretty,” said Jenny, making an effort to sound interested and sincere. She felt guilty that she had only been half-listening to Becky, even though Becky did the same thing to her all the time. “It's just, maybe you won’t be into purple and black lace when you’re, you know, grown up,” said Jenny.

“I’ll be like twenty-two,” Becky retorted, quickly. “That’s only seven years from now. Anyway I’m always going to be into purple and black. Are you going to change when you get old?"

“I don’t know,” Jenny said. “Maybe.”

“I hate that,” said Becky. “I’m not going to get all normal and respectable just because I’m old. I’m going to stay just like I am forever.”

Jenny nodded. “I think I’m going to buy it,” she said, holding up the tube of lipstick. “It’s pretty, right?” She smiled and turned her head to show off the dazzle of her iridescent lips.

Becky grabbed it from her hand and scrutinized the packaging. “It’s twelve dollars,” she said. “That’s way too much.”

“It’s okay, I have it,” said Jenny, grabbing it back. Her mother had given her a hundred dollars to spend this weekend. Becky’s parents didn’t have that kind of money, so Becky had only come with twenty dollars for the day.

“Yeah, but it’s the principle,” Becky said. “That stuff probably costs like twenty cents to make. I can’t believe they’re charging twelve dollars.”

“Isn’t twenty-two kind of young to get married?” Jenny asked.

“I’m not going to stay married,” Becky said. “It’s cooler to do it young, before everybody starts doing it. I want to be the first one.”

“So will you just get a divorce right after the wedding?” Jenny asked.

Becky thought about it for a moment.

“We’ll stay married for a little while so I can get to say ‘my husband.’ But then we’ll get divorced. I could never be satisfied with just one man.”

“How long will you stay married?” Jenny was still looking at the lipstick, turning it over, trying to decide whether the metallic sheen was pretty or cheesy.

“I don't know, a while,” Becky said. “Three months? I’ve never dated anybody longer than three months.”

She leaned over, pulled the lipstick out of Jenny’s hand, and dropped it into Jenny’s open purse.

“Hey!” said Jenny.

“Chill out,” said Becky, through her teeth, without moving her lips. She turned her back and started walking towards the cassette tapes. Jenny followed her, rummaging in her purse to find the lipstick amongst her tangle of other makeup and assorted junk.

Someone bumped against her, and she looked up to see one of the store employees, wearing a red vest and holding a clipboard. Jenny’s heart raced. It was her! she wanted to yell, pointing at Becky. I was trying to take it back out!

But she wouldn’t do that, and anyway, there was no need.

“Sorry,” mumbled the employee, hurrying past Jenny and looking down at his clipboard.

Jenny met Becky over at the tapes, still feeling shaken about the lipstick. I guess they don’t know about it, she told herself, deciding not to look for it in her bag anymore.

Becky was rifling through a bin of cassette tapes encased in large plastic security devices.

“You’re totally going to get married,” Becky said, nonchalantly continuing their earlier conversation. “Like in the normal way. You’re kind of normal.”

“No, I’m not!” Jenny said. But yes, she thought to herself. She did want to get married, and maybe even have a real wedding. Not a huge one or anything, but with a white dress and a cake and flowers. Maybe everything would be all light blue and gray and lavender; that would be so pretty.

She began to thumb through the cassettes, looking for something to buy so she wouldn’t feel so guilty. She found one she wanted, by a band whose lead singer she found extremely attractive, although his heavy use of makeup and falsetto made her pretty sure he was gay.

And she wanted to have a husband, she thought. And live with him in a nice house, and have children and a backyard and a dog. And it didn’t matter if that made her normal, because it would be sweet and cute and make her happy.

But she wasn’t going to tell Becky that.

“Get these, too,” Becky said, handing her a stack of blank cassette tapes. “I’ll copy some stuff for you.”

“Cool,” said Jenny.

The cashier, when they went to check out, was a middle-aged lady with helmet hair who beamed at Jenny and Becky as though they were her favorite nieces.

“Did you girls find everything okay?” she asked, smiling.

“Oh, yeah,” said Becky, as Jenny nodded.

The woman took Jenny’s cassette tapes, the album and the blank ones, ran them across the scanner, and dropped them into a plastic bag. “Are you having fun at the mall?” she asked.

“Lots of fun,” said Becky, cheerfully.

“That will be fourteen dollars,” said the cashier. Jenny reached into her purse and saw the lipstick, in its plastic wrapping, poking out of the top of her jumbled clutter. She gasped and placed her hand on top of it, blocking the view as she rummaged around until she pulled her wallet from the bottom.

“I used to love going shopping with my friends,” the cashier said. “You don’t get to do that as much when you get old like me.”

“You’re not so old,” said Jenny, embarrassed to be telling such an unconvincing lie. She handed the woman a twenty dollar bill.

She wanted to rush out of the store as soon as she got her change, but she forced herself to wait calmly for Becky to buy her green nail polish.

“I’ve never seen a color like that,” said the cashier, holding it up to the light. “It would be fun on Halloween.” She brought it down to the counter and held it against her own hand. “Think I could pull it off?” she asked.

“She was so nice,” said Jenny, when it was finally time to walk towards the exit. She looked at Becky, who grimaced a little, as though acknowledging the thing Jenny was thinking.

“I know,” Becky said.

Just then, Jenny felt a hand on her shoulder and heard the voice from above her head.

“Miss,” it said.

She turned to face the security guard, who was towering over her, his hand extended as though he was expecting to have to grab her by the collar as she ran.

“Yes?” she asked, her voice shaking despite all her efforts to steady it.

“You put something in your bag,” he said, pointing at her purse.

She looked over at Becky, unsure of how to respond. Becky shook her head.

“No I didn’t,” said Jenny. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Someone saw it on the camera,” said the man, impatiently, as though he was expecting her to deny it. “You put a lipstick into your bag.” He grabbed Jenny’s arm and started to pull her towards the doorway.

Jenny began to get that spinning feeling that meant she was panicking. Where was he taking her? Was he going to arrest her? Call her parents?

He’d better call my mom, she thought, trying to strategize quickly. She probably won’t care. Jenny could never be sure about her mother’s reactions; she would be nonchalant about something scandalous like finding a little bag of Becky’s cocaine hidden in Jenny’s room. But then the most seemingly insignificant thing would send her into a fury, like when Jenny’s English teacher wanted her to stay after class to write poetry and her mother was sure he was hitting on her, which, even if he was, didn’t seem like the sort of thing that would upset her.

Maybe she thinks shoplifting is cool, Jenny thought hopefully. Maybe it’s like sticking it to the man.

“I’m taking you to mall security,” he said. “That’s where we handle shoplifters.”

“Wait,” said Becky. “Wait, I put it in her bag. You need to arrest me!”

Jenny felt the wave of relief—she would not have to go to security alone. She hadn’t expected Becky to speak up, and wouldn’t have been angry at her for staying silent. Unlike Jenny's own mother, Becky’s parents were predictable. They would scream at her for a week and ground her for a month; there was no doubt about it.

The guard turned to look at Becky as though he hadn’t noticed her until just then. Without saying anything, he surveyed her, his eyes lingering on her purple hair and painted combat boots.

“Yeah, you better come, too,” he said finally.

At the security office, an actual police officer searched Jenny’s purse, found the lipstick, and then asked for phone numbers to call the girls’ parents. He lectured them about how they could have gone to jail for their offense. They were banned from the mall, and if he ever saw them here again, he would arrest them for real.

He went into an adjacent office, separated by a large window, to call their parents. Jenny could see him cringe as though someone was shouting at him on the phone; that must be Becky’s father, she thought.

