Chapter Eleven: Pain Is Power
River Jenkins

When I’ve descended down the staircase of Sophia’s house, I nearly bump into her grandmother, Jenna, who was carrying a tray with two glasses of orange juice and some snacks on the way up.

Jenna frowns at me, clasping at the silver tray with both of her hands tightly. “Leaving so soon?” She asks. “You two barely started your—”

I couldn’t help but huff, cutting off the words she wanted to say in the process; the breath escaped through my lips faster than I could stop it. “Sophia should learn to mind her own business.” I snap.

I step past her, not caring that her eyes were wide with shock at the tone I used on her.

I fling the door open, and yank it shut behind me again.

I knew from the second I saw Sophia that she wanted the attention to be away from her. I knew it since the start, and my aunt didn’t want to listen.

My aunt thought I was being paranoid, but I wasn’t.  I told her that a girl like Sophia only wanted to get close to me to fish about my past—to get a juicy story to tell everyone so that the attention would be away from her.

The way she spoke about my earlier was like she knew me—the real me—but in reality, she hasn’t known me for that long, and even if she did, she would never have come that close enough to know my darkest secret. No one will ever come close enough to me to know what truly happened to me.

“He doesn’t care about anyone other than himself.” Sophia had said earlier. “And he’s very troubled. Gets mad easily… Gets into fights…”

She acts like she knows me, but she doesn’t know a damn thing about me.

The side she has already seen of me was the only part I will allow her to see because there isn’t another part of me that I can show her. This is me—the real me—take it or leave it. I will not change. And she was right. I do get mad easily, but what does she expect? Does she expect me to sit back and watch how she makes assumptions about me when she doesn’t know me?

No. I will not allow it.

I hear a front door slamming shut behind me and when I glanced over my shoulder, I saw Sophia practically storming toward me. Her hair was flailing behind her with how fast she was actually storming toward me. By the looks of the anger literally radiating off of her in thick waves, she was absolutely pissed at me for talking to her grandmother with such disrespect.

Okay, I must admit that it wasn’t my intention to disrespect Sophia’s grandmother like that, and I must admit that I was being rude to her, but I didn’t like it at all when someone had their nose where it didn’t belong, and Sophia’s nose was in my business, even if she just ‘talked’ behind my back.

She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know what happened. And the fact that she called me ‘troubled’ without knowing the real, full story about my life when she didn’t know anything about me at all… I didn’t like that, at all.

I hear Sophia’s shoes clanking against the pavement behind me and I start to walk faster. Well, that was the case until I felt Sophia’s hand twisting around my arm before she pulled me to an abrupt halt, and then forces me to face her.

“I don’t know why you’re suddenly angry at me, but you should show some respect.” She says. Her green eyes were filled with anger. “My grandmother’s three times your age. You cannot talk to her like you did with Mr Yuri the other day.”

“What I told her was the truth,” I pull my arm out of her grasp, “you, Sophia, should mind your own damn business.”

“What are you talking about?” Her eyebrows pull together in a tight frown.

“You were talking behind my back as if you know me.” I tell her. “You had no right discussing me behind my back with your grandmother, especially since you know nothing about me.”

“We weren’t discussing you. She was telling me what a great guy you are.”

“Well, you sure had a lot to say about me, like how I am ‘troubled’ and how I don’t care about anyone other than myself. She might have said that I was a good guy, but you think the opposite about me.” I shake my head at her. “Do you know the saying, ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’? Well, this is one of those cases. You don’t know me, but yet you still judged me. And here I thought I was the prejudiced one.” I scoff.

She opens her mouth to say something but closes it again when I started to speak.  “You know nothing about me, so I suggest you keep your mouth shut and leave me the hell alone.” I turn on my heels to leave but I stop in my tracks to turn to face a very stunned Sophia. “And another thing, Sophia… Don’t make assumptions about me. You don’t know me. Don’t try to get to know me either because you won’t get very far with that.”

