Caged Warrior (9781423186595) Read online

  No doubt I loved the sport of mixed martial arts. I loved the training. I loved the competition. I loved the hard and grueling challenges, too. The way it pushed me, tested me, hurt me, and dared me to fight back. But what I was doing lately had almost nothing to do with sport anymore. I was a whore, turning dirty, violent tricks for money.

  And my dad was my pimp.

  I used to feel pure on the inside, a man on a mission. A warrior. Nowadays, I don’t know what I felt.

  But whatever it was, it didn’t feel good.

  “Of course, the princess monster sparkle unicorn will love to keep eating cupcakes with vanilla frosting. The bottom can be chocolate or vanilla but the frosting has to be white because unicorns are white and that’s how they get their magic powers.”

  We turned a corner and an icy wind whipped us. Gem’s new purple coat, thick and long with a fluffy fur hood, kept her warm and toasty and did a good job of protecting her from the morning chill.

  “Who’s tough?”

  “I’m tough.”

  “How tough?”

  “So tough.”

  “And why are we tough?”

  “’Cause that’s the way we get out.”

  But was it? I thought. Were we really on our way out? Was there even a way for us to get out, or were we both trapped like rats in a cage, too stupid to know the game was rigged for us to lose all along?

  “Gimme a kiss,” I said shaking myself out of my daze, and she did. As usual, I waited until I saw Gem walk safely through the front door of her school before I turned and continued on to Fenkell.

  “Hey, McCutcheon, got a sec?”

  I rolled my eyes. I’d been on campus less than eight seconds, and already Mr. Freedman was handing me a packet.

  “Some extra science material we’ll never get to in class. You’re gonna need it. Those kids at Radiance are much further along than we are.”

  Why the hell was he giving me this stuff? I never said I was gonna accept the offer. And he knew that. Man, I wish this guy would just leave me alone, I thought.

  But not wanting to be rude, I took the materials.

  “Thanks.”

  “No need to thank me, son,” he answered. I skimmed the packet. Nothing jumped out as being too, too hard. “I do it because I care.”

  He nudged his head as if I should look to the left. I did and saw a gleaming blue BMW. The passenger-side window rolled down.

  “Ready to go? There’s more to see.”

  A droplet of rain, small and cool, hit me on the cheek.

  “Don’t tell me you’re surprised?” Mrs. Notley said. “I told you, McCutcheon, I’m persnickety.”

  Mr. Freedman pulled a scarf from his coat pocket and wrapped it around his neck as a light drizzle began to fall.

  “It’s your ticket out, son,” he said to me.

  Mrs. Notley turned on her wipers. With a sleek hum they swept the light mist from her windshield.

  “I imagine you already told the front office about this so those truancy officers don’t hassle my pops?” I asked.

  “All taken care of,” Mr. Freedman assured me as he opened the car door so I could hop in. “Everything is long since taken care of.”

  Mr. Freedman’s tone felt confident and sure. Almost too confident and too sure, and for the first time I realized that maybe me “winning” that lottery might not have been so lucky and random after all. I mean, this was D-town, a city where practically every part of the government was crooked. Fixing a school lottery? Hell, Detroit’s had mayors with hookers on the city payroll. When top peeps want something done around here, stuff gets done.

  I climbed inside the car. The sweet smell of the leather hit my nose and my butt felt warm and toasty.

  “Heaters in the seats,” Mrs. Notley noted. “Kinda nice, no?”

  Ass heaters? Only rich people would ever think of something like that.

  “You’ll have me back by noon?” I said.

  She put the car in gear. “Yes.”

  I buckled my seat belt and we took off.

  Driving down East Seven Mile in such a sweet car felt different than taking the bus or riding down the street in a hunk of junk. And though I woulda thought being in such an expensive vehicle would make me feel less safe, like we were a more obvious target for being carjacked or something, somehow, strangely, I felt better protected inside the BMW. Sorta insulated from the danger and dirtiness of the surroundings. The clean glass, the quiet hum of the powerful engine, it was like money bought folks a certain distance from the problems of the outside world.

  Being in the Beemer changed my perceptions, too. Like on the bus, I never hardly noticed the crazy amount of churches we got on the streets around East Seven Mile, but as Mrs. Notley and I cruised through the neighborhood on the way to Radiance, I couldn’t help but be amazed at how many damn different houses of worship there were around.

  Churches, temples, cathedrals, ministries, on, and on. Spread between burned-out businesses, closed-down shops and long-ago abandoned retail stores, the cross of the savior felt like it was everywhere.

  I started counting. Within three blocks I spotted five liquor stores and six churches. After another three blocks I counted two more liquor stores and four more churches. Selling booze or selling God seemed to be the only really money-makin’ enterprises around these parts.

  “What are you thinking about?” Mrs. Notley asked noticing that my mind seemed to be a million miles away.

  “God,” I replied.

  “Do you believe in God?” she asked.

  “Do you?”

  “I do,” she said and then she showed me the gold chain with the simple crucifix charm she wore around her neck. “Very much so.”

  “Me, well...” I said as we drove by yet another church. “Every night I say my prayers.”

