by Ryan Schow
“Not everyone, but a lot of them. Hell, half of them don’t even know. I mean, one might be taking a pill for acne or something, then their acne clears up and they have a high metabolism, or thicker hair, or eyes that are blue when they started out brown. Not everyone gets a complete makeover. Half of these over-privileged cock-eaters started out pretty. So for the good looking ones, it’s just touch ups. Like, that’s all they need. ”
“Why were you made over?”
“Because ugly people don’t make it in this world unless they’re brilliant, which I’m most certainly not. But my father is extremely wealthy and extremely powerful. Just like yours. Just like all the parents of the luckless children like us.”
“And your brother, too?”
Sabrina nodded, smiling the most disarming smile. She’s like a freaking supermodel, is what Georgia was thinking.
“Well,” Georgia replied, “you’re most definitely beautiful now.”
“Is that why you burned me?”
“I didn’t burn you.” There was no logical reason to continue the lie, but she did anyway.
“Yes, you did,” Sabrina said, lower, making a slightly irritated look, like a half grin that might soon be the start of an accusation, and a subtle tilt of her head. It was her disappointment mixed with disbelief, charged with the slightest onset of a bitch fit. “For shit’s sake, Georgia, I can smell you. Not your perfume, or your hairspray, not even the claylike scent of foundation. What I smell on you,” she said, leaning into Georgia a little too closely, “is the burning smell of embers, the vaguely cooked flesh of you.”
“It wasn’t you,” Georgia finally admitted. “I mean, I didn’t do it on purpose. It’s just—”
“It’s what?” Sabrina said, narrowing her eyes.
“I was heating up and you wouldn’t stop staring, so you caught a little bit of burn off.”
The minute she admitted what she’d done, Georgia felt better. Like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. When Sabrina hauled off and smacked the absolute shit out of her face, that feeling blew away.
“If you ever do that again,” Sabrina warned in a sort of deranged fifties-style housewife manner before pausing and making her own malicious eyes, “don’t do that again.” Instead of leaving right away, Sabrina hovered inches from Georgia’s face, just long enough for Georgia to memorize the coils and spires and electric chaos sitting like iced charcoal in Sabrina’s eyes, long enough to know she, too, was something else. Then the actress turned and stormed off.
Georgia didn’t understand what just happened, how someone who seemed so normal and nice could flip personalities on a dime. Even worse, that wench now knew her secret. Georgia prayed to Christ the satanic TV glam queen didn’t have a big mouth.
Watching Sabrina walk off, Georgia almost roasted the girl. The stingers pushed slowly out of her palms, plentiful and lethal, but she refused to overreact. The threat was diminished. For now. The heat inside her, however, stewed to a boil.
Eat it down, she told herself. Stay calm.
Only when she reminded herself there was nothing she couldn’t do to protect herself or her secret—if it came to that—did the heat inside start to fizzle out.
Dreams Yet To Be Dreamt
1
The first thing I do after getting Sensei Naygel to take me back is move out of my swanky hotel into something more economical. The Hilton doesn’t seem that bad, I guess. My room has a view of the bay, which I tell myself is a water feature. Silver linings, I guess. The truth is, you are only a millionaire until you’re not, so what I have to do is be smart with my money.
I spend the better part of my time in the dojo training with Sensei Naygel. In the early mornings, he guides me through the art of transcendental meditation. When I’m not meditating, I’m training in martial arts, sleeping, and eating nothing but protein and steamed veggies.
To my new regimen of training, my body responds like a machine. Sensei says most of the students are inspired by me.
“If only they knew,” I’d say.
Netty, however, refuses to talk to me. I don’t push her. This fact hasn’t escaped Sensei, who knew we were BFF’s when I was Abby.
“You won’t tell her?” Sensei asks.
“No. To her, Abby is alive and in school.”
When we are in class, Sensei has me spar with my rank, which is now orange belt based on my ability to properly demonstrate my kata. It takes everything in me to spar at a level so far beneath my skillset it’s laughable. Sensei says this is good for me, working on restraint. Putting effort into humility.
