When I arrived in the gym one day for my training, there was another boy there, with a grown-up I hadn’t seen around before. Paulo and Uncle Si stood together, arms crossed, staring at me with stony neutrality. They mumbled to each other in Portugese, and occasionally glanced at the other kid.

The boy had Asian features, as did the adult with him. He wore workout sweats like me. He met my gaze once but his face was perfectly blank, so I had no clue what he might be thinking.

Paulo and Uncle Si went over to the adult and had a brief conversation I didn’t hear, then Uncle Si approached me.

“Go get your mouthpiece,” he said. “You’re doing something different for training today.”

“Sparring?” I asked, glancing again at the other kid, my heart rate increasing.

He almost smiled, but was trying hard to remain inscrutable, it seemed. “Not exactly. There’s an important difference: sparring is practice; this is a test.”

“A t-test…?” I repeated, suddenly nervous.

“When you spar, you and your partner normally have an unspoken agreement to pull your punches. It’s not about trying to beat the other guy; it’s about refining techniques, improving your defense, and sharpening reflexes. This won’t be like that, today. This kid is here to test you. Your job is to test him. So don’t hold back. He’s not going to hold back, either.”

Now my heart was really pounding. This was a fight!

How good was this blank-faced Asian boy? I sized him up, but couldn’t tell much. He might have been a little taller, but I wouldn’t necessarily call him “a big kid.”

Paulo came back from the equipment room with hand wraps, gloves, foot pads and a head protector. He helped me put it all on, while the stranger did the same for the other boy. The last thing Paulo did was smear petroleum jelly on my cheeks. “Fight I teach you,” he said.

I assumed he meant “Fight the way I taught you.”

We both entered the octagon. The bell rang. I looked to Paulo and Uncle Si to see if this was the starting bell, or if I should wait for another one.

“That’s the work bell,” Uncle Si said, simply.

I felt afraid and utterly alone. I walked toward the center of the octagon to touch gloves with my opponent. He stopped me short with a kick to my head. I was stunned, but realized that the kid wasn’t playing around. Just like my uncle warned, he wasn’t holding back.

Quick learner, me.

He followed up with another kick, and a hand combination. I ducked the former and blocked the latter, shuffling back out of range. All the adults were yelling, now, but I couldn’t make out the words through the fog of my adrenaline rush.

Something warm and wet dripped down my face and into my mouth. It had a salty, copper taste. It kept trickling, threatening to get in my eye. I wiped it away. My wrist came back into my field of vision slick with blood.

I can’t say for sure if my heart rate slowed down or sped up, but something happened to me. Some sort of change. My visual focus zeroed in on the other boy, and everything else was blurred. But I did hear Uncle Si calling out, “Get your feet going!”

I put my feet to work, bouncing on the balls as if skipping rope, and began circling my opponent.

His steps were sure and steady, with no bouncing. He feinted a couple times, but I didn’t fall for it. He made a more serious effort, but I simply bounced back out of range. We circled some more.

Having felt me out all he needed by now, I guess, he lunged forward to the attack with a surprising burst of speed. His lead kick caught me in the stomach. I would feel the pain later, but right then it didn’t do much. All the sit-ups, crunches and flutter kicks had turned my belly hard as a slab of frozen beef. I kept my guard up and slipped left and right to avoid his hand strikes. Then I noticed an opening.

How long had he been showing me his head like that?

I fired one of the combinations Uncle Si had taught me with the punch mitts: double jab; straight right; hook, uppercut. The jabs and overhand right caught him solid. I began to bicycle back out of range, but hit the wall of the octagon and could go no farther.

He doubled up on his lead kick. I saw it coming and side-bounced. The first one brushed my hip. I sprang off my trail foot, back-spinning, and slammed my heel into the inside of his thigh while his leg was still extended.

This jolted him off-balance, forcing him to shuffle under his center of gravity. Something flashed in his stony eyes, too. Pain, I hoped.

But I didn’t waste time pondering it. I closed the distance, fired a snap-kick that connected to his chest. This foiled his effort to regain balance, and I pressed in, hooking off the jab, catching him on his head protector about where his ear should be.

He backed out of range, adjusting his headgear with an irritated expression. This was the first time I’d perceived emotion of any kind from him.

Since he was retreating, I advanced. We mixed it up a bit and he hit me with a couple good shots.

The bell rang.

I walked to the chain-link wall of the octagon. Paulo was at my side quickly. He gave me a water bottle, from which I took a couple long gulps. Meanwhile, he pressed a towel against the laceration on my brow with one hand, and reapplied the Vaseline to my face with the other. Behind me, Uncle Si spoke through the chain link.

