Chum

I’m not one for tumbling, gymnastics, acrobatics, all things I abandoned at the altar of kicking and running and aiming with my forehead. Like most little girls, when I was young, I did those things, enrolled by my parents in an effort to teach me valuable life skills and keep me in shape. Of course I can somersault, of course I know what a balance beam is, and sometimes I can even cartwheel if I feel particularly motivated.

I shakily put one foot in front of the other, and think to myself, in no uncertain terms, “this is bullshit”.

The balance beams looked even from the distance I was at before, but from up close, they’re anything but. They’ve been propped up, slightly bent, some of them thicker and some of them thinner. There’s inclines and declines, each balance beam overlapping at least one other but usually two, and never at the very end of them. I have to step over the ones that intersect the middle of whatever beam I’m on, and several times, I almost fall, my arms splayed out for balance like a tightrope walker. I’m determined to not fuck up on this first obstacle, and I make my way across slowly and steadily.

Unlike them, I don’t need to be fast. I just need to prove I can do it. Doing it fast comes afterwards. I don’t turn back for gracious applause after I make my way off the sole balance beam leading to the end, an extremely narrow one at an incline that I really have to work my calves to get across. I don’t grandstand or do anything interesting. It is only me, and the obstacles ahead of me. It is only ever me, and the obstacles ahead of me.

There are only two obstacles that I’m really dreading, and one of them is right in front of me. I know being able to ascend two parallel walls, like in an alleyway, is probably an extremely essential skill for anyone who needs to move around a city by foot extremely quickly, but this just strikes me as impossible. The bricks are extremely fake, wallpaper that won’t give me any grip, and there’s plastic pipes and knobs like a rock climbing wall, painted in worn-out metal colors, silver and grey and rust red brown. The ledges are just wooden planks anchored in and similarly painted to look like granite or marble or whatever, built to mimic the appearance of window-sills. The space directly between the two walls is a foam pit, like the kind they expect you to fall into doing gymnastics, which sort of breaks the illusion but I guess is necessary for safety.

I look up, take a deep breath, and think. Really, it’s just a rock climbing wall that requires you to switch walls. From afar, it was more intimidating, because it was harder to see all the little handholds and crevices. I take a step back into the space between the balance beams and this, and run at a sharp angle so I can get a little more lead-up. I turn, try to propel myself up the wall, and just barely manage to skim the first ledge with my fingers.

I fall back down, my feet catching in the foam pit, nearly knocking myself down to my knees. I take a couple steps back and try again, and this time, I catch it, hauling myself up with both arms already getting ready to start screaming at me. There’s not enough space on the ledge to really pull myself into a standing position from below, only to use it as a footrest if I’m already above it, so I just treat it as another rock on the rock wall and move on. My eyes flick from object to object, scanning for handholds, limited in timing only by the lactic acid buildup in my forearms, if I’m remembering one of my old coach’s lectures correctly. I trace out a path and start working my way up.

Blink, over from the sidelines, whistles and claps. “Go new girl! You got this!”

I rest my feet on one of the ledges with the inch or so of room I get and shake one hand out, followed by the other. I know the goal is to jump across to the other wall, but I don’t think that’s feasible, and I don’t know if they’d actually set that up as a necessity – if I jump and fall, I’m breaking my ankles. I know it’s not flashy, but I just reach across with one arm and one leg, the other half of my body gripping for dear life onto the wall. I catch a handhold. It’s slow going, but I make my way up, stone by stone, my body heaving for breath, gulping down precious lungfuls of air that I haven’t needed before. It becomes simple on the way up again. I work my way onto the ledge that I am allowed, and then stretch all the way across to just barely grab hold. As I manage to pull myself onto the top, I take a second to feel accomplished before looking around.

It looks a lot worse from below. Up here, about ten feet high, I’d wager, it just seems about as daunting as a diving board. “What’s the situation if I fall off this thing from up here? Do I just try not to break my neck? This doesn’t exactly seem up to code,” I yell towards the end of the obstacle course.

“What are you, a safety inspector?” Playback shouts before Puppeteer has a chance to shut him up.

“Then you try to land in the foam pit while Gale slows you down! In the real world we can’t guarantee you belaying equipment for scaling buildings safely. You’re going to have to get comfortable with free climbing,” Puppeteer yells back.

“Sounds dangerous!” I shout.

