Chapter 22: Round One

My opponent weighed twenty pounds more than I did and had a nose that had been broken four times.

She walked into the ring Saturday night to a roar from three thousand people.

I walked in after her with the mask in my hand.

I did not put it on.

"Mask!" the announcer boomed. "The girl from the video! Seventeen years old, and an undefeated thirty-one and zero!"

The crowd howled.

It was the first time I had ever fought with my face bare.

I looked across the ring at her, and she looked back at me and did not smile.

"Don't be nice to me," I said at the center line.

"Wasn't going to," she said.

Dutch stood in my corner with a towel on his shoulder.

Perry stood beside him in a plain black jacket with a water bottle, his ribs still taped.

"You don't touch me," I told him. "You don't tell me how to fight."

"I'll read," Perry said. "That's all. I'll tell you what I see."

"Fine."

The bell rang.

She came across the ring in three steps and hit me in the mouth.

I had not been hit like that in my life.

My head snapped back, and the lights went white, and I tasted copper.

I got my guard up a second too late.

She hit me again in the ribs, right on the crack, and I folded.

The crowd was screaming.

I covered my head and backed to the ropes, and she kept coming.

A left hook came around my guard and caught me over the ear.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Threw Me Away at Twelve, So I Came Home Undefeated from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.