Neither of their parents arrived for half an hour. Jenny and Becky sat silently on stiff chairs as they waited, Jenny’s sweaty hand folded tightly in Becky’s.

Chapter 31:
http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2009/12/31-agent-of-defeat.html

29. A Mean Story

“Beauty is a hard thing. Beauty is a mean story. Beauty is slender girls who die young, fine-featured delicate creatures about whom men write poems.” —Dorothy Allison

The student of chess will benefit in all areas of life, for chess represents the quintessence of competition. The pieces take on both offensive and defensive roles, yet these two roles merge into one another. The strongest offensive pieces are also the ones that must act most defensively, because their power makes them vulnerable. The queen is so powerful that novice players are frightened to use her, and the king is so powerful that he is prohibited from being put into danger, as though he requires a curfew for his protection. The pawn is less powerful offensively, yet his expendable nature makes him at times the most dangerous piece on the board, like a man who is not afraid to die.

“What did you learn?” Master Park asked her, slamming the door. Jen looked up from the book. Her teacher’s abrupt entrances no longer startled Jen; he always entered the back living room this way.

“The strongest pieces are also the most vulnerable,” Jen recited.

“Right,” said Master Park, looking pleased. “That’s an excellent point.” He paused and smiled to himself. “A very good point,” he said. “See, I told you that’s a great book.”

He sat down across from her, as he did three nights a week at nine o’clock, after the intermediate-advanced class ended, and held out two pieces hidden in his hands. She wasn’t allowed to attend class on these nights; instead, she sat in the back, studying Thomas Fo’s book about chess. Then, after class, she and Master Park would play. Never just one game; always at least two. Jen usually stumbled home around midnight, more tired than if she had spent those three hours training at taekwondo.

She pointed at Master Park’s left fist. He opened it, revealing a white pawn. It seemed that she drew white more than probability would predict; at least three out of four times, she estimated.

“Start,” he said, nodding at the board.

Chess is an ancient art developed over thousands of years. It cannot be mastered through cramming or quick study, just as a rich broth cannot be developed by through fast, furious boiling.

There is no point chastising yourself if you are not succeeding at the level you desire. You need to practice more. When you have played a thousand games, then you have played one.

Two nights a week, Jen kept her old training schedule with Shane. She had finally gotten used to her partner’s new name, which helped distinguish her from her girlfriend, Brittany.

“I can see that kick coming,” Shane said, frowning at Jen from across the kicking pad. “Disguise it more.”

Jen took a deep breath and tried to relax her entire body. Then she jerked, in what she hoped was one sudden, unexpected movement, and snapped her leg up at the pad.

“Nope,” Shane was saying before Jen’s foot could reach its target. “I can still see it.”

“I don’t know what else to do,” said Jen. She spoke in a quiet, subdued voice that she hoped would disguise her frustration.

“Don’t get frustrated,” said Shane, demonstrating that Jen couldn’t even disguise her emotions, much less her front kick. “You just need to practice it more.”

“I practice it all the time,” said Jen. “I practiced this kick for three hours in my back yard, every day this week. And then I practiced it here in the mirror. I don’t think it’s possible to practice it any more.”

Shane raised her hand to her face and stroked her chin, as though scratching an absent beard. Jen thought the gesture looked somehow artificial, as though Shane had been practicing it in front of a mirror. It looked odd and unfamiliar. But perhaps Shane had always done that, and Jen was only just noticing it now that she did not see her every day.

“You know, it’s cool how much you train,” said Shane.

“But?” said Jen, prompted by Shane’s tone of voice.

“You learned this all too quickly,” said Shane. “It’s not exactly the right way to learn it. Most people train a few hours a week and it takes them a few years until they compete. You’ve been training five hours a day on average, I’d say. Thirty-five hours per week—that’s ten times as much as most people. So since you’ve been training for four months, that’s like forty months.” She paused, and Jen could read on her lips that she was doing long division in her head, a skill that Jen found as maddening as her spinning side kick. “That’s over three years of work in four months,” she concluded.

“But why should that matter?” Jen asked. “I mean, hours are hours, right?”

“In some ways,” said Shane. “But there are things that can only be learned over time. That’s why masters are masters, because they’ve studied for so long that they have all this nuance to their movement and strategy.”

“Wow,” said Jen, impressed with her partner’s sustained progression of philosophical thought. Shane was smart, but she usually only used her intelligence in brief, explosive bursts that mirrored her kicks.

Shane looked like she about to say something else, something important. She scrunched up her forehead, then opened her mouth and released not a profound insight, but a loud burp. She wiped her mouth crudely with the back of her hand, dragging her jacket cuffs across her face with studied crudeness. Another weird gesture, Jen noted to herself.

“Isn’t acting like that?” Shane asked. “Aren’t there people who are so good at acting that you feel like you could never get to their level? And it’s because they have been doing it for so long that they understand it in a way that you can’t comprehend?”

“I guess,” said Jen. She vaguely remembered having had that feeling once or twice, maybe, of being awed by the skills of an older actor, but she couldn’t remember any details. She wondered whether it was just too long ago, or whether it had never really happened, just one of the many things she had pretended to do in a movie but had never done in real life.

The novice in chess thinks only of not having pieces captured, and moves in reaction to his opponent’s moves. The sign of proficiency in chess is thinking at least ten moves ahead. Great masters have plans that span to the end of the game; if the game does not follow their plan, they readjust and shift to a new plan.

One Sunday, as Jen sat at the side of the mats, watching two yellow-belts spar, Master Park appeared in the chair next to her.

“You’re going in next round,” he said. “You’re going to spar Rob.”

“What?” said Jen, unable to keep the indignance out of her voice. In all her months at the academy, Jen hadn’t sparred him yet. Lately he had only been training with purple-belts and above. She knew he was going easy on them, but it never looked like it. He sparred Shane almost every Sunday, sending her flying backwards across the mats no less than twice each round, and that was when Shane was sparring at her best. Jen had seen him render three different male students fully unconscious with spinning kicks to the head.

“I can’t,” she said, helplessly, beginning to panic. He wasn’t really going to make her, was he? Because if he did, she knew exactly what would happen. She was going to get knocked out, just like her fight, knocked out cold on the floor in front of everybody. She couldn’t imagine any way that this was not going to happen.

“Calm down,” said Master Park. “Here’s what I want you to do. What’s his scariest move?”

“Spinning wheel kick,” said Jen, without needing to think about it.

“What’s the counter to that move?”

Jen knew it, had practiced it over and over. “Low sweep,” she said, impatiently. “But it’s not going to work. I’m not fast enough.” The thought that she could see one of those furious whirling kicks coming, see it soon enough, remain poised enough to drop to the ground and sweep out his standing leg—it was laughable.

“Shh,” said Master Park. She realized her voice had become loud and hysterical. One of the male blue-belts was staring at her.

“You need to bait him to throw the kick,” he continued. “It’s one of his favorite techniques. If you throw one, he will throw one back at you.”

“I don’t want him to throw it back at me,” she said, annoyed that he was missing the entire point of what she was saying.

“If you know when it’s coming, you should be able to counter it with the sweep,” said Master Park. “Now stop complaining,” he added.

A few minutes later, there she was, staring at Rob as he towered over her. Wheel kick, Jen said to herself. It was a difficult, risky kick and she did not usually use it in sparring, especially not against an opponent with six inches of reach and twenty years of experience on her. She moved in to throw it, nerved herself up—wheel kick, wheel kick—and then saw her leg extend out into a roundhouse kick instead, impervious to her brain’s commands.

As though he could read her thoughts and was trying to annoy her on purpose, Rob responded to her roundhouse with a wheel kick. She ducked just in time to feel the edge of his heel graze the top of her head.

