Wait, are your parents okay with that?
Oh, they have no idea. Definitely going to have to wear a T-shirt until college. Probably longer. Please don't tell them.
He was still at the stage where he enjoyed admiring his tattoo in front of the mirror. How could he help himself, the final product had undoubtedly turned out to be badass, both Miguel and Aisha had agreed on that. It was just what he'd needed to help cement his self-image. The flying raptor on his back, wings extended, prepared to fiercely attack anyone that crossed it. He especially enjoyed rolling his shoulder-blades to get the hawk to fly. Everything about the tattoo was just perfect, especially since he had asked Rico to embellish it by giving the hawk its own electric blue mohawk; it really was that extra little touch that made all the difference.
Keeping the tattoo hidden from his parents was going to require constant vigilance. If they ever found out, they would definitely flip; they could probably understand if he had acted out a little in the name of teenage rebellion, but there was no way they wouldn't ground him for life if they knew he'd gotten a tattoo behind their backs, illegally at that.
Eli didn't necessarily like the thought of keeping such a big secret from his parents. His mom and dad had always tried to be those types who assured their kid he could come to them for anything, but Hawk knew that contract only covered certain circumstances. This was on a whole other level. So even though the weight of having to constantly carry a big lie around them for at least the next six years might eventually crush him, it couldn't be helped.
A ring-tone went off, and Hawk grabbed his phone off his bed to answer the Facetime call. "'Sup?" he said when Demetri's face filled the screen. Before his friend could even get a single word out, Hawk cut him off and immediately took control of the call. "Yo, check this out." He propped his phone against a box on his dresser, then stepped back and turned around, flashing his new ink for Demetri to see.
On the other end of the screen, Demetri took a good long look at the flying red-tailed hawk, with its prominent blue mohawk, and gave a satirical nod. "Hmm, impressive," he judged, rubbing a thumb down his chin, as if in contemplation. "You're definitely one step closer to looking the full part of a teenage delinquent. I'm almost tempted to hand over my lunch money to you right now."
Pivoting back around, Hawk curled his lip back in annoyance. He had hoped Demetri would reaffirm to him just how amazing his new tattoo looked, not that he would descend into half-mocking humor about it. He guessed such badassery just couldn't be appreciated by someone like Demetri. "Hey, I didn't spend fourteen hours in a chair just for you to make fun of it," he threw back.
"C'mon, you know I'm just giving you a hard time," explained the other boy more sincerely.
Hawk didn't like the explanation. "Yeah, well, maybe I'm not looking for a hard time right now." He knew Demetri really didn't mean anything by it, but he wasn't in the mood to be mocked. The whole reason he went to go get inked in the first place was so he'd have something to showcase his newfound confidence, a metaphor for the new heights he was soaring as the badass Hawk.
"Sorry, Eli. It looks…nice," apologized Demetri, and he watched while Hawk scooped his t-shirt from off the floor and threw it on; Eli knew the sooner he got in the habit of always having a shirt on around the house, the better, in case his parents randomly decided to barge into his room one day. "So, how'd you get that, anyway?" Demetri inquired. "Pretty sure you gotta be eighteen in order to get ink in Cali. Well, unless you had parental approval, but everything I've come to know about your parents leads me to believe they one-hundred percent definitely would not be okay with that. Sooooo fake ID, I'm going to assume?"
"Yep," confirmed Hawk. He whipped out his crisp new fake identification card from his wallet and held it up to the phone screen. Eli didn't know much about fake IDs, but it looked legitimate enough when compared to his real one. And since it did its job and fooled the tattoo artist, it was certainly worth the $100 it cost.
"'Walter Hawkman'," read off Demetri, pursing his lips in mild distaste. "Nice Batman-villain name, at least you're committed to the gimmick." Seeing the hard look Hawk was giving him for that, he added, "I meant that in a positive way. C'mon, you love the Riddler, right?" Hawk very much doubted that he meant the comment positively, but decided to just drop the subject.
"Anyway, abrupt segue, you up to staying over at my place Friday night?" asked Demetri, apropos of nothing. "We haven't had a Badlarious Movie Night for a while. I managed to snag a bootleg of Beastmaster 2." He held up the copy as proof. "I don't even think you can get this legitimately on DVD, so you know it's gonna be great."
