The car ride was agonizingly quiet the whole way from Miyagi-Do to Hawk's neighborhood in Encino Hills. Miguel had looked over from behind the wheel at him what must have been a dozen times since they left the dojo, but Hawk kept huddled by the passenger door, hiding behind the hood of his jacket as best as he was able. He wished he hadn't agreed to let Miguel drive him home. He didn't want Miguel to see him like this, without his mohawk, struggling to hold himself together.
Hawk spent the whole time trying to think of some way to properly apologize for serving as the catalyst for Sensei Lawrence and Mr. LaRusso splitting the dojos apart. He hadn't meant for that to happen. He'd only gone to the dojo to see what they thought he should do about Cobra Kai ambushing him. He'd wanted their advice, their guidance. He didn't know they would erupt into an argument over it when they couldn't agree on what the response should be.
Now Miyagi-Fang had been split in two again, with only seven weeks until the All-Valley Tournament, and it was his fault. How was he supposed to make that up to Miguel? Miguel was the one who'd helped unite the dojos in the first place. Hawk had already told him sorry earlier, before they left Miyagi-Do, but that wasn't enough, was it? Talk was cheap, right? But he couldn't think of how to make up for it, not even by the time Miguel pulled into his driveway behind his mom's car and turned off the engine.
For a long moment, the both of them sat there in the still car, neither one making a move to get out of his seat. Miguel stared at Hawk, unmistakable pity etched clear on his face, opening and closing his mouth a couple of times before finding his words. "Do you want me to come in with you?" he offered.
Come inside with him? Where his parents were waiting?
Hawk's eyes dropped to the glovebox, and he sat in his seat as mute as ever. What in the world was he going to tell his parents? How was he going to hide this from them? Could he lie? He'd gotten so good over the past year at lying to them, hadn't he? What was another lie on top of all the previous ones?
The chipped tooth had been easy to cover up. Just an accident from the dojo. It had been simple to omit the fact that he'd been told to stay still and take a direct punch to the face from Aisha. The dog bites had been more difficult to explain, but by the time he'd limped home, he had concocted a whopper about getting mauled by some random mutt while walking home from the dojo. The day he'd come home covered in cement, well, he'd fallen into a wheelbarrow while Sensei Lawrence had them mixing some for muscle buildup. He'd certainly not climbed into a cement truck.
His mom and dad had bought all those lies. And it had been even easier to cover up all the horrible shit he'd done while in Cobra Kai. For that, he just had to say nothing at all.
But what would he tell them about this? That he'd lost a bet? That he'd gotten gum stuck in his hair and Sensei Lawrence had botched trying to fix it? That all his bad karma came back to bite him on the ass and took his hair with it?
Hawk's hands started shaking in his lap the more he strained his frazzled brain trying to come up with an excuse. He had to think of something, though, and fast.
Miguel must have gotten the wrong impression of his silence. "It's okay," he said. "I'll head on home."
Hawk peeked at him from behind the shadow of his hood. "My…My dad would give you a ride."
Miguel's eyes got sad again, and Hawk turned away so he didn't have to look at them. But he heard his friend unbuckle his seatbelt and say, "No, I'll call my mom to pick me up. You should be with your mom and dad."
"…Okay." Hawk felt the brief touch of a hand squeezing his shoulder, and for a moment he wanted to tell Miguel he did want him to go inside with him. He didn't want to face his mom and dad alone. It was like walking into an execution chamber. Perhaps Miguel could help come up with a story his parents would believe. The lie would be more believable if he had someone to collaborate with.
But when the hand pulled back, Hawk decided he couldn't rope Miguel more into this; besides, he knew Miguel wouldn't support a lie of this magnitude, he would encourage him to tell them the truth, for his own sake.
Both of them got out of the car. Handing Hawk his car keys back, Miguel promised him, "I'll text you later, okay?"
"Yeah," mumbled Hawk, hunching over as he trudged to his front door, his mind still scrambling through the thick fog to come up with a plan to avoid having to tell his mother and father any of this. But before he turned the knob, he glanced once over his shoulder to Miguel and said, "Thanks for driving me home."
"Of course, man," returned Miguel.
Hawk's eyes lingered on his friend for another moment before he finally turned around and went inside. Closing the door behind him as quietly as he could, his heart leaped to his throat when he heard his parents' voices coming from the living room. He would have to pass by there on the way to his bedroom.