She stood up, relieved that she had successfully avoided danger, and as she regained her fighting stance, he threw the wheel kick again, this time hitting her squarely in the temple.

It wasn’t hard enough to knock her down, but it did send a brief wave of nausea down to her stomach.

She looked into his eyes, which were shadowed and impassive under his head gear. Wheel kick, she said to herself, more forcefully now. Three other kicks to distract him, then wheel kick.

This time, her body followed her plan to the letter. Kick, kick, kick, spin. He backed up, but the kick flew past his face, missing him by inches. She thought she saw the slightest flash of annoyance, or even anger, rush across his eyes.

Now sweep, she told herself, waiting for him to kick. She dropped, but not fast enough; on her way down, her chin ran into the side of his foot on its way up to where her head had just been. The blow knocked her onto her back. Then the timer rang, and the round was over. At least I didn’t get knocked out, she told herself with a sigh, rubbing her bruised chin.

Master Park was still sitting in the same chair, watching Shane, who was the next to spar Rob. It annoyed Jen to see Shane doing better, being braver, recovering faster than Jen could against him. Master Park nodded his head as Shane’s side kick connected with Rob’s muscular stomach, even though it sent Shane flying backwards instead of Rob.

Jen sat down next to Master Park, fuming silently, wanting to say, See, I told you it wouldn’t work.

“Next time,” he said, without turning his head to look at her.

Don’t get fixated on what you think is happening. The novice player becomes so rigid in his expectations that he cannot see the board ahead of him. Make sure to see what is really there.

On Shane’s twenty-first birthday, she appeared in the door of the back living room, interrupting Jen’s chess game with Master Park.

“Ah, the chess,” she said. They only played on Shane’s nights off, but Jen had been telling her all about it, how ruthless their teacher was, how he would let her pieces advance just long enough to give her a bit of experience, then mercilessly kill them off one by one, like a child smashing a row of ants.

“White is the aggressor!” he would yell, as she began to pull her pieces back in response to his attack. “You are one move ahead of me. Stop acting defensively.”

So she would attempt bolder, more fearless moves, only to send her bishop or knight right into one of the five or six traps Master Park had laid out for them.

Just like taekwondo, she thought; you have to get hurt to get better. But at least in chess, the pain wasn’t real.

Shane was dressed in her cutest outfit for a night of celebration, which meant pinstriped pants, a white wife-beater tank top and a thick hooded sweatshirt. It was a chilly November night, but Shane had tied the sweatshirt around her waist, perhaps for the purpose of displaying her impressive upper-arm muscles.

One of those arms was wrapped around the waist of a girl who was filling up the other half of the doorway, a girl who Jen recognized as Brittany, even though they had never met. She looked just like she had in Jen’s imagination: tall and curvy with long, stylishly-messy hair, lots of makeup, tight jeans and an even tighter blouse.

“Sorry to interrupt. We just came by to say hi on the way out for my birthday,” Shane said.

“It’s okay. We can use a little break,” said Master Park. He means that I can use one, Jen thought, bitterly. She was, as usual, in a horrible position. Master Park had just captured her knight. She could now recapture his bishop; she worried that this was a trap, however. She could see three other places where the black pieces were poised and ready, waiting to capture their white opponents if she happened to place them on the wrong square. She needed to figure out how to avoid those traps without seeming defensive, lest she get yelled at, which was worse than losing pieces.

“Master Park, this is my girlfriend,” said Shane, as the two women came over to stand over the table, giving Jen a perfect eye-level view of Brittany’s bosom as it tried to escape from her shirt. “Brittany,” she added.

“Very nice to meet you,” he said, rising to shake her hand. Jen wasn’t sure whether she should stand as well; she opted to stay seated.

“And this is Jen,” said Shane.

“Oh, I’ve heard so much about you,” Brittany exclaimed, smiling warmly and leaning down to hug her. Jen hugged her back awkwardly, this woman she had never met before and who was towering above her as she sat on the chair. She did smell excellent, Jen noted.

Power is divided between the masculine and feminine aspects. The king is the seat of power, but, accordingly, the queen bears more practical, useable power, because she can move longer distances but also because she can be placed into danger.

Brittany looked down at the chess board, wrinkling her painted nose.

“Do you play?” asked Master Park.

“A little,” said Brittany.

“Oh no,” said Shane, dropping down onto the couch. “I knew we couldn’t get out of here quickly.”

“Where should she move?” Master Park asked Brittany. Jen felt indignant; why was he asking this party girl to weigh in on her game? Anyway, this was the easy move. She needed to capture the bishop; pawn to E4. What would happen after that was the confusing part.

“Queen to H4,” said Brittany, quickly. Jen was surprised to hear her using the algebraic notation to describe the moves; she had expected her to point and say, Move your pawn there. She would have scoffed at the move Brittany suggested—presumably she didn’t see that Jen could capture the bishop. But Brittany’s confident tone made Jen wonder whether Brittany could actually see something that Jen herself was missing.

“Interesting,” said Master Park. “Why?”

“It’s a zwischenzug,” said Brittany. “Now you’ll have to weaken your pawn structure. She can take the bishop later.”

“See that?” Master Park said, turning to Jen. “That’s what I mean by being aggressive. She’s not just thinking, ‘take his piece,’ ‘save my piece.’ She’s trying to mess me up down the road.”

“Wow, where’d you learn all that?” Shane asked, sitting up high on the couch now so she could see the board.

“We play at the sorority,” Brittany said. “We’re the best house. We totally kicked ass on Alpha Phi last weekend—they’re like our nemesis.”

While Brittany and Master Park discussed a few chess problems on a second board, Jen and Shane walked down to the bathroom at the far end of the strip mall.

“I guess she’s pretty smart,” said Jen, patting her friend on the arm. “Nice work.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” said Shane, shrugging. “I mean, it’s not like that’s why I like her. I’ve never talked to her about chess or anything.”

Jen laughed. “Sorry, I wouldn’t want to suggest that you valued her for anything but her looks,” she said. She reached out and put her arm on Shane’s shoulder. “Happy birthday,” she said.

Shane stopped walking, and since Jen was still touching her shoulder, she stopped, too.

“You know, there’s something I’ve got to tell you,” said Shane, her face losing all trace of the smirk that she usually wore in conversation. Jen was startled. She never saw Shane looking serious like that, except when she was sparring.

“What is it?” Jen asked.

“I’m thinking about becoming a guy,” Shane said.

Jen was silent for a moment as she tried to understand what Shane had meant.

“Do you mean, like, surgically?” she asked, finally.

“Yeah, and with hormones,” said Shane.

Jen had known a few women who used to be men, but she realized she had never met anyone who had changed their gender in the other direction.

“They can do that?” Jen asked.

“Oh yeah,” said Shane. “Well, they don’t really do a great job with—you know—the bottom half.” Shane dipped her chin to indicate the direction she was talking about. “Most people just do the top part. That’s what I would do. They do a great job with that part.”

“Wow,” said Jen, dumbstruck. It seemed like it should be a small alteration—Shane was so much like a boy, anyway—but Jen knew it would change things. For one, Shane was her only real friend in Michigan. Jen couldn’t imagine being close friends with a twenty-one year old boy. She could barely tolerate them back when she herself was that age. But would Shane still be the same person, herself, or an adolescent boy?

And if Shane were a boy, would they still be training partners? Jen gasped as she realized that Shane would need to take time off training, perhaps a lot of time, to undergo this process, or procedure, or whatever it was.

“I just think it would be easier,” Shane said. “I mean, everyone already thinks I’m a guy.”

“But you’re not,” said Jen, thinking that this wasn’t a very good reason for undergoing a surgical procedure. “You don’t need to change yourself because of what other people think.”

