Knockout Girl
Page 19
He’s also Cherry’s boyfriend now. Thanks to me. Yup. I did it. I got them together, which was nothing short of a miracle, let me tell you. Anyway, that’s another story for another day. Cherry’s waving at me from the water so I jump back in with the camera. We pass the camera back and forth, taking ridiculous photos of each other snorkeling and posing like swimsuit models—she certainly fits the part better—and of all the fancy fish and coral.
The snorkeling trip is the last touristy thing we do before we go home. My friends all come to the airport to say goodbye to us. My former crush, Kai is there too and I give him a hug. To be honest, I thought when I first saw him again that I’d get that crazy feeling in my stomach all over again. But then, surprisingly, I didn’t. It was just like seeing any other guy.
Cherry seems a little sad to be leaving and I totally get why. My friends were so accepting of her, they just folded her into the group like it was no big deal. And to be honest...there’s no place on Earth that’s like Hawaii. I think—I hope that now she gets why I was kind of a space case when she first met me, and why I was terrified of the ice the first time she took me skating.
I let Cherry take the window seat on the way back because I got to have it on the way there. When we’re up in the air, she waves and says, “Goodbye, Hawaii. I’ll always love you.”
“Wow,” I say with a little giggle. “I think you may be even more in love with Hawaii than I am.”
“Seriously, though,” she says putting her hand flat on the window, “that was a blast. Thank you so much for taking me.”
I snort. “You bought yourself a ticket,” I jokingly remind her.
She turns to me with a wry grin. “Yeah, I know. But you could have given it to someone else.”
I briefly think about who that other person would have been. Adrian, so I could have shown off my cute boyfriend to my friends (like Lily, who totally stole Kai after I moved, BTW)? Or Julian, since he’s been like my BFF since the first day I started at my new school, who’s totally rocking the rookie boxing world right now?
I give her a look. Obviously neither of those options would have happened. “Like I would have ever.”
She bursts out laughing. “Well, I gotta say, I’m happy you’re on the return flight.”
I laugh. “I guess I’m a little more in love with Canada than I first thought I’d be.”
Never in the first sixteen years of my life did I ever think I would say those words. I’m seventeen now, though.
Julian
“Left! Left side! Get on your left! Defense! What are you doing?”
These words race through my head as if they were my own, but they’re not. I’m being yelled at by my coach, Dan, who also happens to be my best friend’s uncle. How did I, the nerdiest kid in school, become this boxing guy? Well, it’s her fault—Ella’s. I’m not still mad about it, but—
“Duck!”
I duck almost before Dan shouts the word at me and my opponent’s glove misses my head by a fraction of an inch. Unfortunately, he manages to get in three more hits before I can fully recover. If Ella were here, she’d probably knock me up the side of my head for letting him score that many points on me. But she’s not here. She’s in Hawaii. With my girlfriend.
“Get your head in the game, Jules!” Dan shouts. I don’t need to look at him to know that he’s giving me an angry scowl.
There are thirty seconds left on the clock. I don’t know if other boxers keep track of the time like I do, but I find it helps me focus if I count while I’m boxing. Dan would probably tell me I’m thinking too much and to spend all my energy on fighting, but I can’t help it.
Fifteen...
Fourteen...
Thirteen...
Twelve...
Eleven...
At ten, I hear the audience start to count down and I focus on getting in as many last shots as I can. When the bell goes, I have to consciously not sigh in relief. My opponent wasn’t tough, but he’s quick and he kept me moving the entire time. It was exhausting, so I’m glad it’s over.
We take our gloves off and shake hands. His hand is sweaty and I am repulsed until I realize my hand is just as sweaty as, if not more so, than his. Oh well. This is just a part of my newfound hobby, I guess. Suddenly, I hear my name being announced.
“Julian VanderNeen, winner of this tournament,” the voice says.
My mouth gapes open. I can’t believe it. The closest I’ve come to winning anything this summer was getting third place in a tournament a few weeks ago. Dan puts his hands on my shoulders and shakes me, grinning like crazy and I can’t help smiling back.
I, Julian VanderNeen, biggest nerd in my entire school, have won a boxing tournament. Take that, meatheads.
Someone slaps me hard on the back and by the strength of it I know exactly who it is. I turn around and there’s Red Jackson, my former bully and boxer extraordinaire, grimacing at me. No wait, he’s actually smiling. He sticks out his hand and I slap his palm-to-palm and then back-to-back and then we knock elbows. Why? Because even though we shouldn’t be friends, we still developed our own handshake over the summer while we trained at the same gym.
To be clear, we weren’t “training together.” But Dan happened to land himself a good job at the same gym that just happened to be the one Red and his coach use. And Red just happened to give me some tips and I just happen to be helping him with his summer school final project.
“Hey, man,” he says. It’s weird hearing him call me man, instead of him just shoving me in a locker as soon as he sees me like he used to do. “That was a hard finish. Good job.”
Again, I have a really hard time with this tenuous relationship we have based on me having almost beat him at our school’s boxing tourney. Before then, Red used to push me around pretty much every chance he got until Ella stood up to him one day and roped me into the ring.
