Chapter 4: Before the Lights Come On
The metal key turned in the deadbolt with a dry click, echoing off the bare white walls of the dojo long before anyone else had pulled into the strip mall parking lot. Outside, the sky over the highway was the color of wet slate, the predawn air biting at my bare fingers as I pushed the heavy glass door open. The indoor mats smelled of industrial disinfectant and old sweat, a sharp, clean scent that always helped settle my ribs whenever the weight of the gym started pressing in.
I flipped the wall switches. Half the fluorescent overhead tubes flickered twice, buzzing a low, low-frequency hum before settling into a steady, sterile glare across the rows of green puzzle mats. My white jiu-jitsu gi felt stiff against my skin, the cotton still damp from being washed and air-dried the night before. I didn't turn on the heating unit yet. The room needed to stay cold for a while so I could sweat properly into the work.
Walking out to the center of the floor, I untied my belt, stretched it out between my hands, and folded it twice before setting it neatly beside my canvas gym bag against the base of the white wall. I started with solo guard retention drills on the green foam. I dropped to my back, knees pulled tightly to my chest, and began shrimping across the width of the mat. Hip escape, reset, hip escape, reset. The friction of the puzzle seams grabbed at the rough cotton of my pants, scraping against my skin through the fabric, but I kept my rhythm steady, breathing in through my nose and forcing the air out through my teeth in sharp, measured bursts.
When I reached the far wall, I rolled up into a technical standup, my right foot planted, left hand shielding my face, base hand anchored behind me on the mat. One, two, three. Repetition was the only way to make the movement invisible, something that happened in the muscles before the brain even had to process the threat of an oncoming body.
By the time I was halfway through my third set of solo sweeps, the front door rattled in its frame. Coach Miller walked in, carrying a large cardboard tray of lukewarm coffee and a clipboard tucked under his arm. He wore his usual gray fleece zip-up and faded jeans, his graying hair rumpled as if he’d been up since four wrestling with spreadsheets or knee injuries. He didn't say anything right away. He stood near the entrance, blowing on the surface of his coffee cup, watching the way my shoulders dropped and reset during my entries.
"You're down here early, kid," Coach said, his voice gravelly from the morning chill. He walked slowly across the mat, his heavy sneakers squeaking softly against the foam, and set the coffee tray down on one of the folding chairs lining the wall.
"Just working the angles," I said, dropping back down to my back to start another cycle of butterfly guard sweeps against an imaginary opponent. "My hip felt loose on the left side yesterday. Wanted to tighten it up before the room gets crowded."
Coach crossed his arms over his gray fleece, looking down at me with heavy, half-lidded eyes. He'd seen a thousand kids come through this dojo—some with natural talent, some with loud mouths like Marcus, and others who just quietly wore the canvas thin until they couldn't be ignored anymore.
"You're moving faster than you were last month," Coach noted, leaning back against the wall. "That's good. But speed doesn't mean much if your grips aren't anchored. If someone bigger gets inside your lapel control, all that scrambling just burns your gas tank out in the first two minutes."
"I know," I muttered, executing a crisp technical standup and pivoting to face him, my hands automatically coming up to a defensive framing posture. "I've been working on my inside ties."
"We'll see how your inside ties hold up soon enough," Coach said, tapping the corner of his clipboard with a calloused thumb. He walked over to the desk by the front window and flipped open a yellow legal pad covered in handwritten lists of names, weight classes, and tournament brackets. "The regional preliminaries are three weeks out. The committee finalized the match-up sheets this morning."
I wiped a thin layer of sweat from my forehead with the back of my forearm, my pulse ticking steadily in my throat. "Am I locked in for my division?"
"You're locked in, all right," Coach said, looking up from the page with a faint, tight-lipped smile that didn't reach his eyes. "And because the local circuit is thin on competitors in your weight class this season, the tournament directors pulled a few strings with the regional council. To get you ready for the bracket depth, I had to make some adjustments to our training schedule starting today."
I lowered my hands slightly, the cold air hitting my damp gi top. "What kind of adjustments?"
"Starting this afternoon, we're changing how we run the advanced sparring blocks," Coach said, closing the clipboard with a sharp slap that echoed off the white walls. "No more self-selected training partners. You're going to be paired directly against the upper belts during the heavy resistance rounds. Every single session from now until weigh-ins."
I stared at him for a second, my mind running over the roster of heavy belts currently training at the dojo—the heavier guys, the aggressive teens, and Marcus, whose balance and speed had given me trouble every time we crossed paths on the mat.
May you like
"Every session?" I asked.
"Every single one," Coach confirmed, turning toward the office to unlock the door for the morning administrative work. "If you want to survive the regional bracket, you need to stop fighting people your own size. Go grab a drink of water. Class starts in twenty minutes, and the rest of them are going to walk through that door expecting an easy morning."
