Chapter 21

“Fights are starting!”

Some girl was yelling the news up and down the halls.  Fights are starting! Fights—are— star—ting!!!  

Gavin and Rona gathered up all their coats and gloves and everything under their arms and joined the creeping herd.  It moved down the long hallway, through a kind of pantry/mudroom in the back, across a covered outdoor deck.  Down into the giant back yard, which was already packed with all those people who had been standing in the front yard before.

The set-up was actually pretty nice.  A boxing ring way back by the back fence, a tarp overhead,  a couple of those giant party tents in case it started raining. Heat lamps.  Considering what a dump the house was, this was downright swanky.

From way in back, Gavin could see the elevated boxing ring, but not too well.  There was a big tattooed guy in a leather vest—the referee, it seemed like.  And then, he had been expecting boxers, but no.  Instead, there were two guys hugging, really desperately hugging, like lovers who were about to be separated forever, just falling on top of each other.  Gavin wasn’t a martial arts expert or anything, but he knew this had to be wrestling. He’d been taught how to do it during two extremely awkward weeks of high-school gym class.  Plus he had watched ultimate fighting a few times when his old roommate had gotten it on pay-per-view.  The main thing he had learned was that in high school wrestling, whoever was on the top was winning, while in ultimate fighting, whoever was on the bottom was winning.  But he didn’t know what kind of wrestling these guys were doing, and anyway they were standing so nobody was on top.

“This way.”  Rona grabbed his hand again—bare skin this time—and pulled him off to the side of the ring, right against the fence.  The view was great.  Kind of sideways, but it’s not like people faced forward when they fought. Girls had such a good eye for stuff like that; Gavin would have just stayed in the back.

The two guys were lying on the ground now, only about five feet in front of him. They looked like New Buffalo undergrads, clean and well-cared for, not scary or anything. On the bottom, there was a kind of chubby white guy in a red sweatshirt.  On top was an insanely ripped Asian guy in a gray tank-top that showed off his giant arm muscles.  He was lying on Sweatshirt Guy in a funny way, like he was trying to squish right through his body and into the floor.  

“Red is winning?”  Gavin was just guessing.  That backyard wrestling he had watched on YouTube was more like like ultimate fighting than high-school wrestling, and since this was also in a backyard, maybe it was more like ultimate fighting, too.

Rona shook her head.  “I don’t think so.” 

Damn. 

The two guys squirmed around some more.  Red-Sweatshirt would turn his body to the left, and Tank-Top would spin like a break dancer on top of him.  Red-Sweatshirt would turn back to the right, and Tank-Top would spin again.  It was pretty boring, but Rona seemed into it, standing up on tiptoes, leaning in to get a better view.

Finally something happened.  Gavin could tell, because everyone in the crowd starting yelling and saying stuff like aw yeah and finish him. Tank-Top had slipped behind Red-Sweatshirt. They were lying on their sides, spooning.  Tank-Top had his arm wrapped around Red-Sweatshirt’s face, like he was trying to strangle him or just smush his nose off. 

“He’s out!” the ref yelled.  Tank-Top got up. A guy in medical scrubs jumped into the ring and crouched over Sweatshirt guy, who was still on the ground, waxy-faced and unconscious.

After a few seconds he opened his eyes and sat up.  The ref was already holding Tank-Top’s well-defined arm up in the air.

“The winner,” announced a Brandon with a microphone on the far side of the ring, “by rear-naked choke: Tony Nguyen!” 

Rear-naked choke?  Wow. This whole wrestling thing was even gayer than Gavin remembered from high school. 

Tony Nguyen and his shaky-but-conscious opponent hugged, a really hard hug like they loved each other.  Then they left the ring and two new guys came up wearing boxing gloves.  One was a kind of skinhead-looking guy in a wife-beater and stompy boots, which seemed like a weird thing to box in, but of course Gavin didn’t know anything about boxing.  The guy was hopping around from the second he got into the ring, throwing punches in the air. The other one had a black sweatshirt with the hood up, kind of dark skin and a hook nose and eyes like he wanted to murder somebody.  He wasn’t hopping, just standing there glaring like a psycho.

“Scary,” Gavin whispered to Rona.

“Maybe.” She didn’t sound too scared.  She might be used to angry people from growing up in Miami, which was supposed to be kind of an intense city. They probably had guys like this teaching kindergarten.