Pulling his hood even further up, Hawk slid off his shoes and padded down the hallway, his heart thundering in his ribcage with each slow step. The voices got louder and louder the closer he approached them. He winced when the wooden boards under his feet creaked, and let it bring him to a standstill, right outside the living room, like he'd been caught in a bear trap.
"There's Eli, I thought I heard him pull in," said his father from where he and his mother were sitting together on the couch.
His mother had a wine glass in her hand. They must've been watching a movie or something. But her voice sounded a little stern when she said, "Honey, I told you before, don't ignore my texts. I don't mind if you and your friends stay out late, but let me know."
His phone had been smashed, Hawk wanted to tell them. But he remained still, hands stuffed in his pockets, quiet, staring at his parents from under the protection of his hood. And he saw the expressions on their faces morph into concern, just like everyone's had at Miyagi-Do. Could he have blamed them? Even if his eyes weren't red, if his cheeks hadn't been tear-streaked, when was the last time they'd ever seen him with his jacket hood up?
His parents immediately sat up straight. "Is something wrong?" asked his mother, looking like she was going straight into Mom Mode.
Now was the time for the lie, to tell her nothing was wrong. His eyes? Spring allergies. The hood? He was cold, that was all. His hair? His hair….
Hawk wanted to lie, but another part of him wanted to run straight in his mother's arms as he had done countless times as a boy, even though he'd sworn to himself he would never do it again because only sissies did that and he wasn't a sissy anymore.
Rico had disappeared. Sensei Lawrence and Mr. LaRusso had gotten into an argument in front of him. But here was his mother giving him that same look of barefaced worry she did whenever he'd come home from an awful day at school. She always knew when something was wrong, even when he wouldn't tell her what it was.
And seeing that open concern in his mother's eyes now, Hawk's bottom lip started trembling, and he knew at that moment that he couldn't lie to her this time. He pulled the hood of his jacket down, his voice cracking as he called out for her. "Mom!"
The wine glass in his mother's hand dropped to the floor as she sprung from the couch upon seeing his shorn head. And Hawk threw his arms around her, burying his face in her shoulder when she pulled him close to her, wishing she would stroke his hair like she used to; but there wasn't enough hair left behind for her to comb her fingers through.
Tears broke from his eyes and he started crying. His father was now at his side, too, and both his parents were near hysterics, upsetting him even more, throwing what felt like a hundred questions at him at once. What happened? Who did this? Who hurt you?
"It was Cobra Kai!" cried Hawk, looking up at his mom. "They cut my hair, they pinned me down and cut off my mohawk! I couldn't stop them! I tried to fight them! I tried!"
He still didn't understand how he'd lost the fight. He couldn't wrap his head around it, no matter how hard he tried, and the effort only made him dizzy. He was tougher than all those guys in Cobra Kai. Even against a group of them, he should've been able to knock them out. He'd beaten more people during the school fight without a problem. So how had they gotten him down on the table, how had they managed to hold him down long enough for Robby to do that to him?
His mom cupped his face with her hands, and her watery eyes went wide when she tilted his chin up. Then one of her hands flew up to her mouth, and suddenly she was crying. "Oh my God, what happened to your neck?! They did this to you?"
His father pulled his jacket back to get a look for himself at the red ring of a bruise wrapped around his neck. "They strangled you?!" his dad asked, gripping Hawk's shoulder tightly. He was afraid. Hawk had never seen his father so afraid in his life.
Had Kyler been trying to strangle him? He'd restrained him so Robby could do the deed unimpeded, but more than once Kyler had gripped the belt so tight Hawk couldn't even breathe, holding it long enough to see him squirm before finally giving enough leeway to let him gasp for air. It had seemed to annoy Robby, so much so that he'd told him to cut it out, but Kyler always pushed what he could get away with.
"One of them p-put a belt around my neck to hold me down." Hawk found himself choking for air now. Why had he turned his back on Kyler? Why hadn't he been able to get out of the hold? Why hadn't he been able to stop Robby? Why had this happened to him? Why had all his amazing karate skills amounted to absolutely nothing?
His father's fear reshaped into anger, not unlike how it had for Sensei Lawrence back at the dojo. "Enough is enough, I'm calling the cops!" he declared. "What are these punks' names? They won't get away with this, I'll have them arrested!"
Hawk blinked up at his dad. "What?"
"Eli, who did this to you?" his mom asked more gently, wiping his tears from his cheeks with her thumbs while doing nothing to stop her own from dripping down her chin. "Do you know their names?"
