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