Corazón

MJ decided that 7:00 a.m. was the earliest she could stop by Mr. Arellano’s house without being a pest and still make it to school on time, and she was waiting on his front step right on the dot. She’d barely slept the night before, thinking about what she wanted to say to him and how she was going to say it. She also knew her mother would be furious if she knew what MJ was about to do.

Somehow, it didn’t matter to MJ if she was punished further for being here. For the first time since Papi left them, she really wanted something. In fact, the more she thought about it, MJ could only think of one thing she’d ever wanted as much as she wanted this, and that other thing wasn’t going to come to pass.

This she could get, if she tried hard enough and was convincing.

At least, MJ hoped that was true.

She knocked on Mr. Arellano’s door and waited. In her hand MJ held her tablet. Her thumb was ready to scroll through several Wikipedia pages she’d saved on the device’s internet browser.

The door creaked open slowly and the old man stood there in a ratty old red and black bathrobe. His eyes were bleary, like he just woke up, and the hair that had been perfectly combed back every time she’d seen him so far was now sticking out in several different directions.

“I hope you’re selling something,” the old man told her without taking the time to say hello.

“Cookies, maybe?” he asked. “I like cookies.”

MJ frowned. She decided in that moment that if he wasn’t going to waste any time then she wouldn’t either.

Instead of explaining why she was there, MJ launched into the important part of the speech she’d planned late the night before.

“Rey Mysterio Junior wrestled his first match in Mexico when we was fourteen years old!” she proclaimed, holding up her tablet displaying Mysterio’s Wikipedia page as proof. “That means he started training even earlier than that. It doesn’t say when on Wikipedia, but he had to be my age, and maybe even younger!”

Mr. Arellano’s bushy gray eyebrows wrinkled up as he looked down at her in confusion.

“What are you talking about, girl?”

MJ took a deep breath and went on, ignoring the question. “William Regal was only fifteen and he was wrestling people in carnivals for real. The Apache sisters were seventeen and eighteen when they had their first matches. Riho started training when she was nine years old, and I’m already as tall as her!”

“What’s your point?” Mr. Arellano demanded.

She felt that rising in her chest—the cold rush in her blood that caused shivers. It was the feeling of doing something that scares you.

“You said I’m too young and too little to train to wrestle. But . . . you’re wrong. If Rey Mysterio Junior could wrestle in his first match when he was only a couple of years older than me, why can’t I start training now?”

“You’re comparing yourself to probably the most famous luchador since Mil Máscaras?”

“He wasn’t always the greatest. When he started he was just a little kid like me, and he wasn’t any bigger, either. I’m practically as big as he is now.”

Mr. Arellano actually laughed at that.

MJ started to smile, but the old man suddenly stopped laughing. He didn’t look annoyed anymore. He looked sad, like he’d just had a thought that bothered him deeply.

“Rey Mysterio and the Apache sisters all come from lucha families,” he said. “They grew up with it. They were practically born to be workers. It’s something that was passed down from their fathers, and their father’s fathers.”

“Just because they came from a family of wrestlers doesn’t mean they were better than anybody else when they first started.”

He sighed. “I guess that’s true, but I’m sorry, Maya, you should concentrate on school. Real school.”

“I’m sorry if I made you sad.”

Mr. Arellano looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“I’m sorry if asking you to train me makes you think about your grandson. I didn’t come here to make you sad.”

He frowned. “That has nothing to do with this.”

MJ wasn’t sure she should say anymore, but she’d come too far to chicken out now.

She decided if telling him the truth didn’t convince him, then nothing would.

“I know . . . I know how it feels when people leave you. I know how it feels when things change. It sucks. I just . . . I love wrestling. And I don’t . . . there’s nothing else I love right now. There’s nothing else that makes me feel the way wrestling makes me feel. It’s the only thing that makes me happy. And that’s just watching it.”

Mr. Arellano stared down at her silently for what felt like a long time. His eyes looked cloudy, like the beginning of a storm.

Finally, he said, “Whenever my life turns to crap . . . perdóname . . . whenever things go bad or wrong in my life, I always turn to the business. It’s the one thing that’s always there.”

“The business?”

“That’s what we call wrestling. What you’re asking me to do is break you into the business.”

“Will you?” MJ asked hopefully. “Break me into the business? Please?”

Again, he was quiet for a while before answering. MJ could tell he was thinking hard about this.

“¿Hablas español?”

MJ understood he was asking her if she spoke Spanish.

“A little,” she said

“Entonces contéstame en español,” he pressed her.

MJ had to concentrate, pulling the words from the back of her brain.

“Hablo un poco. My grandma . . . mi abuela me enseñó.”

Mr. Arellano nodded.

“You’ll learn to speak lucha.”

MJ took a deep breath and held it. “Does that mean I can come to your school?”

“It was brave of you to come here like this. It shows you have heart. Heart’s the most important thing in this business. It’s not muscles or good looks or being a great athlete. This business is hard. If you don’t have it in your heart, it’ll kill you. Do you understand?”

MJ nodded.

“What about your mother?”

“I’ll talk to her,” she insisted. “I’ll tell her how much it means to me. She’ll let me do it, I swear.”

“You’re a minor. You have to get your parents’ permission and they have to sign a waiver for you in case you get hurt. That means I’m not responsible. And you’re going to get hurt. If you listen to me it won’t be so bad, but this isn’t acting, whatever your friends at school or your parents or whoever thinks about wrestling. I’ve had over a dozen concussions and I’ve broken almost every bone in my body in the ring.”

“I understand,” MJ said, trying to sound as serious as she could.

Mr. Arellano nodded, looking satisfied.

“Bueno. I’ll pick you up Saturday morning, nine o’clock, if you get your mother’s permission, which I doubt.”

MJ felt like she was going to bust apart from the excitement she felt.

Then she thought of something else.

“Oh, I should have asked, how much does it cost? To take lessons from you?”

Mr. Arellano took a long, deep breath. He looked like he was deciding something.

“I’m not going to take your money,” he said. “At least not until you try it and decide whether you want to come back.”

MJ couldn’t imagine why she wouldn’t want to come back, but she didn’t say so.

“What’s it called? Your school?”

“Victory Academy,” he said with pride in his voice.