Águilas Y Ratas

They’d come close to selling out tickets for that night’s show and MJ had wrestled in her longest match yet. She went almost a full ten minutes with another, much older student, Marta, who had chosen the gimmick name Tigresa Fuerte. MJ took some of her biggest bumps for Marta, getting bieled out of the corner and across the ring, back body-dropped, and even catching Marta when she dove through the ring ropes and landed on the protective pads outside the ring.

Dives like that were a big part of the lucha libre style of wrestling in particular, and MJ, Tika, and Papi had spent most of the week preparing for her to safely catch her opponent and fall to the floor.

In the end, MJ reversed Marta’s attempt at a suplex off the turnbuckles and tossed the older girl over her shoulder and down to the canvas. She held onto Tigresa Fuerte after they hit. Both of them landed with their shoulders on the mat, and the referee counted to three. If Marta’s shoulders had stayed down, MJ would have scored the pinfall. Instead, and at the last possible second, Marta lifted one of her shoulders. That meant Marta was now technically pinning MJ, and Tigresa Fuerte was declared the winner.

However, for just a moment the crowd thought MJ had won, and it was the loudest she’d ever heard them cheer.

“I told you she’d get over it,” Tika said to Mr. Arellano as MJ walked backstage after the match.

Papi, as usual, appeared totally unimpressed.

He told Tika, “If you break your arm patting yourself on the back you won’t be able to work next week.”

When the last match was over and everyone in the crowd had filed out of the school, MJ approached Mr. Arellano as she did after each show. In her hands she held her Lightning Girl mask. When she wore the hood, she tried not to think about the fact that it had belonged to Papi’s grandson, but MJ always felt a weight pressing down on her because of it.

Before her first match with Tika, Corrina Que Rico had cut a quick and hasty hole in the back of the mask so she could pull MJ’s ponytail through it. Since then, someone had sewn a circle of vinyl the same color as the rest of the mask around that hole to make it look more finished and professional. MJ wasn’t sure if Tika had done it, or even Mr. Arellano himself, but it made it feel more like the mask belonged on her head.

Mr. Arellano was barking orders at the new students, most of them even greener than MJ, who were tasked with putting away the chairs and cleaning up the school after shows.

She walked up behind him. “Papi?”

“I’ll be ready to take you home in a few minutes,” he said without looking at her.

“No, that’s not it. I just wanted to give you the mask to put away in your trunk, that’s all.”

That got his attention. He looked down at her holding the mask without answering her for what felt to MJ like a long time.

“Take it home,” he finally instructed her. “Wash it. It smells like cheese someone left out for a week.”

“Oh,” she said, staring into the mask’s empty eyeholes. “Okay. I’ll bring it back after school tomorrow.”

He waved the idea away. “Just keep it at home. You only need to bring it back for shows.”

MJ was surprised to hear him say that.

“Are you sure?”

He nodded. “It’s your mask now.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. She knew what the mask meant, and what a big deal it was for him to give it to her.

Before MJ could think of what to say, Mr. Arellano turned away and started yelling at a teenager who he said was stacking the chairs wrong.

She was sorry the moment was over, but she was also relieved she didn’t have to come up with the words to thank him.

MJ hung out and bought a soda from one of the vending machines. She always waited for Mr. Arellano to oversee the breaking down so that he could drive her home. Her mother had yet to come to one of the Saturday night shows. She was taking business classes on the weekends. Her mother said it was so she could get a better job and get them a house like the one they had to leave behind.

After she finished her soda, MJ walked outside, leaving the main door to Victory Academy open so that the sidewalk was bathed in the warehouse’s light, and she could still see and hear everyone inside. She’d found that after a show or a hard training session, nothing felt better than walking out into the cool air, feeling it on your skin, and breathing it in deeply.

No one else appeared to be hanging around in front of the school. It was late, and any fans that had lingered after the show to talk to the wrestlers or drink sodas by their cars had all gone home. MJ liked the quiet. It was funny thinking about how before she started attending Victory Academy the quiet at home when she was by herself often got to be too much for her. Now MJ spent so much time around so many people that she was enjoying her alone time again.

