Karate Kick Read online

  “Ty, do you miss karate?”

  Ty looked surprised at the question. Then he shrugged. “Sure. Sometimes. I never really got into any other sports. Except skateboarding, that is.”

  “Well, why don’t you start taking it again?”

  “I don’t know, Cole. It’s been so long. I bet I don’t remember anything. I’d probably have to start all over!”

  “You remembered the thigh slap,” Cole pointed out. The older boy laughed. “That was purely instinctive!” he said. “You had a vicious finger lock on me! I may not remember how to do that move, but I sure as heck remember what it felt like to be on the receiving end of it!”

  “You should think about coming back,” Cole insisted. “I mean, give yourself a break. You were only eleven years old! Who knows what that purse-snatcher might have done to you if you had tried to stop him!”

  Ty busied himself with putting the repair tools away. “You know, when the police caught him, they found out he’d been using the stolen money to buy drugs.”

  Cole flung his arms open. “See? It’s probably a good thing you didn’t do anything! He might have had a knife or a gun or…” He broke off, shuddering as he thought of all the terrible possibilities.

  “Anyway,” he finished, “I bet that little girl didn’t really blame you. She was probably too scared to think of anything!”

  Ty raised a shoulder. “Since I don’t know who she was, I’ll never know, will I?” With that, he pushed the toolbox back onto its shelf, waved good-bye, and left.

  Cole stood in the garage for a moment longer. “I think I know who she was,” he said to no one. “And if I’m right, it explains a whole lot.” He clicked off the lights, pushed the button to close the garage door, and went inside.

  “Hey, honey,” his mother said. “Hang up your coat and come have dinner.”

  “Okay.” But before he put his jacket on the hook, he pulled out Monique’s kata. The paper was wrinkled and torn from having been in his pocket. He bit his lip, sorrier than ever that he’d taken it from her bag. But he had, and there was nothing he could do to change that.

  He couldn’t change it, but he could try to make up for it. He folded the paper a few times and stuck it into his back pocket.

  “Hey, Mom,” he said when he came into the kitchen, “would it be okay if I used the computer tonight?”

  “Going to type up your kata?” she inquired.

  “It’s something for the contest, yeah,” he answered truthfully.

  But it wasn’t his own kata he typed up later, it was Monique’s. When he was done, he saved the document, and then printed it out.

  “I’ll be in my room!” he yelled to his mother as he carried the printout upstairs. He studied the sheet for a few minutes, then laid it on his bed, stepped back, and followed the moves one by one.

  “Ready stance, bow,” he murmured. “Step back with left foot, upward block right.

  “Step forward left front stance into left palm heel. Do a one-quarter turn to right into cat stance with hands fisted left over right, then into a low right punch. Step forward left front stance with left downward block. Step forward right with right front snap kick.”

  That’s as far as he had gotten in Marty’s basement. He double-checked the paper to see what came next.

  “Transition one-half turn to the left into left-cross shuto with back stance. Then reach and grab into a right knee followed by a step right into double punch.”

  To a non-karate student, such instructions might have sounded like complete gibberish. To Cole, they made perfect sense.

  He spun out of the right punch and did the left-cross shuto, striking out with the blade of his left hand while dropping down into a back stance and pulling his right hand to a spot at belt height. Next, he twisted to a front stance, raised his hands as if to grab an opponent by the shoulders, and then pulled down while jerking his right knee up.

  If he had really been facing an attacker, his knee would have driven into the assailant’s stomach. And if that knee hadn’t stopped his opponent in his tracks, the two-fisted double punch that came next certainly would have!

  Cole stopped then and started from the beginning. Only after he was sure he had the first series of moves down pat did he add on.

  Double arm circular throw to the back. Right punch. Left front snap kick. Spin into a right-cross shuto. Another grab and knee. Another double punch. On and on he went, memorizing each move, stopping and beginning again, until at last he reached the final bow that ended Monique’s kata.