“No, I know,” said Shane. “I mean, I think it would be easier for me. To understand who I am.”

Now Jen felt horrible. How could Shane not understand who she was? Jen understood perfectly who Shane was: a tough woman, strong, brave, her role model. She wanted to tell Shane those things, tell her that she needed to stay just as she was. But she couldn’t think of a way to say that without it sounding selfish, like she needed Shane to stay a woman for her own reasons, to keep her as a teammate, a sister. Maybe it is selfish, Jen thought; it was too complicated to figure out so quickly.

“There’s a really good clinic down in Ann Arbor,” Shane said. “I might need to move down there for a while. I could transfer to Eastern Michigan University for a semester. Brittany said she’d come with me.”

Jen’s stomach sunk.

You can’t go, she wanted to shout, to beg. You’re my only friend. You’re the only person here that matters to me.

But she knew she would not say that. “Of course I’ll support you in any way I can,” Jen said. “Just let me know what I can do.”

Shane reached in and gave Jen a long, hard hug, pressing her wet cheek into Jen’s neck. “That means so much to me,” said Shane, quietly, near Jen’s ear.

The blending of attacking and defending suggests the idea of balance. You must balance your aggressive energy with your sense of caution and introspection. You must never become so focused on your goal that you lose awareness of what is going on in the periphery of your vision. Becoming overly fixated on one aspect of life will cause other areas of your life to atrophy like withered limbs.

“Jen? Is that you?”

Jen recognized the voice on the other end of the lake house phone. She had been nervous to answer the phone; it almost never rang, and Jen only used it to make her weekly calls to Becky. If Jen answered and the phone call wasn’t for her, she needed to explain that Paula’s mother and her husband were in Toledo (they had returned in September from their summer vacation) and take a message, a complicated process since she then needed to call Paula’s mother, who she had never met, and relay the message.

It was easier just to let the phone ring. But this was Tuesday morning, which was one of the times that she and Becky often talked, though usually Jen called Becky and then Becky called her back to avoid running up a bill on Paula’s mother’s phone.

This person wasn’t Becky, though. Who else would be calling here for me, Jen wondered?

“I was meaning to call sooner,” the voice continued, “I mean, I had the phone number and everything.”

“Paula,” said Jen, relieved to have identified the caller without having to ask. She hadn’t spoken to Paula since she and Becky had left Jen in Michigan five months ago.

“How is everything?” Paula said. “I mean, Becky’s been keeping me posted on the basic news, and I read that horrible article about how you’re on steroids and a lesbian.”

“Yeah,” said Jen.

“I mean, you’re not, right?” said Paula, her tone conveying a slight hope that the article might have been correct.

“Right. Sorry,” said Jen.

They talked for a bit, catching up on Jen’s news—yes, she really had done a fight, yes, she had really gotten knocked out—and Paula’s news—“Same old stuff, yoga, celibacy, hanging around with Becky and Chase.”

Then Paula got to the reason for her call. “We’re having a shower for Becky. It’s at your house, not this Sunday but the next one. Sorry, I know it’s last minute; we just decided to do it.”

That was soon, Jen thought, less than two weeks. Too soon. Her taekwondo schedule felt like a speeding train that needed a great distance to stop. She was planning to do two upcoming competitions, one in December. There was no way she could take a break right now, even for a few days.

“You’re going to come, right?” said Paula, who apparently had been waiting for Jen’s response.

“Well,” said Jen, trying to figure out how to explain her hesitation. “It’s short notice, and I have this fight coming up.”

“Jen!” Paula yelled sharply, like a nursery-school teacher scolding a toddler who was just about to bite his playmate. “You haven’t been out to visit the entire time Becky’s been pregnant. She won’t tell you, but she misses you.” Paula cleared her throat. “You have to come when the baby is born next month, and you have to come to the shower.”

Now Jen felt horrible. Paula was right; how could she even consider missing her best friend’s baby shower just because it would throw off her training schedule? As though a few days of taekwondo and chess were more important than the friend who had supported her since they were twelve years old. Something must be going really wrong with my values, she told herself.

“Of course I’ll come,” said Jen, as though this had been her intention all along. “I was just saying it will be hard. I wouldn’t miss it.”

“Great,” said Paula. “I’ll buy your plane ticket; I know you don’t have internet access out there.”

“Thanks,” said Jen.

Before they got off the phone, Paula remembered one other detail she had forgotten to tell Jen.

“Oh, and it’s a co-ed shower,” she said. “You can bring a guy, if you want. Or a woman, of course,” she added, in a tone of magnanimous non-judgment.

“No, it’ll just be me,” said Jen. “I’m not seeing anybody.”

“That a girl,” Paula said, before hanging up the phone.

Chapter 30

28. Forced Moves

“If we must live on a desert island, make it fertile and rich with opportunity, not so barren and unyielding that all of our moves would be like forced moves in chess.” —Daniel Dennett

For two days after her fight, Jen didn’t leave the house. The first day, her head felt foggy and her muscles ached. She lay in bed reading the magazine that Britt-Shane had shown her in the locker room, which she had given to Jen on the drive home.

“While most reporters have been discouraged by the actress’s elusive ways, we have followed Jen’s descent into obscurity, her small-town life, and the new passion that now consumes her every waking moment.”

Was this the reporter, Jen wondered? Someone who had been following her around North Middleton, unnoticed, as she “descended into obscurity.” Was Lorna O. Lee the woman who had surprised her at the side of the mat and caused her to lose her fight?

Amid the confusion and disappointment following her knockout, Jen tried had tried to piece together how it had happened. At first all she could remember was the face of the reporter, floating disembodied like a ghost above the mat, dissolving into a flash of white as Jen fell. As she rode home silently in the passenger’s seat of Britt-Shane’s car, the rest of the fight had slowly begun to materialize: the girl’s first hard kick, Jen’s strong counterattack. She had begun to feel confident that she would win, had felt her dominance against the girl. Then the reporter had appeared and ruined it all.

Jen looked down at the magazine and snorted in annoyance. The sound hurt her head, and she thought for a moment that she might throw up. Drank too much, she said instinctively to herself, and then remembered that she hadn’t had a drink in over five months.

She stayed in bed the rest of the morning, watching the small travel alarm clock she had bought at the drug store as it approached eleven forty-five, the time she usually left home for Sunday sparring class. As it crept towards noon, when the class began, she told herself, I could still go. I could be late, she said to herself at eleven fifty-seven. If I left right now, I’d get there fifteen minutes past the starting time.

As though to test this theory, she raised one arm up off the bed and held it in the air. Then she dropped it back down to the bed, exhausted from the effort. No, there was no way she could spar today; there was no decision to be made. Don’t even look at the clock, she told herself, forcing her eyes shut.

Then the clock’s hands both pointed to twelve. Class would be starting right now. Jen wondered whether Britt-Shane was there. She had won her fight yesterday and gone home in a great mood, with a celebratory date already arranged with her new love interest, Brittany. Maybe she’s too hung over for class, Jen thought, feeling a little hopeful. But she knew it was likely to be a false hope. Britt-Shane was no doubt arriving at class right now, receiving a hero’s welcome, congratulations all around. Too bad about Jen’s fight, they were probably saying to her, and maybe she replied, Yeah, Jen really screwed up.

Jen wished she were there to silence their whispers and show how tough she was, how indifferent to her loss. It’s not too late, she thought. I don’t need to be on time the day after the fight. Then she rolled over, closed her eyes, and slept for the rest of the day, dreaming of sparring class and the derision of her classmates.

The next day, she moved from the bed to the couch downstairs, bringing Zen for the Troubled Mind by Thomas Fo with her. It was one of the books that she had special-ordered, and she had only read it once so far. She didn’t feel like starting it from the beginning, so she let it fall open to a page in the middle.