"Through the Portal of Time?" asked Eli for clarification, bringing his phone closer for a better look. Excitement spilled from his voice unguardedly, forgetting the strain of their conversation thus far.
Demetri smirked and confirmed a touch smugly, "The one and only. They say it's even worse than Highlander 2, and I don't mean the Director's Cut, I mean full on Zeist terrible." Demetri loved collecting DVDs of movies that were so bad they were legendary, he always had. He and Eli even had a winter tradition of watching The Star Wars Holiday Special, Demetri had had a copy of it since they were kids and had riffed it years before famous Internet reviewers on YouTube. "You ready to enjoy Sarah Douglas in her prime?"
"Oh shit, man, I hear she was so hot in that," answered Eli with a little laugh as Demetri made a cupping motion with his hands at his chest to indicate he was also looking forward to watching the actress's "talents" in the film.
"Sounds like a plan then," said Demetri. "Pizza okay with you, maybe some popcorn? You might need to pick up a Diet Coke, though. Mom's back into her 'no artificial sweeteners' thing. It's either that, water, or Dad's 'tomato juice'."
Hawk couldn't help but be amused by how Demetri threw air quotes around tomato juice, bringing up the memory of how they'd almost gotten drunk off his father's Bloody Mary that he'd left out on accident. "Heh, yeah, I'll pick up a two-liter."
"By the way," added Demetri off-handedly, "Mom said to tell you she got new rubber sheets for your waterbed, so you don't need to bring your own set this time."
A lead weight dropped in Eli's gut, and in an instant a flip inside him switched. A frown cracked his previous smile, and his brows knitted at the bridge of his nose. Why did Demetri have to ruin things by bringing that up? "Actually," he said, his voice sharpening like a flint had been taken to it, "I can't make it over. I forgot, I got a thing on Friday."
The sudden shift almost gave Demetri whiplash. "Are you sure?" he asked, a hint of hurt breaking through his usual sardonic demeanor. "It's not something I said, is it? You've been asking forever to track down this movie, I thought you'd want to come over and watch."
So now Demetri was going to make him feel like the bad friend? Hawk dismissed his complaints. "Look, I don't have a lot of time for this right now. There's a tournament coming up, and Sensei is trying to push us to the next level. We might actually have a shot at winning."
"We have karate tournaments here in the Valley?" The look on Demetri's face showed he didn't completely buy into that explanation. "So instead of pizza and a movie, you're going to be practicing karate at 9:00PM on a Friday night, just so I understand?" he asked, hiding none of the skepticism in his voice.
Hawk practically fumed at the accusatory tone being thrown at him. He bit back with, "Yeah, 'cause unlike you, I don't quit just because I got thrown to the mat once like a complete pussy!" That hit landed its mark, as he forced Demetri to remember when he had quit Cobra Kai after Sensei Lawrence had made an example of him in front of the class for mouthing off at him. Demetri may have been a quitter, but he wasn't.
"Eli!" exclaimed Demetri, the single word full of unconcealed distress.
"And don't call me Eli," he snapped. "It's Hawk now. Look, my Dad's calling for me, I gotta go." He pressed the red x to close out of Facetime, cutting Demetri off before he could say anything else. The left him alone in his room, fuming without a good reason.
The rage rose out of nowhere, and it was undoubtedly disproportionate to what had stirred it in the first place. It filled Hawk with a hot surge of energy. He tossed his phone back on his bed, and then instantly set off in the motions of shadow-boxing, throwing jab punches against an imaginary opponent. He did this for a solid fifteen minutes straight, working himself until sweat started pouring down his forehead, until the jabs became erratic and fitful, like instead of practicing karate he was actually throwing a tantrum. He kept going at it until the snarling wild fury inside him calmed down.
The room filled with the sounds of him trying to catch his breath. Eli simply stood still for a moment, listening to his erratic gulps of air. The intensity of his own anger had caught him off guard. Why had he been so mad about that call from Demetri? Why had he suddenly felt so threatened?
"Get it together," Hawk whispered to himself under his breath. "It's alright…." There wasn't any point in getting himself so worked up over nothing. He certainly wasn't in any danger.
Nobody was ever going to hurt him again.
Your best ain't shit! If you want to win the All-Valley Under 18 Karate Tournament, you gotta give me better than your best.
