“Sorry, please go on, Senator,” Peter says, his cheeks flushed.
“Looks like Peter has some explaining to do,” Senator Appleby says with a clap on his back, not missing a beat. “Back to the matter at hand though, the two of you might not be aware of this, but after my husband passed away, I not only took over his senatorial seat, I also replaced him on the Association’s selection committee. And as their first female member to boot.” She gives a little smile. “Some of my peers asked if I even know the rules of the sport, but I happened to coach an all-girls mecha fighting team back when I taught in Sacramento. There are rumors I even fought in a few matches myself when I was younger,” she adds with a wink.
“I’m hoping that’s evidence enough that I come by my expertise honestly,” she continues, “and that’s why I truly believe that you, young lady, are very impressive in the pit.”
“You … well … thank you.” I’m struggling for words. I still can’t quite believe that she actually watched my reel.
“Frankly, you should be getting much more fanfare. A 19–1 record in the NorCal senior division? There should be reporters and recruiters knocking down your door at all hours of the day.” Her smile turns wry. “But let me guess. That hasn’t been the case, has it?”
I wish she was wrong, but she nailed it on the nose. If I were a boy, I’d bet good money that the San Francisco Chronicle would’ve sent a reporter to cover most of my matches. And once my record ticked up to 10–0 this past season I’m sure the Association would’ve taken notice and invited me to one of their training camps that they hold throughout the year to find new talent. If I’d passed their muster, I could’ve joined Team USA and represented them on the international circuit, traveling around the world throughout the summer to fight in elite tournaments like the Armistice Cup and the English Invitational. And if they really liked me, I might have gotten the nod to go to the World Championships in late August, which are held yearly unless there’s the Pax Games.
The senator notes the look on my face and keeps talking. “We both know from personal experience how tough female fighters have it here in the States. The scene internationally might be marginally better but not by much. I counted three girls out of fifty fighters at the Games in ’59.”
She doesn’t have to remind me of that, even though I’m happy to let her. Mecha fighting is one of those rare sports that isn’t separated between the men’s game and women’s—we all compete together since our mechas are supposed to level the playing field. During the ’23 Games, one of the American fighters was Jeanie Gibbons, a seventeen-year-old spitfire from Wisconsin who cleared her own pit in her backyard and flew single-engine biplanes in her free time. She was the first woman to represent the US, out of a grand total of two. The second was Louise Armstrong-Reed, who fought in the 1935 cycle in Rome, coming in at a respectable ninth-place finish. There were rumors during World War II that women might even come to dominate the sport since so many of them were working on the factory lines, making mechas and testing them out for the battlefield, but after our troops came home, all that chatter died out. Women were shuffled back into the kitchen, and for almost thirty years, Team USA has only featured boys.
“Now I’m a red-blooded American through and through, but the Communists are far ahead of us when it comes to this matter,” Senator Appleby says. “Over in places like the USSR and Romania, the girls train alongside the boys, sometimes starting as young as five. And guess what? They’re just as talented! Look at Trude Bürkner,” she says, referencing the Austrian fighter who got third place at the ’31 Games.
“Or the Federovas,” I add. I’m talking about Lidiya and Zoya Federova, the two Soviet sisters who are currently ranked among the best in the world, with the older one, Lidiya, claiming the number one slot while the younger one, Zoya, has taken fourth and is moving up fast. It’s heavily favored that one of them will win the Games this year.
“Meanwhile in the States we keep underestimating half our population and wondering why we haven’t won the Games since Malcolm Maines did it in ’47,” Senator Appleby points out.
“Exactly!” The word charges out of my mouth at full speed, matching my pulse. I never thought I’d hear an American senator say something like that, and now I’m really curious why she has stopped by for a visit. Just to tell me, Keep up the good work?
“Here’s what I believe. If we really want to beat the Soviets, we ought to try something new. After all, they’ve won the Games in ’51, ’55, and ’59. So for these upcoming Games, we need to shake things up. Choose a pair of fighters who are fresh. Unexpected.” She pauses and sighs. “So I made my case to the other committee members but was roundly ignored. Let’s just say that they already knew who they wanted to bet on in the race. But two days ago, a wrench got thrown into the plans.”
Peter and I exchange a look.
“What kind of a wrench?” he asks her.
“One about the size of a meteor.” Her face pinches, like she’s recalling a bad memory. “During a recent sparring session, Ted Rochester took a bad fall and broke his elbow.”
“Ted is out of contention?” I say, gobsmacked.
This is big. Huge. I’ve never faced Ted in the pit before, but I know of him that’s for sure. He’s seventeen and rumored to be the best fighter in Texas, with a left hook as mean as his right. Last year, he got sent to the World Championships in Sydney, where he’d finished sixth, but he was getting over the measles, so he could’ve finished higher.
“He’ll make a full recovery, but it’ll take a couple of months and lots of recuperation,” she explains. “However, this means that we must replace him immediately since Round One of the Games starts on Saturday.”
It’s already Tuesday.
My heart starts to thud fast.
She can’t be— No, I won’t let myself believe it.
