Burning Down the House

MJ couldn’t reach anyone.

She wanted to scream in frustration. Her mother was working late, and she had the bad habit of not charging her phone during the day so that it was dead if she stayed at the office past five o’clock. When MJ called her mother’s work directly, an automated voice message answered her instead of the receptionist who took calls during business hours, and the machine voice just told her to leave a message and someone would get back to her the next day.

Victory Academy didn’t have a landline. Mr. Arellano wasn’t home next door, and he wasn’t answering his phone either.

MJ left a voicemail message: “Papi, it’s Maya. I have something I have to tell you. You have to call me back. The school is still in trouble.”

She tried Tika next, and when no one answered she didn’t even bother leaving a voicemail.

MJ paced back and forth across the floor of her bedroom, not knowing what else to do.

MJ looked over at her windowsill. The drone she’d crashed into Mr. Arellano’s backyard was sitting on it. It was still broken. She’d had plenty of time to get it fixed since then, but she hadn’t thought about it. She hadn’t needed to. MJ was no longer the sad girl who sat alone at her window after school every day dive-bombing empty soda cans with her toy. She had somewhere to go and something to do. She had somewhere she belonged.

That place was Victory Academy, and MJ wasn’t going to let anything happen to it.

The year before, her mother had installed the Lyft app on MJ’s phone. She’d made it clear it was for emergencies only, no exceptions. MJ didn’t know if her mother would think this situation counted as an emergency, but if not, then MJ was ready to accept the consequences.

She ordered the Lyft with trembling fingertips, and then put on her boots and her jacket before heading outside to wait in front of the house. Part of her was afraid her mother would return home at that moment and find out what she was doing, and another part of MJ hoped her mother would show up so she could just cancel the Lyft and explain to her mother what was happening.

A few minutes later the car she ordered pulled up, and neither Papi nor her mother were anywhere in sight. MJ hesitated before climbing inside. The driver was an older man who seemed nice enough. He asked her if she needed a charger for her phone, and MJ told him she didn’t. Fortunately, that was the only question he asked her.

She thought about calling Papi again, but instead, perhaps because MJ didn’t want the driver to hear her ranting into her phone, she sent Mr. Arellano a quick text message. She kept it short, letting him know she was headed back to the school, and that he needed to meet her there as soon as possible because it was an emergency.

MJ felt like she was bouncing in her seat the whole ride over, she felt so anxious. She didn’t know why. There was just something inside of her that said if she waited for tomorrow to tell Papi what she’d learned, it would be too late.

When they arrived, MJ found she was scared to get out of the car. It was hours past dark, and she’d never been here this late without Papi or her mother accompanying her.

“Are you sure this is the right place?” the driver asked her.

MJ nodded quickly. “My grandfather is waiting for me. It’s okay.”

She felt bad lying, maybe because the driver seemed so friendly and his concern sounded genuine.

She climbed out of the car and waited for him to pull away. There were no lights on inside Victory Academy that MJ could see from outside. There were no cars parked in front of it this late, either.

Despite how it looked, MJ was surprised to find that not only was the front door unlocked, but also open, just a crack. MJ gently pushed it open wider until she could slip inside.

“Papi!” MJ called out as she walked into the school. “Are you here?”

No one answered her, yet somehow MJ knew she wasn’t alone. The warehouse was as dark as it had looked from the outside. MJ tasted acid in the back of her throat. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so afraid. Despite that, she wasn’t about to run away.

MJ felt her way across the concrete blocks of the wall until her fingertips touched cool metal. She knew it was the power box that worked the ring lights. Her hand closed around the rubber grip that covered the handle, and she flipped it to the on position.

The center of the warehouse and the show ring set up there were suddenly bathed in light. The ring wasn’t empty, either. There was a lone figure casting a stubby shadow from the middle of the canvas.

It was the man in the black and green eagle mask, the one who unleashed the rats. He was wearing gloves and a long leathery trench coat. A steel chair from the stacks that were usually piled against the wall was unfolded and sitting beside him.

In one of those gloved hands he was holding onto what looked like a can of gasoline.

He didn’t move and he didn’t speak. He just stared across the warehouse at MJ through the shadow-filled eyeholes of his máscara.

“I know it’s you,” she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking, trying to sound tough. “I know why you’re doing this. I know you blame Papi for ruining your career.”