Hawk had been strolling down the boardwalk of the beach when he heard a friendly voice call out to him. "Hey Hawk, we missed you at the dojo today." Aisha waved from across a business stand and shuffled through the small crowd to join him.
His face heated a little in embarrassment and he rubbed his upper right arm, trying not to wince at the soreness. "I wanted to go," he said, "but I wasn't feeling too hot after the hospital visit yesterday. My mom said maybe some ocean air would do me good." He felt weak admitting that, like it was just some pathetic excuse to miss class, but it was true. In some way, that made it even worse because it meant he was weak. He was glad Aisha was by herself, that Miguel and the other guys weren't with her to see him being so pathetic. Not after all the progress he'd made in Cobra Kai to improve his image.
Giving him a sympathetic smile, Aisha said, "You got bit on the ass by a big junkyard dog and now you have to get rabies shots. I think everyone understands if you miss a couple classes, even Sensei."
Her reassurances did nothing to appease his mental self-flogging. "It's so close to the All-Valley Tournament. I should be training, not sitting at home like some wangless loser." The memory of the events at the junkyard still put him to shame. He'd been the only student who got bit by one of the dogs, because he hadn't been vigilant enough, he hadn't been tough enough, hadn't been skilled enough to get on top of that car. The whole experience had been humiliating.
Worse, he'd had no choice but to admit it to his parents. Granted, he left out the part that this had all been part of a training course in a dangerous scrapyard at Sensei Lawrence's instruction, and he may have given his mom and dad the impression that he was just randomly mauled by a dog while walking home from Reseda. Another lie.
But the thing that guilted Eli most of all was knowing he'd cost his parents $10,000 in medical bills because of his ineptitude. They weren't taking any chances, they said. The skin was broken, he was getting the shots. Sure, they reassured him that it was okay, this obviously wasn't his fault, so there was no reason for him to be upset. But Eli knew it was his fault. He didn't even blame Sensei for sicking the mutts on them in the first place. He only had himself to hold responsible for not getting on top of the car and out of the way of the dogs.
Aisha changed her approach while she and Hawk continued walking. "Did you know in the past, the standard rabies vaccination involved up to twenty-one shots in the stomach? Guess you dodged a real bullet there. But I hear even those modern shots can hurt like a real bitch. You'd still have to be pretty badass to get through all of them." That soothed Eli a little. "How many more do you have to get?"
"My next shot's in four days," he answered, "and then the last one is next week. But it's okay, I'll be at practice on Thursday. I won't miss another one." Truth be told, it wasn't the shots themselves that hurt. The doctor had told him there might be side-effects to the vaccines. Nausea was making his insides cramp, and his muscles were aching so bad that he knew he wouldn't be able to tolerate the physical exertion at Cobra Kai. How much was this going to set him back, he wondered? He'd just have to work ten times as hard at the next practice, and all the time between then and the tournament to make up for it.
"Hmm, now I'm not a doctor or anything," pointed out Aisha, pushing her backpack strap up her shoulder, "but I do know applying cold pressure usually helps with things like this, so my official diagnosis is that we should go and pick up a prescription at Baskin-Robbins."
Dessert honestly did not sound all that appetizing to Eli at the moment. His stomach was still rumbling with nausea. He hadn't even been able to eat lunch that afternoon, just the idea of it had sounded gross to him. But, having missed hanging out with his friends at Cobra Kai, he didn't want to be a let-down again. So he smirked and said, "Hell yeah, sounds like good medicine to me."
"Great, let's go!" With a smile, the two of them walked passed various touristy businesses lined up along the boardwalk, vendors set up to sell cheap merchandise to unsuspecting visitors who'd showed up for a day on the beach. It wasn't too far a stroll until they arrived at the ice-cream shop, dinging the bell on the door and grabbing the attention of the underpaid employee as they entered.
Eli's eyes scanned the array of flavors, and they lit up when he spotted a tub of bright blue, red, and yellow. "Sweet, they got Superman ice-cream!" he exclaimed in almost boyish excitement. Catching himself though, he cleared his throat and put back on his cool airs. "Yeah, I'll take a sugar cone of that, single scoop," he told the employee, handing over a twenty-dollar-bill from his wallet. With a smug wink at Aisha, he added, "I got the lady's too."
