When Jack refused to respond or step away, the boy turned his head slightly, as if about to back down, before swiftly pivoting back, fist flying toward Jack’s chin.
Incredibly, Jack blocked the punch.
The boy’s friend then swung at him from the side, but Jack managed to shield himself again.
Stunned and angered, the two boys each tried another maneuver, but still Jack fended them off. What the frustrated boys couldn’t have known was that Jack wasn’t on the streets of New York anymore. He was back in the ring with Javier. Sparring against his best friend, his brother. Subliminally memorizing Javier’s moves, and how to defend against them.
Jack really didn’t want to hit the kids, but he figured it was his only way out, so he landed a jab in each boy’s stomach, nothing too hard, just enough to send the message that the battle was over.
And when the boys both staggered back, and Jack realized what had happened, he smiled to himself. Even when he wasn’t around, Javi always had his six.
After the boys had fled in defeat, a police officer arrived. He was taking the canvasser’s statement when the young pregnant woman, who must have called the cops, walked over to Jack.
“You’re quite the fighter,” she said.
Jack’s body was still trembling with adrenaline, and his wrists were sore, but it was nothing compared to the pain of that brutal fistfight during freshman year, when he had been knocked clean on his ass in front of all his new classmates, and Javi had to steal ice from the kitchen to keep his face from swelling.
“Thanks,” Jack said. “I’m normally not that . . . capable.”
“I’m Lea.” The woman smiled.
“Jack.”
“Well, Jack, I’m on my way to a discussion group tonight. So, thank you for giving me a good story to share.”
Jack noticed, then, that the girl was wearing a gold pin on her sweater, with a design he had never seen before: two curving lines intertwined, like the snakes twisted around Hermes’s caduceus, only these lines were of two different lengths.
Lea spotted his curiosity. “It’s two strings,” she explained. “One long and one short. For solidarity.”
“Did you make that?” Jack asked.
“My brother gave it to me,” she explained. “I think someone just started selling them on Etsy, but apparently they’re catching on pretty fast. Wes Johnson even wore one last week.”
Something his uncle would surely hate, Jack thought.
“Do you think that’s really why they were so cruel?” Lea asked. “Because the man was working for Johnson?”
Jack shrugged.
“I can’t believe the stuff they said about short-stringers.” Lea shuddered.
“Well, hopefully now they’ll think twice before saying something like that again.”
“Thank you,” Lea said solemnly.
The gravity of her tone struck Jack. “It was just two bullies looking for kicks, maybe some cash,” he said. “It was really nothing.”
“You saw something wrong, and you didn’t look away,” said Lea. “That’s not nothing.”
Jack remembered what Javi had said during their argument. That it wasn’t just about Anthony’s ego, not anymore. People’s lives were at stake now. People who had been dealt a hand far worse than Jack’s, no matter how many times he complained about his family, wishing his life were different. Javi tried to tell him that, to pull him out of his self-absorption.
As usual, Jack had failed to see it, and Javier was right.
Jack wasn’t sure what had come over him, pushing him to intervene on the street, but he couldn’t help heading back to D.C. that night with the feeling that maybe he wasn’t so weak, after all. Maybe he just needed the right moment, away from his family, away from the cameras, away from the army, away from anyone he had ever lied to, or tried too hard to impress. Maybe, after all those years living with Javier, he had learned more from his friend than just boxing.
It was exhilarating, this feeling of having done something meaningful, even if just for a moment. All his life, Jack had limply followed orders, shrunken into himself. He felt like he had always done nothing.
But this, at last, was not nothing.
Jack knew that it was only a matter of days now before the next invitation to join Anthony and Katherine onstage. And maybe, this time, he wouldn’t be so afraid.
Ben
On Sunday morning, the day after he told his parents the truth, Ben woke up and realized that he still hadn’t written a letter. He hadn’t yet decided what to say to Amie, and tonight was another meeting, another session in her classroom. His last chance to leave the usual letter behind, to pretend that nothing had changed.