A metal rattling sound broke her away from those thoughts and drew her attention. There was an old, rusting ladder bolted to the side of the building that extended all the way to the roof. MJ looked over at the bottom of the ladder and didn’t see anything. Then the ladder started shaking.

She jumped back a little bit in alarm and looked up. MJ saw a dark shape moving up the ladder.

“What . . . ?” she mouthed silently.

She didn’t have time to make out exactly what it was before the shape disappeared over the top of the ladder and onto the roof.

MJ walked over to the first rung, her eyes still scanning the top of the building. She waited, but the figure didn’t reappear.

She looked back at the open door to the school. MJ knew she should probably run back and tell Papi or one of the older students who was still inside. She didn’t, though. Maybe it was wrestling on the Saturday night shows, or the way the other wrestlers treated her like an equal instead of a dumb kid. It might also have been that MJ wanted Papi to see she could handle more things on her own.

She leaped and grabbed the first rung, pulling her body up onto the ladder as easily as she scaled the ring ropes. MJ climbed to the top quickly. She had never been afraid of heights, especially after doing gymnastics for so long.

The only light on the rooftop came from the moon hanging full and bright overhead. It was enough for MJ to spot the dark figure, standing over one of the large pipes that fed down into the warehouse. He’d opened the cap that was attached to it.

The man (MJ assumed from the width of his body that he was a man) wore a long, thick leather trench coat and dark gloves. A mask covered his head and face. Those gloved hands were holding onto a thick cardboard box. It looked like he was preparing to tip the top of the box against the opening of the pipe.

It wasn’t just a mask he was wearing, MJ noticed; it was a máscara, a lucha hood. The hood was black, and in the light of the moon she could make out the shape of a bird stitched in green over the face and around the mask’s eyeholes. MJ thought it looked like an eagle spreading its wings.

“Hey!” MJ yelled at him. “What are you doing up here?”

The figure’s hooded head whipped around and the eyes behind that green eagle stared at MJ in surprise.

At that point MJ realized she probably should have come up with a plan before she got his attention.

She was still thinking about that when the man, in a panic, reared back and threw the box in his hands across the roof at MJ.

It was one of those moments when time seems to slow down, when your eyes go wide, and for just an instant you see what’s happening in front of you as clearly as if it were a picture someone made larger on a screen.

As that box hung in the middle of the air, MJ saw rats. Big ones. She saw fat, furry bodies with crooked teeth and gnarled tails flying out from inside that box. There must have been half a dozen of them, the four toes on each of their front feet looking to MJ as big and sharp as monster claws as they catapulted in her direction like something from a bad dream.

She threw her arms up in front of her face and turned her head. MJ felt the bristles of their fur and their plump bodies wriggling as they bounced against her skin.

Fortunately, it only lasted for a split second.

Unfortunately, the reason it only lasted for a split second was the large box slamming into her.

MJ fell backward, losing her balance, and suddenly there was nothing solid underneath her feet. In a panic, her brain informed her that she was falling off the roof. The air rushed up around her and MJ closed her eyes and screamed at the top of her lungs without really hearing the sound she made.

Then it all stopped.

She hadn’t hit the ground. MJ knew this because she could feel her legs swinging. Her heart was pumping, and she was breathing hard and fast. She slowly opened her eyes and looked up.

Somehow, and MJ didn’t even remember doing it, she’d grabbed onto a rung of the ladder and stopped herself.

She was dangling about twelve feet below the edge of the roof. Her heartbeat slowed down a little, and MJ stopped panicking as the knowledge she wasn’t falling anymore set in. The bad part, however, was once she stopped panicking because she wasn’t falling, MJ started being afraid she was going to fall.

Just don’t look down, she thought over and over. Don’t look down.

MJ suddenly became aware of how sweaty and wet her hands were. She could feel them slipping around the metal of the ladder rung. That caused her heart to start beating fast again.

Just put your feet back on the ladder, she told herself. That’s all you have to do.

Slowly, MJ began raising one leg to plant her foot on another rung. The toe of her sneaker was just touching metal when a blood-chilling squeak from right above her head stopped her cold.

