Page 5 of Hits Different

From across the room, Vanessa glances up.

If you don’t know Brandon Carter, chances are you’ve heard of him. And his family. His parents are famous. Notorious, really. Nobody would have pegged me, with blue on my collar and a chip on my shoulder, as his best friend.

The only thing longer than my rap sheet was Brandon’s list of extracurricular activities. “That’s right”.

“Did you see his match yesterday?”

I give a half nod, like my body can’t make up its mind.

I’d had precisely zero interest in watching a college soccer game until I saw that the Wolves were playing, and that Brandon Carter was their star striker. I had almost bolted, but the temptation of seeing him again was too much.

Classic Brandon. Magnetic without even trying.

I guess some things don’t change.

“Now, Spirit Squad: full disclosure. Parker used to date my BFF, so we’re not going to trawl through the ex-files intoomuch detail today”. I’m acutely aware of Vanessa’s eyes on me.“Let’s talk about MMA. How’s training going?”

“It’s awesome”, I say, relieved to be back on safer ground, “It’s been a lot of hard grind but now, finally, it’s paying off. I’m excited to get out there and…”Prove everyone wrong,“Show everyone what I can do”.

“Our school had major basketball, football, soccer and hockey programs. Why not one of those?” When I don’t answer, she presses, “What drew you towards martial arts, of all things?”

My fingers lightly grip my seat. I pull my sleeve up to my elbow, revealing the new portrait on the inside of my forearm. Lainey’s eyes widen. “My Dad. He taught me everything I know”.

The ink maxed out my credit card, but it’s the closest I’ll get to having him in the ring with me. And I need him there. We started it together. We finish it together.

“He had a perfect amateur record and was the youngest in the country to win a Gold Ring tournament. There was talk about training for the Olympics”.

“I wouldn’t have thought the Olympics would entertain cage fighting”.

“It was for boxing. MMA came after. But it didn’t work out”.

“What happened?”

“My mom got pregnant. With me”, I add. Lainey laughs like she’s not sure whether I’m kidding. “MMA didn’t pay a lot of money back then”. I leave the rest unsaid. How he sacrificed his dreams to take a dead end job that barely paid minimum wage, let alone medical insurance, just to put a roof over our head.

And that lack of insurance was why he didn’t find out he was sick until it was too late.

Vanessa puts down her pen. Lainey’s still asking questions and I can hear myself answering, even though my voice sounds very far away.

There were whispers at his funeral.Alberto reallycoulda beensomeone, if only he’d stuck with his training. Everything could have been different. Even at fourteen, I knew how that sentence ended.How everything could have been different if only he hadn’t screwed up and got his girlfriend pregnant.

The guilt and the shame and the grief all burned together inside me, until I realised the only way to make my dad’s life count was to pick up where he left off.

Winning is the only way to make the guilt go away.

“I just don’t see the appeal”. Lainey continues, in a tone that jolts me back to reality, “Mixed martial arts is such a dangerous, well, I don’t even know if you’d call it asport per se…”

“It’s a sport”, I say. “It’s also an art. Clue’s in the name”.

“I’ll grant you, it’s entertaining”, Lainey laughs, “to acertain demographic. But an art form? Drama is art. Theatre is art. Music is…”

“Martial arts is one of the oldest art forms in the world”, I cut her off. “It teaches self-defence. It teaches discipline. It’s one of the few unifiers that, along with drama, dance and music, and sports, actually brings people together, regardless of their background or social class. It lives outside of politics. That makes it special”.

“You’re obviously very passionate about it”.

I flashback to watching my dad teach classes at the local youth centre. How he held the kids attention in a way that teachers, cops, hell, even their own parents, never could.

“A lot of kids, people you might call acertain demographic”, I accent my tone just enough for her to colour slightly, “Find a place to belong, thanks to martial arts. Kids that otherwise might end up going down a less than ideal path”.

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