Chapter Five.
I"ve been invited to an illegal underground cage fight, and it"s only my first night in Melbourne.
Some might say I was off to a good start.
I look at Rose, one eyebrow raised. "You can"t be serious?"
She"s distracted, examining her nails. "Still not dry," she says, looking up at me. "Yes, I"m serious."
Rose, an old high school friend, has picked up some of the Australian accent since moving out here when she was fifteen. I like her... for the most part, but we"re quite different. Her idea of a fun night is certainly not the same as mine.
"Could we get into trouble?"
"Babe," she says, rolling her eyes. "They"re not going to arrest five-hundred people."
"Five-hundred?" I say in surprise. "That many?"
"Oh, for sure. It"s only the biggest fight this month."
"Are there many fights?"
"Oh, every week. This is the biggest."
"I don"t know," I say, rubbing the tops of my thighs. "To be honest, Rose, I"m really not looking to get into trouble while I"m here. I mean, if I get arrested, I have to deal with the emba.s.sy, my dad will find-"
"Jesus Christ, girl!" Rose says, charging into the room and sitting on my bed. She crosses her legs. "You won"t be arrested. They"ll just tell everybody to leave, you know? They want the organizers and fighters, not the watchers."
"Is it just one fight?"
"Yeah, one fight."
"That"s it? All these people are turning up for one fight?"
"It"s the fight of the month. People are betting big bucks. It"s business."
"Okay, this is starting to sound shadier and shadier by the minute. I think I"m out."
She shrugs, and gets up. "Suit yourself. I was just asking if you wanted to come is all, not trying to put pressure on you."
Rose is about to leave when I call her name, and say, "There"s more, isn"t there? I saw that look. There"s something you"re not telling me."
She grins. "How could you tell?"
"I can always tell with you."
"Fine, fine, there is something."
"What?" I ask, shaking my head. "I mean, it"s just a couple of beefcake jocks beating each other up, right?"
"Well, not just any beefcake jock."
I blink. "Well?"
"One of them is fine," she says, drawing out the word.
I laugh, but shake my head. "I"ll need more of a reason than that to go down and risk getting arrested."
"Okay," Rose chirps. She turns around again.
"Rose," I say, sighing. "What else is there?"
"Oh, right," she says with a smirk, exaggeratedly pointing a finger at me. "You can always tell."
"I can."
"Well, it just so happens that you know one of the fighters."
"I do?" I ask. My brows knit as I think about it, but I can"t imagine knowing any underground fighter. "I don"t think so."
"Well, you don"t know him know him, but you do know him."
I stare at Rose. Does she actually expect me to decipher that? "Why don"t you just tell me?"
"Pierce Fletcher."
I"m about to say I don"t know who that is, and then it hits me.
Fletcher.
Isabelle Fletcher.
She"s dating my dad, and it"s her son. I flashback to the picture that dad showed me. He is fine, that"s for sure.
"You"re not serious," I say through a half-laugh, half-scoff. I can"t believe it. She"s pulling my leg.
"I am."
"Why didn"t you tell me about him before?"
"I wanted to surprise you."
"Surprise me?" I ask. "I don"t even know him."
"Well, technically you have some sort of relations.h.i.+p. After all, when you wrote that your dad"s girlfriend had a son out here named "Pearce" a and you got the spelling wrong-"
"Will you ever forgive me?"
Rose raises her eyebrows at me. "Anyway, I knew it had to be him. Maybe you can introduce me to him."
I roll my eyes. "You"ve got a boyfriend. And besides, how would he even know who I am?"
"Well, you know who he is."
"Yeah, because my dad showed me a picture. I never actually met him!"
Rose shrugs. "Seriously, you should come. It"s going to be fun."
I suck on my lower lip, thinking about it.
"There"s nothing on television tonight," she says.
"Will it be just us two?"
"Jason"s coming, too."
Her boyfriend. That"ll cramp her style if she gets to meet this fighter.
"He"ll drive," she says.
"Well, okay," I say after a moment, grinning. "Why not, right? I"ve never seen a fight before."
It"s dark, it"s cold, and as far as I can tell, we"re in some unremarkable lower-middle-cla.s.s suburb.
"We"re here," Jason says, and he meets my eyes in the rearview mirror.
"I thought you said this was a big event. I don"t see anybody around."
"No parking on premises," Rose says. I can hear the smacking of her lips as she chews her bubblegum. "Since it"s illegal and all. Five hundred cars would definitely look out of place at midnight on a Tuesday."
"What is the, uh, premises?"
"Oh, just an old train depot that doesn"t get used anymore. It looks totally low-key on the outside, but they"ve done it all up real nice on the inside."
"You mean like they used to keep trains inside?"
"The engine carriages, yeah," Jason says. "That"s how there"s enough indoor s.p.a.ce."
"Ah."
"We"ve got to walk there, maybe a ten minute walk?"
We all get out of the car, and I fall into step next to Rose. She"s holding Jason"s hand, and seems completely amped. I see gooseb.u.mps on her arms. She"s wearing leather pants she"ll have to peel off to get out of, and paired it with a tribal print crop top.
"You look like you"ve just stepped out of a Spice Girls music video," I say.
"Nineties is the new retro," she tells me. "Spice Girls were my favorite, anyway." She blows a bubble and pops it with a bite. Rose definitely knows how to put on a show. She"s so confident.
We round a corner, and that"s when I see it, streetlamps glinting off train tracks and chain-link fencing. So we must be nearby.
There"s a scream of laughter behind us, and I see a pack of girls. They walk quickly by us, and we"re left in their perfume-soaked wake. Mini-skirts, platforms, skinny jeans, heels... they"re all dressed as if they"re going to a club.
"I thought we were going to a fight?" I say, looking at Rose. Suddenly I"m feeling a little insecure. I mean, I"m wearing loose jeans, a black Pink Floyd pullover, and a cardigan.
"We are," she says. "Like I said, it"s the biggest fight. It"s going to be a huge party."
"You could have told me what it was going to be like." I fiddle with the b.u.t.tons on my cardigan. "I"m going to stand out so bad. I thought it was going to be like, I don"t know, in a dusty bas.e.m.e.nt or something."
"Oh, don"t worry so much," she says, waving a hand at me. But she doesn"t look at me. Her eyes are fixed on the big building in front of us. I can see that the windows are blacked-out, and from the outside it looks a little like an airline hangar. Huge, boxy, a real eyesore.
But I can hear it. The hubbub of excited people. It"s like a vibration in the air, a signal, and Rose is already tuned in to it.
She speeds up, excited, and I fall behind.
As we close in on the crowds, I realize that I don"t really want to be here anymore.
Chapter Six.
They f.u.c.king love me.
I don"t just hear the crowd, I feel them. Their collective voices, the screeching and cheering, and all their clapping, it shakes the air. I feel it on the beads of sweat that sit on my skin, this buzz, this vibration. I"ve just been warming up in the back on the bike, but now, beneath the bright lights, with the audience chanting my name, I"m heating up.
I throw off my robe. I don"t do any bulls.h.i.+t showy poses. I don"t flex my biceps or my lats. I don"t howl or growl or woof or bark.
I just walk around the cage.
Tonight is fight night.
Illegal, underground, unlicensed, whatever you want to call it. You walk in, and you don"t win anything unless you"re the one walking out. It"s just one fight, and the winner takes the pot. That"s always me.
People in the front rows have their hands out. They want to touch me. They want to feel the slick sweat on my skin, the heat in my flesh, the hard muscle packed tight on my body.
Who the f.u.c.k am I?