Chapter 19

I let Hanna go home, hoping she got a chance to put the day behind her. School had been bad enough, but Marcus’s reaction had been brutal. If I had to miss a day of training to let her recover, even a little bit from that, then it was worth it.

I made my way across the creek and called Chef.

“Hey, Chef, it’s Charlie.”

“You’re late.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. As we were leaving school, I found out Hanna couldn’t take me today, and I only just now got to a phone.”

“Is she okay?”

“Yes, she just has some personal stuff and can’t drive me today.”

“Okay. I have your address and I’ll send someone to come get you and I’ll make sure you get home. I know you don’t have a cell phone, but next time try and find out ahead of time so we can make arrangements. I set aside time to work with you and I don’t like wasting my time.”

“I understand, and I promise I won’t make a habit of this.”

“Good. Give me ten minutes or so.”

The person he sent to pick me up was Vinney. Apparently, he’d dated someone who lived at Oakdale and knew where it was. He was driving a beat-up old truck that fit with the other cars in the estates. I thought about it and realized I didn’t know much about him. Hanna, Jordan, and the rest all drove newish sedans. I knew that the car people drove didn’t tell you if they were poor or rich or whatever, but it was an indication.

We made idle chit-chat on the way back to the Blue Ridge. He didn’t pry into why Hanna wasn’t driving me, which was good. It wasn’t my place to air her problems, at least, not without her permission.

Chef was another matter. When I walked in, before I could make it out back, Chef waved me towards the back of the kitchen.

“My office,” he said.

His office, in this case, meant the storage room. He had an actual office, or at least a desk and files, upstairs in his apartment. When he said ‘my office’ during a shift, he always meant the storage room, basically for the same reason Willie and the guys used it in between sets on weekends. It was fairly secluded and you could manage a conversation there without being overheard.

Of course, that didn’t work out the handful of times Chef had needed to chew someone out, which I’d only seen once. Vinney had told me it was pretty rare and seldom happened for little things like messing up on orders or workplace problems. He reserved his anger for when someone disappointed him. Since everyone who worked here seemed to be a project of one sort or another, that usually meant not living up to whatever they had committed to improving about themselves. For employees, the Blue Ridge was as much a social worker’s office as it was a place of business, with Chef filling in the role of therapist, counselor, and drill instructor all in one.

“Tell me what’s going on,” he said as soon as we got into the storage room.

“She just had a rough day and needed some personal time is all.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“Chef, I’m not sure it’s my place...”

“Charlie,” he said, interrupting me. “I’m not sure what Hanna has told you about her past. I’m not going to tell you anything, but I will tell you that she has had some serious stuff happen to her that led her to a bad place a few years ago. That’s how she ended up here with me. She has a tendency to shut down and hold everything in when things are going bad, and too much of that can cause serious consequences. I’m not asking you to divulge anything private to me or share any of her secrets, although I promise you I probably know more of those than you do. I’m asking you to give me a rundown of what happened to her today that caused her to break her schedule. I’m guessing it happened at school, and I’m going to guess it wasn’t something private only the two of you know about.”

“No, it was public, well, most of it.”

“Then tell me. I’m not being nosey or trying to pry. That girl’s done a lot of hard work to put herself back together, and if there’s something serious that might undo all that work, I need to know about it. I promise she won’t get mad that you talked to me. I know it seems like I’m blowing this out of proportion, since she doesn’t even work today; but this isn’t like her, which is a sign we should worry.”

“You’re not blowing it out of proportion. It was pretty bad,” I said, sighing. “There was a social media post about her, well, pretending to be her diary. There were a bunch of posts. It made all kinds of claims about her ... umm ... moral choices, I guess. It also included a picture of her holding hands with another guy, and text that suggested they were sleeping together. The guy she’s dating saw it and came after her. He said some pretty nasty stuff, accused her of cheating on him, and basically went off on her.”

“What did she do?”

“She kind of, sank into herself and cried.”

“How did it end?”

“I may have threatened to beat him to death with my crutch.”

“Charlie!” he said, in a warning tone.