“One of the greatest obstacles to our spiritual progress is excessive focus on our own mistakes. We judge our own mistakes with a harsh condemnation that we would never apply to others. When our friends make mistakes, we tell them to forgive themselves, move on, that no one is perfect. But we obsess over our own mistakes with a kind of reverent fascination. Even when we know objectively that the mistake is forgivable, even when we are forgiven by those we have wronged, we cannot help but be transfixed by our own past mistakes, nurturing them with a fascination that speaks more of love than disgust or self-censure.”

Jen put the book down next and on her stomach and stared at the ceiling, marveling at how Thomas Fo always seemed to know precisely what was going on in her life. But when she picked the book back up and resumed where she had left off, she was even more startled.

“Imagine a boxer who regrets dropping his guard and getting punched. He stops what he is doing, scowls, berates himself for his carelessness. Of course, while he is dwelling on these thoughts, he loses focus on the present moment and gets punched again.

“Any boxing teacher will tell you that one of the most important lessons for a beginning boxing student is not to react to getting hit. The new student will stop the drill each time he makes the wrong move, because he feels that he must spend time recognizing his mistake. ‘Damn,’ he will say, or ‘Sorry,’ or ‘Why do I keep screwing that up?’ That is what our culture, with its focus on self-assessment, tells us we must do—acknowledge the mistake and criticize ourselves preemptively, before others have a chance to do it for us.

“Any moderately experienced student of boxing knows to forget the error and stay in the moment. A fighter must take advantage of each fresh, new moment and the opportunities for success it affords, rather than reflecting on past failures, whether those failures occurred six months ago or six seconds ago.

“We would be wise to emulate the boxer and not allow ourselves to be distracted and weakened by self-criticism. Of course it is important to reflect on our mistakes and learn from them, but only during appropriate times. A fighter reviews his fight once it has ended, noting the strengths and weaknesses of his performance. If he is wise, he critiques himself dispassionately, indulging in neither self-congratulation for his strengths nor self-flagellation for his weaknesses. And no matter what, he must not let the mistakes of the past impair his ability to move positively into the future.”

All right, Thomas Fo, Jen said to herself, putting the book down. I’ll go back to class. Tonight. Then she fell asleep, and didn’t wake up until midnight.

She returned to the academy the next evening. When she arrived for the seven-thirty intermediate-advanced class, Britt-Shane was not waiting at their regular spot in the back by the mirror. Maybe she’s in the bathroom, Jen thought, peering at the door behind her as she stretched, hoping to see Britt-Shane appear.

Once Jen had stretched for five minutes, with no sign of Britt-Shane, she had to accept that her training partner might not be coming to class. Perhaps she hadn’t yet recovered from her victory celebrations, Jen speculated. But explanation didn’t seem too convincing, given that Britt-Shane had been in class every day since Jen had started training, even on a few mornings when her skin had been noticeably greenish and her breath had still stunk like cheap vodka.

As she stood scanning the gym one last time, hoping that Britt-Shane would appear from behind the desk or the mysterious bamboo screen, Master Park came over to her. She wondered what he wanted to say. Her experience had taught her that he conserved his words, at least the ones directed at her, but there was certainly plenty to discuss today, three days after her humiliating loss of her first fight.

He didn’t say anything at first. Instead he just stood and looked at her for a moment, as though waiting for her to speak. Jen thought of saying something about the fight, some acknowledgment or apology for her poor performance. But she remembered Thomas Fo’s words: forget the error and stay in the moment. She resolved not to say anything about her fight unless Master Park mentioned it himself. She would focus on her training right now, today, and moving into the future.

In that case, the first question was who would be teaching her today.

“Where’s…” said Jen, but stopped because she didn’t know what to call her training partner.

“I told her not to come,” said Master Park, interrupting her.

“Oh,” said Jen. “Why?”

Master Park folded his hands across the chest of his white uniform. “She needs to focus on her school. She dropped her statistics class. Did you know that?”

“No,” said Jen, feeling guilty. She had often suspected that Britt-Shane couldn’t be putting much work into her classes if she was at the academy training Jen every night and all weekend.

“I told her take a week off,” said Master Park. “Then she can come back, but only four days a week, like she used to.” He narrowed his eyes accusingly at Jen. She felt the urge to defend herself: It wasn’t my fault, she thought. I never told her to come in every night. It was all her idea.

Instead, she stared silently at Master Park, keeping her expression carefully blank, as she had learned to do back in her days as a yoga student.

She wondered what she would do on the nights that Britt-Shane wasn’t there to train with her. Rob was already leading the rest of the class in some kicking drills. Jen sighed inwardly, resigning herself to a moment she had long anticipated, when she would lose her special status as a private student and move into the regular class. It wasn’t that she minded being part of the group; it was just that Rob always taught those classes. In fact, she had been bracing for the awkward moment that she would have to take instruction from Rob ever since she came to the academy the day after he had kissed her and then confessed that he was in a committed relationship. But the moment had never come; each day, Britt-Shane had arrived and saved her from the unpleasantness.

Jen had avoided being instructed by Rob for so long that she was almost eager for it to happen, just to get it over with already. Besides, she didn’t have any hurt feelings about him anymore, just a vague sense of wariness and distrust.

Realizing that Master Park still hadn’t spoken, Jen said, “Should I go join the class then?”

Master Park shook his head. “No. I’m going to train you,” he said.

“Oh,” said Jen, trying not to let her surprise show on her face. “Okay.” She wondered if she were in trouble for losing her fight. Maybe she had gotten Britt-Shane in trouble, too, for not training her properly. That could be the real reason she wasn’t in class tonight. Queasiness rose up in Jen’s stomach and she wished for a moment that she had not come back to the school, that she had stayed at the lake house for a few more days or weeks or forever.

“Let’s go in the back,” Master Park said.

“In back?” Jen repeated. Now she was really shocked. In her four months at the academy, she had still not learned what lay behind the mysterious bamboo screen. She had asked Britt-Shane several times and only received vague replies: “It’s just a back room,” she would say, as though this weren’t self-evidently the case.

And in fact, when Britt-Shane put it that way, Jen wondered why the space behind the screen fascinated her so deeply. Storefronts had back rooms, and schools had offices; nothing so odd about that. Yet when Master Park emerged from the back, he didn’t look like he was coming from an office. It made Jen think of an exercise they had done in her drama class: emerge from a door as though you had just come from a business meeting, a party, cooking dinner in the kitchen, making love in a bedroom. He seemed to be acting the wrong role every time he came through the door.

I’m probably just imagining it, she thought, as he led her past the screen and through the door that Jen knew lay behind it from her surreptitious observations. Too many acting classes make your mind crazy.

They emerged into a cramped hallway that seemed normal for the space behind a storefront. There were several closed doors along its walls; Master Park opened the one closest to them and led Jen into a small room that she expected to be an office.

Instead, she found herself in a tiny makeshift living room. The linoleum floor, the same adobe color as the floor of the academy, was covered by a dark Oriental carpet. There was a small dining table with three chairs around it; the fourth chair had been pulled out to face the short sofa that sat against one wall. Between the chair and the sofa was a coffee table topped with a neat stack of magazines and a wooden chess set. A small bookcase in the corner held far more books than it was designed for, so many that they had been stacked in vertical piles reaching from the bottom to the top of each of the three shelves.

I suppose this is why he doesn’t look like he’s coming from an office, she thought, although this lounge still seemed a bit incongruous with what she had expected, although she didn’t know quite what that was.

“Have a seat,” said Master Park, pointing at the table.

Jen walked obediently to the table and seated herself in a chair that faced out into the room. Master Park remained standing. So, Jen thought, now I’m going to get a lecture.