Their names? Hawk had their names right on the tip of his tongue: Robby Keene, Tory Nichols, Kyler Park. But when he stared at his parents' faces, he suddenly saw himself in their eyes. He saw himself as he used to be. And he heard his own name. Eli Moskowitz.
And it repulsed him.
No, he wasn't Eli. He was Hawk, and Hawk wasn't some passive easy target who got ambushed when he least expected it. Hawk stood up for himself, Hawk could defend himself, Hawk hurt others before they could ever hurt him again, even when those people had never hurt him in the first place.
Pushing away from his mom and dad, Hawk wiped furiously as his face, sniffing hard to try and bottle his emotions back down. Too little, too late. "Do you know why this happened?" he asked, his voice low and hoarse. Narrowing his eyes, he snapped, "Because I deserved it!"
"That's not true," his father declared, reaching out to touch his shoulder again. But Hawk shook him off. Still his dad insisted, "It's not your fault people bully you."
And there it was, the confirmation. His parents had never really seen Hawk whenever they looked at him, and they certainly weren't seeing him now.
This wasn't like the old days when he was some put-upon bullied victim. But that was who his parents probably saw, right? Their poor, helpless, innocent kid who never did anybody wrong but who the world just wouldn't leave alone. Of course that was still what they saw when they looked at him. He'd never given them any reason to think otherwise. They didn't know what their son had turned into over the past year because he'd refused to let them see.
He wasn't supposed to be helpless anymore.
And Hawk wasn't powerless. Not like Eli had been.
He wasn't a victim. He was awful. No better than Robby. No better than Kyler, than any of those guys in Cobra Kai, because he'd been a Cobra Kai himself just a few months ago. He'd hurt people, too, real bad.
He didn't deserve to be a victim.
"You guys think nothing's changed but you don't even know about the things I did!" Hawk yelled, his voice rising until he was practically shouting at them now. His fists opened and closed by his sides as his breathing started to pick up, recounting every terrible thing he had done over the past year. And it started spilling out. "I hurt Demetri. Last summer, he left a bad review about Cobra Kai, and I chased him around the mall and tried to beat him up for it. Then I went and trashed Miyagi-Do, I wrecked the whole dojo just to get back at them for stopping me. And I stole Mr. LaRusso's medal of honor. It belonged to Mr. Miyagi, his sensei. I stole a dead guy's medal of honor!"
Shock had come over his parents' faces through his tirade. Clearly, it had never once crossed their minds what he had been up to while in Cobra Kai. Why would it have? The worst trouble he'd ever gotten in was being suspended for participating in the school fight, but everyone in the dojos got caught up in that.
They never thought that he could have been so vicious on his own, though. Not their cowardly, meek, docile loser of a son.
His mother took a step toward him. "Eli—"
But Hawk took a step back. And he wasn't finished. "And it only got worse after the school fight," he declared, his shoulders rising and falling with his rapid breaths as he kept going. "I wouldn't leave any of the guys in Miyagi-Do alone. I started fights with them whenever I could. Sam, Miguel's girlfriend, I was such an asshole to her. And there's this kid, Nate, I kicked the shit out of him so I could give Miguel the charity money they'd raised for him. And this other guy, Chris, I went to his workplace to harass him. And that's where I got into a fight with all of them, and I broke Demetri's arm!"
His parents' jaws dropped. "You did what?" asked his dad, shaking his head in disbelief. And why wouldn't he doubt what he'd heard? Demetri had been over to their house since then, acting like nothing of the sort had ever happened. But it had.
Hawk gripped the side of his head with one hand, rubbing the heel of the other against his brow, recalling that awful night at Golf 'N Stuff. "He begged for mercy and I snapped the bone in his arm! They had to take him to the hospital to put a cast on it, and I did that to him! My friend! And I got away with all of it! Demetri didn't ever snitch on me. I kept waiting for you guys to find out, for his parents to press charges or something, but he never told on me and I don't know why!"
His dad was holding his palms out now like he was trying to talk him off a ledge. "Alright, we'll put off filing a report for tonight," he said, sounding like he was offering a truce. "But we should at least take you to the hospital to have them—"
"No, don't!" Hawk screamed, shrinking into his shoulders at the thought of the doctor's office. That was where people went when they'd been hurt. That was where Miguel and Demetri went. But he hadn't been hurt, he'd only gotten what was coming to him. Hadn't his parents listened to anything he just said? "I'm fine!"
