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.