“Ego is the death of self,” he once said. I’ve been working on shedding my ego for what seems like weeks now. It’s much harder than you think.
Tonight I test for my purple belt. Sensei has me demonstrate my kata before the school. It’s flawless. He then looks at me and says my two favorite words in the whole world: “Gear up.”
Hand and feet gear go on, mouth guard goes in. No headgear. We don’t punch full force to the head. Only a full speed “tap.” Distance and control are two things I’m learning.
“If you can control your punch at full speed, then you can control your temper when it’s hottest.” One of Sensei’s little sayings to keep me from killing someone.
So sweet of him.
The way we test physically is to fight the entire school all the way up the ranks. At the rank I’m testing for, it’s fifteen minutes. Which is nothing to me. There are thirty-five students in class. I fight through all of them inside of twenty minutes. I’m checking the clock, checking Sensei, still going.
Okay…
I’m cycling through the white belts again, sweating, but barely. Then I roll through the yellow belts and orange belts. When it comes to purple belts, including Netty—who still won’t engage in anything other than heartless pleasantries, and few at that—I see Sensei whispering in her ear. She nods. I get kicked in the stomach and cracked in the ribs for my lack of focus. Not that it matters. When it’s Netty’s turn, she comes in with a new look on her face.
This is determination. She comes at me fast and hard. Crawling her mind, I can see how much she wants to hurt me and I don’t understand why. I’m too pretty. Too perfect. Everything comes easy to me. That’s what she’s thinking.
Walk a day in my shoes, Netty, I’m thinking.
She kicks me centimeters to the right of my chin with the ball of her foot, sending pain sparking up my leg, then she rolls in hard for a shot to the solar plexus, and right when I go to block it, she drills me with everything she has on the chin. I see stars for a second. It’s the second punch right to my nose that has me wondering how much she’s enjoying this.
It keeps coming.
The world shrinks in. My heart pulses like a rushing river in my ears. Anger flares. I push her, not with my mind, but with my hands. She keeps at me. Looking at Sensei, his eyes are hard, firm, giving nothing away.
Netty pushes in fast, I step sideways, punch her in the ribs.
She shakes it off, spins around. Hands go up, her Russian temper ignites. Along the side of her head, the blonde hair is cut super short, like a boy’s cut. The rest is longer and cute. My love for her swells as she drives in on me with her hatred. My mind crawls hers, involuntarily, a defense mechanism. That’s when I find her weakness, and her insecurity. It’s there in her belly, growing, and she refuses to name it.
This stops me. Astounds me. I just look at her as she drives her angry little fist right into my nose once more. I stagger backwards as she works her rage, her pain and her hurt out on my body. I let her, making almost no attempt to defend myself because she needs this. The startled expressions of the students concern me.
Two more shots to the face, wobbling me. My legs go all soft and weak; I sink to a knee. A nice person would ask if I was okay. This little firecracker drives her bony knee right into my chest, rattling my entire ribcage. It’s okay.
I can take it.
My eyes find Sensei’s eyes.
They’re cold rocks against this violence. He knows exactly what I’m doing.
“Turn your heads,” he barks. Everyone turns their head, refusing to look at the massacre being delivered to me. Netty stops, hands hanging limp at her side. Sweat rains like tears from her pores and her breath is coming fast. I’m on my knees before her, hemorrhaging out of my face. Already wounds are closing up.
“Get up and fight, Raven,” Sensei barks, “or you will fail this test.” I stand up. Netty looks back to Sensei. He nods his head at her. She comes after me again. My hands go up, blocking her punches. My mind flows into hers, wandering down pathways, pouring through memories. The hurt in her is colossal. Makes me want to cry.
I let her hit me. No one’s watching anymore, so it doesn’t matter that I put my hands down and just let her sock me everywhere. She winds up, throws a vicious kick at my head. My lips split, bleed, then sew themselves back up.
“Fight back!” Sensei barks.
I don’t.
