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  “Who’s the faggot now, culo?” I ask quietly, then pull back my fist like an arrow on a tightened bowstring. I smirk. And let it go.

  I’ve gotten in fights before. Fighting was part of life at Tryon, especially before I started boxing. It was kill or be killed in there, even worse than Park West, and until I proved to the other residents––even to some of the guards––that I wasn’t a sucker, I had to take my punches and give them back, no matter if it got me tossed into isolation.

  But somehow, this is different. This isn’t happening in quick, dirty sucker punches while the guards look the other way while they place bets on a winner. This is payback. Here I have the freedom to have at it while Flaco and K.C. block the street, giving me silent support as my fist meets Jaden’s face with crunch after satisfying crunch. Jaden isn’t a total chump––he gives as good as he gets, shoving me off him and landing a few scrappy punches, some nasty kicks to my shins. But he’s no match for me. He doesn’t have my training or my strength. He doesn’t have my anger either.

  Soon I don’t even see him anymore; I just see red, blue, black, all sorts of colors as the pain of bone on bone throbs satisfyingly up my arm. As the rush takes over, there’s no one to grab me by the shoulders, tase my side, pull me out of the frenzy. No one stops the rage as it rushes like a flood.

  It’s not until Jaden’s slumped against the wall, breathing too hard and looking at me through a puffy, bleeding eye, that K.C. finally taps me on the shoulder. When I turn around, my friend looks a little freaked out, but he sticks his chin out with respect.

  “Nico, I think he knows who’s the boss now,” he says in Spanish so Jaden won’t understand. “No lo mates.” Don’t kill him.

  I look back at Jaden, who really does look like a kid now, not the bully from the schoolyard. For a second, I remember his face when we were little. Younger than Gabe, without the hardness, the nastiness it has now. Guilt washes over me as I take in the gash on his lip, the eye already swollen shut, the bruises already evident around his jaw despite his darker skin. He’s the same age as me, still growing into his body, still at heart just a scared kid trying to figure out how to live in this jungle of a city. And I just gave him a face that will make his mother cry for a week.

  I take a step forward, and he cowers instinctively against the wall.

  “Nah, man,” he says in a voice that cracks. “You win, homey. You win.”

  I don’t tell him I was going to help him up. He doesn’t want my help. And I don’t deserve to give it.

  “Just...don’t fuck with people at school, okay?” I say, unsure of what I’m asking for here. “And really don’t fuck with my friends or family. Or me.” With a last thought, I pluck the hat off his head and toss it to Flaco. “And buy your own fuckin’ hat.”

  Without waiting for a response, I pick my backpack off the ground and leave, and K.C. and Flaco fall into step beside me as we exit the alley and continue home.

  “Yo!” K.C. crows next to me. “That was some gangster shit right there!”

  Flaco chimes in while they gleefully recount the fight to each other, but I don’t say anything. I just hunch my shoulders and shove my hands into my pockets, ignore the pain throbbing through my knuckles. For some reason, this doesn’t feel like a victory. It feels like a step in some other direction––which one, I’m not so sure.

  ~

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Yo, man, I like that one. That shit is filthy.”

  Flaco shoves a skinny finger on my sketch. It’s the last period of the day, art class, the only class that I don’t want to end as soon as it starts.

  Things are getting a little easier. True to his word, Jaden has laid off, keeping far away from me except for a few dirty looks from time to time. That’s fine by me. He can look all he wants.

  But even if I like drawing, it’s still hard to be in a regular class again. All last week I felt like a zoo animal, entering in the middle of the semester. Most of my old friends hadn’t seen me in years, and considering how much we’ve all changed, it took them a bit to get used to me. Some of the others have been a little weird since I don’t want to hang out in the yard after school or skulk around the neighborhood acting like thugs. I’m not looking for a fifth year of high school. I’m not looking for trouble.

  Flaco, who’s had that nickname––Spanish for skinny––since we were kids, looks over my drawings, then waves over another classmate. “Hey, Milo, c’mere.”

