Happy Kid! (16 page)

Mr. Kowsz was a black belt at
my
dojang, the place where
I
liked to go. Was that a good surprise because—

No ! There was no possible way it could be good. I was not being negative. I was not looking for the worst in life. Facts were facts. Because of Mr. Kowsz, everyone thought I was some kind of kid criminal. Now he was bringing all that into the dojang.
My
dojang.

“Line up!” Mr. Goldman called after we'd all run around the room a few times.

“Sir!” I shouted.

“Ten jumping jacks!”

“Hana!” I yelled as I began jumping. “Dul!”

All through the warm-up, my head kept twitching to my left so I could try to see what Mr. Kowsz was doing. He was always staring straight ahead and following Mr. Goldman's instructions.

“Fighting stance! Front kick! Hana!”

I kicked and kicked and kicked and then switched stances and kicked some more.

After the drills, we worked on our forms for a while. My turns became spins that sent me stumbling, so I couldn't move in a straight line the way I was supposed to, and my upward blocks looked as if I was waving. I was ready to move on to something else long before Mr. Goldman ordered all the students to put on their gear for sparring practice.

Everyone ran to their bags and started pulling out padded vests and helmets and shin, wrist, and mouth guards. Since I was the only person there whose rank was so low that he didn't own any protective gear, I had to just stand there doing nothing. So I couldn't help noticing all the guys putting on big plastic cups
over
their doboks. They were held in place with wide elastic bands around their waists and between their legs for all the world to see.

I tried not to stare.

“Kyle and Tim!” Mr. Goldman called.

I called out “Sir!” and ran over to him.

“I'd like the two of you to train together. Kyle doesn't have any kind of protective gear yet,” Mr. Goldman explained to someone coming up behind me. Then he turned to me. “And this is Tim's first class in nearly four months because of a foot injury. So you two start out together. Take it easy on each other.”

I sighed, turned, and put my hand out so I could shake hands with Mr. Kowsz. His helmet didn't make him look any better.

Mr. Goldman ordered the others to find partners and line up across from them. “You're going to start out with kicking only, light contact to chest protection if your partner has it. No contact at all to anyone who doesn't have chest protection. That pretty much means no kicking Kyle. One-minute round. Fighting stance! Begin!”

I was the only person without chest protection. That didn't sound good. But while I was trying to figure out what I should be doing about it, “Tim's” right leg came up, twisted, and headed right toward me in a roundhouse kick. And then it stopped in midair just an inch or two from my ribs.

“You need to be in fighting stance,” he told me.

I just stood there staring at him. He had his fists up—one guarding his chin, one his chest—and his right leg was pulled back a bit. He was bouncing up and down, moving all the time.

“Fighting stance,” he repeated. “Get your fists up.”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

I didn't want him to think I didn't know what fighting stance was, so as I moved into the correct position, I started to say, “I know—”

But I was cut off because Mr. Kowsz suddenly spun so his back was toward me. He looked over his shoulder, brought up a leg, and shot his foot out toward my chest. I gasped and stared at the foot that stopped just before hitting me.

He whirled back into fighting stance and patted his vest.

“Your turn,” he said.

What could I do? I only knew a few kicks. I was afraid a straightforward front kick would catch him in the crotch. Even though he was wearing that protective cup (I couldn't wait for Chelsea to see me with one of those), my gut feeling was a kick to the groin was probably a huge mistake. I didn't have time to think about all this! All the other students were dashing at each other and kicking and twisting and shouting. I had to do something. Another roundhouse kick was my best bet. I brought up my leg, pivoted on my left foot so that my knee was no longer pointing forward but to my left, and swung my foot toward Mr. Kowsz's chest.

The entire top of my foot hit him at full speed. He went toppling over backwards and landed so that his hands hit the mat first with his chin tucked so that he was looking at his feet. He shouted when he hit the floor.

I stood there for a second with my hand over my mouth. Then I started to kneel down next to him. Before I could get all the way down, Mr. Kowsz was passing me on his way back up to his feet.

“Are you okay?” I asked, looking up at him. “Are you okay? Oh my gosh . . .”

Mr. Goldman was already next to us. “Continue training,” he ordered the rest of the class. “Tim, is the foot okay?”

“Yeah, it's fine. He's just got an incredible kick,” Mr. Kowsz said, nodding down at me because I was still kneeling on the floor.

“Light contact,”
Mr. Goldman told me. “Taekwondo is all about control. You can't just wildly kick and swing at people. It's dangerous to do that here, and it won't do you any good if you really have to defend yourself somewhere else.”

“I don't know how that happened,” I said as I started to stand up.

“You need to know how everything happens when you're training here. Now, you're new, so I won't make you do push-ups for losing control like that,” Mr. Goldman explained. “Instead, I'll let Tim handle this situation. Stop! Get ready for next round!” he suddenly shouted to the other students.

Mr. Kowsz signaled for me to come closer. “Just be calm. There's nothing to be upset about.”

I opened my mouth to shout “I'm not upset!” but shut it again without saying anything.

“Okay, now, kick me again the way you just did, but do it very, very slowly,” he ordered.

I did, and when my foot got close enough, Mr. Kowsz said, “Now tap my vest.” And I did that, too.

“Now do it again,” Mr. Kowsz told me. “And again . . . again . . . now faster . . . faster.”

When I had tapped his vest over and over again after kicking at different speeds, he said, “Isn't your leg beginning to hurt?”

“Well . . . yeah.”

“Then stop. The point of repeating a motion is to create muscle memory. You want your body to be able to do things without your mind having to think about it. You don't want to repeat the same motion to the point that you hurt yourself. Switch legs.”