With my bare hands, using none of my supernatural skills at all, I could cut her in half and stop this fight inside seconds. My fists go up, but they’re props. Netty’s fists plow through. I let them. Her feet get through. I let them through, too. She pummels me until she can’t even throw a punch.
And then it’s over.
I’m still standing. Bleeding with a cracked sideways nose, but standing. Sensei walks over to me, puts my nose between his thumbs and adjusts it back into place.
“I’m proud of you,” he whispers into my ear.
I nod, knowing exactly why. I could end her, and he knew it, but I didn’t because Netty needed this more than I needed to win, or earn rank.
People turn and look at me as Netty breaks into tears. Sensei gives a subtle nod toward the bathroom. She walks to the edge of the floor, eyes draining on her rosy cheeks, bows, then heads into the bathroom where everyone can hear her puking from overexertion. It’s not easy to beat a person down. That kind of adrenaline rush hits everyone in different ways.
“Get her fluids,” Sensei says aloud to no one, looking so deep in my eyes I would swear he was checking my soul for signs of wear. Two students fetch me a Gatorade, a bottle of water and a wet towel for my head and neck.
Still boring into me with his eyes, with his impossible will, loud enough for only my ears to hear, he says, “You barely even hit her.”
Just as quiet, I say, “Because there is a little girl inside her belly and I didn’t want to hurt it. Or her.”
He pulls back, stilled by the news. Turning his head, he looks to the bathroom and points to one of the students saying, “Netty needs water, too.” My mind subconsciously crawls the aura around Sensei deep enough to feel his overwhelming sense of remorse.
“Don’t feel bad,” I say. “You couldn’t have known.” Then: “You’re still a great Sensei. It was the right thing to do and you know it.”
He looks back to me and just like that, I can’t read his eyes. I try to crawl his mind, but all I feel are Zen moments. The things I think about when I am meditating.
“Not fair,” I say.
“Stay out of my head,” he warns.
When Netty is back, she looks green in the face, but presentable. Everyone lines up in a ceremony line. Sensei opens his hand, motions for me to kneel before him. I drop to my knees, lower my butt to my heels, put my hands on my waist and sit as straight as possible. The blood was wiped from my face, two twisted pieces of toilet paper screwed up each nostril to stem the bleeding wound that no longer bled and was no longer a wound.
I go through the promotional ceremony, and Sensei presents me with a purple belt. I put it on with pride. When I stand, it is as a new rank. I turn to the class, bow, then turn to Netty in a show of respect and bow just a little longer.
She bows.
Then, at the end of class, she leaves without saying good-bye. When everyone is gone, I turn to Sensei and say, “She hates me.”
“I know,” he says.
“I’m going home,” I tell him.
“Home to the hotel, or home home?
“Back to Astor.”
For a long time, we stand and look at each other. Then: “If you agree,” he says, “I would like to fight you before you go.”
2
The laugh that bursts out of my mouth surprises us both. “You want to fight me, Sensei?” I ask. “Really?”
“Yes.”
He is perfectly serious.
“You’ll win,” I tell him. “It won’t even be a fair fight,” I reason.
“Then fight me your way.”
I look at him and can’t stop the nervous grin plowing its way onto my face. The dojo is now empty, everyone gone. My fingers drag the nostril tampons out of my nose, toss them off the mat. “Gear?” I ask.
“No.”
He raises his hands. My hands lift as well. He adjusts his footing; I adjust mine. Then he attacks. I try to fight him without my talents. Inside of seconds, his foot fires like a bullet at my face, cracking me in the head so hard and fast, it’s lights out. When I wake up, he is choking me.
Out I go again. And again, and again.
The second I wake back up like the fourth or fifth time, I push him with my mind and the telepathic punch to his chest is weak. He looks down, his gi top blown slightly open. The first time I get to use my powers on him and it’s the equivalent of a sneeze.
“That’s it?” he asks. I can feel the waves of solid, sharp energy pushing off him. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.
This is the real sensei, I tell myself.
