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2885 Redefining America%u201cHoney,%u201d the psychic adviser says. %u201cDo you know how many Marys I talked to this week?%u201d%u201cNo,%u201d Kayla admits.%u201cI could give the Bible a run for its money,%u201d she says before hanging up.Soon, Kayla is back in the rising elevator, her backpack between her feet. Her phone pings in her pocket. Her former best friend has just texted, wanting to know what happened today and if she is okay. As though she thinks that, in secret, she can go back to being the person she used to be. A teammate. A friend. Fuck you, Kayla thinks, and does not reply.She finds Mary%u2019s bed empty. A tangle of white sheets. Dangling tubes. She asks nurse after nurse what%u2019s happened, begins to panic that she left at some critical juncture to eat a cheeseburger and a chocolate pudding. Finally, she learns that Mary has been transferred to the coronary-care unit. She crosses a sky bridge, moving briskly through the blue evening; she rushes down one long, bright-white hallway after another until she finds Mary%u2019s room.%u201cYou just missed the doctor,%u201d Mary tells her, a little scolding.Kayla pulls a hard, beige chair up to her bedside. %u201cWhat did the doctor say?%u201d%u201cI have two choices.%u201d She sighs, crosses her arms over her chest, pushes out her lips. %u201cSurgery or . . . surgery!%u201d%u201cWhen?%u201d%u201cTonight. Maybe. They don%u2019t know.%u201d The room is cramped and windowless, with a tart, medicinal smell and dim lighting, though the bed itself is spotlit. Kayla can make out blue veins running under Mary%u2019s face, evidence of that deeper architecture currently under attack. Her bloody sneakers have been replaced with white ankle socks.Eventually Kayla knows that she will need to drop this charade. Eventually she will need to go home.%u201cEarlier,%u201d Mary says. %u201cYou asked me about my family history.%u201d758085%u201cThe nurse did. Yes.%u201d%u201cMy mother died of a heart attack. Well, that%u2019s not exactly right. My father threw my mother down a flight of stairs. Then she had a heart attack and then she died.%u201d She rests her hands on the small hump of her stomach. %u201cI come from a long line of fragile and broken hearts.%u201d%u201cHow old were you?%u201d Kayla asks. %u201cWhen your mother died?%u201d%u201cFourteen,%u201d she says. %u201cYour age.%u201dKayla sits up straight in the hard chair, a little insulted. %u201cActually, I%u2019m seventeen.%u201d%u201cSeventeen!%u201d Mary pushes herself up on her elbows and squints. %u201cWhy are you so skinny?%u201d%u201cI%u2019ve been dieting.%u201d She fights at 112 and has to cut ten or more pounds in the weeks before a bout. She has gotten used to the meager meals of chicken and boiled vegetables, the slow, steamy runs in her sauna suit, the clawing hunger.%u201cDo you have one of those mothers who is always on some kind of strange diet? My mother once ate nothing but cabbage soup for a month. %u2018If I must be miserable, I might as well be thin.%u2019 That was her motto.%u201dI have no mother, Kayla wants to tell her. %u201cI%u2019m a boxer,%u201d she says instead.%u201cYou%u2019re joking.%u201d%u201cI was supposed to fight today.%u201d%u201cAll my life,%u201d Mary says, %u201cI have tried so hard to avoid violence.%u201dHow did people come by their violences? For a moment, Kayla feels like she can perceive the whole miserable network. The hoodie got his violence from somewhere, as did her father. Eventually the hoodie will be apprehended and, if he ends up in Polk, their two violences will collide and create a violence larger than either of them.To locate the dawn of her own violence, Kayla only has to recall her early days at the gym. Once another kid pinned her to the ropes during class, shuffled left and right so she couldn%u2019t escape. 9095100What important clue do we get about Kayla%u2019s father in paragraph 99?44Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.