MJ couldn’t remember when she’d stopped eating her lunch behind the library. It wasn’t any kind of conscious decision she’d made. One day, several weeks ago, MJ had simply stopped at the collection of long tables outside the cafeteria instead of walking past them. She did the same thing the next day, and the next, and after a while it just became part of her daily routine.
The first time she’d ever tried to eat at the tables, a group of older kids told her the cafeteria tables were reserved for eighth graders only. MJ knew they weren’t telling the truth, but she’d packed away all her things and left the table anyway.
Lucha Dominion was over for the season, but they still posted short videos exclusively through their app. MJ was watching an interview with Corrina, talking about her victory in the season finale.
MJ still couldn’t believe she and Corrina Que Rico were pretty much friends. She smiled as she watched the woman she’d come to know in real life cut a promo totally in character. The Corrina she hung out with at Victory Academy was sweet and nice, so different from the intense persona she used when she was in the ring and on camera.
“So you think you’re some kind of wrestler now?”
That voice wasn’t coming from the video.
It was Madison.
Who else? MJ thought tiredly.
It was annoying the way Madison always seemed to announce her presence by angrily firing a dumb question at MJ.
The other girls from the gymnastics team surrounded her, as usual.
MJ paused the video she’d been watching and set her tablet down on the table. She looked up at Madison, staring into her eyes.
“What are you talking about?”
“We heard you’re going to a wrestling school,” Emma explained, sounding far less bothered by it than Madison apparently was.
“That’s so cool,” Sophia added, drawing a reprimanding look from Madison.
“It is not,” she corrected her teammate. “It’s probably not even true, anyway.”
“I’m just taking some lessons at a school our neighbor runs. He used to be a luchador.”
Madison cocked her head to one side like a confused dog. “A what?”
MJ sighed. “Never mind.”
“That’s so dumb,” Madison concluded, even though she obviously had no idea what MJ was talking about. “And fake.”
“It feels pretty real when you get knocked down,” she told Madison. “And how would you know, anyway? You’ve never even watched a whole show. You’ve definitely never been in a wrestling ring.”
“Oh, look at you. You really think you’re tough now, don’t you? It was stupid enough when you just watched that junk all the time. Trying to actually be one of them is really making you act like an idiot.”
As MJ stared up at Madison, she saw in the other girl’s eyes the meanness she always seemed to carry around for no reason. Something occurred to MJ.
She didn’t care.
Madison didn’t matter to her. None of the other kids at her school who liked to pick on her mattered, not anymore. She no longer felt nervous or afraid, at least not about going to school and facing other kids.
The world seemed bigger to MJ now, and middle school was just a part of it.
She must’ve been quiet for too long, because Madison reached for MJ’s tablet, no doubt with the intention of taking it away from MJ, or even breaking the device that was a birthday present from her parents.
MJ snatched it away quickly, her eyes narrowing and a fresh, hot spurt of anger rising through her body.
It would feel good to jump up from the table and put Madison in one of the many wrestling holds she’d learned at Victory Academy. A lot of those holds really hurt when you applied pressure. She could take Madison down and make her tap out right there in the middle of the cafeteria tables, in front of everyone.
It was a fun fantasy, but MJ knew she couldn’t do that. That’s not what Papi had trained her for.
Besides, she didn’t really want to do it, either.
Fighting Madison for no reason wasn’t worth it.
MJ took a deep breath, the way a wrestler breathed, and when she spoke next she was calm and her voice was even and firm.
“Madison, you can go away, or you can sit down and eat lunch with me. I don’t care either way. But if you touch my stuff or me again, I’m going to have to stop you.”
“How are you going to stop me?”
MJ shrugged. “However I need to. And it’s not because I’m learning to be a wrestler or I think I’m tough or something. It’s because I’m tired of you. You’re boring, you’re annoying, and I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”
“Let’s just go, Madison,” Sophia said.
“Yeah, I wanna eat,” Emma seconded.
Madison looked back at them, surprised.
Without the other girls backing her up, Madison seemed to lose a lot of her confidence and menace. She shifted from one foot to the other uncomfortably before staring down at MJ again.
“Don’t think I’m afraid of you or anything,” Madison warned her.
“I don’t think that,” MJ said, and she meant it.
Madison seemed satisfied by that, or at least as much as someone so unhappy all the time could be.
They left her alone.
MJ breathed a sigh of relief.
It felt like a small victory, but it was hard for MJ to enjoy that feeling.
She couldn’t stop thinking about Zina and the terrible argument they’d had.
MJ used to think she didn’t need friends, but lately the friends she’d made at Victory Academy felt every bit as important to her as wrestling had become.
She hoped she could make things right with Zina somehow, but MJ knew it wouldn’t be as easy as telling off Madison.
Friends were a lot harder to keep than enemies. That much MJ knew.