Through sheer survival instinct alone, I get to my feet, blister at the pain of my fractured skull healing. Half my face is like a hot iron was smashed against it. Breathe deep, I tell myself. In through the nose—
Sensei times his attacking to me inhaling. My mind pushes him and this time what hits him is no sneeze. The telekinetic punch caves his chest, stopping him. Folded into a human C, his eyes bulge. Snot and saliva leave his face. Veins bulge in his forehead. Chords tighten in his neck.
With all the power I can muster, I kick him in his protective cup with the ball of my best foot. The gunfire-like snap is the sound of his cup breaking in half. After the cracked skull and repeated choking, I don’t even feel bad about maybe destroying his nuts.
Sensei drops to his knees, but the minute he falls, my hand is out and lifting him up. Not physically. Mentally. I’ve already made a connection with him, with the space around him, with the universe in a way no human being could.
The paralayers. My Bluetooth connection.
Sensei Naygel levitates into the air a good three feet off the floor, my invisible hands holding him up by his throat. He’s clawing at his skin like my are hands there. There aren’t. Manic lines of red drawn from the nails of desperate fingers rake his skin. They start to bead with red dots of blood. My psychic grip is so tight he can’t even choke out loud.
“I can snap your neck just by thinking it,” I say as the world folds into morbid greys. My voice has a deep, ragged quality to it. “Or I can stop your heart. However I want to kill you, you will die.” His eyelids start to flutter. His hands fall limp at his side. The fight has forsaken him as his face turns purple.
“Let him down!” the voice booms.
I turn and he drops to the mat.
Netty.
“What the hell are you?” she says, shaking. Except she doesn’t say hell as much as she power drops the f-bomb.
“This doesn’t concern you, Netty.”
Sensei is coughing, fighting for breath, looking at me with beaten, liquid eyes. He stands, barely on unsteady legs. When he is on his feet, he bows to me. I bow to him. The fight is over, and I’ve won. But only because I can’t die.
“What are you?” Netty asks again.
“For the last month I’ve wanted to talk to you, to be your friend,” I hear myself saying as the dark shadows empty from my eyes. “Even though you hate me for the way I look, for how easy you think things
come to me, I’ve wanted to be friends with you—”
“Why?”
The gravitational pull turns my entire body to her. She takes a step back, fear working its way through her expressions, in spite of her attempts to conceal them. In that moment, every last ounce of rejection I suffered from her—all the pain and hurt that came from her mind and made a home in my body—it becomes a tidal wave of grief inside me. My body nearly breaks in two. I can’t stop the tears from forming in my eyes, but instead of speaking in rough, gravely tones, the next words I say bear the anguish of a thousand wasted lives. “I have wanted to be friends with you because she was.”
“Who?” Netty asks, breathless.
“Abby.”
3
Whatever strength Netty had, whatever resolve remained in her, it just went. Propped up on anger, fortified by the need to punish herself and others, she was someone. Now, with all that gone, she was just a girl dissolving. I go to her. Take her trembling into my arms.
“It’s okay, Netty. You didn’t hurt me. I’m like Abby.”
“Why, though?” she asks, sobbing, her face practically pressed into my blood-stained gi top. “Why did you come to me? Why did you let me hurt you?”
“Because you needed all that emotion out of you. All that emotion, all that animosity, it’s not healthy for the baby.”
She let go of me, stood back with startled eyes, like I was first friend, then enemy. Her eyes darted from me to Sensei, then back again.
“Does he know?” I ask.
“Who?” Netty says, quiet as a mouse, but angry that I know.
“Brayden.”
“How can…how can you know that?” she asks. I go from friend to enemy to…who the hell knows what now? Netty’s emotions run their course. Everything is white noise now.
Behind me, I feel Sensei’s mind releasing the struggle. Giving up his body. I turn and he is in lotus position, eyes closed, meditating. There is a small flower of blood on the upper thigh of his gi pants where the cup broke and most likely cut open his leg. On his neck, bruises rise in bluish-black hues. He’s uninjured, I tell myself. Just leaving his body and his pain behind for a few moments. The same way he taught me.