  He flopped onto his bed then, tired but happy.

  It was a good kata. That’s what he would tell her tomorrow before their karate class — right after he gave her the typed-up copy and confessed to having taken her handwritten version. With any luck, he’d have time to apologize before she could get too furious with him. He might even get the chance to ask her about a certain incident that had happened four years ago at a playground.

  But he wasn’t sure luck was going to be on his side.

  19

  As it turned out, Cole didn’t even have time to give Monique the typed-up copy of her kata, let alone apologize or ask questions before class. That’s because his gi was still in the dryer when he needed to get changed. Therefore, he was five minutes late to class that afternoon.

  The students were already working their way through basics when he hurried into the dojo. Sensei Joe instructed him to bow, put on his belt, and join the others.

  Cole quickly did so, taking a spot near Marty. “Guess what I did last night?” he whispered to his friend.

  Marty turned — Cole stepped back in shock. Marty looked enraged! “I know what you did last night!” he hissed. “When did you turn into such a jerk?”

  A few other students looked their way. Monique didn’t, but Cole could see from the dull red flush creeping up her neck that she had heard them.

  He realized then that somehow, Marty knew he had taken the kata. Monique knew, too.

  He wanted to explain, to apologize, right then and there, but he couldn’t. So instead, he threw himself into doing the basic moves with as much power as he could.

  “Ki-ai!” he shouted with every punch, kick, and block.

  After ten minutes, Sensei Joe divided the students into two groups. “Purple belts, go with Sensei Duane,” he said, pointing to a young man in a black gi. “Blue and green belts, you’re with Sensei Dale.”

  Dale and Duane were brothers and looked so much alike that Cole sometimes got them confused — until they started teaching, that is. Then their different styles set them apart immediately. Dale liked to work on sparring, while Duane preferred to pick apart kata performances.

  Cole, Marty, Monique, and two other students hurried to put on their sparring equipment — padded helmets, gloves, and foot protectors — and returned to the section of the dojo covered with floor mats.

  Cole tried to get near enough to Marty to whisper his explanation. But Marty just moved away and started talking with the other kids. Then the sparring began and Cole didn’t have time for anything but concentrating on the mock-fight.

  “Cole,” Sensei Dale said, “since you’ll be testing for your green belt on Sunday, I want you to partner with someone higher in rank who will really put you through your paces. Monique, would you go with him, please?”

  Monique nodded. Then she turned to Cole. A slow, humorless smile crossed her lips. “I’d like nothing better than to take a few swings at him,” she murmured.

  Cole gulped. Any doubt he had that Monique knew he’d taken her kata vanished with that sentence. She knew. And she was planning to make him pay.

  Some of the girl students — and many of the boys, too — were leery when it came to sparring. After all, the purpose of the exercise was to try to land blows on one’s opponent while preventing the opponent from doing the same. Although the matches were carefully monitored by the sensei in charge, sometimes those hits, and many of the blocks, too, were harder than expected!
r />   Monique wasn’t afraid of getting hit — or of hitting, for that matter. She had lightning-quick reflexes that helped her block incoming strikes before they could reach her. And when she went on the attack, well, Marty’s “world-famous rain of pain” was nothing compared to what she could do!

  “Oh boy,” he heard Marty whisper to the other students, both green belts. “This is going to be interesting.”

  20

  Sensei Dale ordered Marty and the two green belts to each take a corner of the floor.

  “You’ll be judging the fight,” he told them. “When I call stop, it means one of them has made a hit. If you think it was Monique, raise your right hand. If it was Cole, raise your left. A show of one finger means one point for a punch; two means two points for a kick. If you cross your palms in front of your face, it means your vision was blocked and you didn’t see who hit who. And if you make a circular motion with your hand, it means one of them made an illegal hit — that’d be one to the face, below the belt, or to the back. Okay?”

  The judges nodded. They’d all done this before.

