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Chapter 3- Beginning Stages

That night, I slept fitfully, overloaded with everything that I had to do. I would never be able to see my friends until after this fight I would spend five months training extremely hard, the evenings studying law. When I finally got to sleep, it was around three o’ clock in the morning. I only got about four hours sleep, before I was up again. So much for starting my day off right. I quickly made some coffee (Yes I drink coffee, do you have a problem with that?), and got on my bike and left.
I arrived at the gas station, and let myself inside. As soon as I opened the trap door, I heard the noise of men training. I was one of the few white people there, and of course I was the only girl, so I was increasingly becoming more nervous. I tentatively walked down the stairs, and again everyone stopped and stared at me. Apparently there wasn’t a trainer present at the moment, so I sat on a nearby bench and waited for the trainer to return, ignoring the stares and catcalls. Presently a young man walked in, who looked remarkably like Danny. Longer dark hair, bright blue eyes, and a slightly crooked nose. He had paler skin than Danny did, though. He was one of those guys you would see in one of those beach movies, the hunk the main character falls in love with. I walked up to him and he looked me over saying
“You must be the girl.”
“I am. You must be Danny’s assistant trainer.”
“I am. My name is Eric.” He replied, mocking my tone.
I began to rethink this whole thing. Maybe I should come in the evenings and study in the mornings. Obviously, this boy would teach me nothing.
“Are you going to stand there like an a** all day, or are you going to let me train you?” he said, definitely putting some innuendo on that. I replied grudgingly, matching his tone
“I’ll train.”
And that was the beginning of Eric vs. Nicole, Round one. Great relationship, huh? Both of us sniping at the other while he attempted to train me. We began with lifting weights. After my arms sufficiently turned to jelly, he had me run around the room until I collapsed. Which was about an hour.
I asked him why he was brutally torturing me this way and he replied
“Before I can train you, we’ve got to get you in shape.”
I rested for a few minutes, and then got up and he taught me how to punch. Quite forcefully, I might add. After this was all done, it was 4 o’clock in the afternoon. I was completely surprised. I had totally lost track of time. When I cam back to reality, I remembered what I was training for and almost broke down in tears right then and there. I mumbled a quick
“I’ve got to go.” And grabbed my bike and left, leaving a confused Eric behind.
When I arrived home, I took a quick shower then rode to the library. I was again on edge, worried that I would see someone at the library that would recognize me and demand to know where my parents and I had been the past couple of days. My fears were confirmed as I ran into a book-geek called Maria. She didn’t have any of the same classes I did, so she didn’t know I had been missing. She was curious as to why I was at the library, me being more of a morning-announcements kind of person. I told her I need some government books for my history class. She said
“I’m surprised. Most teachers don’t give homework this close to Halloween.”
“Ah, well, um…wacko teacher, you know.”
She nodded and silently pointed to a recluse part of the library. I nodded my thanks then found about a hundred books on law and government. I groaned, then grabbed the first ones I saw. I checked them out, six books in all. I left the library quickly, relieved I hadn’t met anyone worse than Maria.
I arrived home, and immediately began reading in the painfully empty house. I decided I needed a pet. Maybe a cat or something like that. They’re fairly easy to take care of…I realized my mind had wandered, then turned back to the boring law book. My lack of sleep, hard training and the overall despair of everything caught up to me; I fell asleep.
The next morning I woke up to the sun glaring in my eyes. I glanced at my watch and cursed, it was 8 o’clock. So much for keeping on time. I changed clothes quickly, literally ran out the door, hopped on my bike and went to the gas station. I arrived, and no one even stared at me today. Yay me. Eric gave me a bemused look and glanced at his watch. He walked over to me and said
“Same drill as yesterday. Get started. I’ll come to you when it’s time to train with the punching bags.”
He walked back to the man he was helping and I sighed. I began the agonizing, painful routine of training. I arrived home from training more exhausted and sweaty than the day before, if that was possible. I took a shower and returned to reading the government books again, finding that they weren’t quite as boring as I originally thought. I also found that I could read my quickly than I thought as well. In fact, I was so absorbed in this books that I didn’t even here Michael and Josh come to the door and ring the doorbell. I must’ve jumped 2 feet in the air, before ducking behind that couch. It was too late, I think they saw me. They kept reading the doorbell and they were saying loudly
“Nicole, we’re sorry.”
I then remembered the fight. Thank God for that. I thought I would never to happy when we fought, but in this situation I was. Eventually, they went away, but I was worried. I still think they saw me. I was hoping I could disappear, and my parents, too. I know that after Sunday, people would come looking for my family, and I needed to be hidden or gone when they did. It’s Friday today.
My routine was the same on Saturday and Sunday, nobody came looking for my family, or if they did, I was gone training. In fact, my routine continued for the next two weeks, and I ran into basically no problems. Then I ran out of food. I had been half- anticipating something like this would happen, but I hadn’t really given it much thought. I was completely and utterly out of food. That evening, I had bad delivery food, a risk because there was always the chance that one of the delivery people knew me or my parents. I needed real food, stuff you could get at the grocery store. Mom used to go once a week on Saturday mornings. She always ran into numerous church members so I decided to try and go on a weekday. It was Saturday, so I would have to wait a few days. Delivery for me, then. I then remembered I had no money. My parents had everything in bank accounts, and I couldn’t access them.