“The committee went through our list of alternates, but none of them sat well with me. They were fine fighters, yes, but they were also like Ted. All power. Built like bricks. And utterly expected, which meant that the Soviets would know how to beat them. So why in the world would we play into that?” She chuckles to herself. “It took me a good portion of the night to convince my colleagues to go in a different direction—and I had to remind a few of them that they owed their careers to my late husband—but we’re in agreement that it’s time to make a little history. To choose a fighter who will shake things up.”
Her eyes meet mine, and I have to say even the Ravager’s gaze didn’t have the intensity of a former coach turned senator. “We’re tapping you to join Team USA.”
She looks at me expectantly, like I’m supposed to squeal or scream or faint, but my fingers go numb and I don’t think I can feel my face anymore. I start wondering if I’m dreaming this all up. Maybe I got a concussion back at the Jade Lily and I’m hallucinating.
Peter yanks at my arm. “Say yes, Jo! Or I’ll have to do it for you.”
“Heck yes!” I blurt so fast that I’m not sure that it counts. “I mean, yes, I’d be absolutely honored to join the team, Senator.”
“I was getting a little worried there,” she says, ribbing me. “Now then, I’ll need your parents to sign off on a few forms, and we should tell them the good news too. When might they be around?”
“Our dad won’t be back for another hour, and our mom—” Peter’s voice catches, and we share another glance, like we always do whenever we meet someone new who doesn’t know about our mother.
“She died when we were young,” I finish for him.
“Goodness, my staff didn’t brief me on that. I’ll certainly have a word with them when I’m done here,” she says, not looking very pleased. I get the sense that she runs a tight ship, and she isn’t happy to have discovered a leak in the hull. “My sincerest condolences. How terrible that must have been.”
I shrug, a knee-jerk reaction whenever someone finds out that Peter and I are motherless. That we ought to be pitied. I wait for the inevitable question at
how our mom died, but much to Senator Appleby’s credit, she doesn’t ask.
Instead she says, “I’m sure your mother would be very proud of you. Look at the young woman you’ve become—an all-American fighter ready to represent our nation at the Games.”
Her words are kind, but I can only blink at them. I know what all-American means to most people. Wholesome. Patriotic. White. Which makes me realize that Senator Appleby and her staff probably have no clue that I’m part Chinese.
My pulse taps a heavy beat in my throat. If the Association knew what my mother looked like, would Senator Appleby be standing here right now and extending this invitation to me? The answer pops into my head much too quickly.
No way.
The US has never sent a fighter of color to the Games before. Not even to an international exhibition, and those don’t count toward rankings. In any case, our national laws aren’t exactly friendly to people like me. If our landlady discovers that Peter and I aren’t fully white, she could evict us just like that and it would be perfectly legal.
Should I tell the senator about my mom?
The question buzzes around in my head like a fly, but I smash it quickly. I might as well say to her thanks but no thanks and that I’d rather stay home than go to the Games. There’s no way the Association would let me represent our country if they caught wind of this.
So I stay quiet and calm my nerves by telling myself that it’s very unlikely that the senator will find out. Her staff would have to do some real digging since my mother died so long ago. She also had a white-sounding name. Clara Lee. Even if the senator’s people came across my mom on some old records, they would probably think that she had light skin like they do.
“Well, will you look at the time?” the senator says, clapping her hands together. “I’ve got a late dinner meeting to get to, and you should get ready. You’ll be taking a red-eye flight to Washington tonight.”
“Wait, tonight? What about school?” I say. It’s the middle of May, so the semester is almost over, but I’ve got an algebra test tomorrow and a social studies project due on Friday.
“My staff will speak with your principal and make sure that you receive an excused absence for the rest of the academic year. We need to fly you out as soon as possible since the other fighters have been getting acclimated and training for well over a week. That’s why we’ve booked you on the next flight out of San Francisco. The ticket has been bought and paid for, and I’ve also arranged for a car to pick you up here at eight o’clock sharp and bring you to the airport. I hope that won’t be a problem.”
It’s a statement, not a question, but the timeline makes me dizzy. My dad doesn’t even know about this yet.
“I can help Jo get packed,” Peter says.
“No need for that, young man. The Association will provide everything that your sister will need. Clothing. Shoes. Toothpaste. They’ll have it covered, but you’re sweet for offering. The only favor that I ask is to please keep this quiet until tomorrow. I’ll be speaking with several reporters tonight, and the announcement will be in the papers come the morning. Until then, I trust that you won’t share this with any of your friends?”
I almost laugh. This will be the easiest promise I ever make. I don’t have time for friends since I’m either training or working or, during rarer moments, doing homework. I suppose she could mean my teammates—all of them male—but they’ve barely tolerated me for years, loathing the fact that I keep showing them up in the pit but begrudgingly grateful that I give us a winning record.
The senator turns to Peter. “I’ll also be sure to reserve a ticket for you and your father at the Parade of Nations in our special VIP section. You can pick them up at will call.”
Peter thanks her, but I get a sinking feeling in my stomach. Unless she throws in a couple plane tickets as well, there’s no way we’ll be able to afford to fly Peter and Dad out. Even a cross-country bus trip would be out of our reach, but I don’t say that. No need to broadcast how bad our finances have become.
