WITH MY ANXIETY at an all-time high on this, the day of the Arena fight especially, it made my mood no better when Vanessa took my usual lunch seat between Kaven and Casey, Taven sitting in his wheelchair at the head next to his brother. Dré prefers me next to him rather than her, but I’m quite peeved.
Kaven’s discomfort is obvious as Vanessa stares passionately at him. This isn’t anything new, but I’m sure it’s something Kaven could have continued to not be reminded of as his olive skin tints pink.
Last year, long before She became obsessed with my brother, Vanessa and I dated. Yes, briefly and it meant really nothing to me. She’d asked me out and in order to show a sense of normality, I said yes. Eventually I had to break up with her, it devastated her, but that’s when I ended up telling her my secret. She asked if we could still be friends. Her and Casey were already super close so I said yes again.
For a while, she was great, then she asked who I liked. I told her Kaven. Besides Taven he was the first to come to mind and I wasn’t going to say the latter. I definitely didn’t want to tell her Gareth (yet) and I absolutely wasn’t going to tell her… the other one. Soon after, though, she began latching onto Kaven much like she does Dré. The twins would have crushed her if I’d said either of them.
“Vanessa, switch me seats!” I voice finally from the other side of Casey.
“No!” she and Dré spout at the same time.
She continues touching Kaven’s arm, who winces a little. He pulls away, but she starts in again. He’s way too nice of a person to tell her to stop.
“Nessa, give the man his spot, he’s been waiting for it all summer,” Taven says to my surprise, bringing a small smile to my face. “We want to talk to him about the fight.”
A long sigh exits my mouth, of course that’s what he wants to ask about. Dré had already tried to rat me out to Mom the other day but by the time we’d made it home the school had already called her. She was already sitting on the couch waiting for me to sit across from her and talk to her about the whole ordeal. Not to mention the angry conversation on the way to school, she insisted Dré call Gareth and tell him not to pick us up so he could run to school and Mom could repeatedly assure me that she’s going to be at that fight.
Her warning still rings in my ears. “And if you lose, Samael Judd, I’m pulling you out of basketball and photography and you’ll be a full time Fragment Fighter.”
“Just move!” Taven insists again. “I don’t care where you go, can’t you give my brother a break?”
Kaven is looking down at the floor tightly hugging himself. She angrily gives in and stands, stomping her way behind me.
“Move you baby back bitch,” she spews.
“Goddammit Sam! Couldn’t you just sit next to your brother for once?” Dré complains.
I jump up, happy to get my spot back. It doesn’t look like Vanessa has any intention of bothering Dré. As I sit, a pale manicured red hand is laid on my shoulder. “Calm down Judd II, she was only enjoying the company of a boy she likes,” Gabriella says.
What the…?
Gabriella defending Vanessa? That’s nothing I would have ever thought I’d see. I give them both the side eye as Gabriella takes Dré’s seat between Vanessa and Gareth while he sits on the other side of Gareth. From what I remember, Vanessa and Gabriella hate each other, but deciding it’s not worth my time, I choose to ignore it.
I have more important things to worry about. I put an ear-bud in, Casey of course takes the other. Some Manson sounds good right now.
Casey unabashedly chants the intro to Irresponsible Hate Anthem. The whole table is looking at him: the basket-ballers, the cheerleaders, Raneé as she sits across from me with her tray, giving me her mozzarella sticks.
“Here you go, Dos, your cheese dicks.” Kaven says as he and his brother also give me their least favorite school lunch item. As long as I continue to give them those gross cardboard pizzas on those days. “Welcome home, buddy.” He quickly side-hugs me.
“So, are you excited?” Taven asks.
“I’m nervous, those Shadow-Fragments are brutal.” My anxiety is too apparent to lie.
“What about that Patrick dude?” Kaven questions. “Why is he fighting? Are we sure he’s not a Blank?”
“He’s not.” Raneé laughs. “He’s just a little shy. He was hanging out with me when I offered to help Casey find Sam and Vanessa, we found Sam fist fighting Arkayd first.”
“Damn, bro.” Taven and Kaven as well as Jake and James next to Raneé all say in unison, hold their hands up to low-five me.
“Wouldn’t it make more sense for you to fight, Cas’?” James butts in.
“Casey’s a pacifist now.” I laugh along with the rest of the table.
“Hey, I’ve been training you, haven’t I?” Casey almost choked his milk out into my energy drink. “I’ve done my part.”