  I sit back awkwardly while they examine the drawing of a clock. It’s sort of cartoon-like, with angels and demons coming out of the sides. I draw clocks a lot. No surprise––when I had all that time to myself, suddenly I became obsessed with it.

  “This shit is tight,” Milo says. He turns to me. “Would you let me ink this?”

  He holds up his arm, which is splattered with tattoos. Already eighteen, Milo is an apprentice at a tattoo parlor downtown, so he has to practice on himself a lot.

  I shrug. “Sure.”

  “Sweet,” he says and returns to his table, drawing in hand.

  The bell rings, and most of the students clear out. But I linger, wanting to finish the drawing I started. This is the only class where I don’t feel overwhelmed. I actually like being here, and more often than not, Ms. Alvarez lets me sit and work for a while. It’s quiet, and after the first week when I was forced to knock some sense into Jaden, gives me a way to avoid the crowds and the gossip. His eye still has a big scab over it.

  “You’ve gotten so much better.” Mrs. Alvarez’s voice behind me breaks my concentration. “Your sense of expression has really improved. That look on her face. Wistful and sad, but also determined and full of love.”

  I turn back to the drawing, which I’m doing from memory. Those weren’t words I was thinking about when I started this picture, but they fit it perfectly. I’m glad they come across.

  “It’s my mother,” I say quietly. Then, with a grin at my teacher, I wink. “Don’t tell anyone, though.”

  She smiles back at me, and if I’m not mistaken, blushes a little. Ms. Alvarez is about sixty years old; I know she’s not interested in me like that. It’s just something I’ve noticed lately when I smile at women of all ages. Olivia isn’t the only girl in my classes who’s been giving me eyes, and I’ve started noticing it happening on the street too. K.C.’s also noticed––every day he’s got some new idea of which girl I should be hitting up that weekend. For some reason, dude is obsessed with my virginity. I just want him to shut up about it.

  “May I?”

  Ms. Alvarez gestures at the sketchbook next to me. Scuffed and with one cover torn off, it’s a lot different than when she first gave it to me, the week before I left the city. That’s a conversation I also carried with me, along with this sketchbook, for the past two years.

  “They’re going to tell you you’re worthless,” she’d said. “They’ll treat you like you don’t matter. But I know the truth, and so do you. It’s easy to lose your sense of direction in a place like Tryon, but if you keep centered, you can find your true north. Write. Draw. Do whatever it takes. But don’t lose track of who you are.”

  I did it every day, and it saved me. While most of the other kids in the center were doped up or fighting guards, I boxed, attended class, or sat quietly in my room, where I read and drew.

  I hand the book to her. It’s only right she sees what came out of her advice. “It’s full. I need to get a new one.”

  Ms. Alvarez flips through the sketches with a solemn face. I keep waiting for her to grimace or make a face at some of the pictures I drew. Most are either pictures of home––of my mom, my siblings, K.C., people and places in New York. Others are pictures of Tryon, and those are not so nice. She stills a moment over the picture of Dolajuwon, one of the “residents” (as they called us) who did the boxing program with me. In the sketch, he’s lying unconscious on the bathroom tiles after one of the guards punched him in the face. There’s a dark shadow of blood on the floor under his broken nose.

  “This one is very good,” Ms. Alvarez murmurs before flipping the page.

  I wait patiently as she continues through the sketches. The hallway outside the classroom is quiet now; most of the students have gone home. But I wait until she’s done, until she closes the book to stand up.

  “These are very special,” Ms. Alvarez says as she looks straight at me without an ounce of pity. “Thank you for letting me look at them.”

  The tightness that always seems to be in my chest lets up a little. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t stop drawing,” she says as she walks away. “Hold on a second.” She unlocks a supply cabinet at the far end of the room and pulls out an identical book.

  “What, do you keep those around just to pass out for students?” I joke. There’s a reason I don’t have a new one yet. Sketchbooks––good ones––aren’t cheap, and I have no money.

  “Only the special ones,” Ms. Alvarez says. “Ones with stories to tell.”

