Reese

“Let’s start by raising your heart rate. Jumping jacks are simple and easy for that. I want you to stay on your marks and do as many as you can until I tell you to stop. After that, it will be burpees, followed by thirty laps around the room, then straight into push-ups.”

They all look at me with something akin to horror on their faces.

I laugh out loud, enjoying their collective pain more than I should. “I’m just kidding. Sit your asses down.”

They look at each other in confusion for a minute before doing as I ask.

There is a guy in the back. Maybe sixteen or seventeen years old. His white-blond hair is almost as pale as his face. He looks at me with a scowl, but he sits without a word.

“Tell me what you want from this? Why come here at all?”

“It’s free,” one of them shouts.

“So is the park,” I point out.

“To learn to fight.” The guy who I put on his ass tells me quietly.

“What’s your name?”

“Carlos.”

“Right, Carlos. Why do you want to fight?”

He shrugs, but he looks away.

“I’m not here to turn volatile kids into bullies. If you want to learn how to do a roundhouse kick so you can show off in the school cafeteria or terrorize your younger siblings, you can leave now. I have neither the patience nor the crayons to explain all the reasons why that’s a shitty attitude to have.”

“What about if you want to learn it so you can protect your little sisters?” Carlos asks.

“Then you absolutely came to the right place,” I tell him emphatically, cataloging everything about him that I’ll need to do a follow-up later.

“Can you show us how to, um…” The girl with the braids starts but changes her mind and drops her head.

“Hey, what’s your name?”

She looks up at me reluctantly.

“Mazie.”

“Hey, Mazie. Do you know who I am?”

She looks me over before shaking her head.

“People around here know me as Malice.”

Whispers move around the room. They might not know me, but they’ve heard the legend of the street girl who made it out.

She bites her lip, her eyes on mine as she whispers her question. “Can you show me how to escape from being pinned down?”

Carlos’s head whips around. The girl next to her sucks in a sharp breath, but I don’t move my eyes from Mazie’s.

“Absolutely.”

Her eyes glisten, but she swallows and not a single tear falls.

The courage of this girl makes me want to scoop her up and keep her, but Mazie is a survivor.

My job is to turn her into a warrior.