Heat

MJ stood in front of the Victory Academy bathroom mirror without really looking at her reflection and slipped the Lightning Boy hood over her head. She pulled her ponytail through the hole in the back before lacing the mask up tight. She adjusted it around her ears, nose, and eyes until it felt comfortable, and then she looked in the mirror.

She still didn’t recognize her reflection, and the mask didn’t look or feel like it belonged to her. She didn’t feel like Chica Relámpago, Lightning Girl. She felt like a kid wearing someone else’s mask and pretending to be a wrestler.

She wasn’t going to tell anybody that, though.

She’d made the dreaded call to her mom and gotten permission to wrestle another match. Despite how afraid MJ had been to talk to her, her mother was surprisingly calm about the whole thing.

Then her mother asked to speak to Mr. Arellano, and although the old man smiled all through the call, MJ was sure Mom spent the entire time yelling at him.

Her opponent was going to be Duchess, who’d wrestled and lost to Corrina the week before in a title match. The angle (which is what people in the business called a wrestling storyline) was going to be that Duchess was mad about losing and was going to take it out on MJ. The fact MJ was half the size of Duchess would only make the crowd hate her more.

MJ’s big move at the end of the match was going to be reversing Duchess when she tried to suplex MJ off the top turnbuckle. MJ would land on top of Duchess and pin her, but right before the referee counted to three, Duchess would roll MJ over and pin her for the win.

Tika had practiced the suplex and reversal with MJ over and over in one of the rings, with a pile of soft foam mats covering the canvas for them to land on safely.

MJ felt confident in her ability to do the move, and to take the rest of the bumps she was going to take, but the thought of wrestling in front of the crowd again still frightened her.

She took several slow, deep breaths, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth. MJ found it didn’t just help her relax after training, it helped her calm down when she was scared or anxious.

She walked out of the bathroom and nearly ran into Zina, who stood there with her arms folded across her chest.

MJ wasn’t sure if Zina was waiting to use the bathroom, or if she was waiting for her.

“I see you ain’t setting up chairs anymore,” Zina said, and she didn’t sound like her usual friendly self.

“Um, Tika wanted to run through some stuff with me for my match.”

“Uh-huh.”

It was like talking to a stranger. This didn’t seem like the same girl MJ had made friends with.

“Are you mad?” MJ asked her.

Zina sighed. “It’s just kinda messed up, you know? I’ve been here a lot longer than you, and I’m not even close to being on the shows yet. Papi says I’m not ready. You’re here a couple of weeks and just because you and Tika are both Mexican, she picks you to work with her.”

MJ felt as though Zina had just punched her in the chest.

“I’m not Mexican,” she said. “I’m American.”

Zina rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

“It’s not whatever!” MJ exploded angrily. “You don’t get to tell me what I am! You think it’s awesome being Mexican? Did you know the other girls on my gymnastics team wrote ‘build the wall’ on my locker?”

Instead of backing down, Zina only seemed to get as mad as MJ.

“Look, you don’t need to tell me about not being treated like everybody else because of what you are, all right? You ever had someone ask to touch your hair like you’re a dog they want to pet? You ever been afraid to laugh too hard at a movie because when you’re loud they complain about you to the theater, or even call the cops on you?”

Thinking about Zina experiencing those things hurt MJ way more than any of the words Zina had directed at her. She suddenly remembered what she liked about the older girl—that they both felt like outsiders. No matter how angry MJ was in that moment, she knew that the two of them had more in common than they had differences, despite what they were saying.

She didn’t want to fight with Zina, but she didn’t know how to stop being mad and tell her that.

Zina seemed to take MJ’s silence as MJ not caring about what Zina had just told her.

“You just do you,” she said, coldly. “But I see you. Just so you know.”

“I didn’t ask to be on the shows,” MJ insisted. “It just happened.”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t say ‘no’ to it, either.”

Zina walked away before MJ could respond, not that MJ knew how to explain herself any better than that.

She felt sick. MJ thought she could hear her stomach making noises.

She didn’t know how long she’d been standing there lost in her own thoughts when Tika appeared beside her.

“You okay?” she asked, putting her hand on MJ’s shoulder.

“I . . . I don’t feel so good.”

“Are you nervous? You’re going to be great!”

MJ stared up at Tika through the holes in her mask. Tika’s smile and reassurance usually made her feel better, but right then it somehow made MJ feel worse.

Tika’s smile turned into a look of concern. “Are you really sick? Do you want to go home? You don’t have to wrestle tonight if you’re feeling bad. It’s okay.”

“No,” MJ said, almost automatically.

Then she thought more about it, and she didn’t change her mind.

“No,” she repeated more firmly. “I want to wrestle.”

Tika smiled again and patted her on the back.

“That’s more like it,” she said. “Now you sound like Chica Relámpago.”

As upset as MJ was about her fight with Zina, the thought of letting down the school and disappointing Papi and Tika and the rest of them was worse.

She may not have felt like Lightning Girl, but MJ knew she could act like Lightning Girl.