“I wasn’t making assumptions.” She says, tucking a tendril of her brown hair behind her ear. “That day, in the bathroom… you wanted to punch that mirror. You wanted to hurt yourself. You don’t fight your demons mentally, River, you’re trying to fight them physically and I don’t—”

“Stop!” I yell. My tone was so hard and so cold that she actually took a cautious step backward. “What you saw in the bathroom the other day was just a moment of weakness. And last time I checked, it happens to everyone.”

“But—”

“I say again, you don’t know me, Sophia, and stop trying to figure me out.”

“I don’t want to figure you out.” She says in a low voice.

She looks at the gravel beneath her feet instead of my icy gaze.

“Good. If you stop trying to figure me out, this will be very easy for you, but if you keep asking about my past, and if you keep trying to figure me out, it won’t be so easy anymore. I am not a puzzle piece you can try to figure out. So, stop trying to figure me out. You cannot piece me together.”

“What happened in the bathroom wasn’t just a moment of weakness. You had a panic attack. It might not seem serious to you right now, but it can lead to something that is serious. You need to seek help.” She looks at me with a pained stare. “And I’m sorry if you think I’m trying to tell you what to do, but this is serious, River. I could see that you were crying for help, and you might deny it now, but I can see pain from a mile away, and you, River, were in pain. And it wasn’t from punching that mirror, or bleeding.”

I laugh. I actually laugh at her. “There you go again…” I stop laughing and throw my hands up into the air frustratingly, “…making assumptions about me.” I shake my head at her. “I’m being serious, Sophia. Stop trying to figure me out. I won’t say it again.”

I don’t wait for her reply; I turn on my heels and storm away.

• • •

“You are useless.”

I shake my head, smiling at my opponent right in front of me.

He’s a big guy, about deep in his twenties. If it wasn’t for his blond hair and dark brown eyes, he would have been a spitting image of Myles, but Myles has a scar across his neck that went down to his collar bone. Myles also has tattoos across every inch of his body. My opponent now had almost none.

And he didn’t intimidate me like Myles did.  Myles was a scary motherfucker on most days, but a golden retriever on the other.

I swing my first punch, hitting my opponent square in the jaw.

Blood sputters from my opponent’s mouth, but he seemed to like the pain because he smiled when he spat the blood from his mouth to the ground; his teeth were red with blood before he licked it away. The hard punch fuelled him, but little did he know that the taunting voice in my head fuelled me.

“You good for nothing piece of shit.”

I didn’t get a chance to dodge my opponent when he lunged at me, swinging a punch of his own straight to my stomach. The breath leaves my lungs abruptly, and my opponent uses that to his advantage when he knees me in the face when I was doubled over from the punch to the gut.

Boos erupt from the crowd when I fall to the ground, directly to my back. Another breath explodes from my mouth from the hard ground; I spit the blood from my mouth and smile at my opponent when he stood over me.

He extends his hand out toward me to help me up from the ground but I lift my foot and kick him in the groin. He doubles over almost immediately and falls to his knees, holding his crotch.

I raise myself to my feet, hyping the crowd up by raising my hands into the air; swinging them repeatedly.

My opponent recovered from the blow to his groin and growls angrily when he jumps up from the floor using nothing but his feet.

His fist connects with my jaw.

I stagger backwards, feeling more blood filling my mouth. I didn’t get a chance to spit it out when my opponent charged at me yet again, but I managed to dodge him by sidestepping him. He nearly tumbles out of the make-shift ring but he manages to steady himself.  He would have tumbled out if the crowd didn’t shove him back inside.

“You won’t get very far.”

Before my opponent got a chance to punch me again, I kicked his right knee, hearing a satisfying crack. His legs cave out from underneath him and he fell to his back. A whimper escapes his lips as he was clutching his knee.

I smirk down at him.

He looks up at me.

His left eye was red-rimmed while the right was swollen shut.

“Finish him, Jenkins!” Someone from the crowd yells.

“Abomination.”

I kick my opponent in the face, sending him flying backwards.

“You’re nothing.”

I kick him again despite him being down already.