  I accept the book, and flip through the blank pages. Do I have a story to tell? I feel like I’m empty. Like the last two years sucked out everything inside me, and now I’m just a shell. I close the book and rest my hands on top of it.

  “Thank you,” I say quietly.

  Ms. Alvarez glances at my knuckles, which are still bruised from my fight last week. She looks up sharply. “Nico. I’ve known you a long time. And I know you’re smarter than to get yourself mixed up with a bad crowd again. I know you learned your lesson.”

  I flex my fingers, already on the defensive. “It’s not what it looks like.”

  “Is that right?” Ms. Alvarez’s voice turns sharp in that way only women from the barrio can do. She’s nice, but she’s still from the block. “So Jaden Matthew’s eye was blackened by a door?”

  I glare at her. “I know you’re not on Jaden’s side here, Ms. Alvarez.”

  Ms. Alvarez sighs and takes a seat on one of the stools at my table. Arthur Evans, the owner of the hat, is in my art class. We sit next to each other sometimes, mostly because no one else will sit next to him. I’m about ninety-five percent sure the kid is gay, and at Park West, that means you get the shit beat out of you on the daily. Arthur’s a good artist, and he’s never been mean to anyone. And Ms. Alvarez doesn’t know I only heard about all the other ways Jaden’s tortured him after I broke Jaden’s nose.

  “Nico,” she says, “I just don’t want to see you end up back in detention. Or something worse.”

  “Ms. Alvarez, I didn’t go to Tryon for giving an asshole a taste of his own medicine,” I reply sharply. “In case you forgot, I ended up there for something I didn’t even do.”

  “But something you’re doing now?” Ms. Alvarez counters back. “There are better ways to deal with your anger about that than by becoming a vigilante.”

  She swallows back a bunch of piercing retorts that are probably at the tip of her tongue. I know the look. My mom gets it right before she threatens me with a house slipper. That was how I really knew I was home again––when the soft rubber hit me in the back of the head after I talked back one too many times.

  I stared at my bruised hands. I’m getting out of shape without the boxing program, but the desire to hit something is worse now than it was then. Day after day since my fight with Jaden, it’s been simmering. At Tryon, I just felt numb, but now that I’m home, faced with all the messiness that was there before I left, that numbness is wearing off, and in its place is anger.

  Anger that my siblings and I are stuck sleeping on couches and the floor, four to a room.

  Anger that David continues to lounge around our tiny apartment, ordering my mother about like a king.

  Anger at the way he threatens her with her immigration status whenever she stands up for herself.

  Anger at how little I can do to help her. And even though it’s not really all his fault, Jaden’s the easiest one for me to blame for where I’m at.

  “No me sacas de quicio, Carmen.” I can hear David saying it now, his voice slurred by alcohol. Don’t piss me off. “You don’t know what I know. Without me, they’ll ship your ass back home.”

  “Pare,” Ma says sharply when I suggest we talk to someone new. Someone at Legal Aid or someplace like that. “There’s no point,” she says, every time. “They can’t help me.”

  I flex my hands again on the pebbled cover of the sketchbook. “What else am I supposed to do?”

  Ms. Alvarez tugs the book from under my hands and flips open the first page.

  “This is a gym that my cousin owns,” she says as she scribbles a name. “On Fifty-Second and Tenth. Tell him I sent you.”

  I turn the page around. “Frank’s Gym?” I look up. “Is this for real? It’s like something out of Raging Bull.”

  Ms. Alvarez presses her lips into a thin line. “Didn’t I hear you telling Flaco and Milo about boxing?”

  I nod, staring at the page.

  “Sometimes Frank lets a few kids work in exchange for training,” she says. “Ask. It sounds like you might need it. It’s better than doing things that will get you in trouble again, isn’t it?”

  I have to admit, her words make sense. As much as I hated everything else about Tryon, I did like boxing. I miss it.

  “Okay,” I say, closing the book. “I’ll stop by.”

