GETTING THERE

Takes me between twenty and thirty minutes to get dressed every morning. First I tie my hair back, that's if it's dry. If it isn't, I do it last, low and tight on my head. Then it's chonies, then leggings. I leave the sheath on my inner left calf empty today because I know Cue will be on high alert with Jimmy being new and all. I don't need to get overexcited and stab somebody on his watch, so it's best it isn't even there. I don't carry it much anyway, not anymore. The thing used to be my crutch back when I couldn't hold my own but things are different now. I'll be more than fine with fists, feet, and my big brother guarding my back. Khaks get put on next. I just got them back from our sew master, he put kneepad sleeves in so I can throw in light Kev padding for everyday use or aluminium pleated shunts for when I got a roll match. Shunts are the thin oval-shaped shields cut to fit in our clothing.

Nearly finished, I put on two T-shirts, both with reinforcement in the chest and shoulders and Cue always teases me because I always look way bigger than I am when everything's on. After that it's my hooded sweatshirt: straight kidney, rib, vital organ, and arm protection. On top of everything goes a flannel, for style. I got alum gloves and my boots have push-out quarter-inch nails in the toe if it gets real bad. The best part about them is that I pass the metal detector test every time because the

FIGURE 4. HOW TO CONCEAL SHUNTS & ARMOR

guard guys in yellow jackets just assume it's the rivets and not the nails in the soles underneath. That's innovation at work, baby. So yeah, we do have metal detectors, but it's just for axes or knives, you know, blatant shit like that. They laugh about shunts all the time, call 'em our "metal shop projects," but that's assuming they even get noticed.

I passed Cue in the hall on his way to the shower and the same thought traveled in the air between our eyes: fighting or not, we got to get Jimmy some gear. He nodded and shut the door behind him but it didn't stick. It's hollow and the latch is crooked. Basically, it just hides nudity and that's about it. You can hear everything going on inside.

I was carrying a glass of water down to Dad's room when we did our telepathy thing. The sun was still down and I had to wake Dad up to give him his meds so I was late putting our lunches together when I got yelled at.

"Yo, let's go." Cue was the director every morning before school. "Jen, grab them sandwitches, we don't need brown bags. We late! What the hell you thinkin'? We never use them. Damn, girl! Jimmy's ready. Let's gee-oh."

Always calling sandwiches sandwitches with a real hard "t" sound, Cue'd done it every day since we made up the story of the Sand Witch when we were in the Great Sand Dunes camping. That was when Mom was still alive. See, me and Cue didn't feel like hiking anywhere and the fact that these giant piles of sand were there wasn't too great either because we'd grown out of sandboxes and hadn't started our training back then. Wouldn't've mattered, you can't kick in the loose sand anyway. So we were just there, sat down, digging ourselves little holes into the clay underlayer to keep our feet cool and made up the story while we did it:

Once there was a Sand Witch that lived in a far-off temple and would fly around and pick up all the little boys that ever traveled the road alone. She would take them home and eat them. One day, a little girl with very short hair that looked like a little boy was walking along the path and the Sand Witch flew down and grabbed the little girl to take back to her corrupted temple. But when the Sand Witch found she was mistaken, that she had not grabbed a little boy, she didn't eat the little girl. Instead, the Sand Witch treated her like an apprentice and taught her all of her secrets, including how to fly. She said eating the little boys gave her the power of flight and, well, we didn't really have time to finish the story because Mom and Dad walked up and gave us ham-and-cheese sandwiches right after that.

That was the kicker. He and I got real excited and never called them anything else ever since. I'm still kind of working on a move called the Sand Witch but I haven't told Cue that yet because he'd laugh his ass off and then expect me to show him something great. So far though, it's just a leg sweep. No combo. Not worthy of competition.