She looked up and saw one of the rats wriggling down the side of the ladder. Its eyes shined black in the moonlight, and its teeth looked like broken shards of glass.

MJ screamed again, leaning away as her toe slipped and the lower half of her body began swinging from side to side. Thankfully her hands tightened their grip on the ladder rung.

It’s gonna bite me, she thought frantically. It’s gonna bite me and I’m gonna fall oh my god oh my god . . .

The rat’s high-pitched squeaking hurt her ears. MJ shut her eyes tightly. She felt tears sting the inside of her eyelids. Her body began to tremble.

Another voice in her head told her that she had to do something, that she wasn’t going to just hang there and wait for the rat to chew her up until she fell to the concrete below.

MJ couldn’t, though. She couldn’t force her arms and legs to take action. She was too afraid.

She was cursing herself for being such a chicken when it occurred to her that the squeaking had stopped.

Opening her eyes and blinking away tears until the world came back into focus, MJ looked up to see the rat’s pink tail slithering over the edge of the roof. It had turned and crawled back up the ladder.

Every muscle in MJ’s body seemed to relax at once, and the hot fear coursing through her slowly turned into a cold feeling centered in the pit of her gut.

You’re okay, she thought. You’re okay.

Still trembling, MJ pulled her knees up and pushed her feet against one of the lower rungs. Once she felt like her footing was firm, she hugged her arms around the rung she’d been holding onto and clung to the ladder as tightly as she could.

“Maya, stay there!” a familiar voice shouted up at her from below.

Against her better judgment, MJ looked down. She saw Creepshow standing on the sidewalk, several others running out of the school to join him.

She just nodded, looking back at the wall behind the ladder and hugging the metal even tighter.

She knew he was climbing up beneath her because she felt the vibrations of the ladder. A few moments later Creepshow was sliding his arms around her waist. He felt warm, and that was comforting in a way MJ couldn’t explain. The way he smelled also reminded her of her father. That was even more comforting, and her fear started to roll back like water on a beach.

“Just hold onto me, okay? I got you.”

MJ finally let go of the rung and threw her arms around his neck. Creepshow climbed back down the ladder and held her securely as he leaped onto the sidewalk.

“Can you stand up?” he asked, still holding her.

MJ nodded against his neck, though her legs still felt shaky.

He lowered her to the concrete and MJ planted her feet solidly on the sidewalk. As Creepshow released her and stepped away, she felt sad. She’d enjoyed him holding her. Thinking that made her feel weird and embarrassed, however, so she banished the thoughts immediately.

“Thank you.”

She had to force the words to come out of her mouth. Her throat felt dry and ragged.

“What’s going on out here?” Mr. Arellano shouted, pushing his way through the bodies that had gathered around MJ.

“She was hanging off the ladder,” Creepshow explained, pointing up at the rooftop. “I had to go up and get her.”

“The ladder? What were you doing up there?” Mr. Arellano demanded.

“Rats,” MJ stammered. “Rats . . . masked man . . . dumping rats . . . threw them at me . . .”

The old man shook his head. “What are you babbling about, girl?”

“There was someone up on the roof with rats!” she blurted out.

Papi frowned deeply, but he wasn’t as disturbed by the news as she would have expected him to be.

“We’ve had to chase dumb kids off that roof before,” he explained. “I don’t know why they like farting around up there so much. Now they’re putting other people in danger, not just themselves.”

MJ was already shaking her head, but before she could protest or suggest he might be wrong, Mr. Arellano seemed to have already moved on.

“We better not have rats again,” he was saying to his nephew.

“Let’s just get her inside, Tío,” Creepshow told him.

Creepshow put his arm around her shoulders and gently guided her toward the main entrance to the school.

MJ walked with him, glad to be so close to him again, but not allowing her brain to think about it too much.

Instead, she asked herself a question: Why would anyone want to dump a box of rats into the school?

Whatever Papi thought, it didn’t feel to her like kids playing a prank or horsing around where they weren’t supposed to be. The person she saw up there didn’t look like a kid, either, even a really big one. It was more like something from a bad wrestling storyline, only this was real.

It was real enough to almost kill her.