“Being a hero usually is!” she replies. I don’t really have a counter to that, so I find the chalk on the roof that’s been set up and chalk up my hands. Descending the walls is a lot easier than ascending them, and the trip down is unremarkable. I hear Blink cheering as soon as my sneakers hit the ground and bite back the need to ask for her silence.

My arms ache, and my forehead is covered in a thin but growing layer of sweat. I wipe it off on the back of my forearm. Hopping fences is not an interesting challenge for me – my small feet, compared to everyone else here, are real good at getting in the gaps in the chain link, and scrambling over is a non-issue. The iron fence, consisting solely of parallel vertical spikes with the tips sanded down and padded, is obviously a harder challenge. Still, I can wedge my feet in at an angle, catching the bars in the arch of my shoe, and shimmy myself up until I’m rolling over the top. Easy peasy.

Next is the part I’ve been really dreading. There are monkey bars at every playground, but these ones have a slight curve to them, barely noticeable if you’re not close enough to see it. After going halfway, the gaps get larger, with every third monkey bar just cut off, and at the very end, every other one instead. I can still see in the sides where they just lopped it off and plastered over the holes and painted over it with silver colored paint. Then, after the monkey bars comes a bunch of ledges like on the parallel walls, but these are clearly intended to be climbed with hanging arm strength, not shimmied over by pulling myself on top.

My arms hurt just looking at the whole mess. I take a couple of steps back and do a running leap onto the monkey bars, grabbing onto them hard enough that I feel the skin on my palms ripping a little bit. I know how to handle monkey bars. I swing myself, rocking my legs back and forth, using my pelvis to give myself more momentum, and before I can psyche myself out, I scramble across.

One, two, one, two, left, right, left, right. My hand reaches out for empty air and I slip up, too caught up in the rhythm to remember the missing bars. I swipe at nothing and overcorrect, swinging my body around so that I can have two hands on the bar again. I grip, I squeeze, I let out a sharp, loud yell. I start swinging again, back and forth, trying to regain momentum.

My hands hurt so bad, but I’ve been gutted by a propeller. This is nothing. I just keep telling myself that – I’ve been gutted by a propeller, this is nothing. I’ve been gutted by a propeller, this is nothing. I am not going to let them get one over on me. I am not failing. Maybe I don’t want to be a hero, maybe I do, but if there’s anything I’m sure of, it’s that I’m good enough for them.

It should be my choice to stay or go. I let out another scream and start swinging. I reach out for the next bar and scrape it with my fingernails. I swing back. I swing forward. I get my momentum back, reach out, and grab hold. The next bar is closer, and my left hand grabs it easily. I stop and keep my momentum so I can use my left hand for the far away bar. I think that’s probably part of the game, here, that if you go with the natural rhythm, you’ll overwork one of your arms.

I swing and grab, and keep it up. One, two, pause. One, two, pause. By the time I get to the bars that are situated with every other one missing, I give up on grabbing, blood running down my inner arms in tiny trickles. Being able to have intimate awareness of my entire vascular system is extremely disconcerting, just adding another obstacle on my pile. I just rock myself back and forth and let go, throwing myself at the next bar and catching myself with both hands. Then the next, and then the next. In the distance, I see Puppeteer getting up, and try to ignore her. I vanish her from my periphery.

“You good down there, newbie? You’re bleeding!” she asks.

I do not have control over my emotions or my voice right now. Instead of saying anything reassuring, my face contorts into a snarl, teeth bared. I pull myself onto the ledges and feel my muscles shredding, fourteen year old girl arms not meant for this sort of upper arm workout. Puppeteer leans over the edge, and I see her casting out her wires, probably deciding to come down and save my life.

So I stop her, and scream. “Don’t look down on me!” I use as my kiai, feeling the effort ripping my throat. She pauses while I yank myself sideways, about to descend from on high to ask me to stop. I’m sure she wants to tell me that I’ve done enough for someone my age, that she’s very impressed, and don’t worry, Sam, you’ll train and you’ll train and one day you’ll be able to do it just like we do it.