Casey and I continue to play up my frustration in front of everyone else. I shake my head when he winks at me, thankfully, nobody else notices. I wonder why he feels the need to do it in the first place. We’ve confirmed that Casey’s agrokinesis can reach for about as long as the football field, that’s all we needed to know.
“My girl Raneé is going to carry you both.” Gabriella laughs.
“Got that right!” Jake agrees as he and Raneé hug each other.
“Come on guys, these guys’ll do great.”
Yeah, if Pat doesn’t give up in the first few minutes. I try to push my nerves down with mozzarella sticks and energy drink. It works for a little while. That is until the end-of-lunch bell rings. I pile the rest in and trash my tray and crushed empty can as the whole cafeteria becomes busy with my peers rushing to their afternoon Fragment classes.
Praise and luck is thrown my way as I as everyone leaves. Alright, so the entire school knows and since after school classes aren’t mandatory today, I’m sure they’ll all be attending the fight.
Great.
* * *
By the time sixth period Aura Theory comes around my nerves are overwhelming me. The thought of skipping had crossed my mind, but I do want to be on the basketball team this year. This has to work. Unfortunately, I have a lot of attention on me right now: Coach, the whole team. Even scarier, Mom.
I gulp at the thought of her staring down at me from the audience. Please don’t sit next to her, Casey, please!
Gabriella’s right, if anything, Raneé’s got this in the bag. My anxiety subsides when I gradually remember that Raneé has trained in combat harder than anyone here. Gareth told me her grandpa trains her and that he’s a master martial artist. Raneé says that’s most of her family, but the only relative anyone really knows about is her grandfather.
I look up at the clock from my desk as I habitually tap my pencil back and forth, waiting for class to be over. Fifteen minutes until the bell. I look down at the narrow window in the door and I can already see Casey’s face squeezed up against it. I can only guess the rest of the class sees him too as laughter erupts among them. Poor, confused Coach. He tries to settle down the class but it doesn’t work.
“Chaperone’s here, Judd.” A female peer continues laughing.
Brown gives up and releases us early. A crowd tries to follow Casey and I but he successfully avoids them as he sneaks me off into a dark, unkempt stairwell at the back end of the school. The one no one will go in because it’s “haunted.” Something super dark apparently happened here years ago. I haven’t been able to figure out what, some even more vague rumors. But no one comes in here, so pretty often, Casey, Vanessa and I actually chill here.
“You ready for this?” Casey sits he and myself down crisscross, our knees touching as he locks eyes with me through a lowered gaze. “We got this, the plan is bulletproof!”
“Vine manipulation, nothing big. Just remember your own idea Casey, no improvising!” I remind him. “Keep it simple, it’s gotta be convincing, my mom is in there, remember.”
“Most attention will be on Patrick, though.” Casey assures me. “Besides a few, most are curious if he’ll show off his powers, aren’t you curious?”
I shrug. “Not what I’ll be focused on, he just better do his part.”
He pats my shoulder and stands me up, then shaking my hand firmly with the other hand. “We got this.”
The walk to the gym feels like a long death march, a rope waiting for me at the end. People turn and stare from their lockers as Casey and I strut shoulder-to-shoulder with an air of confidence. We speed down the stairs and through the gym doors, the fastest way to the Arena.
I suddenly feel my hat being jerked off my head, snapping my loose coal-black curls out of their thin rubber band. My brother appears in front of us with a shit-eating grin, hat in hand. Dré speeds through the doors toward the Arena after telling me Mom has already taken her seat.
He examines my hat. “What’s with the Jew star on the inside?”
“It’s called the Star of David.” I shake my head, “It’s so I know it’s mine.” I lie, it was sewn in long before I owned it.
“Well, I dunno who David is, but see ya later, li’l bro.” He waves before speeding through the doors straight to the Arena.
“Goddammit!” I fall to my knees on the stone foot-race track with my face buried in my palms and my temples painfully pulsing. “I don’t know if I can do this!”
Casey lowers to my level for aid “Yes, you can!” He tries to encourage me. “It’s just a hat, Sam. Breath.”
“It’s my lucky hat, though.” I’ve been through a lot in the amount of time I’ve had that hat. “What if I die?”
“You won’t.” He laughs. “Not with those Fragment blaster suits on.” Casey helps me back up. “Those things can absorb grenade damage.” He flexes for… some reason, including the arm around my shoulder.
I inhale heavily and look into his bright green eyes. “It’s just a hat.” I repeat. “I can do this.”
Still, that hat is practically my signifier. It’s the only thing of my dad’s that Mom forgot to throw away. I found it one day in the boxes snooping around in our attic along with an old picture of him and Mom. I begged her to let me keep the hat, it took a long time, but she’d given in. I never told her about the picture, she definitely wouldn’t have let me keep it.