“Fighting out of the blue corner,” the announcer-guy said.  “From West Lafayette, Pete Metzger!”  Skinhead got more hyper, jumped around faster, threw more punches in the air.

“And in the red corner, from New Buffalo, Sam Rojas!”  Hoodie Guy did not get hyper.  He just stared at the ref like he wanted to kill him.

“That guy looks crazy,” Gavin said.

“He’s scared shitless,” Rona said.

A bell rang to start the fight.  Skinhead ran full-force at Hoodie, his fist cocked up over his shoulder. The crowd gasped, but Hoodie jumped backwards.  The punch hung in empty air for a second, then fell downwards before Skinhead could regain control of it. 

Rona sighed really loud.  “Jesus Christ.”

Hoodie kind of shuffled towards Skinhead, his dark eyes still glaring.  But Rona was right: he looked terrified.  He kept his gloves up around his head, like he was expecting to get hit.  When he  threw a couple punches, they didn’t look like they were really meant to reach Skinhead’s face.  Skinhead lowered his glove to his waist, stuck his jaw out, and took a giant swing at Hoodie, which seemed like it hit him, though things went crazy after that and it was hard to see what was happening exactly.  There was just a lot of spit and fists flying everywhere.  The crowd was freaking out, yelling drunk directions as though the fighters could hear anything past all that punching and with everyone screaming at once.

“They suck,” Rona said.

Wow, really?  Gavin didn’t know anything at all about boxing—his old roommate wasn’t into it and they didn’t do it in PE—but it seemed to him like they were doing okay.  They were managing to hit each other a lot, anyway. Wasn’t that the point?  And when they got hit, they were standing there and taking it instead of jumping out of the ring and running away like Gavin would have, so you had be impressed with that at least.

He turned to look at Rona. She was staring at the ring, biting her lip, her nose wrinkled up like she was smelling something really foul, which she undoubtedly was, beer and body odor and cologne.

“How do you know so much about fighting?”

She kept watching the boxers. “My family’s into it.” Right, Miami, Cubans.  Scarface.  It sort of made sense.

Hoodie was in trouble now.  He was stumbling backwards, way backwards, into the ropes at the edge of the ring.  Skinhead stood there and watched him for a few seconds, like he was considering following him but hadn’t decided yet. Then, a burst of murder-rage lit up his eyes. He cocked his hand down by his waist and flew at Hoodie.  His fist was going to enter the front of Hoodie’s head and come out the back.

“Cross!” Rona said, not loud, but in her Divine Sharpness voice, clear like a paper airplane flying above the crowd.

Maybe Hoodie heard her, or maybe he was just thinking the same way she was. Right cross.  Skinhead’s giant crazy punch was coming, coming, almost there, and WHAM!  It was Hoodie’s punch, snapping straight into Skinhead’s jaw.  His eyes rolled back, and he tottered on his feet for a second.  When he fell, it was in a weird, crashing way that was more like a tree than a person.  

The guy in scrubs jumped back in the ring.  He sure was getting a lot of action tonight. But Skinhead was already sitting up, legs stretched in front of him like a kid.  “I’m good, I’m all good,” he was telling Scrubs.  He stood up, and when Hoodie was declared the winner, Skinhead gave him a giant bear hug.  It seemed like all these guys just loved the fuck out of each other the moment they stopped beating each other up.

Now a girl came into the ring. She was ready: tight jeans, black sweatshirt with Bully written on the back, shiny new gold boxing gloves. Hair shaved on one side of her head, the other side braided back in cornrows.

“We have a woman who would like to fight,” the announcer said. “Debbie McMahon from Crawfordsville.  Weighing one hundred and thirty pounds.  Any females out there want to step in the ring with Debbie McMahon?”

She stood in the ring, gloves at her side, lower lip pouting out, kind of angry and kind of sad.

“If you want to fight Debbie, please come to the front immediately.” 

The ref went to the side of the ring and said something to the announcer.

“Folks, it looks like we have our fighter!  What’s her name?” 

Her name is FUCKED.  Gavin turned his head to tell Rona the joke, but she was gone.  He looked back towards the fraternity building to see if she was heading inside, maybe to the bathroom.  Then he turned back, and there she was: at the side of the ring, pulling off the miniskirt from over her leggings and handing it to the announcer.  The ref was strapping her hands into a pair of worn, red boxing gloves. 

“From New Buffalo,” the announcer said. “We have Rona Gomez!” 

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Chapter 22>