I don’t want to hear any of that. Something in my abs blows a fuse like a circuit breaker being tripped, and a sharp taste fills my mouth. I pull myself to the next ledge, leaving bloody, smeared handprints mixed with chalk along the wood. The ache goes down to my nails, and I feel like my arms are about to rip themselves out of my shoulder joints. My inhale is shaky and unsteady. My eyes are unfocused and swimming. I have been gutted by a propeller. I have been gutted by a propeller. I have been gutted by a propeller. It becomes a mantra as the world stops being in focus for me. I say it again in my head. I have been gutted by a propeller.

Outside of the echoes of my outburst, the gymnasium is silent. When I look behind me, I see everyone else, having left the starting line and walked around the obstacle course just to watch my performance.

I hate that. I clench my teeth together like a vicegrip, digging the tips into my gums, trying to elicit a pain response that’s not from my arms or my core. My legs dangle uselessly beneath me. I hang there, pushing myself beyond everything my body is designed for, and begin to shake myself side to side like a pendulum. If I can’t shimmy across, I’ll throw myself across. I let go, in small, rapturous moments of micro-rest, hurling myself sideways an inch at a time, one, two, three inches. My nails dig into wood. Blood reaches the underside of my t-shirt.

Finally, I make it to the next obstacle, drop down, and buckle as a wave of fresh oxygen hits my lungs. My vision goes sparkly and my mouth immediately fills with saliva. Crossroads says something, but I don’t hear it, because I’m too preoccupied with slamming my red, wet palms into my knees and trying not to fall to the ground completely. My entire body begs for release, even though I’m resting, I no longer have anything to agonize over. I inhale, and it feels like my lungs are broken. My arms are limp, sliding off my knees and failing to protect me as I pitch forward and hit the ground nose-first, right into the padding.

I can hear Puppeteer and Playback both making their way down from the fake fire escape as quickly as they can. I can hear the noises of concern from the onlookers, and I can feel the wind from Gale pulling at me. “Get her upright, Pup.” Crossroads orders. Something thin and tight winds around my hair like a ponytail tie, and I am yanked upwards, my eyes dry and my vision blurred.

The saliva flows freely from the corners of my lips as I vomit directly into a bowl of swirling wind, taking the morning’s Wawa trip with it. My entire body convulses in rebellion against what I just put it through, and I feel my throat clench and squeeze as it propels bile and half-digested food up into my mouth and out into the world. How lovely – I ask not to be looked down upon, and my body betrays me by making me look weak and feeble (that means REALLY weak) in front of the entire team.

I can’t even say words against the tide. I just start yelling in between belches, my mouth repeatedly refilling with fresh spit. I remember once, after my mom got too drunk at a seder, that one of my relatives told me why it is your mouth gets all spitty and you get that weird feeling in your cheeks before you throw up. He said that it was a defense mechanism, your body trying to protect your mouth and throat from the harsh acidity of the stomach bile. I spit into the levitating sphere of vomit, and another wave comes up, this one devoid of food.

I spend a minute being babied, maybe two minutes, maybe five. I’m in enough pain that time has blended together into one incoherent mass. At some point, Gale floated away the remnants of my morning meal and stomach acid, and I try to take a mental note to thank her, but all I can do is instead mentally note to stop yelling. My throat is raw and ragged, and as Puppeteer lets my head down gently, her strings cushion me and form a lattice beneath me, manipulating my limbs so I’m splayed out like a starfish.

The daily obstacle course run comes to a momentary, inconvenient pause. The room is silent as it tends to be, its vastness absorbing even the sounds of everyone’s breathing. Shaking like a leaf, or an animatronic skeleton on Halloween, I get back to my feet.

“Alright.” I squeak, my voice hoarse and dry. “I’m ready to keep going.”

“Are you sure, new girl? You just threw up. I think you should stop.” Blink asks, reaching out to try and hold my shoulder. This time, when I shrug her off, it’s with more force, swinging my arm at her. She backs away faster than I can respond to, and my arm goes back to dangling at my side.

“My legs are fine. I’ll have enough arm strength to handle the fire escape at the end. Don’t patronize me,” I answer her, trying to crack my knuckles. It doesn’t look nearly as badass as I expected, I imagine. All it ended up doing was getting blood on my fingers.

“I’m not…” she starts, before a wall of semi-visible strands locks in the air across my face.

“Hey. Newbie. I don’t care what kind of protagonist syndrome you think you have, but you’re not going to take it out on my team,” Puppeteer chides me, glaring at me through her eyebrows. “Nobody’s patronizing you or looking down on you. Get that chip off your shoulder.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, as flatly and sincerely as I can manage with my hoarse-ass voice. “Sorry. I’ve got problems.”