“I wasn’t going to do it. He was just on a roll and I needed to snap him out of it. After he walked away, I caught up to him and talked sense into him, showing him he was both wrong and what an asshole he had been. He promised to call her tonight and beg for forgivingness.”

“How did you leave things with Hanna? How was she when you left her?”

“We talked for a little bit, she seemed to be better. Still upset about the post, but Marcus backing off and then seeing how wrong he was helped. I offered to stay with her and keep her company, but she said she wanted to go to bed early. She wasn’t crying anymore and even laughed at a stupid joke I made.”

“Okay,” he said, stopping to think for a moment. “I’ll call her mom and ask her to keep an eye on Hanna, just in case. I’d like for you to call her tonight, too; just to check in as a friend. You can tell her I asked you to or not. She just needs to know she has a support structure around her.”

“Okay.”

“Good. You did a good job, by the way. I’m proud of how you handled that.”

“Thanks,” I said, unsure of how to respond.

“Follow me,” he said.

I did as I was told, and was surprised that instead of heading to where we normally trained, we ended up in his apartment.

“Have a seat. Instead of working on your body today, I think it’s time we started working on the rest of you. Martial arts are never about just building up the body. I know the MMA that people see on TV. That’s what they give you, but there’s a philosophy behind all traditional martial arts forms. It’s not always the same, since much come from different religious ideas, but they have similar themes at their core. I told you that I started my training by doing Wushu, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Wushu is a modernization, kind of, of Shaolin, a traditional Chinese form of martial arts that originated with Buddhist monks more than fifteen hundred years ago. The monks were training their bodies along with their minds, trying to focus themselves and reach that perfect point of balance. For them, the forms were as much meditation as physical. One thing that has remained from the Shaolin traditions, have been the tenets. These are the ideas that Shaolin, and later Wushu, are built around. They are the core values that we hold ourselves to, as part of finding that perfect point of balance.”

“What are they?”

“There are eight. The first is Motivation. You need a drive and desire to succeed in anything you do, be it martial arts, school, dating, or music, you will face challenges and obstacles. To get past them and succeed, you need to want it.”

“I can see that, I guess. Although Dad always had the desire to become a hit musician, he never made it, so I’m guessing there’s more to it than that.”

“That’s why there are eight tenets. The second is Confidence. You might want to succeed, but if you don’t believe in yourself, then you’ve already lost. This isn’t overconfidence, you have to understand your limitations and be realistic about them. Believing in yourself is the first step to achieving the thing you’re motivated about.”

“That’s a tough one.”

“Especially for a teenager. I know it’s easy to second guess yourself. That’s the time when you need to stop and remember who you are. It’s also important to remind others what they can achieve, because none of us are an island.

“Third is Discipline. This might be one of the most important. You need to control yourself and put in the work to achieve what you want. A disciplined mind makes a successful man.

“Fourth is Perseverance. Even if you’re confident and motivated and have discipline, you will stumble. That’s part of life. This is when you need to dig deep and keep going; push through the pain, be it physical or emotional, and keep going. In the end, the only person who can stop you is you.

“The first four are all internal. These are the things that you can do to improve yourself and meet your goals. Be motivated and have a goal, have confidence in your own abilities, be willing to put in the work to achieve your goal, and being able to push through the things that get in your way. Mastering these four things will allow you to achieve anything, if you really commit to them.”

“You said there were eight tenets.”

“I did, and there are. The first four are internal, the last four are external. True warriors, which is what the Shaolin monks are, are about more than just themselves. They understand that they affect those around themselves. Balance is both external as well as internal. The fifth tenent is very important. Respect. You must be willing to respect both yourself and others.

“Sixth is Community. By that, we mean caring for others and being a positive force for others. You live as part of a larger body, and what you do affects that community, and ultimately, you.

“Seventh is Righteousness. This isn’t meant to be overtly religious, which many people take the word righteousness to mean. The word, however, has a bigger context. It means doing the right thing. That doesn’t mean doing the right thing because you want to be seen doing the right thing, but doing the right thing simply because it’s right.