“You lost focus,” said Master Park.

“I know,” said Jen. She wanted to add that it wasn’t her fault, that someone distracted her, that reporter, that woman who was stalking her, but she stopped herself. She knew better than to make excuses.

Master Park continued to look at her, and Jen felt that she should say something else. She thought of apologizing for her mistake, promising that it would not happen again. But then she thought of Thomas Fo and remembered that there was no reason to spend unnecessary energy acknowledging her errors. She could not guarantee that it would not happen again, and the way to prevent it was through her future actions, not her words.

If anyone was going to chastise her, she resolved, it was Master Park. She would agree with his assessment, if it was correct, but she would not waste her energy criticizing herself. She returned his gaze silently.

“Do you know how to play chess?” he asked.

She nodded, waiting for whatever analogy he was about to draw. A chess player must not get so focused on his…pawn…that he allows the opponent to capture his…queen? She wasn’t sure about the exact names of the pieces, but she could imagine where this was going.

“Really?” he asked, looking surprised and pleased. “Do you play often?”

Jen was confused. She hadn’t taken his question literally, and now she was afraid that she had inadvertently lied to her teacher for the sake of expediting the conversation. But thinking about it for a moment, she remembered that she had played chess as a child against her grandfather, although that had been almost twenty years ago.

“No,” she said, embarrassed. “Never.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” said Master Park, his smile fading. “That’s okay. You’re going to start.”

He walked to the bookcase, knelt, and began to shift the books around on one of the shelves.

“Here it is,” he said, pulling out a thin, worn paperback and holding it in the air. He stood and handed the book to Jen.

“Fundamental Strategy for Chess,” Jen read aloud. Then she stopped, incredulous. She looked up at Master Park.

“It’s by Thomas Fo?” she asked.

The smile returned to Master Park’s face. “You know him?” he asked.

“I’ve read all his books,” said Jen. Except she had never heard of this one; she had no idea he wrote about subjects other than Zen philosophy. “Well, I thought I had. I didn’t know he wrote about chess.”

“He has written about many subjects,” said Master Park. “He is a favorite author of mine, and a very dear friend. Someone I know very well.”

“You know him?” Jen exclaimed, her excited voice bouncing off the walls of the small room. She was about to apologize, but Master Park smiled, evidently appreciating her enthusiasm.

“As well as I know anyone,” said Master Park.

Jen opened the book to its title page and stared at the title and author, still incredulous that Master Park was assigning her books by her favorite author. A dear friend. Maybe he would introduce her some day.

“You read this during the regular class,” said Master Park, walking to the door. “After class, we will play.”

Uh oh, thought Jen—she would need to at least remind herself what all the pieces did before then. She turned to the back of the book to see if it had an index.

Master Park walked out the door, then turned back to look at her.

“Do you know why I want you to play chess?” he asked.

Jen closed the book and looked up. “Because chess is like taekwondo?” Jen guessed.

Master Park looked at her skeptically. “How is chess like taekwondo?” he asked.

Damn. She had fallen for it again. Her teacher had tricked her into saying the wrong thing and now he was going to yell at her. “It’s not,” said Jen, quickly. “I was wrong.”

“Of course it is,” said Master Park. “You read and think about how. You’ll tell me when I come back.”

He left, and she opened the book again, now frantic to get started with her ambitious task. In the next hour, she would need to figure out how chess was played, and then how it was like taekwondo.

Chapter 29

27. A Misty Consciousness

"Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten--a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me." --Hellen Keller

Ever since Jen disappeared into small-town Michigan four months ago, many of our readers have been wondering—where is Jen, exactly? What has she been doing? Why has she disappeared from the public eye? Is her new reclusive lifestyle really what she wants, or is it a sign that something is deeply wrong?

In an exclusive story you’ll find only in Celebrity Gape Magazine, we follow Jen where the other news sources have not dared to go. While most reporters have been discouraged by the actress’s elusive ways, we have followed Jen’s descent into obscurity, her small-town life, and the new passion that now consumes her every waking moment.

This new obsession will be surprising to fans who fell in love with Jen in romantic comedies such as Love Sick and Meeting Elizabeth or the workplace farce Free to Chat. While the Jen we know and love is a shy but flirty ingénue who has charmed us playing quirky, off-beat love interests, the new Jen has decided to take her life in a completely different direction: into the world of full-contact fighting.

Yes, you read that correctly—fighting. Jen now spends every waking moment eating, sleeping, and breathing this new obsession.

She has taken up a radical new lifestyle filled with grueling exercise and strict self-discipline. She attends regular classes at a regional taekwondo school, an intensive training program that many have described as a cult for good reason. Jen’s routine includes four hours per day of training at the school, along with lengthy runs and intensive stretching. She follows a strict, high-protein diet to encourage lean muscle development. For at least three hours a week, she “spars” with other students, mostly men, arduous battles that often lead to gruesome, bloody injuries. Jen herself has suffered no fewer than six bloody noses as a result of her training, and subtle changes in her facial appearance have led to speculation that she may have broken her nose or jaw.

Jen’s lifestyle is not the only thing about her that has changed. Her appearance is also radically altered. Jen’s fans would hardly recognize the once slender and feminine actress. She appears to have gained at least fifteen pounds of pure muscle, leading to suspicions that she may be resorting to steroid use. Her trademark long, chestnut hair is now short and black, and she has stopped wearing makeup. She has shed her glamorous designer outfits for sweats and running shorts, and often appears grungy and disheveled.

Sources close to Jen reveal a potential motivation for her newfound passion for fighting. While Jen’s taekwondo school is run by a Korean master, Jen’s main trainer is an aggressive, masculine woman named Shane. Rumors of a torrid lesbian affair between Jen and this statewide taekwondo champion—who, at the age of twenty, is more than ten years younger than Jen—have caused a stir in their sleepy town, where local residents are calling Jen a poor role model for young women. In a time when, more than ever, young people look to celebrities as role models, it is a shame that yet another of Hollywood’s finest has succumbed to temptation and let her fans down.

In the passenger seat on her way to East Lansing, Jen thought about all the monumental occasions for nervousness that she had experienced in her lifetime. She had been through events that would make a normal person sick with fear—movie openings, awards shows, interviews with late-night talk show hosts who nurtured their own fame by making those more famous than themselves look like idiots.

She had seen people who weren’t real celebrities waiting in the green room to be interviewed about their remarkable acts of personal bravery or winning cookie recipes; they would be sickly blue with fright, sweating and shivering at the same time. Yeah, wait until your job depends on this performance, Jen would think to herself, biting hard on her pinky finger to stop herself from chewing up her manicure. She had been through it all, over and over again.

She had never—never, never—been as gut-twistingly nervous as she was at this moment, in this car, on her way to her first tournament.

She supposed it made sense. After all, as obnoxious as those red-carpet interviewers and catty talk-show hosts were, there was about zero chance of her getting kicked in the face by them.

“Hey Brittany, how much farther is it?” Jen asked.

The young woman driving the car stared fixedly at the road and made no acknowledgment of Jen’s question.

“Shane,” said Jen.

“About an hour,” said the boyish young woman who had been training Jen every day for the last four months.

Jen understood why she had changed her name; Brittany was a horrible name for a fighter, and it didn’t raise her credibility with the bouncy sorority girls that Brittany was always chasing after, either.

Still, of all the names, why Shane?

“I love that name,” Brittany had said, when she had first informed Jen of her decision. “It’s so androgynous.”

I suppose, Jen had thought, although neither the males nor the females that the name conjured in her mind were the least bit appealing. In either case, they were blond with fake tans and always wore white tennis outfits.