“Here’s my office phone number. Be sure to give the operator the special extension so that they can patch you through directly,” she says, handing me a business card. The extension is 1010. Easy enough to memorize. “I’ll see you soon. I’ll be attending the welcome banquet at the Manger Hay-Adams so we’ll chat again then.”
Banquet? Manger Hay-Adams? Is that a town or something? There’s no time to find out the details because she’s at the door and her car is already running outside. We shake hands again, and I make sure to really look her in the eye.
“I don’t know how to thank you for this opportunity, ma’am.”
“Oh, I can think of one way.” She winks. “Bring that title back home where it belongs.”
As soon as her car leaves, Peter and I close the shop for the day, the first time in years that Linden’s Repair shuts its doors early. The two of us book it upstairs. We’ve got about forty minutes before my ride comes to take me to the airport, so I start throwing things into my gym bag since none of us owns a proper suitcase. The Association might provide clothes and toiletries for me, but I feel like I ought to bring something. I’m searching for an extra pair of matching socks when Dad walks through the front door.
He calls out to us, “Mind telling me why the store’s closed and it’s not even seven thirty?” His voice sounds like sandpaper, all rough and grit, and I’m betting that his meeting at the bank must’ve tanked.
“Don’t worry. We’ve got one heck of an excuse,” Peter says to me.
“Do you want to tell him the news, squirt?” I say, watching his eyes light up.
Both of us rush out of the room like excited puppies to meet our father in the cramped little space we call our living room. Dad has already loosened his tie, and his collared shirt looks worn and crumpled, matching his mood. He’s digging through his pockets for a stick of gum when Peter blurts out everything that has happened in the last hour, from the senator’s surprise visit to her even more shocking request. As he listens, Dad’s face shifts from exhaustion into disbelief and finally into a blank look where he can only stare at us.
He stares at me with bewilderment in his eyes. “You mean to tell me that you’re going to the Games?”
I break into a grin. “I’m supposed to leave in ten minutes.”
“You have to sign some papers and Jo still has to finish packing,” Peter says. He’s ticking off a list of things I ought to bring, like floss and soap. “And books! You’ll need something to read on the plane.”
“You better find your sister something, then,” Dad says, but Peter has already hurried back into our shared bedroom to dig through his little library of instruction manuals and technical magazines that he buys used over at the Author’s Attic. When Peter is well out of earshot, Dad crosses his arms and asks softly, “You sure this ain’t a mistake?”
I flinch. That hurts. After all this time, even with my nearly perfect record this past season, he still can’t fathom that I could make Team USA?
“Senator Appleby sought me out actually,” I retort. “She even hired a car to pick me up, so I better get ready.” I try to shoulder past him, but he catches me by the arm.
“I didn’t mean it like that. Don’t get delicate,” Dad says.
How many times have I heard him say that? Don’t complain, Jo. Don’t get delicate. Grit your teeth and get back up again. Those were his stipulations if I wanted him to teach me how to fight in the first place. If I saved up half the money to buy my own Goliath and the parts needed to fix it up, he would loan me the other half and the labor to get it running. I think he figured that I’d give up after a couple weeks, but I was determined, starting my own paper route and doing odd jobs for Mrs. Watters next door and anyone else on the block. Eventually I’d saved enough cash that Dad found me a beat-up Goliath—an ancient 21E model that had been sitting out in a junkyard since ’46. It took another three months to get the thing up and running and fitted for my frame. By then I considered quitt
ing my paper route to spend more time training, but Dad had cracked a rare smile and reminded me that I still needed to cover the cost of the esterium batteries, not to mention the loan I had to repay.
That’s my father for you. He raised Peter and me the only way he knew how. Tough. It was all that he knew himself, growing up as one of five kids on a corn farm in Nebraska. That sort of life was hard, but then came the droughts and the locust swarms and the Dust Bowl that left Dad and his siblings half starving. When he turned fourteen, he hopped on a train and came out west where he nabbed a job working on an assembly line making military-grade Goliaths for the war effort. This was back in 1942, not long after the attack on Pearl Harbor. That was how Dad learned the ins and outs of mechas, which eventually led him to a lucrative side hustle—fighting in illegal matches around the city. He even earned the nickname of Tombstone because he won so many times, and the only reason he stopped was because of two broken vertebrae he got in Korea.
A car beeps outside, and Peter runs to tell us that the driver is here. Dad signs the paperwork while I make a quick circle around my room to gather up anything I might’ve forgotten before we all make a stop next door to tell Mrs. Watters the news. I know that Senator Appleby told us not to spread the word, but she’s almost like family. She gives me a kiss on the cheek and tells me with a wag of her finger, “You flatten the competition, you hear me?”
After that, we head to the curb. The driver tells me that we better hit the road to beat traffic, meaning I have to rush through my goodbyes.
While Peter puts my bag in the trunk, I lower my voice to a whisper and say to Dad, “Tell the landlady that I’ll get her the money.”
He looks taken aback and flushes. “I’ve got that handled.”
“Senator Appleby could put in a good word for us too.”
The Great Destroyers Page 4