“Settle down. Loosen up. Don’t just move straight in and out—move side-to-side also. Keep that bicycle rolling. You see he likes to lead with his feet. Good work breaking that up. This next round is study time for you. Take his measure. Finding that opening was great, but be patient and take mental notes for now. Keep him at bay while you watch him work. There might be more to the pattern.”

The bell rang and we moved toward each other. The fear was gone this time…or at least nonexistent compared to how oppressive it had been at the beginning. I stopped before getting in range, then got on my bicycle. I tried to follow the instructions I was given.

He came after me, and tagged me a few times, but I played defense and tried to keep out of his reach while watching him close. He really did like starting his combinations with a lead-foot kick. He did it every time. Smart, really: legs are longer than arms, and therefore give you more reach. But I quickly got to where I could see them coming, and I consistently muffed his kicks by extending my own lead foot to shove my arch into his ankle.

The kid didn’t crouch and bob—he stood up straight when he fought. In fact, it seemed he leaned slightly backwards—maybe in anticipation of incoming blows, so he would have a head start at leaning farther back to avoid getting tagged. When he threw a roundhouse or side kick, he leaned quite a ways back. His arms went out and down, leaving him wide open.

The round was fairly uneventful. In the break before the next one, Paulo worked on my face again and let me drink water.

“What did you learn?” Uncle Si asked.

“He leans back,” I said.

“Make him pay for that,” he said. “Your bicycle’s pedaling pretty good. Keep it going, but study time is over. Be smart, but go after him. Work the body whenever you can—hard.”

When Paulo pulled the towel away from my head, I glanced up at it and saw the blood. I shifted my gaze to the boy’s blank, expressionless face and got pissed. I wanted to make him bleed worse than I had.

Anger, it turned out, was not an advantage. I stalked him and threw leather with bad intentions, forgetting much of what I knew. He made me pay for it, too. He hit me from all angles. I waded through the storm and tried to swarm him. I caught him a couple times, but not flush. Mostly I only caught air.

“You’re telegraphing!” Uncle Si yelled. “Settle down and work the body!”

I targeted his midsection, but was still swinging for the fences and mostly missed him.

By the end of the round, my anger had faded, to be replaced with fatigue. I was gassed.

While Paulo went to work on my face, Uncle Si said, “Well, that was stupid.”

I made no effort to reply, too busy sucking wind and water. Besides, he was right.

“How did you forget everything in the course of a couple minutes? If you had worked his body, he’d be slower and easier to hit now. Instead, you’re the one who’s gonna be slow. That’s how you punch yourself out, genius.”

“Sorry,” I grunted, through ragged breaths.

“You only got one more round, and he smells blood. You better wise up real quick, or he’s gonna knock you out. When he…”

The bell interrupted him. I handed the bottle back to Paulo and walked out to meet the boy. “Act like you know what you’re doing!” Uncle Si called out, annoyed.

The kid smelled blood, alright. He went right after me. I covered up and weaved, making him miss as much as I could. Then, swinging my torso back up from a slip, I drove a left hook into the side of his head. It landed solid. His attack fizzled out and he shuffled backwards.

My conditioning paid dividends at a good time. I felt my second wind building up, and got my feet going again.

I bounced inside, feinted, and bounced back out. Then I did the same thing again, noticing him flinch.

He had felt that hook.

I bounced back in and scored with a jab and a cross, then backpedaled out of range.

He launched a kick, but I muffed it and scored with another jab.

His nose was bleeding now. Not bleeding enough for my satisfaction, but it was something. He glared at me while adjusting his headgear again.

He led with a roundhouse kick. It was time to take advantage of his backward lean and dropped guard. But his leg kept me at bay. I couldn’t get inside fast enough to exploit the opening. We separated with no damage done, and circled each other a bit.

He came in again, leading with a high kick. I dropped and swept his trail foot. He fell back on his ass.

The grown-ups were yelling all at once. I rushed forward, but the boy sprang quickly to his feet and assumed a defensive posture. I shifted my momentum sideways. He attacked again.

This time I rushed at an oblique angle. I cut it so close that his foot brushed my shirt on the way past. I spun and clocked him with a backfist while he was leaned back, and his guard down.

He staggered back across the octagon. I’ll never forget the stupid, bewildered look on his usually blank face.

“He’s hurt!” Uncle Si screamed. “Finish him!”

I charged in to do just that, and got caught in a clinch.

My arms were tangled in his grip. He wouldn’t let go, and every time I pushed one or both hands down, or pushed him back, he simply tied me up again. It was like wrestling with an octopus.

This went on for a long time, me getting more and more frustrated. I forced him back against the chain link. He held on doggedly. I whipped around inside his clinch, manage to drop my right shoulder, then came up with an uppercut that drove into his gut. He grunted and slackened enough for me to rip out of his hold.