So I did, and we started the whole thing over again. The others switched partners and did other moves. But there I was, doing the same stupid thing over and over. And just when Mr. Kowsz said we could get back in line with the others, Mr. Goldman announced that we were done. He also said we had to help our training partners undo their vests, so I had to untie the straps that crisscrossed behind Mr. Kowsz's shoulders and a second set at his waist. What a treat that was.

Later, while the black belts mopped the mats and a brown belt vacuumed the entry, I got stuck emptying the trash from the bathroom and both the locker rooms.

Happy Halloween!

I got home, picked up a fistful of candy from the bowl by the door, and ran to my room to look at
Happy Kid!
Just as I thought, it was time for a new message.

Well, that makes no sense at all, I thought as I tossed the book into a corner of my room. So other people have problems. Does that change the fact that I have them? No, it does not.

I picked up a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt from the floor and headed into the bathroom for a shower.

 

 

I made the very, very big mistake of telling my father that Mr. Kowsz had suddenly appeared in my taekwondo class and that I'd given Moo a kick that had sent him flying. I then had to spend the whole weekend listening to Dad's stories of his bad experiences with sports. And he had a lot of them. Which I guess shows that I'm not the only person in the world who has problems, though you'd think he'd have gotten over his by now.

When my grandmother showed up Sunday afternoon, I asked her if things had been as bad as Dad made them out to be. She said they were worse.

“And people wonder why I stick to yoga,” Lauren said. “I can do it by myself and not have to listen to other people's complaints.” She was lying on the couch with a bag of pretzels on her stomach and her chemistry book (her best subject, to the whole family's surprise) propped against her bent knees. This was as close to being in a yoga position as anyone had ever seen her.

“When have you ever done yoga?” I asked.

“That reminds me.” She turned her head so Mom and Dad would be able to hear her. “I'd like a yoga mat and a yoga tape for Christmas!” she shouted. “And I guess I'll need some yoga workout clothes. Unless you're going to get me a car, of course.”

Our living room opens onto the dining room, so we could see Mom bring a stack of plates to the table and start placing them in front of each of the chairs. She ignored Lauren and jumped right on me—as usual. “I don't think your experience Friday night at taekwondo was all that bad. You did knock an older man over, a man who had just recovered from an injury of some sort. They were pretty nice to you, all things considered. I hope you apologized.”

“Don't you get it?” I protested as my father came into the living room and grabbed some pretzels from Lauren's bag. “Everything was ruined
before
I knocked Mr. Kowsz on his butt. Except for the kids from school, no one at the dojang had ever seen me before I walked in the door. I was just another student—a student who showed up on time and kicked well. That was all I had to do to make them like me. I didn't even have to talk to anybody.”

“Why will any of that change?” Nana asked from one of the good living room chairs.

Lauren threw a pretzel at me. “He's afraid Moo will tell all his little friends at the doojingle or whatever they call it the sad story of Kyle and the screwdriver. Then everyone will know that he's a junior terrorist and think he's going to use his newly learned martial arts skills for evil instead of good. Am I right?”

Everyone was looking at me. I hate that. Even when it's my own family. Sometimes especially when it's my own family.

“Well . . . you know . . . maybe . . . sort of—”

“Ah, the screwdriver,” Nana sighed.

“You didn't do anything wrong, Kyle,” Dad said with his mouth full. “We've told you so over and over again.”

Then Mom said, “You've been upset about the screwdriver so long, it's as if your anger has control of you now.”

Dad, Nana, and Lauren all rolled their eyes at her because she was using family-counselor talk in the house again.

“Well, it is,” Mom insisted, sounding as if she was losing a little control herself.

“I suppose you all just think . . . just think . . . I should get over myself or something?” I sputtered.

“Actually, I think that's exactly what Mom was trying to say,” Lauren said, while the rest of my relatives nodded their agreement. “Get some control and move the hell on so the rest of us don't have to listen to this anymore.”

 

 

On Monday morning I was actually happy to go back to school. Well, “happy” is probably not the right word. Since my relatives thought I was a whiner, I figured I might as well be at school.

I wasn't in any hurry to tell Luke about Mr. Kowsz taking taekwondo. It was too depressing. I wouldn't have had much of a chance to talk about it during art, anyway. Jake spent a big chunk of the period telling us all about how he and his buddies were followed by a security person at the mall Halloween night. He was really excited about it.

Then Luke said there were only three guys at the Halloween party he'd gone to, and he and Ted were two of them. All the girls wanted to do, he told us, was talk and listen to music, and either Beth or Jamie spilled grape soda down the back of his dobok. He didn't know for certain because they both denied it, but it had to be one of them. They were right behind him with cans of soda when it happened.

I felt better when I left art since it seemed like maybe I wasn't the only person who'd had a bad time on Halloween.

I was heading down the hall toward the cafeteria after fourth period when I ran into Mr. Kowsz chasing a couple of guys out of a boys' room. I started to just rush past him, but then, at the last minute, I turned around and said, “I didn't apologize for knocking you down the other night. I
am
sorry.”

He stopped and gave me that creepy skeleton grin of his. “Now that I know you can kick like that, I'll never let it happen again.”

That went really well. So I said, “Did you hurt your foot in class?”

He nodded. “In a black belt class right after school got out last June. We were sparring, and I collided with the person I was training with that night.”

“The other guy get hurt?”

“She was a woman,” Mr. Kowsz admitted. “A big one, though. Her foot was black and blue for a few weeks afterward, but that's all. I got the worst of it.”

He looked down at his own feet for a moment and kept talking. “I don't know how it happened. Usually I don't have any trouble concentrating in class. The moves are so complicated, it pretty much knocks everything else out of my mind.”