In my own defense, the reason I never used paper bags for lunches was because we just chucked the food in plastic bags and then in our backpacks and hoped our books didn't squash it. We never bought nice little lunch-sized paper bags in their nice little packaging because they were a waste of money and usually we just got some of the plastic ones from the produce department or bigger paper ones for free at the grocery store when they packed our stuff. So that's what I was doing when he wanted to leave. I was trying to find the little ice-cream-box-sized paper bags to put sandwitches in so Jimmy wouldn't think we were weird or too poor.

Cue had a point though. We were "late" (late to Cue meant we wouldn't be thirty minutes early and have time to plan for the day) and that was bad because we had to walk to school in packs and getting left behind was a bad idea. I don't know why he even stressed it. Not like anyone was ever gonna leave without him.

Alfredo and the Hunters were already in our front yard, kicking their heels into the dirt and making holes where they shouldn't've been making holes. Alfredo was an Uncle in the Waves. He also ran the Hunters, a subfamily within our family. All families have little groups inside 'em. Cue trusted him because Alfredo saved his life once, but I've never trusted Alfredo. He's got corneyes. You know, the kind of eyes that never really have whites around the irises, just slightly yellow. Except for Alfredo, it's serious yellow, like he fell down in a field of corn and got corneye instead of pinkeye. That's the joke anyway.

I tossed Cue his sandwitch and handed Jimmy his and we were out. And damn if it wasn't the second I walked through that door that Alfredo put his corneyes on my tits, even before he looked at Jimmy. Yeah, that's the second reason I don't like him. He keeps thinking we can get together but he's dead wrong.

"Who dis?" Alfredo spat when he was done talking. Reason number three.

"This is Jimmy, he's my cousin." I knew it was Cue's place to talk but I couldn't resist.

"Cousin, huh?" Alfredo stepped up on Jimmy, all close too. That was Jimmy's turn to earn some respect and stare Alfredo in his beady little corneyes and let him know that he could tie him in a knot and roll him home to his mamá. But he didn't. He just stood there with a dumb smile on his face.

"Hi, nice to meet you," Jimmy said.

Damn, if Cue didn't laugh, we'd've had a roll on what used to be the lawn. We couldn't afford to water it anymore. Besides, that didn't make much sense in winter.

Of course, Alfredo got pissed anyway.

"What the fuck is that guy's problem, K?"

Everybody in the Waves called Cue, K. That or Pop. Poppa Don maybe, but that was pretty much it.

"Shut it, Corny," I said, "Jimmy'd roll your shit in a heartbeat."

I should've been the one shutting it but it was all right there for the taking. And nothing gets Alfredo's goat better than calling him Corny. Cue shot me a look over his shoulder as he led us down the street.

"Yeah? We'll see, little Jen-Jen. We'll see"—Alfredo raised his voice—"because I heard Chang was washed up. I heard Chang's gone softer than the Three Ninjas put together and yo, that's Rocky, Colt, AND Turn Turn!"

Alfredo turned his attention to Cue after getting some laughs from his Hunters. "Seriously, K, what use is this guy to us if he won't roll? He's strictly a liability. Strictly slack me and the Hunters gotta pick up. And you know we don't carry stragglers. Hunters don't truck with no bitches."

And then he licked his lips at me like he was LL Cool J or something, which he's not and never will be. All that guy's tired antics are straight out of the bad movies he was always referencing. I was about to tell him so too, but Jimmy put his hand on my shoulder and for a second I couldn't feel the ground underneath my feet.

"Enough!" Cue was thinking about something else already and I didn't blame him. He was brainstorming, not just how to keep Jimmy out of a fight today, but for good. He must've known it was impossible.

"I am finished. No more fighting," Jimmy said, then the little bastard smiled at me. It took an effort not to smile back too. Gravitas, that's what Jimmy had, gravitas. I learned that word in a Laurence Olivier documentary that I'll never, ever admit to having watched late one night on TV.

"See?" Alfredo was just spooning it on. "He really is a bitch."

I couldn't let that one go. Me and Cue both knew that Jimmy could tear Alfredo apart.