"Oh, in that case, the lady is definitely getting two scoops," Aisha responded with a smile in return. Hawk chuckled at her tenacity. "Can I have a cup of Rocky Road and, uhhhhh, Butter Pecan." The two took their ice-cream and walked out to the pier so they could have a nice view of the ocean waves as they ate.
For a while, they made small talk. Aisha filled him in on what he'd missed at practice. He told her the details of what a rabies shot entailed. They kept chatting, interspersed with moments of licking ice-cream, until a ping came from Aisha's hoodie, and she pulled out her phone for a check. Hawk heard her scoff and watched her face get stern, the way she bit her lower lip hard before she shook her head and put her phone back away. Taking another lick of his ice-cream, he asked her, "What's up? Bad news?"
Swallowing her own spoonful of dessert, she answered, "It's Sam."
"The one Miguel went on a date with? Did you hear the rumor she put out for Kyler on their first date?" He chuckled under his breath, not without a hint of mean-spiritedness. "Heh, right on, Miguel, he knows how to pick 'em."
Aisha couldn't help but roll her eyes a little at his dudebro-esque comment, but she clarified further. "Actually, I knew Sam before all that. Remember, I told you guys she and I have been friends since, like, elementary school."
"Oh. Right." Hawk's cheeky grin fell into a lop-sided frown in embarrassment. Way for him to stick his foot in his mouth. "Uh, sorry."
"Oh no, she and I aren't on good terms right now, don't worry about that," Aisha cleared up. "I mean, if Miguel wants to hook up with her, whatever, that's fine." But from the way her face hardened ever so slightly as she took an especially angry spoonful of ice-cream, Hawk could tell she really didn't believe the situation was fine at all. It had to be an awkward situation, for one of her friends to be dating an ex-friend. Seemed like there was a lot of room for tension there.
The nausea in Hawk's gut churned some more, making him lurch a little. But he put it out of his mind. Taking a big bite out of his cone, he asked, "So what's the beef between you guys anyway?"
Letting out a big sigh, Aisha returned the question with one of her own. "Remember how Sam used to hang with Yasmine and her Queen Bee Alpha Bitch Club?" Hawk laughed a little at her description, but then he recalled that it had been Yasmine who had made Aisha go viral online, who had made her life a living hell there for quite a while, who still hadn't completely taken Aisha off her radar. Yasmine, without a doubt, was the meanest girl in school. What kind of person did that make Sam that she would've wanted to hang out with her? Especially when she was already friends with a cool girl like Aisha?
"Did Sam have something to do with the Instagram post?" he asked, suddenly feeling the stirrings of protectiveness on her behalf.
"She may as well have." Aisha ate another two mouthfuls of her ice-cream while Hawk wolfed down the rest of his cone. "She just stood there and didn't do anything when Yasmine posted it. Sam didn't say anything when her new friend called me fugly, when she said that I was a fat pig. She didn't even call her out online, I mean she did literally nothing to stand up for me."
Hawk tightened his jaw. "Sounds like a total bitch."
"Yeah," agreed Aisha. "The most she ever did was try to tell me it would blow over eventually. Like, no shit, but that doesn't take back the fact that it happened. People aren't ever really going to forget it. I definitely won't." Eli empathized with Aisha. He knew a thing or two about cyber-bullying, the absolute mortification one felt when being ganged up on social media. Wasn't it bad enough to be picked on by the students at school? Why did it have to follow them everywhere online? It meant nowhere was safe. If someone gave you a black eye in the locker room, you could at least heal from that. The scars from mean words, the pain of having your friend stand back and do nothing when bullies hurt you, well who knew how long any of that took to get better.
"You know what the worst part is?" Aisha bit her lip again and looked down over the pier at the ocean current, her brown eyes startlingly sad. "She hasn't even apologized to me. Like, after things with her and her fake friends finally got ugly, she thought she could just slide right back into being friends with me. She actually tried to sit with me at the lunch table, after everything she did. Can you believe that? It was like she really thought she could just put me on hold while she had fun with Yasmine and Kyler, and as soon as that backfired, it was back to Aisha the doormat."
Wanting to think of something comforting to say, but not wanting to risk dipping into mushy shit, Hawk told her, "Well, at least now you can kick her ass if she hurts you like that again."