I pull my hair into my hood as we proceed along the two-mile track that encircles the basketball courts downstairs. Through the double doors at the back of the gym is when we’re stopped once again.
“Hey, Sam!” Holy— “I knew we could count on you not to back out.” Taven punches my shoulder gently. “You ready for my pep talk?”
Casey winks and runs ahead. “See you in there, bud.”
“Wait, I…” But I’m too late. “I wanted you to hold my bag.”
Taven continues to roll alongside me across the grassy field between the school and the Arena. “I know you can do this, man,” he starts, “I would have trained you in some fire, but I just don’t have the time.”
“Understandable.”
“But at least Casey helped you out. Hopefully he can do the same against James if you lose, which you won’t!”
“What do you mean?” I question, my nerves returning.
“Oh, nothing, nothing. You got this!”
“That doesn’t help anything, Taven.” I laugh “My nerves are shot without my lucky hat.”
“Lucky hat, huh?” He adorns a ponderous look with a smile. “This did seem like a new look for you.” He reaches up to pull me down, pushing my hood away while putting his own ski hat on my head. “You know, this is a lucky hat for me, too,” he tells me. “Maybe some of its luck will rub off on you during the fight. You could borrow it.”
I’m not sure what I hate about these hats more. It can’t be the ear flaps, I’m sure they’re rather warm in colder climates. It could be the stupid ball at the end. Either way, these hats look so dumb on me.
“Oh, no no no!” I wave my hands trying to hand him back his hat. “I couldn’t impose like that.”
I feel like he’s making fun of me when he starts laughing. “It’s no imposition at all, Judd,” he assures me, pulling me back down to his level and fitting it back onto my head. “This is my way of wishing you luck.”
I stare into his glistening hazel eyes that match mine, green on the inside with a brown ring around it as we continue forward. They peer into my soul and I’m frozen as he looks on.
“You and I have just about the same eyes.” He notices too with a chuckle. “It’s like looking into a mirror except you’re black and I’m Filipino.”
“Half, I’m biracial.” I shrug, I don’t like to discount my dad even though I have no clue of who he is except that picture and the Star of David in my hat.
“Me too.” He smiles.
Heat wells up in my cheeks. I notice that his hair is as black as mine, too as he brushes his bangs aside. Then I look up when I realize the great Arena doors are before us, the golden ram above them staring menacingly back down at me.
“Well, good luck, man.” Taven starts forward through the doors.
“Wait!” I stop him just in time. “Would you hold my bag?” I hand it to him as he puts it in his lap. “My camera is in there too, would you mind snapping some pictures of the fight? I’ll credit you as the photographer, of course.”
“I’d be glad to!” Taven enthusiastically complies. “I promise I’ll be careful with it.”
We both look back to see the ruckus of Raneé dragging Patrick. Pat’s veins pulsate through his beat red face as he practically claws at the ground like a terrified animal. Raneé’s unseen muscle overpowers him, trying to regain control of his arm. They pass right by us without noticing us.
“She’s cute…” Taven comments. “She shouldn’t be fighting.” Psssh, Fragment Fighting is her favorite pastime.
“Yeah…” I look forward through the entrance only feet away. “I should go.”
Popular opinion is that Raneé and her bubbly personality is adorable or whatever. I can’t say a small amount of jealousy doesn’t well up inside of me anytime a guy is like “hook me up, Sam.” Then again, if he were to date anyone, even a friend of mine, I like to think I’d get over it. Well… less quickly with Taven than anyone else… with the one other exception. Raneé wasn’t always such a light. I like to think it was something I said that turned her around.
“I should go get ready, Taven.” I walk away looking in his direction.
He waves at me. “Alright, see you on the other side, I’ll be front and center.” Great. “Take care of my hat!”
“Oh, I will.” I mess with the strings on the ends of the earflaps uncomfortably. “Take care of my camera!”
I stand in the thirty-foot doorway of the Arena clueless of where to go and wondering why there are so many windows in an Arena for Fragment Fights. Then again, any glass on the Arena and school for that matter is bullet proof and Aura proof, meaning indestructible to anything other than Tier 6 Fragment-Abilities. The title of Cosmos is a hard feat to reach though. The average Fragment is expected to be a Star, Tier 4 by the end of High School. Overachievers can reach Comet, Tier 5, especially at Aries High, which is the required minimum for the Fragment military.
I look left, then right. To both sides of me are the stairs to the seating areas. How did Taven even get up there?
