July
Lucy's Age: 14
I think I went too far this time. I blew out Renworst's elbow last night and shattered one of his knees. I think that Renworst would have killed me if he wasn't so loyal to Geoffrey. He could have probably succeeded too. I've been training again for nearly a year, but Renworst has something like eighty pounds on me and he fights dirty.
I hate the idea of being beholden to Geoffrey for yet another thing, but there it is. Geoffrey put me in this situation and now I owe him for saving me from Renworst, who he saddled me with in the first place.
First Geoffrey told me that he wouldn't start training me again, and then he showed up a few days later with a uniform and tells me that my training for the next year has been paid for at the dojo three blocks from our house.
He didn't act glad to see me or embarrassed that he's pretty much ignored me for half of my life. He just calmly turned my life upside down once again. After handing me the uniform he told me not to get too close to any of the other students, and then left.
The sensei at my new dojo turned out to be okay. It's a really big operation, for the most part the newer students don't get any real time with the head sensei, they just take classes from the other first and second-degree black belts.
Apparently Geoffrey worked out some kind of deal with the sensei though because after my first month I started getting private one-hour lessons each week.
Things went pretty okay for the first few months. Renworst would take me into class whenever I asked and then wait until I was done so he could take me back home. It was still pretty much like being in prison, but it was a ton better than what I'd been living with before. It even seemed like it was good for Renworst to get out of the house occasionally too. He was less grouchy after I started going to my dojo.
At first I just randomly went to whichever of the beginner lessons I felt like attending, but that didn't last long. For one thing some of the junior instructors were idiots, for another, after a month or so I found an instructor that I liked. No, I mean really liked, and not just his teaching style.
Parker wasn't like the other guys in the dojo. He was one of the best karatekas in the dojo, but he didn't take himself as seriously as the rest of the instructors took themselves. When I started he'd just turned seventeen, so he didn't have any interest in me, but I worked really hard to change that.
At first it was difficult. My body still sort of remembered the techniques that Geoffrey had been teaching me when I was just a kid and this stuff was completely different. I had to break myself of the habit of redirecting energy and controlling my opponent's balance and get used to punching and kicking, but after a little while I realized just how much fun it was. Even better, it was something that I could practice without a partner, so I practiced a lot at home.
Renworst grumbled when I asked for him to mount a heavy bag in the exercise room, but I kept asking and finally he ordered one off the internet. At first I could hardly move it, but I got better over time. I still can't move it as much as if I were a guy and weighed more, but there's something incredibly satisfying about kicking something nearly as heavy as you are and seeing it swing back from the force of your blow.
With regards to Parker, once I finally started to catch his eye I tried to mix things up, sometimes missing training altogether or sometimes going to a session taught by another instructor, but it wasn't to confuse him, it was to keep Renworst from realizing what was going on.
It helped when I got onto the competitive kata team. Parker was on it too, which meant that I was occasionally able to use the team as an excuse to spend time with Parker outside of the regular practices.
It was kind of tough to keep Parker interested because we could only steal away to talk or hold hands when Renworst wasn't looking. It was like two opposed forces. Parker, who needed more attention, and Renworst, who would ruin everything if we were too obvious about what was going on.
It was like the first taste of love and freedom all rolled up in one. I should have known that it couldn't last forever. Renworst figured out something was up last week. It took him several days to put all of the pieces together, but once he had the full story he completely freaked. He threatened to call Geoffrey. He said he was going to pick up and move us just like Geoffrey had done the last time I tried to make a friend.
The next thing I knew we were both yelling and then Renworst went too far. He told me that he was going to catch Parker in a dark alley somewhere and take a baseball bat to him.
I went to storm out of the house and Renworst grabbed my arm. I was so angry that I just kind of let my training take over. I extended his arm and then did a palm strike to his elbow. He screamed, but before he could do anything else I hit him with a side-thrust kick to the knee, destroying the joint and dropping him to the ground.
I almost just left him there sobbing in pain, but he pleaded with me not to leave. He said that Geoffrey would kill him if I left. There wasn't any reason to believe him, not really, but it made me stop anyways.
I hate Renworst. We're mostly civil to each other, but if you would have asked me before that, I would have told you that I would have celebrated if something were to happen to him. I guess maybe I care about him more than I realized.
As much as I hate him he's still the only family I've had since Dad, since Geoffrey, took me away from Mrs. Agosti. Maybe Renworst only does what he does because he's scared of Geoffrey, but that's better than nothing. I still remember what it was like to be freezing to death underneath a pile of garbage. If it's a choice between prison and dying then I'll pick prison every time.
Geoffrey is supposed to be up here sometime in the next hour or so. I guess we'll see how bad things are then. After everything that has happened in the last twenty-four hours, it wouldn't surprise me if the nightmares started back up.