He reached up with his empty hand and slowly peeled back that lucha hood.

Corto smiled at her. His eyes, now that she could make them out, were filled with anger.

“Papi,” he spat, as if the name were a curse word. “He’s not your father, you know. He acts like it, but he doesn’t care about any of you. You’re just money to him, and a way for him to still feel important, like he matters. Even though he stopped mattering in this business a long time ago.”

“He mattered more than you!” MJ shot back, her own anger surprising her.

Corto’s warped smile faded, twisting into a sneer.

“You don’t know anything about it! I had more talent in my finger than he or any of his nieces or nephews had in their whole bodies! But all he cared about was giving his family every good spot on the card, every opportunity that should’ve been mine!”

MJ reached inside her jacket and pulled out her phone.

“I don’t care what you think he did to you. It doesn’t give you the right to attack the school! I’m calling the police!”

Corto reached inside his trench coat pocket, as well. He didn’t pull out a phone, though. He pulled out a cigarette lighter.

“Don’t do it,” he warned her, holding up the lighter and sparking a flame.

MJ paused, holding the phone in front of her. She looked above and behind Corto.

For the first time, she noticed long, thin black cords hanging down from the lights above the rings. Those cords had never been there before. They ran up into the rafters, and several strands snaked down the walls. She could see those had been fed into electrical outlets throughout the school.

MJ looked back at the gas can Corto was holding, and her eyes widened in shock as she realized those cords were fuses. He must have been using that steel chair to help hang them.

He was planning to light them on fire and burn down Victory Academy.

“That’s right,” Corto said, seeing the look on her face. “This place will be crumbling ash before anyone you call can get here. I promise you that.”

MJ didn’t want to believe he meant it, but she could see that he did.

“What . . . what do you want?”

“I want you to bring that phone to me, now!”

She didn’t know what else to do. Her legs didn’t seem to want to carry her forward, but she made them, stepping across the cement floor with her arm extended out, as if the phone in her hand was leading her. She walked it next to the ring and held it toward the ropes.

“In the ring,” Corto ordered her. “Put the phone on the mat right in front of me.”

MJ never took her eyes off him. She climbed up onto the apron and under the bottom rope, standing up slowly and shakily.

“That’s right,” Corto said. “Bring it here.”

MJ’s heart was pounding so hard she could hear it between her ears. She took two steps across the canvas and knelt, slowly, lowering her arm to place the phone on the mat. The whole time she was staring at the sparked lighter he still held in his gloved hand. She didn’t know what he would do after she gave up her phone, but MJ had to believe he wasn’t going to stop.

Moving as fast as she could, MJ popped up and threw her phone like a pitcher hurling a baseball. It hit Corto’s glove and knocked the lighter from his hand, extinguishing the flame. As soon as she released the phone, MJ was leaping forward to grab hold of the gas can. Her only thought was to snatch it from him and run away.

MJ hugged her arms around the can and turned to bolt, hoping to rip it from his grip as she did. Corto was much stronger than her, though. It was like trying to pull a tree stump out of the ground. MJ lost her footing and stumbled. At the same time, Corto swung his arm, sending her flying backward. As she did, the metal body of the gas can hit her head. Everything went black for just a second, and the next thing MJ knew her body was crashing against the ropes.

She didn’t hit them the way Tika had trained her to, and they bit her painfully all over her body. Instead of gliding gracefully back across the ring, it felt as though MJ was being thrown down to the mat by strong, wiry arms. She didn’t break a clean bump, either. MJ landed hard on her hip and shoulder, and the muscles in both places screamed angrily at her in protest.

She tried to ignore the pain and the fear and the panic bubbling in her brain. MJ pushed herself to her feet, finding that getting up after taking a hard fall was second nature to her now. She blinked, her vision blurry from the hits she’d just taken. Corto looked like nothing but one big ugly blob to her.

She ran at him again, this time not even aiming for the gas can. MJ didn’t know what her plan was at this point, really. She didn’t have one. She only knew she had to stop him, someway, somehow.

Fortunately, she didn’t have to figure out what to do when she reached him. Unfortunately, the reason she didn’t have to figure it out was because Corto scooped her up with the practiced ease of a former wrestler and body-slammed her to the mat, hard, taking no care to protect her the way an opponent would in a real match.

