Karate Kick (6 page)

“That’s what it looked like to me.”

“Did you yell to the lady?”

Ty shook his head. “It wouldn’t have helped. The guy was so close that even if I warned her, he could have snatched her stuff
and run before she had a chance to do anything.”

“So what
did
you do?’

Ty closed his eyes as if watching a replay of the scene in his mind. “I started toward the guy. But the little girl must have
seen what he was doing, too. She ran to the bench and grabbed the purse before he could. But she fell when she tried to run
with it.”

Cole held his breath. “What happened then?”

“I got there. I put myself between the thief and the little girl.”

“And?”

“And he took a swing at me — a classic, from-behind, full wind-up, hook punch.”

“Oh my gosh!” Cole breathed. Then he broke into a smile. “Let me guess: you stopped him with one of the kumites!”

Ty opened his eyes and scrubbed his hands across his face. “No. I didn’t do anything! Everything I’d ever learned in karate
just seemed to vanish from my brain. I just stood there like a statue and let the guy hit me!”

Cole stared in shock. “You — what?”

“Yeah. Then he yanked the purse right out of the little girl’s hands and took off.”

Ty drew his legs in to his chest, rested his elbows on his knees, and bent his head down. “I quit karate the next day. I couldn’t
go back, not after I saw the look on the girl’s face. Not after what she said.”

“What did she say?”

He lifted his head. “‘Why didn’t you use karate to stop him?’”

“How did she know you did karate?”

“I was still wearing my gi, remember? But there was something about the way she said it, made me think she knew more about
karate than just what the uniform looked like.”

“What was her name?”

Ty groaned. “I don’t know. I was so ashamed I just ran away. But I’ll never forget her. She had these big blue eyes and this
head of curly red hair — and she was looking up at me with this completely stunned expression.”

Cole sat up straight. “Did you say she had blue eyes and red hair?”

Ty nodded.

Cole’s mind was whirring. “You said this happened four years ago. And you think the girl knew what karate was?”

Ty nodded again. “She seemed to, yeah. Why?” Cole reached his hand into his pocket and touched the paper with Monique’s kata.
“No reason.”

C
ole and Ty replaced the flat tire in silence. Cole was too busy pondering a suspicion he had to make conversation. And Ty
seemed spent from having told his story. It was only when Ty was ready to leave that Cole roused himself from his reverie.

“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.

A
s 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!

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.”

S
ensei 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.