Ha, I am a nerd.
“Yeah, I doubt I would have won if you were in this tournament,” I tell him. Though I said it because I prefer to be on his good side, it’s actually the truth, too. Red is a stellar boxer.
He scowls. “You know I’m not allowed to compete until summer school’s over. It sucks,” he spits out.
I nod. Red’s parents weren’t very happy about his near-failing grades at the end of the school year and they forbade him from boxing unless he does well in summer school. Which is how we ended up helping each other out. It’s still weird, though.
“Julian, I am so proud of you,” Dan says, as he helps me unwrap my hands and gives me a water bottle. “And I know if Elli were here, she would be, too.”
I smile and then take a giant gulp of water. “I’m sure she would be.”
I say goodbye to Red and look around to see if either of my parents eventually showed up for my tournament today. I know Mom doesn’t really like boxing—she thinks it’s too violent—but Dad was really impressed with how much weight I lost from training. But now that I see that he’s not here, I guess he doesn’t actually care that much about how good I am at boxing.
“They didn’t come,” Dan says quietly, giving me a pitying look.
I stifle a sigh. I had promised myself no more sighing, at least not in front of other people. Whenever I do, it practically begs others to ask what’s wrong and sometimes there isn’t something wrong. Sometimes you’re just disappointed and you just feel like sighing. But I don’t do that anymore.
“It’s alright,” I say in a flat voice, looking down at my shoes. “They were probably busy.”
“Well, if you were my son, I’d never want to miss a single match,” Dan says.
I look up at him. Dan’s a pretty hard coach, but he’s also a soft-hearted friend and his words mean a lot to me. I smile because I know he’s trying to make me feel better, and the effort itself does make me feel better.
“Let me take you out,” he says. “You deserve a cheeseburger.”
“Oh, a cheeseburger!” I say with mock enthusiasm. In truth, I haven’t been allowe
d a cheeseburger or anything remotely like it in months. “How fancy.”
“Unless you want something else,” Dan says, taking my sarcasm seriously.
I cling to the chance of having something that’s actually tasty. “No, no. Burgers are fine.”
I go to the change rooms to get dressed and gather all of my things. The guy I just beat is in there, pulling a sweatshirt over his head.
“Good match,” I tell him. He just grunts. Meh. You win some, you lose some.
Dan takes me to Five Guys, this awesome place that serves humongous burgers with massive sides of fries to match, and tells me to get whatever I want. I don’t need to be told twice. Opportunities like this don’t come along too often for me anymore.
While I eat, Dan says to me, “I’m really proud of you Julian. I can’t believe how far you’ve come.”
I smile a little and shrug because I don’t know if it’s appropriate to say that I’m also proud of him and how far he’s come. When I first met him, he was homeless, unemployed, and struggling to overcome his alcoholism. Today, he is none of those things.
“Let me ask you something, though,” he continues. “Why do you keep boxing when it’s obviously not your favourite thing to do?”
“I like it,” I say. I mean it, too. I like it more than I thought I would.
“Is that really it?” he probes. I hate probing questions.
“Well...” I scratch my head. “I guess I like being good at something that people actually notice,” I admit.
“Oh.” He seems surprised. “So...it’s not about Elli.”
This time, I do sigh. We have this conversation twice a week and twice a week I have to remind Dan that there is nothing, absolutely nothing romantic going on between me and Ella. We are friends. We do not like each other like that.
“Dan...”
He puts his hands up in surrender and chuckles. “Okay, I’m sorry.”
I shake my head and go back to digging into my burger because it tastes like freedom and my former life of not being semi-athletic.
MORE FROM THE KNOCKOUT GIRL SERIES!
A NOTE FROM the author
thank you so much for reading Knockout Girl! I loved telling this story of a girl who finds herself through friendship and boxing. But most importantly, I loved showing what can happen when one person stands up to bullying. Sometimes all it takes is one drop to start a wave.
If you loved the book (or even if you hated it), would you consider leaving a review? It takes a lot of time, effort, and tears to put an entire book together from scratch. Reviews help authors know what they did right and wrong, and they also help steer other readers in the right direction.
Don’t forget—the story isn’t over. There’s still more to tell and more to explore about these loveable—and sometimes not-so-loveable—characters. Thank for coming on this ride with me, it’s been a blast!
—Natasja ♥
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Natasja is a librarian and the self-published author of My Best Friend's Brother/The Summer I Turned Into a Girl (Createspace 2012), a 2011 National Novel Writing Month winner, Knockout Girl (2018), Standup Guy (2019), The B-Boy (2019), and Rinkside (2019). She is an avid fan and participant of NaNoWriMo and has completed several novels over the past few Novembers.
In 2019, Natasja received two Indie Originals Awards for Knockout Girl, one for Best Young Adult Novel and the other for Best New Author.
When she's not working on her many unfinished novels, she can be found playing video games with her husband and two kids, singing, or curled up with a good book.
Natasja lives just outside of Toronto—close enough for good shopping and far enough to avoid the traffic.
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