All I had was about 50 dollars from a vacation money jar, and that was only paying for deliveries. I worried about it for the full two days. On Monday morning, the mail arrived, and in one of the letters was enclosed a card, a card that the FBI sent me. I sighed in relief, because it was like a credit card, except the FBI paid all the bills. I would be okay. I could get whatever I wanted. So in the morning, I showered and disguised myself, because I knew that I would probably run into someone I recognized. I found trip pants in my mom’s closet, (I wonder why she had those…) and I had a black hoodie I could wear. I put the hoodie over my distinctive bright blonde hair, and I put a thick line of black eyeliner around my eyes, making me looks goth, but really just made my green eyes stand out much more. My nose was tiny, so there wasn’t much to cover there, and my lips fuller, but I didn’t put on black lipstick. I didn’t need to draw too much attention to myself.
The grocery store was many miles away, so I decided to try my hand in driving. I was 15, after all. I knew the police were lax on this side of town, usually there was no crime around here. That was all on the south side. The side where Danny’s place was. So I got into the car and drove up slowly to the grocery store. The only thing that was hard was parking, just because I had never done it before. My parents had taught me to drive pretty well…and I stopped all thoughts of my parents right there. I didn’t want to cry in public, after all.
I got lots and lots of food, enough to last me another month at least. I wanted to be far away from the public as possible. I had done this grocery shopping during my regular training time, so I drove a little faster home, put the groceries away, and ran to the bike and left. I had a feeling they didn’t want cars at the gas station, attracting attention. I was so into pondering why the cashier had given me a strange look while I checked out, that I didn’t notice I hadn’t changed clothing. I was still in the Goth clothes. I sighed, then dismantled all the chains on the pants, took the hoodie off, revealing a tight fitting black shirt underneath. Not the best choice for training with guys, but I wasn’t going to go home and change now. I must’ve been totally out of it, because I didn’t even notice that Eric was watching me undress the Goth clothes while I was on the stairs.
“Why were you wearing those clothes?” he asked, almost with concern.
“None of your business.” I said sharply.
“I know you might not believe it, but I’m worried about you. You come in here every day, train your a** off, then leave, sometimes, not even saying a word. And I’ve never heard anything about your parents.”
“I’ve never talked much, and my parents aren’t around right now.” I said, biting my tongue from saying anything more.
“What about school?”
At this, I looked away, and said
“I plan on going back eventually.”
“What is going on with you, girl?” He asked, exasperated.
“You don’t need to know. I can’t tell anyone, specially not a jackass like you!”
I pushed past him, and began weight lifting, ignoring his attempts to talk to me. Finally, he gave up and reduced his speech to training instructions for everyone. We moved from using punching bags to kicking, after I ran for hours. Otherwise, nothing was different. I was surprised, after our little fight, I was expecting him to do something, I wasn’t sure exactly what, though. As I was leaving, he did do something, I was just not expecting it. He asked
“Do you want to go to dinner with me tomorrow night?”
“What?” I asked stunned, not quite getting it.
“Come with me to dinner.” He repeated.
“Oh…um, I can’t, I’m sorry.”
“Why not?” H demanded.
“Look things aren’t going so well right now, and I can’t get involved with anyone.
“I’m not asking that you get involved, just that you go to dinner. That’s all.”
“No.” I said shortly, and turned to leave.
I got home, and pushed the whole affair from my mind. I had a killer headache, and I was reaching for the pills in the kitchen cabinet, my hand hit the mirror next to the cabinet. It fell over, and I was furious to see that there was a camera behind it. I ripped the camera from the wall, startled to find it gave me no trouble. I immediately went to all the mirrors, ripped them down and ripped out the cameras. Who needed mirrors anyways? I then went all around the house, with a pencil and piece of paper, identifying the cameras, not bothering to rip them off, the FBI would just replace them. But really, is putting them behind mirrors necessary? That’s more like a Peeping Tom than monitoring how I train, which I believe they are failing to do, as I am training elsewhere.
I then remembered how I had ripped the camera off the wall. I didn’t realize that I had gotten any stronger. Come to think of it, I had lost weight too. I was fairly heavyset in the first place, and in just two and a half weeks, I had lost nearly 20 lbs. I smiled humorlessly. Not to self: If I live through the fight and gain weight back, go for training all day at Danny’s. Of course, I wouldn’t have the same drive I do now, but it would still be a way to lose weight. I still wasn’t skinny, but I was well on my way. I had a few hours before bed, so I read another law book, my fourth one. Movement outside caught my attention.
It was Michael and Josh. They were hanging out. Surely I could test how well I snuck around using them. I know its eavesdropping, but I missed them. They went into Josh’s tree house immediately and I settled myself in the lower branches. They talked about normal things, making me long to join them. But no. My life won’t be that normal for a long time.