It would have been a perfect time to swarm him, but it had taken so much energy to break out of that clinch, I couldn’t move fast enough. He retreated out of range.

I wheezed big gulps of air and advanced. Then he did something that confused me. It was a simple southpaw switch, but all my tired brain registered was that he was suddenly a much more awkward target now.

“Move to your left!” Uncle Si called out. “Your left!”

My brain didn’t compute this at first, either. I threw a lead right instead, that whiplashed his face. Then another lead right to the body.

Then the bell rang.

It was over. The grownups raced inside the octagon to pull us apart. Paulo lifted the other kid’s hand in victory. The adults shook hands, then Paulo and Uncle Si escorted me to the locker room. Paulo gave me an examination that was something I might expect from a doctor—including the shining of a pen light in my eyes. Once he was done, he mussed my hair a bit. Uncle Si slapped me on the back and said, “Hit the showers, Sprout. Then we’ll bandage that cut and have a chat.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, but his back was already to me as he and Paulo left the locker room having a discussion in Portugese.

***

I expected a dressing down from Uncle Si as we took seats in the living room, but he appeared rather cheerful. “”What do you think?”

“I thought I won,” I said.

“You won the last round,” he said. “But you threw away the Third.”

I nodded, dejected and starting to feel the effects of the blows I took.

“It’s pretty common for the loser of a decision to think he won,” Uncle Si added. “It’s a matter of perspective—and you tend to skew it in your mind when you’re part of it. You discount some of the other guy’s punches because they don’t bother you that much at the time, I guess.”

“Sorry about Round Three,” I said.

“Yeah. What was that about?”

“I got mad.”

He nodded. “There’s another valuable lesson for you: anger is like fear. It can be an asset if you channel it into a smart game plan. Control it; don’t let it control you.”

“How do you do that?” I asked.

“It’s not something that can be taught. You just have to learn through experience. Experience like what you just earned. What you just went through is like precious gold. Treasure it.”

“But you think I lost,” I said.

“You did lose. And that’s what makes it so valuable. There’s a lot more to learn from defeats than from victories, as a rule.”

“Too bad it wasn’t video-taped,” I said. “I could see what you saw.”

“Who says it wasn’t?”

I stared at him. “There weren’t any cameras in the gym.”

“There weren’t?”

He rose from his seat and gestured for me to follow. We marched through the catacombs to one of the chambers I didn’t have personal access to. He let us in. The place was like a warehouse. He led me to a shelf with a variety of objects on it. He picked up a ballpoint pen and handed it to me, asking, “What’s that?”

“A pen?

“It’s also a camera,” he said. He took it back from me and set it down, then handed me a pair of sunglasses. “How about these?”

I examined the shades. “There’s a camera in here?”

“Yup.” Next he picked up what looked like a cockroach. “In here, too. This is an advanced model. Radio controlled; moves like the real thing; transmits streaming audio and video.”

I found this hard to believe. “How could you even fit a battery in there?”

“Small battery,” he said.

We left the Secret Agent Supply Depot and went to the computer lab. Uncle Si typed some commands, and soon we were watching footage of the kickboxing match I’d just participated in.

I looked like a clown in Round Three. In Round Two, the other boy was the only one with any offense, so it made sense he was awarded that round. Round One went more his way than I remembered it. I could see how somebody might judge that he won that one, too. Even more disappointing: Round Four wasn’t as decisive as I remembered it, either. Sure, I scored pretty well. But it wasn’t lopsided.

“I’m sorry,” I said, depressed, now.

“What are you apologizing for now?” he asked.

“Embarrassing you.”

He shook his head. “You didn’t embarrass me, Sprout. Your opponent was three years older; a lot more experienced; and had the reach on you. This was your first bout. He suckered you with that opening combo when you were trying to touch gloves. And yet, you made adjustments; listened to instructions…with the exception of Round Three…you improvised and took the fight to him. I saw some good work from you, today.”

“Really?”

“Really. In fact, you’ve been picking up on a lot of stuff, and doing really well.”

“I have?” Ever since Uncle Si became my de facto guardian, I’d pretty much just been having fun. Frankly, I’d been half-expecting the other shoe to drop at any time—for some grown-up to give me a speech telling me it was necessary for me to move back into some shithole trailer park somewhere, eating hot dogs on stale bread, with my status reduced back to a level so low that what I wanted or needed was never considered when decisions were made that affected me. This fun life, with people who seemed to like me, just didn’t fit the pattern I was familiar with. Certainly somebody would decide I was escaping my dues, and insist that my life start sucking again.

“Yup,” he said. “I think it’s time you had a real summer vacation. So pack your stuff tonight. We’re gonna take some time off. Training is suspended until further notice.”

 

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