A sharp, almost self-deprecating giggle escaped Aisha, and she tossed her empty cup and spoon into the nearby trash bin. "Ha! Doubt it. She took karate for years, way before any of us. Her dad used to be this big deal in the Valley when it came to karate. She's probably, like, a second-degree blackbelt or something."
"So?" rebutted Hawk, affectionately nudging her with his elbow. "You're still probably better. C'mon, you're Cobra Kai. You're badass!" That cheered her up some, judging by how her smile brightened and got a little less cynical. She patted him on the shoulder for a wordless thanks, which in turn made him feel better for helping her out. Aisha was Cobra Kai, just like he was. They had to stick together. It was them versus all the assholes in the world.
Aisha's cellphone pinged again, but this time it didn't upset her when she looked at the message. And, a few seconds later, Hawk's went off, too. "It's Miguel," he said as he unlocked his screen.
"He texted me, too," said Aisha. "Same thing to you, about wanting to catch a movie after practice on Thursday?"
His stomach lurched again, this time much more forcefully, and it had nothing to do with the text. "Y-Yeah," he answered, reaching out to grab the rail of the pier with his free hand while the other tucked his phone back in his shorts pocket. "S-Sounds like a plan…."
"Hey, are you okay?" Aisha asked, taking a step back but reaching out a hand to grab his arm in order to help steady him. "You're looking a little green right now. Maybe you should — oh shit!" Thinking fast, she swung him around by his elbow just in time to get him to lean over the railing, where he promptly began puking his ice-cream back up, straight down into the ocean's crashing waves below.
Eli felt like his stomach had been pile-driven into, as if someone was squeezing all its contents out. He had no control over it until the last dribble of bile spilled from his trembling lips, when he then felt Aisha's hands on his shoulders, helping him turn around and sit down on the pier. Even worse than the cold, clammy perspiration on his skin were the passing looks of mild concern from strangers as they walked by the teenagers.
"Here," offered Aisha, handing him a napkin she'd rushed to grab from a nearby stand. Eli accepted it, wiping the sickness from his face. He kept the napkin hovered over his upper lip in a moment of self-consciousness, paranoid that every single passerby was surely staring at his scar, rather than at the kid with the mohawk who'd just blown chunks over the railing.
One of them approached Hawk and Aisha. "Hey, you okay?" asked a young man, who appeared to be a college student, judging by the print on his t-shirt.
Before Aisha could say anything, Hawk blurted out from behind the napkin, "Y-Yeah, no big, just getting over a two-day bender." He had to give himself credit, he was getting pretty good at this lying thing. Sensei would've been especially proud of that one. "You know how crazy those frat parties get, amirite?"
He may have looked a pale, sickly mess, but he said the lie with such confidence that it convinced the college student. "Right, I got you. Next time? Take some milk thistle. Makes all the difference." Hawk flashed him a thumb's up, and, satisfied he'd done his part as a good samaritan, the young man went on his way. But not before pointing out, "By the way, sweet hair, bruh." It almost made the whole thing worth it.
Sitting down beside Hawk, Aisha twisted a spare napkin in her hands and said, "Sorry, I guess ice-cream wasn't so great an idea after all."
"It's okay," Hawk mumbled, hesitantly lowering the napkin from his mouth. "It's not your fault." It was his, for being unable to just man up, for being such a complete wuss that a fucking shot would make him sick to his stomach. Looking over at Aisha with his now bloodshot eyes, he implored her, "Don't tell Miguel and the others about this."
The request confused Aisha, and she raised a skeptical brow. It seemed like such a silly thing to ask. "Hey, it's not like you're the first guy to puke in public," she reassured him. "You're probably not even the first guy to puke on the pier this week."
She just didn't get it, thought Hawk. That wasn't really her fault either, though. She was a girl, she was allowed to be vulnerable, chicks could be sensitive and emotional, it was almost expected of them. But Hawk finally had a rep now. People were starting to see him as the ass-kicking student from Cobra Kai. He was gaining respect, and he had to protect that at all costs. Nobody could think he was still dweeby Eli.
"You can't tell them!" he practically begged. "Please don't!"
Aisha's eyes reflected pity back onto him, which made him only feel worse. Nonetheless, she gave him a soft nod and swore, "Alright, I won't."