The renaming had happened almost two months ago, and although that was half of the time that Jen had known Brittany-slash-Shane, she still couldn’t get used to the change. When speaking, Jen tried to use the new name out of respect for the wishes of her friend and trainer. In her mind, however, she had taken to using an amalgam of the two names, “Britt-Shane,” which she had generously chosen over several other alternatives including “Shitney.”

There was nothing in the landscape to distract Jen from her nervousness. The view from the passenger’s seat was as flat and uniform as her original drive to North Middleton had been.

“Stop sighing,” said Britt-Shane, still staring stonily ahead. Based on her friend’s curt responses and heavy jaw grinding, Jen was fairly certain that Britt-Shane was almost as nervous as she herself was. Britt-Shane’s fight would be against another brown-belt, a tough Detroit girl who was known for her intimidating whooping war-cries as she threw roundhouse kicks.

“I didn’t know I was,” said Jen. She took a deep breath in through her nose and tried to let it out silently back through her nose.

“You’re doing it again,” said Brittany.

“I’m nervous,” said Jen, hoping to elicit a similar confession from either Britt-Shane or the male blue-belt who was pretending to be asleep in the back seat. Master Park and two other male brown-belts were traveling down in Rob’s car; the blue-belt boy had been forced into the girls’ car due to his lower rank.

“There’s nothing to be scared of,” said Brittany. The boy remained silent; perhaps he really was asleep, Jen thought. “People hardly ever get injured. This is totally safe.”

Safe? Jen had simply been nervous about forgetting everything she knew and looking like a complete idiot. This would be her first competition, and even though she would only be fighting another green-belt, she was convinced that her opponent would have all the skills of the brown-belts that Jen sparred regularly at the academy. In her anxiety about her performance, she had forgotten to even consider the possible physical danger involved. Thanks, Shitney, she thought.

By the time they reached the university parking lot, Britt-Shane wasn’t speaking, Jen was lightheaded from trying not to exhale too loudly, and the blue-belt was snoring audibly.

They lugged their gym bags through the basketball court where they would be fighting in a few hours. Jen looked across the gym at two women in warm-up pants, one holding a kicking shield while the other threw double jumping kicks at it, and wondered if the kicker might be her opponent. Right next to them was a bored-looking man in a jumpsuit leaning against the wall, and next to him, a raised table that Jen recognized but couldn’t quite place, until she noticed the two oxygen tanks next to it, at which point she realized with a queasy feeling in her stomach that it was a stretcher, and the man next to it, a paramedic.

She was about to point this out to Britt-Shane, who was staring fixedly straight ahead as she crossed the gym, but then she decided it wasn’t really important.

They walked past the entrance to the dressing rooms and into a small studio in the back of the gym where the fighters were warming up. Master Park and Rob were already there training the two brown-belts.

“Go get dressed,” said Master Park without looking up at them, his expression as impassive as ever as a high kick landed on the pad right next to his face. “Then start warming up.”

Once they were changed into workout clothes, Britt-Shane led the two of them through stretches, leg swings, and jumping drills, while the blue-belt boy joined the brown belts. Then, when all the boys had finished training, Master Park came over to the two women.

“Brittany,” he said. “Go train with Rob.” Jen wondered if she would remind him of her new name, but she followed Rob across the room without saying anything.

Then he turned towards Jen. “I’ll train you,” he said.

Jen was startled. During her four months at his school, Master Park had remained as mysterious as when she had first met him. With Britt-Shane instructing her on the side of the room, she had bypassed the normal class sequence, preparing for two belt tests and now for this competition without Master Park’s interference or assistance.

She had assumed Britt-Shane would be the one getting her ready for her fight. But of course, Britt-Shane had her own fight to prepare for, and Master Park and Rob were both there only as coaches.

“Okay, so we’re going to work combinations of kicks,” said Master Park. “That’s what I want you to throw out there. No single kicks.”

Master Park led her through the combinations, first three consecutive kicks, then four, then five, then five faster, then five as fast as she could possibly move.

“Move your hands. Feint,” he said. She attempted to thrust her hand out deceptively between kicks two and three.

Master Park wrinkled his brow in a faint but noticeable signal of confusion and disgust. “Not like that,” he said.

When he had decided that the workout was over, Master Park slapped her lightly on the back.

“Good,” he said. “You’re ready.”

Jen wasn’t sure what to say. Should she thank him? Did she have any questions she needed to ask him?

Master Park interrupted her thoughts before she could speak. “Meet back here at one,” he said. “Try to relax.”

Britt-Shane had already finished her warm-up. “So what do we do now?” Jen asked, as they walked back down the hall towards the locker room.

“Wait,” said Britt-Shane.

“How long do you think we have?” Jen asked, realizing that she had absolutely no idea what time it was.

Britt-Shane heaved her gym bag forward on her shoulder and pulled her cell-phone from an outside pocket. “Well, it’s eleven-thirty now,” said Britt-Shane, squinting at the phone. “So I guess we’ve got a while.”

Jen began to ask where they should wait, but she her friend’s ear.

“That girl from the bar last week called,” Britt-Shane said, in a quick, distracted voice that indicated that she was still listening to the message.

Jen tried to remember which girl this was. Britt-Shane was always carrying on about some girl or another—girls in her classes, girls in coffee shops, girls working at the bookstore. Always bubbly, vapid girls in skimpy outfits. It was hard to keep track.

Then Jen remembered a conversation from last Sunday. Britt-Shane had gone to a friend’s birthday party but limited herself to one beer because she was preparing for the tournament. Jen was always a little shocked by how much time Britt-Shane’s friends spent in bars, considering they weren’t old enough to drink, legally speaking.

“I spent all night talking to the hottest girl,” Britt-Shane had told her as they warmed up for sparring.

“What was she like?” Jen had asked, although she was pretty sure of the answer already.

“Stacked,” Britt-Shane had said, her enthusiasm lighting up her face.

Jen had snorted. “You’re a pig,” she said. When they trained or discussed taekwondo, Britt-Shane was her advisor, her guide, wise beyond her years. But when their conversations strayed to any other topic, Britt-Shane’s youthful perspective became painfully apparent.

Still, Jen was impressed by how many of the objects of Britt-Shane’s desire—paragons of conventional femininity that they were—ended up going home with her boyish but definitely female training partner.

“Haven’t you ever heard of LUG—‘lesbian until graduation’?” Britt-Shane had asked her.

Jen shook her head. “I don’t think they had those back when I was in college,” she said, meaning it as a joke, although Britt-Shane didn’t laugh.

“Besides, why wouldn’t they be into me?” Britt-Shane asked, running her hand through her hair in a gesture that drew attention oh-so-offhandedly to the definition of her deltoid and biceps. “I’m hot. And none of their boyfriends know how to give them an orgasm.”

Britt-Shane hadn’t taken this new girl home yet; she was waiting until after the tournament to see her again.

“What was her name?” Jen asked, as they reached the women’s locker room and Britt-Shane removed the phone from her ear.

“It’s Brittany,” said Britt-Shane.

Jen was confused for a moment, thinking she had called her partner by the wrong name again, before she realized that this was in fact the name of the “stacked” girl.

“That’s funny,” said Jen. “Did you tell her?”

Britt-Shane shrugged. “Tell her what?” she asked. She looked up confrontationally, as though daring Jen to make reference to her given name.

“Never mind,” said Jen. She had enough fights to deal with for today.

They sat down on a bench in the locker room, their gym bags resting at their feet, and watched the other women getting ready. It wasn’t too crowded yet. Fighters who lived close by wouldn’t be arriving so early, while those who lived much farther than North Middleton had come down the night before and were staying in local hotels. It was only those like Britt-Shane and Jen who lived a few hours away who had needed to work a large cushion of time into their travel plans. A few women walked in and out of the locker room, some giggling and gossiping in little packs, others looking tense and irritable. None of them gave Jen a second look as they passed her, and she didn’t expect them to; no one seemed to recognize her lately.