"You know what, 'Fredo? Keep talking like that and the only kiss you'll ever get from me will be the kiss of death like I'm Michael Fuckin' Corleone but I'll be the one breaking your heart—" I paused for effect, and Alfredo was about to jump in and say something but I talked over him—"when I pull it out your rib cage!"

There was even a chorus of "ooohs" from the Hunters on that one.

Usually, it was just talk. This wasn't. I would've rolled on him in the street and that just isn't smart. By far the worst place to ever roll is the street. The cops would steam in and pick you up, throw you in juvie, and you're done. In our neighborhood, they pick on you, they taunt you, and then they wait. They're like trapdoor spiders just hiding in their holes, waiting for us to make a mistake.

"Jen!" Cue spun around and lifted my whole body up off the ground. My feet were dangling before I even knew what hit me. His face loomed close to mine, but with eyes gone soft inside his sneer. When Cue's mouth turned up like that, his whole face followed: forehead, hairline, chin, everything. We have the same cheekbones. "Just stop right now. We don't need this. So save it." Big brother, always being the badass, dropped me on the ground instead of setting me back on my feet.

Thankfully, Alfredo laughed when he glared at me. That meant he could keep walking without losing face. Cue was smart like that. Turning, Alfredo pulled his trademark long black comb out of his back pocket, the one that was too big for his stupid pinhead, and surfed it through his hair. What a vain bastard. Reason number four. Not like I needed any more reasons.

Jimmy offered me a hand up and I forgot about everything else. Instead, I had to tell myself that I am not Sleeping Beauty. I am not Snow White. I am not a pretty princess. I am not the heroine. I do not get the guy in the end. The sooner I got used to it, the better.

We got to school fifteen minutes early, passed the metal check, and then Cue had plenty of time (but he'd never admit it) to iron out Jimmy's schedule and assign him a couple of Waves for each class: Period 1 Photography (7 Waves, easy class), Period 2 Earth Science (4 Waves), Period 3 Geometry (6 Waves), Period 4 Lunch (the back right corner of the cafeteria was sort of our section), Period'S Gym (0 Waves), Period 6 English (4 Waves), Period 7 Study Hall (10 Waves, generally, it would mean Jimmy could skip out and go home, but not at Kung Fu—circles started at closing bell and you weren't allowed to leave early). We were the only family that I knew of that had chess-inspired classroom seating strategies (unwritten part of #3 on the survival list: families weren't allowed to sit together, too easy to detect who was with who, Dermoody would be in on us in a flash). So the seating arrangements were like snapshots of opening chess moves that Cue thieved from some book. He'd look at the diagrams of the pieces set up and then he'd assign desks in the somewhat similar positionings of one side, always black. Roll over it. Dress it up. Put a flag in it.

Cue said he picked them all according to how many people were in each class. So it was funny to hear Cue explain to Jimmy that he was a bishop to N2 in the fianghetto in his science course, and rook to king's one, castling in English. They were all static. Not set up to continue a game, but just to spread us out. Secretly, I was a little sad I didn't have any classes with Jimmy, but he was a junior and I was a sophomore and that was the bad luck of the draw.

I hoped to god that he'd last until the final bell, but by lunchtime, everybody had heard that Jimmy was new and it was only curiosity that kept them off him. Like they thought his claim not to fight anymore was a lie, so they didn't go too close right away. I knew it would happen, everyone noticing him, I had just prayed it wouldn't. Word had spread fast. If he wasn't a legacy, the family with the last pick in the draft would've got him. That would've been the Blades. They knew who he was. Everyone knew who Jimmy Chang was. And it was well within their right to test him on closing bell.

We were in public so I couldn't give Jimmy a hug good-bye, I just gave him a shoulder clench instead. You know, how guys do. For someone who was supposedly done fighting, he was absolutely solid. He must still be training, I thought as I turned away and shuffled off to my Period 1 Civics (3 Waves, Hungarian Defense), where I was an unmoving bishop on the back row, the buried piece.

THE HUNGARIAN DEFENSE