PROLOGUE: FÉNIX
Everything hurt.
That was what MJ quickly learned about professional wrestling.
It was always hot in Victory Academy, where she had spent most of her after-school hours and weekends for the past month, learning the secrets of pro wrestling. The walls were metal, and after a short while she began to think of the old warehouse like one giant oven in which she was slowly being cooked. The several large fans constantly turning their bladed heads did little to banish the heat. She’d almost gotten used to sweating buckets every day.
MJ stood in one of the wrestling ring’s four corners, holding the ropes where they connected to the top turnbuckle. The “ropes” were really steel cables covered by a garden hose slit up its middle and then wrapped in duct tape. MJ still wasn’t sure why everyone insisted on calling them ropes. She could barely see over the top of the corner. Even the youngest student in the academy was almost three years older than her, and she wasn’t big for her age besides.
MJ ran in place, her feet pumping as if she were sprinting around the track at school even though she stayed planted in the same spot.
On the cement floor beyond the ropes, Mr. Arellano stalked like some kind of predatory animal in a jungle, circling the ring. The skin around his eyes may’ve been wrinkled and sagging from age, but those eyes remained clear and sharp, and they seemed to see everything.
“Bump!” he barked at the students inside the ring.
MJ stopped running in place and let go of the ropes-that-weren’t-really-ropes. She let herself fall backwards, keeping her feet firmly planted where they were on the canvas. She tucked her chin tight against her chest as she landed on the upper part of her back between her shoulders. MJ extended her arms as she fell and slapped her hands against the mat at the same moment her back hit it. She was careful to keep her elbows turned out so they didn’t painfully smack the ring floor. It had taken her weeks to master that one small mechanic of taking a bump, and her elbows wore dark bruises that still served as her best reminders.
Landing hurt, just a little, far less than it was supposed to look like it hurt, but far more than people who dismissed wrestling as fake would ever know. Mr. Arellano had told MJ that bumping, especially taking bigger bumps than a simple fall backwards, would be harder on her because there was so little padding over her bones, and that it would get easier when she had more meat on her.
It hurt, but it also felt good in a strange way. It sent a rush through her body every time. The truth, as bananas as MJ knew it would sound to most other kids she knew, was that it all felt good. The oppressive heat, taking bumps, running drills, bouncing off the ring ropes until the skin under her right arm and across her back wore a red stripe.
After the brief shock of the bump passed, MJ stood up as fast as she could. She grabbed the ropes and began running in place again.
“You need to be back on your feet faster than that!” Mr. Arellano shouted at her from the floor.
Even his yelling at her and the rest of the students all the time felt good. In fact, it was one of the things MJ enjoyed the most. It was the first time in her life that someone yelling didn’t make her feel smaller, didn’t make her want to shrink away from the source of that yelling and hide. When Mr. Arellano shouted and cursed at them, there was no anger, but there was also nothing held back. He treated his students like adults, even her, and that was the part that felt good.
“Bump!”
MJ planted her feet and let herself fall again, welcoming it, gravity guiding her back to the warm mat that almost seemed to hug her, like a friend.
As she landed, MJ could barely remember her life before the ring, or maybe she just didn’t want to.