  Now Sensei Dale told Monique and Cole to bow to one another and shake hands. Then he stepped back.

  Cole stepped back, too. The mat beneath his feet felt soft and squishy. He bounced on his toes, wishing the blows that were about to come would feel soft and squishy, too.

  “Ready?” called Sensei Dale.

  Cole raised his gloved hands in front of his face. Monique did the same.

  “Fight!” their instructor said.

  The word was barely out of his mouth when Monique charged, fists flying. Cole turned sideways to give her less of a target and tried to block the punches. He knocked a few away but she landed one to his rib cage. It wasn’t a hard blow, but he felt it nonetheless.

  “Stop!” Sensei Dale ordered. “Judges?”

  All three lifted their right hand with one finger raised.

  “One point for Monique,” Sensei Dale agreed. “Ready? Fight!”

  This time, Cole didn’t wait for her to come to him. He shuffled forward and, with a quick whipping motion, kicked at her with a roundhouse intended for her hip.

  But before his foot could touch, she raised her leg, knee bent, and blocked him. Then she drove in with a one-two delivery to his middle!

  “Stop!” Three right fingers sailed into the air. “Monique again. Two to zero.”

  Cole lifted his hands, waiting for the signal to fight. Instead, Sensei Dale said, “Cole, remember to keep your hands up at all times. You dropped them when you kicked. That’s how she got those punches in so easily. Right?”

  Cole flushed at his mistake and then nodded that he understood. It won’t happen again, he told himself.

  It didn’t, but other mistakes did.

  The next time he kicked, he threw his whole body behind it — only to feel his standing foot slip out from under him! He landed with a thud on the mat and Monique hadn’t even laid a finger on him.

  Then, he neglected to watch her legs as well as her fists. So when she leveled a kick at him, her foot thwacked his side for two points.

  Finally, he forgot a simple but important rule, one that had been drilled into him early on in his training: never turn your back on your opponent. He spun away from her at one point, only to turn back into her oncoming fist.

  When the match finally ended, he had earned just one point. She had earned five, a sound victory. With a triumphant smile, she pulled off her helmet, shook out her hair, and went to the cubbies to put her gear away.

  Now! Cole’s mind screamed at him as he followed her to do the same. Apologize now!

  But he was too late. She had moved into one of the judge’s spots. After a moment, he moved to another. Once more, he tried to catch Marty’s eye. But Marty refused to look at him — not then, while he was still judging, or after he had his turn in the sparring ring, or later, when they were performing katas with Sensei Duane.

  Class ended soon afterward. The senseis bowed them out and one by one the students retrieved their belongings. Cole didn’t grab his bag, however. Instead, he pulled out the typed-up kata and left everything else behind. Then he worked his way through the crush of students, looking for Monique.

  He found Marty instead.

  Or rather, Marty found him. He grabbed Cole by the arm, pulled him into a side storage room and, hands on hips, demanded, “Well?”

  21

  Okay, okay, I took it!” Cole confessed. Then he waved the paper in his hand in front of Marty’s face. “But look, I brought it back, typed and everything!”

  Marty grabbed the sheet from his hand and turned to leave.

  “Wait!” Cole cried. To his relief, Marty hesitated.

  “It was a terrible, rotten, stupid, mean thing that I did, stealing Monique’s kata,” he admitted, his words coming out in a rush.

  “You left out awful, nasty, cruel, and downright horrible,” Marty muttered. “What were you thinking, man?”

  “I wasn’t thinking. I was angry at her for hiding it from us.” He frowned suddenly. “That wasn’t the only thing she was hiding, you know. She didn’t have to leave to babysit her sister last night. She left to —”

  “Come here and have a karate lesson with Sensei Ann,” Marty finished. “I know. She told me when she called to see if her bag was at my house.”

  “She… did?”

  “Yeah. She said she had mixed up the days. Last night was her private lesson. Tonight is when she babysits for her sister.”