  ~

  CHAPTER SIX

  Two weeks later, I’m standing outside Frank’s Gym, staring at the sign with the same name. Sitting alone on an empty corner on the Westside Highway, it’s an older building, made of ugly gray concrete, a car garage that was converted long ago. One of the garage doors is partly open, and through the bottom I can see some boxers’ feet moving around a ring, the sounds of their gloves finding contact floating into the late afternoon air.

  My hands clench the worn strap of my backpack. It was a hard rest of the week. Jaden, that motherfucker, has started chasing my sister around school. He’s doing it to fuck with me, not because he actually likes Maggie, and that’s really not fair to her. Every day in Biology, where we’re doing a unit on the human reproductive system of all fuckin’ things, I have to hear him talk about the dirty things he’s going to do to her, how he’s going to make her call him Papi. He’s careful to have a couple of friends with him at all times. And he’s figured out that at school, he’s safe. He’s knows I won’t do anything that could land me back in Tryon, or, because I’m old enough anyway to be tried as an adult, in jail.

  On top of that, David’s spent every night this week at the apartment, and on Monday I had to help Gabe go to sleep to the sounds of David giving it to my mother. Again. I barely got a C- on my math exam the next day, and I had to skip History class this morning so I could stand in line at the food bank with Ma. Last week she didn’t get there in time, so we ended up eating nothing but rice and soft apples for two days.

  So I’m grouchy and really fuckin’ hungry. But I need something more than a meal at home can get me.

  “Can I help you, kid?”

  I jerk around to the doorway, which is being held open by a short older man with a hooked nose and combed gray hair. He looks like every other greasy old man from the neighborhood, but his eyes spark with a kindness I recognize. No doubt about it: this dude is Frank, owner of the gym and my teacher’s cousin.

  I shuffle toward him and hold out my hand. “I’m Nico Soltero. A student of Ms. Alvarez’s over at Park West. She, um, said you were looking for someone to hire for trade.”

  “Frank,” says Frank as he looks me over skeptically. “Carly sent you?”

  I nod, although to be honest, I never knew my teacher’s first name. “Yeah. I, um, I just started school again after being away for a while. They had a boxing program where I was at.”

  Frank frowns. “And where was that?”

  Jesus, this guy really doesn’t beat around the bush. I toe a crack in the sidewalk. “Um, Tryon Residential Center.”

  “The correction facility?”

  Still staring at the concrete, I nod. “Yeah.”

  Frank says nothing for a long minute. Before I can get out another word, my stomach speaks for me, growling like a Rottweiler. I look up, embarrassed, but Frank raises a thick eyebrow.

  “Follow me,” he says gruffly.

  He leads me into the gym and up a flight of stairs, barely giving me a moment to look eagerly at the guys training below. It’s not quite four yet, so the gym isn’t busy with people coming for classes after work. Right now is just for the hardcore fighters, men who work irregular hours so they can focus here when the gym is empty.

  Frank leads me into his office and takes a seat behind a messy desk, gesturing for me to take the seat opposite him. Then he reaches into his desk and tosses me a PowerBar.

  I try to give it back. “Thanks, man, I’m good.”

  “First rule of my gym, kid: don’t lie to me.” Frank tips his heavy gaze down to my stomach. “You got a fuckin’ circus going on in there, and can’t nobody think on an empty stomach. So, eat.”

  I’m realizing fast that Frank isn’t the kind of guy I’ll be able to say no to. So I just give a quick nod, and he watches me tear open the wrapping. I demolish the bar in about five seconds.

  “Thanks,” I say while I’m still swallowing the last bite.

  He looks impressed. “So, you got your stuff?”

  I stare at the table. “I, uh, don’t have any stuff. I was sort of hoping you might have something I can borrow.”

  When I look up, Frank is staring in disbelief. “Did Carly tell you I was runnin’ a goddamn charity over here?”

  I frown. “No. She said you were looking for someone who would be willing to work in exchange for a membership and a little training. I’m strong. Dependable. Trustworthy, even if the judge said I’m not.”

  “Is that why you got sent to Tryon?”