“You will never be anything more than an abomination.”

Kick.

“You are good for nothing.”

Kick.

I feel someone pulling me away from my out-cold opponent.

It was Myles.

He looked at me and then back at my opponent lying on the ground.

He shakes his head.

Blood trickled down the sides of my opponent’s face and his leg was resting in an awkward position. I think I broke his knee.

His eyes were swollen shut and his lip, cheek and eyebrow was busted.

The ringmaster smiles at me when he climbs into the make-shift ring. He walks over to me and lifts my bloody hand high into the air. “We have a winner.” He yells into the microphone. “Congratulations Jenkins. You’re still the champion, and undefeated.”

I dip my head once in a quick nod and wipe the blood from my mouth with the back of my other hand.

He releases my hand and I climb out of the make-shift ring, savouring the crowd’s claps against my back as I passed them to get to the locker room.

There were narrow metal lockers with horizontal slits in each one of them on the left side of the locker room and there was a toilet stall, a shower and a privacy curtain for when you want to clean off your blood or the opponent’s blood from your hands and body, and a small sink to the right.

I look in the full-length body mirror.

It looked like I passed through a murder massacre, and survived.

My blond hair was covered in dry blood.

My lip was completely busted open, my eyebrow had another cut just beside the old one, my clothes were damp from sweat and blood from my opponent and my shirt was torn at the side.

The entire locker room smelled like sweat, dirty clothes and blood.

I scrunch my nose up at the vile smell but even though it smelled absolutely disgusting, I still felt a sense of familiarity. This was the place I felt the most welcome. This was the place where I felt like I belonged. This was the place where I felt like I could face my demons and win them.

I wasn’t an ‘abomination’ here. I wasn’t a ‘nothing’ here.

I was ‘something’ here.

But even though my father’s words were there to remind me of what a big nothing I was, directly quoted by him, it still made me want to work hard to achieve my goals. His discouraging words were encouraging me to be something more than what he thought I could become.

It didn’t hurt less, though.

His words were like a knife piercing through my heart each and every time and the only place where I can use those words to my advantage was in the ring, but here, when I was alone in the locker room with nothing but the sound of cheers coming from outside the locker room and the stench of sweat and blood inside, the words were getting to me.

It sliced through me over and over again.

I pull the roots of my hair frustratingly, walking to one of the wooden benches in front of the lockers to sit down. I sigh loudly and close my eyes.

“Abomination.”

I bite my tongue hard enough to draw blood.

“Good for noth—”

I slam my palm against the wooden bench, opening my eyes.

“You can’t lose your shit like that again, River.” Myles says when he sits down on the bench beside me.

“I can’t help it.” I tell him.

“I know.” He squeezes my shoulder and looks at me. “Anger is one of the few emotions people can’t easily control and that is why you nearly killed your opponent in the ring today, because you couldn’t control your anger.”

“I thought the entire point of fighting is to nearly kill your opponent, M.”

Myles purses his lips and shakes his head at me, and to be honest, I have never seen him so concerned about me before.

“The point I’m trying to make is that you shouldn’t do that again. They’ll kick you out if you pull that shit again.”

“The ringmaster seemed like he loved the show I put on for the crowd.” I tell him, shrugging with a smile. “The barn looked a lot fuller today than all the other days, M.”

“Don’t change the subject, River. You nearly kicked that guy to death.” He says. “I know you fight here to release the anger, but you need to chill. What are you going to do if you can’t fight anymore? Use a wall as a punching bag? Or even an innocent bystander in the streets? A kid at school?”

“Alright, I get it. No need to spell anything out, Myles.”

“Hasn’t the support group been helping?” He asks me.

I tilt my head sideways to glare at him. “What do you think, Myles?” I ask, the sarcasm dripping from my tongue. “Does it look like the support group has been working? Do you think I’ll get angry like this if it worked?”

“Then you know that the next step is.” Myles tucks his shoulder-length hair behind his ear, looking at me. “You can’t go on like this anymore.”