“I don’t mind problems, I mind people who can’t be team players. If you can’t handle getting assisted by others, go be a street vigilante. Or go to therapy,” Puppeteer orders, and I really can’t fault her for it. Logically, everything she’s saying makes sense.

“I just don’t want help finishing this course. I can handle it. Apologies for the outburst, ma’am,” I reply. She retracts her strings, looks at me with what is easily identifiable as pity, and nods.

“Alright, everyone, let’s give the stubborn newbie her space,” she orders, backing everyone away with her wingspan. I pace in my spot and eye the next obstacle ahead of me, everything duplicating and fusing back together in my vision. I take a couple of steps back, begin running, and jump for the first platform.

I misjudge the jump, slip off the edge, and black out before I even hit the ground.

There are a lot of places I expect to wake back up in. My home, assuming that everything that happened in the past couple hours was some kind of dream, or maybe that my parents were alerted and would come to pick me up. Or maybe an infirmary, since I know there was one that I got shown during my little tour. Maybe they just left me there, or moved me to the side so they could do the obstacle course around me.

I did not expect to wake up atop the fire escape wall and its facade, lying on foam cushions, body propped up sideways, presumably in case I threw up again. From up here, I can see the entire gymnasium, its distinct lack of people, its vastness and enormity. I slowly prop myself up on agonized, bruised arms, straight purple lines going up and down their entire lengths, my hands covered in thin, weeping scabs that have been wrapped up in gauze.

I turn around to see the rest of the group sitting, talking, in hushed tones presumably to avoid waking me. Blink notices me waking up first, and waves excitedly, causing everyone else to turn around. Rampart stands up first, scuttling over to help scoop me off the roof’s floor and into a sitting position. I notice that there’s gauze and padding wrapped around my head too – did I hit that on the way down? I don’t know.

“Hey. I’m sorry if you felt like you needed to push yourself to prove yourself to me or something. I hope you can forgive me, hopefully as your teammate in the future,” he hush-speaks. “I have no doubt that if not for the age thing, you’d be just as able as the rest of us. That was really impressive. Really.”

“Save it. Apology accepted,” I say, remembering Puppeteer’s request to take the chip off my shoulder. I stand up and stretch, and my entire lower torso yells at me in protest. “We good?” I ask the group.

“Oh, yeah, Gossamer just has something for you!” Blink near-shouts. Playback elbows her in the ribs playfully.

“Don’t ruin the surprise, girl.” He whispers, loud enough that I can still hear it.

I’m not thinking about surprises, though. I’m thinking about the fact that I can’t smell my own blood anymore, which is nice. It was getting extremely distracting. I blink a couple of times as my vision refocuses on Gossamer’s green outfit approaching me. “Yeah?”

She hands me a stack of clothes, with what looks like a facemask on top. I take them into my weak arms and examine the mask, with its collection of non-useful holes, hard and durable looking. I wonder what it’s made of – resin? Plastic? It looks a bit like a dog baring their teeth. “I was making you a costume!” she cheers, and my face lights up into a tight-lipped smile.

“Oh. Cool,” is the only way I can exhaustedly respond. “Extremely cool. I’d sound more enthusiastic but I’m sort of out of energy. I don’t really see the shark theming though – it’s all brown and black and red? And the mask has a lot of holes in it.”

She giggles at me, and everyone else starts leaning in, except for Rampart, who is backing away to give Gossamer more room. “It’s not a facemask, silly, it’s teeth. You said you didn’t care for sharks, and Pup told me about your blood smell. I went and got one of those menpo, the masks that samurai used to wear, from our Halloween storage, and added hinges so you can open your mouth. You know, in case you really need to bite someone, it won’t restrict you”

I can’t help but raise an eyebrow, pulling apart the neatly folded clothes stack with my hand to examine it. “Wolf mask?” I ask dubiously, examining the mask from all angles, clasping it to my face, feeling it fit around the curves of my chin.

“How do you feel about the name ‘Bloodhound‘?” She asks. She puts her hands behind her back and tries to look as innocent as possible, swaying her hips from side to side. I take my time and think about it.

Everyone is looking at me. I bare my teeth in a sharp grin.

“Yeah. I can work with this.”