Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
I don’t think about them because when I do, they haunt me. Little ghosts trailing behind me with their bloody noses and broken necks.
But they are hard to forget.
My second death fight was against another girl—which almost never happened—and she was way too pretty to be in the ring. In fact, the first time I saw Anya out there on the Rock my first opponent’s face popped right into my mind, she was that pretty.
Anya is like supermodel pretty. She could be one of those lingerie models who wear the wings. I’m pretty sure Anya knows she’s pretty, but I’m equally sure she has no idea just how pretty. I’m also equally sure she has no use for that beauty and doesn’t even play it up, as Nandy would say, with make-up or push-up bras.
The little blonde girl in the ring with me during that second fight looked like she’d stepped off a yachting vacation. Her eyes were sea-blue, her skin was tanned a golden brown with rosy, sun-kissed spots on her cheeks, and her blonde hair was nearly white. It was plaited back along her head and tied up into a flat bun at the nape of her neck so she looked like a little Swedish doll.
She was wearing matching gear—a gorgeous orangey-pink color. Coral, I think they call it. Both her tank top and her shorts were this color. And they were legit workout clothes, not the stained and cheap shit I was wearing that day.
Her toenails were painted that color too. I was kinda fixated on her toes because that was the first time I had ever seen nail polish.
Her hands were taped—I remember that because it was against the rules. But unlike me, she had someone with her. I think it was the man who owned her, but I guess it could’ve been someone else. He argued with the man in charge of the ring that day and the tape stayed.
I was watching from my corner. Just observing.
I killed her in under a minute. Snapped her neck. She was not a fighter, not prepared at all. I don’t know what that man was thinking when he put her in that fight. Maybe he didn’t understand. Maybe he just took one look at me—another little blonde girl with blue eyes—and thought to himself, She’s not a killer.
But I was.
And I still am.
When I think about that fight I mostly don’t think about that girl or the way she died. Or the way her eyes were empty black pits after it was over.
I think about the cameraman. It was not something I noticed in the first fight, but there was no way to miss this guy. He was in the ring with us. Getting close-ups.
But not of me. Of her. Just her.
Cort didn’t say anything to me about it, but later—like a week later—I asked Sergey, in my new broken English, why they wanted to film that girl.
And he said, “So they can send the video to her parents, Irina.”
I was in shock when he said that. I almost couldn’t talk. But I had questions, so I forced the words out. “Why? Why would they send that to her parents?”
Sergey shrugged. “Because they didn’t do what they were told.”
I think about that conversation with Sergey way more than I think about Maart these days. Sometimes my past doesn’t feel real. I mean, how does one go from death matches to living in a South Beach condo and waitressing?
It doesn’t make much sense. And the really funny thing is that it didn’t take much effort to change my path in life. Yeah, that first breakout with Cort, and Maart, and Rainer—that was major. Not the fighting. Those men were weak. They were so unprepared for us. I often wonder what those men were thinking. Did they not understand that teaching children to kill, then giving them the opportunity to kill you, is pretty much the definition of stupid?
Anyway. Once we fought our way out of the camp it was a couple years of checking our backs and working hard on the supply ship to save money. But once we settled back on land, and Maart got his gym, and Rainer took off for a while, and Cort and Anya acted like a happy married couple, life got very simple.
So changing it was simple too.
I mean, really, all I did was buy new papers and get on a plane.
Boom. Instant new life.
Of course, there were a lot of little dramas that happened afterward, but none of them required me to kill someone at the end of a fight.
I don’t think people—and especially Americans—realize just how easy they have it.
Or how easy it would be to change it.
I will never get tired of air conditioning. I run that AC set at sixty-six degrees every day of the year. This adds to my unreality. That’s what I’m calling the disconnect that’s been plaguing me for the better part of a year.