The canvas had never before felt so unforgiving to her as she hit it. All the breath left her body, rushing out through her mouth and nose as roughly as a stampede of horses. She seemed to be able to feel every single bone in her body, and they all hurt.

“You’re not a lucha hero,” he told her, breathing hard from their short tussle. “You’re just a dumb little kid with bad timing. If you’re lucky I’ll drag you outside so you can watch this place burn.”

MJ couldn’t look up at him, but she felt his heavy boots stomping away from where she lay. A moment later there was a hollow metal crash somewhere outside the ring, and she realized Corto had tossed his gas can away.

MJ rolled over even though every aching part of her body felt like it was screaming at her to stop moving. Her head was her loudest opponent. All her brain seemed to want her to do was sleep. She blinked, feeling something wet sting her eyes. MJ didn’t know whether what was in her eyes was tears or blood, but it hurt. She wiped it away with her hands, blinking more until the world came back into focus.

MJ looked up from the canvas. Corto had climbed the ring ropes and was sitting on the top turnbuckle. In one hand he held the end of one of the fuses he’d hung from the lights. In his other hand was the lighter he’d threatened her with. He must’ve picked it up from wherever it had fallen.

He was getting ready to spark the fuse.

She opened her mouth to beg him to stop, but no words came out. At first she thought it was because she was afraid, and she wanted to curse herself for being too little and too weak to stop him. There was something else stopping her from crying out, though. There was something inside telling her not to beg and plead. Her brain repeated to her that this was her school. It felt more like home to her than that rented house her mother had been forced to move them into. It was everything Mr. Arellano had. This building meant something to him, and to his people, to their people.

Seeing Corto perched on the top rope, looking up at him from the ring floor like that, reminded MJ of the final moments in her very first match with Tika. It was a weird thing to think about at a time like this, but it gave her an idea. She wished Tika were there now to help her.

She wasn’t, though. No one was going to help her or coach her or hold her hand through this. She had to do it for herself.

MJ pressed her hands against the ring floor and pushed her body up from the mat. Her legs felt like the spaghetti her mother always boiled for far too long, but she stood on them all the same. The top turnbuckle looked higher than it ever had, and Corto was much taller than Tika.

You’ll never make it, another voice inside her head promised her.

MJ knew that voice well. It was the same voice that told her not to go up to other kids and try to make them her friends. It was the same voice that told her to quit gymnastics rather than stand up to her teammates when they treated her badly or excluded her.

That voice didn’t belong in Victory Academy. This was the one place that voice had never held her back or stopped her from doing what she wanted.

I know I can’t make it, MJ told herself, but Lightning Girl can do anything.

She didn’t need the mask in that moment.

MJ put one foot in front of her and suddenly she was sprinting across the ring. Her legs seemed to feel stronger with each step she took, and by the time MJ was ready to make the leap the rest of her body felt just as strong.

Corto looked down at her in surprise, holding the sparked lighter just inches from the first fuse.

“Wait—” he started to say.

But MJ was already flying up toward him.

Her feet landed even more firmly on the ropes than they had the first time she’d tried this. MJ quickly bounced off them and jumped up onto Corto’s shoulders, locking her legs around his little head with its slicked back hair.

The impact made him drop the lighter outside the ring. He had to wrap his gloved hands around the top rope just to keep from falling off the turnbuckle. The lighter must have landed in some spilt gas from the can, because in the next second MJ heard flames burst and crackle to life somewhere below them. She could feel the heat from the newly born fire on her skin.

There was no time to worry about that, however.

MJ launched the top half of her body backward, tightening her legs around Corto’s neck. Instead of flipping the man off the top rope, however, MJ found the back of her head smacking against the middle turnbuckle. She hung upside-down limply, dangling from Corto like she was a necklace. He was still sitting firmly on the top rope.

She could hear him laughing above her. It was an ugly sound, almost like he didn’t understand what laughing was, or like he didn’t know how to feel the way you’re supposed to feel when you laugh.

“That stuff doesn’t work in real life, little girl!” he snarled down at her.

MJ was still hanging from his neck by her legs. She leaned her head back, beginning to panic. Then she saw the steel chair. It was folded up and lying flat directly below her. It must’ve gotten knocked into the corner when she ran at Corto the first time.

MJ could feel Corto’s gloved hands closing around her waist. She didn’t know what he was planning to do with her, but MJ knew she wouldn’t like it. He stood up on the second rope, holding her tightly as he did.