"Eli, you're not fine," his mother argued, taking another cautious step towards him. "It doesn't matter what you did before, you need help now. Just tell us who did this to you, and we'll make sure they never hurt you again."
His mom had made that promise to him before when she called the school about his bullying, and it had accomplished nothing. And that was back when he'd done nothing wrong except commit the crime of being born with a weird lip. But now she knew the truth, she knew he was worse than his own bullies, and still she thought she could shield him from everything bad in the world.
"D-Don't you get it?" Hawk retorted, his bottom lip trembling. "I don't want to go to the cops! I don't want this to go to court! You-You want to know their names so you can throw them in juvie, but I should be there right along with them! Why should they be punished when I wasn't?"
His mother shook her head adamantly, reaching out to cup his cheeks again. "Listen to me, no matter what you did before, that doesn't give anyone the right to violate you like this."
Violate. Hawk's stomach bottomed out at hearing the word. That was the word they used for girls when guys wouldn't keep their hands to themselves. That wasn't what happened to him. He wasn't a victim….
Hawk's jaw kept quivering and now his cheeks were wet again. When his mother wrapped her arms back over his shoulders, he caved, letting her pull him into a hug as he broke down and begged, "Please don't make me tell, don't make me go to the cops, I don't want to, please don't make me…." He buried his face back in his mother's shoulder and kept crying, practically choking on his tears as kept repeating over and over that he didn't want to fight anymore.
Hawk cried for a long time until he had nothing left to give and his head was splitting in two. Then his father was putting a glass of water in his hand to drink, along with two Tylenol PM pills. He took them both and drank the water, letting it soothe his scratchy, parched throat.
"These will help you sleep," said his dad, rubbing a soothing hand up and down his back while he drank the last of the water. "Let's get you to your room."
His mother was hesitant to let him go, but she compromised and helped him down the hallway and to his bedroom. They left him alone long enough to change into his pajamas, but Hawk could hear them outside his bedroom door, still trying to decide what they should do about this.
It didn't matter what they decided. They couldn't make him talk and it wouldn't make any difference if they did. Nothing ever made any difference in the end. So why fight it? He was tired of fighting, tired of pretending to be something other than what he really was.
Pulling his shirt over his head, Hawk paused in front of the mirror on the dresser, where his eyes hovered over the tufts of purple hair Robby had left behind. The final insult to injury. Robby would force him to make the final clip of his wings with his own two hands. And once that was done, the Hawk would never fly again.
Maybe that was for the better, right? So what if Hawk had tried atoning for all the horrible shit he'd pulled? It didn't take any of it back. Maybe the Hawk wasn't supposed to exist anymore at all. Maybe that was why this had happened.
Hawk was everything he'd always wanted to be: tough, powerful, and totally without fear. But then he'd used that newfound fearsomeness to hurt others, just to compensate for the years of powerlessness he'd endured. If he couldn't be trusted to have that power, then maybe he deserved to have it stripped of him. Maybe Cobra Kai had done everyone a favor by revealing the fact that, deep down, he was still a loser, still Eli Moskowitz.
Eli lumbered over to his bathroom. He flipped on the light and stared down at where he'd left his electric razor. At least with an electric one, it would be over in a few seconds. A quick buzz on both sides and it'd be finished. Nothing compared to the length of time it took for Robby to shave his mohawk with a straight razor.
Opening the cabinet below the sink, Eli stooped down and started rummaging through his collection of hair products, pushing back bottles of leave-in conditioner, cans of extra-strength hairspray, and stained containers of dye, including the recently opened canister of Ultra Violet Manic Panic. But he froze in his tracks when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
"What are you looking for?" asked his father.
Eli's eyes didn't pull away from the now useless supply of hair products. "I need the charger for my razor," he mumbled. "I need to even out my hair."
His dad closed the cabinet door and pulled Eli up into a deep hug. Eli rested his forehead against his father's shoulder, let him wrap his hand around the back of his head to hold him closer, but did not return the embrace this time.
"I'll help you with that in the morning," his father promised. "We'll talk some more then. For now, try and get some sleep, alright?"
Eli didn't respond. He just walked numbly back into his room and crawled into bed, staring up at the ceiling while his father turned off the lights and stepped out. His dad left the door cracked behind him, probably so they could check on him later. But down the hallway, Eli could hear his parents' faint voices still talking. And he could hear his mother crying.
Closing his heavy eyes, Eli turned over and buried his face in his pillow.