  “But saying your prayers doesn’t necessarily mean you believe,” she said to me.

  “I used to believe,” I told her. “When I was a kid. Nowadays, I’m not sure. I mean when I look around and see all the hurt, all the pain, all the injustice, well…like I said, I’m not so sure.”

  I expected her to lecture me. To convince me. To spend the rest of the car ride explaining to me why God existed, why God was good, why a person needed to believe in God and put God before everything else.

  But she didn’t. Instead, Mrs. Notley replied with a single word.

  “Understandable,” she said.

  We didn’t really talk about God any more the rest of the drive, but Mrs. Notley, with her simple one-word reply, had just done something I hadn’t expected her to do.

  She’d earned my respect.

  Clearly, having to chaperone me around campus for a second time stood out as the highlight of Kaitlyn’s day.

  “And this is the library.” Kaitlyn talked to me like she was speaking to a little kid. “See those things on the shelves? They are called b-o-o-o-o-ks.”

  “Oh, is that what they are?” I answered. “I wasn’t sure, ’cause I do most of my reading on a tablet. But that printed stuff is quaint.”

  She scowled.

  “And this campus is Wi-Fi, right? I mean I don’t want to attend a school where I get, like, patchy Internet service.” I grinned, big and wide.

  “Pfft,” she replied. We exited the library.

  “So what grade are you in, anyway?” I asked as she led me to another part of school. Without a doubt this was the biggest campus I’d ever seen. Place looked like a college.

  “Going into twelfth.”

  “You’re gonna be a senior?”

  “My mom pushed me forward a year when I was little.”

  “That’s funny,” I replied. “My mom held me back a year.”

  I paused to let her think it was because I was dumb.

  “She was an early childhood e
ducation specialist and knew how all the latest research showed that the oldest kids in class usually end up outperforming the youngest by the time they all graduate.” I hopped over a tree branch. “But I’m sure you’re really smart and all to be considered for that Arm Hair Award.”

  “The Archer Award.”

  “Whatever.”

  It was true about my mom. When she first met my dad, she was a twenty-year-old cashier working in a health food store going to school at night. My dad, only twenty-one at the time himself, came in looking for some vitamin supplements just at the point in his boxing career when he was getting ready to make a serious run for the belt. That means he was clean, sober, ambitious, filled with dreams, and, though I still find it hard to imagine, charming.

  They fell in love, she got pregnant, he went on a losing streak, and it all went downhill from there. I still remember the nights of being a little kid trying to bury my head underneath the pillow to drown out the sounds of their fighting. In the morning, of course, he’d always apologize for the bruises and the welts and tell my mom how much he loved her. I guess she always bought it, ’cause she stuck with him for years.

  By the time I’d graduated kindergarten, my mom had graduated salutatorian, the second in her class from a school of education, and she started teaching full-time. When Gemma was born, I remember feeling scared all the love for me would be sucked out of her heart and she wouldn’t want me anymore.

  I was wrong. That didn’t happen till a few years later.

  Kaitlyn and I followed along a stone path and passed by a sign that said PLEASE KEEP OFF THE GRASS. It seemed as if all the students at Radiance respected the request, too, because there were no parts of the lawn that had been trampled over.

  At Fenkell, the only grass we had at school was the kind people smoked.

  “Hey, wait,” I said. “If you were pushed up a year and I was held back a year, that means...” I did the math in my head. “We’re both about the same...”

  “Don’t get any ideas,” Kaitlyn said.

  “Too late,” I replied. “Already did.”

  We made eye contact. She gazed at me with the look of someone who wanted to break the lock between our eyes but couldn’t help from continuing to stare at me. I felt the same way. Though I didn’t want to admit it, I’d been thinking about this girl every day since my last visit to campus. I didn’t mean to. I’d tried all sorts of things to get her out of my head, but there was something about her that was different. Something that was strong and confident and intellectual and attractive.

  Plus, I had to admit, the first time she and I met, I was a total jerk. Really, she hadn’t done anything to me, yet I acted like a punk. In a way, I kinda felt like I owed her an apology, but I was too scared to say anything to her about it.

  Crazy, huh? I’ll jump into a cage with bloodthirsty gorillas, not a shred of fear, but when it came to some little uniform-wearing prep school girl, a chick I’d only met one time and spent less than an hour with, I was intimidated. By what? I don’t know. But I was nervous about something.

  After a still moment in which the world around us melted away, Kaitlyn broke our eye contact and lowered her gaze. Trying to find something to say to quickly change the topic, she began blabbing on about some other features of the school.

  “Over that way are the dorms. Radiance is a combination campus, part boarding school, part community resident. About thirty percent of our students actually live on the school’s grounds. Do you want to see the living quarters?”

  “Not really.”

  “Do you want to see the cafeteria?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, I, um, guess that ends today’s tour.”

  “Too bad,” I said.

  “Why too bad?” she asked.

  “’Cause,” I replied. “It was just gettin’ interesting.”

  ELEVEN

  I’ve got a bunch of memories of me and my mom sitting at the kitchen table when I was Gemma’s age, reading, writing, working with jelly beans to learn math, and basically doing all kinds of stuff that was good for my brain.