Raneé comes out of a corridor (apparently invisible to me) to the side of one set of stairs. “I was just coming to look for you!” She skips over to me, linking her arm with mine. “Are you ready to get ready?” She laughs at her own odd wording.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.” I shake my head.
“Awesome! Let’s go then!” She hops ahead, pulling me along like a ragdoll into what she says is the dressing room.
The room is almost as bad as the stairwell and dimly lit with flickering red and blue neon. “Is Coach here yet? Where’s Pat?” I ask nervously, taking Taven’s hat off and fidgeting with the black ball on top.
“He’s in the other room fitting Pat into a blast-suit.” She looks up at my hair. “I really like your hair, I’ve never seen it before.” She follows a curl with her finger, eventually intertwining them. “It’s surprisingly soft for always being in a beanie all day.” I put the hat back on. “Where is your hat? That’s Taven’s, isn’t it?”
“It’s a long story.” It’s not, anxiety has stolen any motivation I had to do anything but be under a hat and shake in my shoes.
A door opens on the other side of the room and two dark figures approach us. “I feel very uncomfortable in this ensemble, Coach Brown.” Patrick’s complain-y voice sounds.
“Suck it up, Buttercup!” Coach harshly pats Patrick on the back making him startle forward. “This ‘ensemble’ will protect you from dying, kid.”
It looks like Patrick’s usual getup, a dingy black hoodie over a brown sweater vest and interesting colored skinny jeans, today green—well, black now, the rest also remixed in black with white glowing lines throughout the design and the Aries Ram on his back and the left part of his chest.
Coach straps a matching helmet to Pat’s head, also handing Raneé a small circular device. “You know the deal, Miss Leonhardt.” Moving onto me next. “Get over here, Judd.”
I hesitate toward him as he takes my shoulder and presses the same circular device to my chest. The Aries Ram glows with the same white neon decorating the center. The lines follow down the shape of my body and on the already existing pattern on my sleeveless hooded shirt and jeans, even creating a glowing Aries Ram on my back, finally making the rest of my outfit black. Taven’s hat even inverts, being mainly black instead of white, with the white neon replacing the outlines and diamond shapes on it instead of their usual black. The yarn ball on the top turns into a solid white ball as the braided yarn on the earflaps become thick white chains.
“Whoa!” I have no other words. “Not very protective without sleeves, eh?” I nervously chuckle.
“I’m glad you both already have hats, as strange as they are.” Coach ignores me looking between Raneé and I. “Isn’t that Trulove’s hat?” his eyes narrow in on me. “Doesn’t matter, your hats become your helmets and your strange looking sunglasses are now protective goggles, choose to wear them or not.”
I take my aviators from hanging off my shirt to analyze them. “Um, so wearing them!” That was a little unintentionally gay of me.
“Blue, purple, red, or yellow?” Coach asks. “Or default white.”
“I vote blue.” I answer quickly, raising an eyebrow high.
“Blue.” Raneé agrees.
Pat nods weakly in confirmation. “You guys are team one, when this door opens, the three of you will step out into the Arena. When you step into a spotlight, the white part of your protective suits will become your team color… I’ll explain more outside. I gotta go help them Shadow-Fragments now.” Coach Brown rolls his eyes. “Them kids gimme the creeps.”
Right as Coach exits the room, Raneé unexpectedly punches me dead in the chest. It startles me more than it hurts, but I still fall flat on my behind. This concrete definitely needs to be replaced, I feel like I lost my virginity to the floor.
“Did that hurt?” Raneé asks sternly.
“The punch or falling back?” I ask with irritated sarcasm. Raneé looks at me seriously waiting for an answer. “No, neither particularly hurt. But it scared me! A little warning next time?” I grumble.
“You think they’re going to warn you?” Raneé points to the door. “At least it’s working correctly.” Her bubbly demeanor returns.
Raneé does the same to Patrick. Asking him the same thing, getting the same answer, giving the same response.
“Raneé, you don’t have an ocular shield!” Patrick exclaims, pulling down a helmet visor.
“I’ll be just fine, Pat!” Raneé’s smile radiates confidence and an anxiousness to fight. The door raises and sunlight creeps up from our feet as the roaring sound of the bloodthirsty crowd begins. Raneé guides Pat and I with every step forward as my heart thumps harder and Pat continues his nervous and audible gulping. I’m sweating worse than I do around guys. All eyes are on us as we step into view our armor changing color under the blue light above the threshold.
<< III. (Chapter Preview Blog Series)
Thank you for reading,
~ J. D. 💙🖤
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