She reached down at the last second and grabbed the folding chair by its legs.

“I don’t want to hurt you, little girl,” he told her.

“Lightning Girl!” MJ screamed as she clinched her legs tight around his neck and pulled herself up.

She swung her arms as hard as she could, bashing the seat of the metal chair against Corto’s face. She hit him so hard that she lost her grip on the chair’s legs and it went flying out of her hands, but the damage was already done. Sitting on his shoulders and looking down at his unmasked face once again, MJ saw eyes that looked blank and dazed. His hands slipped weakly from where they’d been holding her waist, and his arms hung loosely behind the top rope.

This time she threw the top of herself backward and pulled with her legs, and Corto’s whole body went with her. As they flew through the air, the fire spreading across the cement floor of the school reached the tipped over gas can and it blew up, sounding like the blast from half a dozen shotguns and sending a giant spurt of flame up into the air. MJ watched it helplessly from the corner of her eye, her body tensing as it tumbled through the air.

She unlocked her legs and broke the cleanest front bump she could as she landed on the canvas. She was breathing hard, but she hurt less than she had just moments ago. It must have been the adrenalin running through her body.

MJ knew right away that Corto hadn’t broken a clean bump. She could tell just from the sound, less like a solid thud and more like someone dropping a bag full of loose tools. His body must have hit the mat at a bad, awkward angle. When she recovered from the flip and the explosion and turned around to see, Corto was lying on his side with his arms folded over him unnaturally. His legs were a messy tangle, and his head was sloped to one side.

He wasn’t moving.

MJ scrambled forward in a panic and crawled over to him. MJ was afraid to touch him, but she hovered directly above Corto carefully. She was terrified in that moment that she might have killed the man.

Fortunately, she could see his chest rising and falling. Corto was still breathing, even if he continued to lie there and not move.

Relieved, MJ sat back on the canvas. She closed her eyes and tried to catch her breath, tried to stop her head from spinning.

Then she smelled the smoke and remembered the fire.

MJ gasped and her eyes snapped open. She got up to her knees and peered between the ropes. The flames had almost reached the ring apron. If that cloth caught fire it would spread quickly, she knew, incinerating the ring and igniting the fuses Corto had hung.

MJ rolled across the canvas and slid back under the bottom rope. She picked up the same chair she’d used to whack Corto where it had landed on the floor. There was a fire extinguisher in a metal case with a glass lid bolted to the wall. MJ turned her head away from it as she swung the chair at the case, shattering the glass.

MJ removed the extinguisher, grunting at how heavy it was and using both arms to dislodge it. She quickly read the directions that were printed on a sticker on its body. She started with the spot where the gas can had exploded, where the concentration of flame was the heaviest, blasting it with spray from the extinguisher. It took a few seconds, and MJ started to worry there was too much, but then the fire started dying.

She followed each trail of flame from there, snuffing them out before they spread from the floor to any of the rings. When she was done it looked like it had snowed inside Victory Academy.

When the last patch of fire had been put out, MJ set down the extinguisher and looked back at where Corto was still sprawled out on the canvas. He wasn’t stirring yet, but she knew he’d wake up eventually. She needed to call the police, but it would also take them a while to get there.

So first MJ ran to where the students’ lockers were set up. She opened the one that Corrina used when she trained and worked their shows. Corrina kept extra gear and gimmicks in there. MJ grabbed a pair of the handcuffs that decorated her ring jacket and sprinted back to the ring.

Corto’s body was much heavier lying on the canvas than it had felt when she flipped him through the air. MJ could only drag him a few feet, but it was enough to cuff one of his wrists to the bottom rope.

The ringtone of her own phone made MJ jump. She looked over and saw it lighting up on the mat where it had landed after she’d thrown it.

MJ crawled over to the ringing phone and saw the words “Mr. Arellano” on its screen. She picked it up and answered the call.

“Papi?” she said.

“Maya,” his voice greeted her, sounding concerned. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

MJ didn’t even know where to begin. She stared across the ring at Corto, battered and handcuffed to the ring. Then she looked out across the warehouse floor, blackened from the fire and dusted white from the extinguisher.

Despite how frightening and painful and difficult the last few minutes had been, MJ found herself smiling.

“Yeah, sí,” she said to him. “Everything is fine.”