  They’re good memories. They make me feel warm on the inside. But she picked up and ran off so fast that she’d left all her teaching stuff in the closet, so these days I use the materials to make sure Gem’s brain doesn’t turn into the kind of ghetto mush you see in the heads of so many of the knucklehead girls around our neighborhood.

  Heck, my sister’s way smarter than I ever was, anyway. Maybe one day she’ll even win an Archer Award.

  Yeah, right?

  “And what’s the hardest working muscle in the human body?” I asked as we stared at a picture of a skinless body, the bones, tissues, and organs were all colored-coded underneath the human skeleton in a book called Anatomy for Kids. Every Tuesday, come five p.m., before dinner and tub but after a snack, we concentrated on science.

  “The heart,” Gemma answered, pointing at the chest cavity. “Because it has to pump all that blood through veins and vesselps and things.”

  “Vessels,” I said, correcting her.

  “Uh yeah, vessels. But like also, the heart never stops because if it does, a person will die, and then you’ll be dead without breathing.”

  “You move your hands a lot when you speak,” I said. “You know that?”

  “I gesticulate.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s what Miss Marsha said to me. She said I gesticulate and I articulate.”

  “Do you even know what those words mean?” I asked.

  “Okay, gesticulate is like when you move your body a lot when you talk and articulate is when you like announce all the words with lots of clarifications and things.”

  Suddenly feeling inspired, Gemma popped out of her chair and began to dance, making up her own little song.

  “I gesticulate and I articulate and the number eight is a cucumber gate.” She wiggled her hips and held the pencil in her hand as if it were a microphone.

  Her smiled beamed as she did a little hula-hula move. That smile was like a fireplace that kept my soul warm.

  “Come here,” I said. “I need to tickle you right now.”

  “Nooooo, Doc!” With an excited hoot, Gemma dashed off to the other side of the room, but I pounced like a leopard, snatched her up, and began to tickle her on the couch.

  “Please, Doc, stop! I’m gonna pee.”

  We rolled around laughing and goofing, her singing more lyrics about cucumber gates and bubble skates, whatever those were. Then, suddenly, we heard the sound of a key in the lock. The giggling stopped instantly. We both sat up a bit straighter as the front door opened.

  “Gettin’ ready to storm like a bitch out there.”

  My father, a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his lips, drops of rain on his black jacket, kicked the door to the apartment closed behind him, then crossed to the kitchen table and set down a brown paper bag on top of Gem’s Anatomy for Kids. After getting himself a glass from the cupboard, he removed the contents of the bag. Though I’d never tasted cognac, I had to admit it came in a nice-looking bottle.

  “Priests are gonna fly in even more fighters to face ya. Provin’ real profitable for ’em with out-of-town talent.” He parked himself in a chair at the end of the table and took a slow sip of his honey-colored drink. “Could be big fuckin’ money in it for us. I’m trying to work it to get in closer with the Priests, maybe do a li’l somethin’ somethin’ with Weasel. Hookin’ in with them, that’s when the cash really starts to roll in.”

  Gemma waved her hand in front of her face. In our small apartment, it didn’t take long for the secondhand smoke to drift over to the couch.

  “You primed for this?” he asked me.

  “O’ course,” I said scooping Gemma up. “Come on. Bath time.” With my sister in my arms, I made my way to the bathroom, my father eyeballing me
the whole way.

  Neither Gem nor I ever knew when he’d be home. Or if he’d be home. My father would just show up when he felt like it and leave when he felt like it, too.

  I turned on the water for the tub and noticed that my dad had cranked his head around to watch us as I readied Gemma’s bubble bath.

  My sister peeled off her shirt. I reached out with my free hand and closed the bathroom door. A moment later, she was in the water.

  I knew my father had no idea why I cared so much for my sister. He and I had discussed it many times before.

  “A fella can’t give a rat’s ass about a female in this world, son, even if they are blood. Use ’em and toss ’em if they ain’t got no good use no more, that’s what my old man used to say to me, and he was right,” he’d said. “I didn’t listen to my old man and done had to learn that shit the hard way.”

  Though I’d never met him, my father’s father was both an alcoholic and a heroin addict. He’d died young, stabbed in the chest with a pair of gardening scissors by the time he was forty-five, but not before he had tricked out his own daughter, my aunt, who I’d also never met. Forcing her into prostitution sounded insane to me, but, having been raised in Southeast Asia after his own father had fought in the Vietnam War, my grandfather learned to view women as disposable. Overseas, before he laid claim to his American passport and landed in Michigan, he’d watched poor people sell their kids, especially their girls but sometimes their boys, too, into the sex trade so that the family had cash to live on. That my grandfather had done the same to his own daughter here in America shocked the hell out of me, but my dad told me there’s an underground market for all kinds of crazy stuff here in the United States for anyone who wants to open their eyes and see our country for what it really is.

  “America likes to talk about apple pie and cheeseburgers ’n shit but we got some sick sum-bitches livin’ in this land, and if the money is out there to buy it, ain’t nothin’ that ain’t for sale. Even freaky-deaky sex with little kids.”