Most of the time, she could push that thought away. When she couldn’t, it made her want to not be alive anymore. To stop eating, the way she’d considered on the boat.
But by the morning, the horror would have receded, and she would find a way to eat breakfast. She’d been a coward about so many things. To stop eating, to make herself die, when Nason might still need her would be beyond cowardice. It would be a crime.
She held on to jiu-jitsu like a drowning person clutching a life raft. She and Sean trained harder in the summer-four hours instead of two, and sometimes longer. Livia would go to his house after lunch, where they practiced together until Malcolm came home, and then they would train with him until it was nearly dark. Sometimes Malcolm asked if she wanted to stay for dinner. She did want to-very much-but she also knew Mr. Lone wouldn’t like it. So she told them the Lones liked her to be home for dinner, and Malcolm didn’t press.
Sometimes while Livia and Sean did drills, Malcolm punched and kicked the various leather bags, including a smaller one shaped like a teardrop that he punched really fast. Livia told Malcolm she wanted to learn those things, too. He showed her how to generate power, and how to hit with her elbows and knees because they were smaller and harder than hands and feet and could do more damage with less risk of injury. Livia overdid it at first, turning her skin raw and bloody. But the raw spots healed and then covered over with callouses, just as her fingers had from gripping and twisting the heavy cotton gi, and soon she could hit as long and hard as she wanted.
By the end of the summer, Livia could consistently beat Sean in free training. The first time it happened, Sean had been uncharacteristically sullen afterward. But maybe Malcolm had talked to him, because after that he was always gracious when she won. Sean was stronger, but Livia had become more technical-and, as Malcolm had frequently assured them both, sufficiently good technique could overcome strength.
“But if you want to keep getting better,” he told them, “you have to start mixing it up with new opponents. I think this fall, you should both go out for the wrestling team. It’ll be different than jiu-jitsu, but that’s a good thing.”
Livia was doubtful. “But… are there girls on the team?”
Malcolm shrugged. “Not that I know of. But that doesn’t mean they’re against the rules, right?”
Livia nodded. The idea made her nervous. Jiu-jitsu was so private. It was just the three of them, in Sean’s and Malcolm’s garage. If she wrestled, there would be a whole team. Matches. Audiences. People would notice her. And she didn’t want to be noticed. It was safer not to be.
“Livia, you’d be a hundred-and-one-pounder,” Malcolm went on. “And Sean, you’d be at a hundred-and-eight. You’d have to learn takedowns, different rules, new habits. But I could teach you the basics. I think even as freshmen, you could both make the high school team. Experience in wrestling would make your jiu-jitsu stronger.”
That was all Livia needed to hear.
31-THEN
Malcolm was right: even though they were only freshmen, Livia and Sean both made the wrestling team. Sean was good, but Livia was better-undefeated at 101 pounds in the regular season, losing only to a stronger and more experienced senior in the semifinals of the state tournament, and placing third in the state overall. People stopped making fun of her, and somehow even the word “Lahu,” which the bullies had originally used to taunt her, became a kind of trademark, with the Llewellyn fans in the bleachers chanting, “La-hoo! La-hoo!” to cheer Livia on when she took the mat.
Her growing popularity was unsettling. She was still shy. She was still afraid that no matter what she had, it could all be taken away in a sudden, horrible instant. And the secret of what she had been forced to do on the boat on the way to Portland, and what Mr. Lone was still making her do in his own house, made her feel ashamed and apart. She knew no one would understand it. And if anyone ever found out, they would treat her like something diseased and polluted. And the really horrible part was, she knew they would be right. She was polluted. Tainted. And worse, a failure, a fraud, for not having protected Nason, and even more for having incited Skull Face and his men into hurting Nason so badly that her little bird’s mind had just… flown away. The only way she could live with how loathsome she sometimes felt was to wall it all off and focus on school, jiu-jitsu, and wrestling. But if anyone ever learned the truth, that wall would crumble. And she could never, ever let that happen.
Most boys seemed intimidated by the wrestling-by a girl who regularly beat boys on the mat. But some didn’t seem to mind, and began to ask her out on dates. She always told them she was too busy. Sometimes they asked if she was Sean’s girlfriend. His stutter had faded away, like something he had outgrown, and nobody made fun of him anymore. She would tell them no, that wasn’t it, she and Sean were just friends and training partners. Which was true. Although sometimes she would catch Sean looking at her in a way that made her wonder. The rude ones asked if she was “maybe into chicks.” She didn’t think she was. She wasn’t into anyone. What she knew of sex was painful and humiliating and disgusting. She didn’t know why people were so fascinated by it. The only thing she wanted more than for Mr. Lone to stop was to find Nason. She would have been happy to never go near sex for the rest of her life.
She was unbeaten again in the regular season of her sophomore year. There were articles about her in the newspaper, describing her as a “phenomenon.” Reporters interviewed her at practice, always making sure to note how wonderful it was that the Lones had taken her in, and asking if she attributed at least some of her success to Mr. Lone’s hardworking example. She said as little as possible, afraid of causing a problem if she were to say the wrong thing.
Mr. Lone sometimes came to her matches. She wished he wouldn’t. It was disgusting to have him watching her do something she loved so much. And although she had grown increasingly confident that he would never see her as anything but a helpless little girl, she didn’t think it was a good idea for him to watch her beating boys, even if they were just teenagers her own size and not tall, full-grown men like him.
In fact, not only did he seem unconcerned about her wrestling prowess, he seemed to take pleasure in it. And why not? People were eager to attribute her success to him. In one of her classes, they had learned the story of the Greek King Midas, who turned everything he touched to gold. Even though the story was about a curse, not a blessing, she thought that was how Mr. Lone liked to be perceived, as someone who turned everything to gold. His businesses; his money; and now, his wrestling phenomenon, straight-A, adopted Lahu girl. It was galling to have him bask in her reflected glory, but she refused to dwell on it, ignoring him as much as possible when she saw him in the stands. She had gotten good at feeling as little as possible when he did the bathroom thing, and it was easy to do so elsewhere, too.
Livia and Sean were the only Llewellyn wrestlers to make it to the states that year-Livia at 108, Sean at 122. Sean placed fourth. Livia finished second, pinned in the third round of the finals, the loss again to a senior. When Livia walked off the mat, furious at herself and near tears not just for losing, but at the horror of having been pinned, there was a cluster of reporters waiting to talk to her. She took a deep breath to pull herself together.
When the reporters and well-wishers were gone and the next match was underway, she walked to the corner of the gym, where she started stretching to warm down. She had seen Mr. Lone in the stands, but he rarely came over to talk to her at matches, having learned that she would ignore him. Malcolm had driven her and Sean to the tournament, and she saw them approaching now.