“I am not going to pour my heart out to a therapist, Myles.” I spit at him. “Don’t even mention a fucking therapist or that I need professional help.”

“You don’t have a choice…” Myles says, looking at me with concern in his green eyes. “You’re going to murder someone one of these days, and you won’t even be aware that you did. You can’t control your anger anymore, and if it continues like this, killing someone won’t be far from your radar.”

“Fighting helps me, Myles—”

“Fighting is not going to help you if you fucking murder someone, River.” Myles snaps at me. He then pinches the bridge of his noses between his thumb and index finger. “I’m sorry…” He apologizes, and then he sighs, loudly. “But I am worried about you, man. This is some serious shit. It’s like you were in another world in the ring today. You weren’t present. You could have murdered your opponent and you wouldn’t even have known.”

“I told you it won’t happen again.” I tell him. “Fighting helps more than therapy ever will, Myles. That’s what you don’t understand.”

He nods.

“I know.” He sighs, loudly. “But don’t do anything stupid, River. You need to get your anger in check before you really kill someone one day.” He pats my shoulder, gets up from the bench and walks out of the locker room.

When I glance around the room, I notice that I was alone too.

Alone with my thoughts—the taunting voice.

“Good for nothing piece of shit.”

“Why did you do it to him too? Why couldn’t you just leave him alone?”I get up from the bench and walk towards the mirror. “Why couldn’t you just leave him the fuck alone?” I ask, punching the wall beside the mirror, not hard enough to draw blood, but enough to bruise my knuckles badly, again. “Why? Why did you have to do it to him too?”

“River!” Myles’s voice comes from behind me.

“I can’t do this. I can’t fucking do this anymore. I tried, but I can’t…”

Myles swallows hard, pulling me into a hug. “Let’s go somewhere, yeah?” He asks when he pulled away. “It might take your mind off… things.”

I clutch my sore hand in the other one, and I nod at him.

Anything was better than thinking about that voice.

• • •

“Out of all the places in the world, you take me to your bar?” I ask him, looking at him sceptically.

“Well, I promised that I was going to take your mind off some things so it’s either punching walls or you can forget a little bit. You choose.”

“You’re really going to allow me to drink… in your bar… where anyone can come in and arrest you for serving alcohol to a minor?” I ask him, seeing him chuckle in the corner of my eye.

“I don’t like it when you put it like that so let’s just keep this between us, yeah? And besides, the closed sign is still on the door; no one will come in.”

I nod at him. “Deal.”

Myles jumps over the bar’s counter and takes a bottle from behind him. “A bottle of my finest whiskey.” He leans down, grabs a shot glass from underneath the counter and slides it over to me.

I sit down on the wooden bar stool and watch while he pours me a shot of his, and I quote his exact words, ‘finest’ whiskey into the small shot glass. The brown liquid was exactly what I needed after the day I had, but even I know that once the alcohol has settled, the thoughts would return.

“If you tell anyone about this, I might just kill you in the ring myself.” He tells me, giving me a look. “I am not even joking. I cannot lose this bar, just like you cannot stop fighting.”

I chuckle, taking the shot glass and tilting it so the liquid runs down my throat. It burns at first but once I got used to the taste, it was quite nice. It tasted like caramel and toasted almonds.

“And?” He asks. “What do you think?”

“It’s not bad.” I tell him.

“Don’t get used to it, though.” Myles says. “I brought you here because I didn’t like what I saw in the locker room, but this isn’t going to be an everyday thing… You really need to consider seeing someone professional.”

I shoot him a dirty look of my own and slide the shot glass toward him. Before I could open my mouth to speak, Myles throws his hands up in surrender, and starts to speak.

“And before you bite my head off for bringing it up… don’t… I just, I really want to help you, man, but I don’t know how. I thought fighting would help you, but it seems to be getting worse each and every time you come back.”

“I won’t kill someone if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“That is exactly what I am worried about.” Myles says, sighing.

“You shouldn’t.” I tell him, and then mutter. “Killing people doesn’t run in the family.”