  “Oh.” Any righteous anger Cole might have believed he deserved to feel vanished instantly. In its place rose a wave of shame. He slumped against the wall. “Marty, I feel so badly about taking that kata,” he said, his voice low. “Do you think you can forgive me?”

  Marty let out a long breath. “Yeah, I’ll forgive you. I know you were mad. But that didn’t give you the right to steal. And if you ever do anything like that again —”

  “I won’t!” Cole promised. He glanced out toward the main dojo. Most of the students, including Monique, he saw, had packed up and left, making way for a group of adults to train. He sighed with frustration.

  “I guess I can’t apologize to Monique now,” he said.

  Marty laid a hand on his shoulder. “Dude, you’re going to have to do a lot more than just apologize. I’ve never seen her so angry, or hurt, either.”

  Cole rubbed his shoulder where one of her punches had landed earlier. “Yeah, I kind of figured that out during sparring,” he said ruefully. “You think she got it out of her system?”

  Marty shook his head.

  “I didn’t think so,” Cole said. “I guess I’ll have to think of something else.”

  As he spoke, he caught sight of the paper in Marty’s hand. He pushed himself off the wall, thinking hard. Then he smiled. “Marty, I might have a way of showing her how sorry I am,” he said. “But I’m going to need your help!”

  With that, he took the kata from his friend and began to explain his plan. Marty nodded as he listened. When Cole was done, he had two questions.

  “Will it be just you and me, or the whole class?” he asked.

  “Just us. If too many people know, they might accidentally ruin the surprise.”

  “Good point. Second question.” Marty fixed Cole with a meaningful stare. “Are you going to confess to Monique beforehand?”

  Cole deliberated before answering. “If I get the chance, I will. But if I don’t, then I promise I’ll do it after. Okay?”

  Marty nodded. “Then I’ll help you. In fact, if my mom will let me, we can start tonight over at your house.”

  The two boys left the storage room. Marty got permission from his mother to go to Cole’s house instead of his own. They gathered up their belongings and hurried to the door.

  But as they were walking through the waiting area beyond the main dojo, Cole suddenly stopped. The walls of the waiting area were decorated with old photographs of former karate classes. One of the photos had caught Cole’s
eye. It was of a green belt class. In the center of the shot was a much younger Ty!

  “What’re you looking at?” Marty asked curiously.

  Cole tapped the glass covering the photo. “See that kid?”

  Marty squinted. “Yeah?”

  “I met him the other day.”

  Marty shrugged. “So?”

  “So,” Cole said, “I’m pretty sure he’s the reason Monique is a green belt now. But he doesn’t know that — and neither does she!”

  He laughed at the look of complete confusion on Marty’s face. “Come on, let’s go,” he said as they stepped outside the dojo together. “I’ll tell you all about it on the way to my house!”

  22

  Let me get this straight,” Marty said as they walked through Cole’s backyard twenty minutes later. “Ty used to take karate at our dojo. He was a green belt when you and Monique first started. He saw a guy about to steal Monique’s mom’s purse. He tried to stop him but got belted in the shoulder for his trouble. Monique was there and saw everything —”

  “She tried to save the purse, too, remember,” Cole interrupted.

  “Right. The guy yanked it right out of her hands.”

  Marty headed down the stairs to Cole’s basement with Cole right behind him. “So Ty starts out looking like some kind of superhero, stepping in to save the day. But he ends up looking — and worse, feeling — like a loser because he didn’t use karate. And that’s why he decided to quit?”

  Cole nodded.

  “But how does his quitting make Monique a green belt?” Marty wanted to know.

  “It wasn’t his quitting,” Cole corrected. He sat down to remove his socks. “Here’s what I think: When she saw Ty freeze and when the thief snatched the purse from her, she decided right then and there to learn as much karate as she could. That way, if she was ever in that kind of situation again, she wouldn’t have to depend on someone else to help her.”