“So,” said Jen, “What are we supposed to do for the next hour?”

“I don’t know what you’re going to do,” said Britt-Shane, reaching into her gym bag. “I brought something to read.” She pulled out a rolled-up magazine, unfurling it with a flourish.

Jen groaned and pretended to be exasperated. Britt-Shane seemed to take great pleasure in embarrassing her by bringing old articles about her to their training sessions. “Look at that long hair,” she would coo. “It’s so shiny!”

Truthfully, the magazines didn’t really bother her anymore. Her self-awareness collage had served its purpose of inuring her to the stories about her. It was like getting kicked in the head, not so bad once you stopped being afraid of it. She didn’t want to disappoint Britt-Shane, though, so she fulfilled her part of the performance dutifully.

“Have you seen this one yet?” Britt-Shane said, waving it around. “It’s new.”

“Wow,” said Jen. She hadn’t been in the tabloids for at least the last few months, as far as she could tell; it seemed that the reporters had gotten bored of following her around North Middleton and taken off to some more fertile ground.

“It’s a really good one,” said Britt-Shane. “And I’m in it.”

“Oh no,” said Jen. “What does it say about you?”

“About us,” said Britt-Shane.

“Oh no,” Jen repeated, dropping her head into her hands.

“It says we’re lov-ahs,” said Britt-Shane, rolling the last word off of her tongue with relish.

“Well, they’re obviously full of crap,” said Jen. “You are so not my type.”

Britt-Shane stuck out her tongue. “That’s not what it says here,” she said. “Look, there’s a picture of us walking.” Britt-Shane held the magazine out towards Jen, but Jen didn’t look at it. “The caption says, ‘Cradle-Robber Jen with her Lezz-bian Girlfriend.” She elongated the second-to-last word as long as she could, so that “girlfriend” came out mostly as a gasp.

“Isn’t that kind of redundant?” Jen asked. “I mean, you wouldn’t be my heterosexual girlfriend, would you?”

“This reporter says she’s been following you around,” said Britt-Shane. “Lorna O. Lee. Have you seen her?”

Jen shook her head. She hadn’t seen anyone following her around; in fact, she had been feeling blessedly, blissfully unfollowed. The thought that someone had been documenting her time in Michigan without her noticing—taking pictures, even—made her feel as violated as she had ever felt back in Los Angeles. Suddenly she wanted Britt-Shane to stop waving the magazine in her face.

Perhaps it wasn’t really the collage that had ended her fear of magazines, she thought. Maybe it was just the comfort of knowing that she wouldn’t be appearing in them any more. Now as she went through her days buying groceries and drinking tea in town or training at the school, she would always be scanning her surroundings for the reporter.

At least it gives me something to think about beside the fight, Jen told herself.

Once the competition had started, Jen and Britt-Shane sat in the warm-up room rather than watching the fights. Jen could hear the yelling of the crowd, and she wondered how many people were watching. She wanted to go out and look, but Britt-Shane advised against it.

“It will just make you nervous to see the fights and the crowd,” she said. “And you’ll be the first one fighting for our school, so there’s no one before you that you need to see. You can watch my fight and the guys.”

Before Jen could ask, Britt-Shane added, “And we’ll all come out to watch your fight.”

It seemed like only minutes later that Master Park appeared in the room and tapped her on the shoulder. “You’re up next,” he said, speaking close to her ear. Jen and Britt-Shane followed him out to the gym. Jen scanned the room: the bleachers were about half-full, and the folding chairs down near the fighting area were all occupied. Britt-Shane spotted the brown-belts and their blue-belt passenger, who were already in the bleachers, and climbed up to sit with them.

Master Park walked her towards the fighting area, stopping at the edge of the mat just in front of the folding chairs. She watched two young men trading kicks, back and forth, snappy kicks that made a loud noise but didn’t seem too painful.

“Stay light on your feet, bouncy,” Master Park was telling her. “Throw combinations, not just one kick. Back her up.”

Jen nodded.

“The most important thing is to stay aggressive,” Master Park said. “Don’t let her intimidate you.”

Then Jen saw the men leaving the fighting area and heard the announcer call her name: “From Master Park’s Taekwondo Academy in North Middleton, Jen Fo.”

That was the name Jen had decided to fight under, in honor of Thomas Fo, whose books on Zen had become Jen’s scripture. She had read the three books from Paula’s mother’s bookshelf several times each, as well as two others that she had had to special-order from the bookstore.

“Let’s go,” said Master Park, patting her on the back as she stepped onto the mat.

As the referee recited the rules of the fight, Jen tried to size up her opponent. It was difficult to make out much of her face through her headgear or her body under the chest protector. What Jen could see were shrewd eyes looking back at her through forcibly relaxed eyelids, long, scrawny arms, a mouth smiling a broad, confrontational grin, made all the more sinister by the black plastic mouthpiece that filled the space where her teeth should be.

Be aggressive, Jen thought, as the referee started the fight. She bounced on her toes, the girl bouncing across from her, each one waiting for the right moment for the bounce to launch her into a series of kicks.

Jen started to throw her first kick, saw the girl preparing her counter, and stopped herself mid-bounce.

A few more bounces, and the girl flew in at her. Jen let herself get chased backwards for a moment, then jumped and threw a spinning kick back at the girl, hitting her squarely in the center of her chest protector.

This isn’t so bad, she thought. Those kicks she just threw weren’t even hard.

She bounced a little, getting ready to make her move. Be aggressive, she told herself. Throw combinations of kicks.

Jen began to lift her leg, but the girl was already flying in at her, slamming her legs against one side of her body and then the other. Jen moved forward just in time to feel the girl’s heel strike the edge of her jaw.

She stumbled backwards, shocked. That kick was hard—that was all she could think. Hard. I’ve never felt anything that hard.

She looked back at the girl, who had retreated for a moment, still bouncing, her skinny arms raised in front of her. She looked a little blurry around her edges.

I’m going to kill you, Jen thought.

She moved in, and felt the confidence of her training come back to her. Combinations of kicks, hard as you can throw them, she told herself, hitting the girl in the stomach, the head, the rib.

The girl winced visibly, and Jen felt triumphant. She didn’t need anything more from this fight; that look was enough.

No, she thought. Move in while she’s off-balance. Like she should have done to me. That, thought Jen, was her mistake.

She followed the girl in, her leg loaded up in a fake, which the girl was prepared to act upon. Jen’s other leg was already shooting out to beat her kick. There was no way the girl was getting out of this one.

Right at that moment, in her peripheral vision, Jen saw a familiar face, a woman, sitting in one of the folding chairs at the side of the mat. Mousy, tired-looking, deep wrinkles around the eyes. Where had she seen that face before?

It was that reporter, she realized, even as her kick was connecting the girl’s body. The image still hung in her head, even though Jen had turned and couldn’t see the woman anymore. That reporter from the co-op all those months ago. Jen’s second and third kicks were hitting the girl’s body again, as the girl backed up to try to avoid them. What was that reporter doing here?

And then the girl’s foot hit Jen on the side of her temple, and all that Jen felt was vibration. She couldn’t see the girl anymore, just the referee standing over her, and then Master Park. I’m okay, she said, I’m fine. I can keep fighting. They didn’t seem to hear her, and actually, she couldn’t hear herself, either. She tried to raise her hand to show that she was all right, but her muscles wouldn’t move yet.

“Shhh,” said Master Park, as the referee waved his arms to call the fight.

Chapter 28