His Brother's Keeper. Dawn Atkins

like Robert. He exercised his talent too often as graffiti, risking fines and jail time, which worried the hell out of Gabe.

       “That’s all toys,” Alex said. Toys were wannabe taggers.

       “Tagged-up plywood over a broken window is no way to impress the new principal.” Last week, Charlie Hopkins, the principal who had let Gabe set up his gym in the charter school, had been fired over some political B.S. Now STRIKE’s fate lay in the hands of his replacement, due any day.

       “They won’t do that,” Alex grumbled, guiltily ducking his face into the padded sparring helmet.

       Good. Gabe could use guilt. He used whatever worked to get through to his kids and keep getting through, day by day, as the pressure to drop out, screw up and go gangster mounted in their lives.

       “Alex didn’t throw a single punch, Coach.” Victor had abandoned the bags to defend his friend, though they all knew Gabe would be fair. That was the promise of STRIKE.

       He’d named his program after the offensive moves in Muay Thai and because his kids had to hit hard to break the barriers they faced in life. This part of Phoenix was a tough place to grow up if you were poor, brown and male.

       “Only because the cops stopped the fight,” Gabe said. His buddy on the gang squad had filled him in on the incident. The news hit Gabe hard. The idea of STRIKE was to give his boys the physical and mental confidence to stay clear of street fights, damn it.

       He cared about all of his boys, but Alex got to him. The kid was a tough case, but he had so much potential.

       “And he got the crew to step off,” Victor insisted. A strong fighter, Victor ran nearly a mile from North Central High after his last class so he didn’t miss a minute of STRIKE.

       “You don’t know how Double Deuce rolls,” Alex said.

       The 22nd Street gang—El Doble in Spanish—ran the neighborhood, and Gabe knew more than he wanted to know about how they rolled.

       “Whoa, homes, Coach’s old man was Ochoa,” Victor said, awe in his voice.

       Gabe’s father, a lieutenant in Phoenix’s oldest homegrown gang, the Baseline Kings, had been murdered when Gabe was thirteen, Robert ten, the twins newborns. Gabe hated gangs and always had. He did all he could to erase the lingering respect his boys had for the criminal thugs.

       “Back on the bags, boys,” his assistant coach hollered at the kids hovering around to hear Alex’s fate. “The meet’s coming up.”

       Reluctantly, they obeyed Conrad’s order.

       “Shadow my moves,” Gabe said to Alex, delaying the verdict to sweat him a little more. Shadowing built a sense of rhythm and timing—finesse skills that trumped technique every time and two of Gabe’s specialties.

       Alex bobbed and shifted, matching Gabe’s every move. The kid had focus and fire and heart. He could be a real champion if he could just keep his head on straight. Gabe swore a silent vow. I will not lose you.

       Not like he’d lost Robert at age sixteen. His brother had been headed to his first Muay Thai bout when he was killed in a gang brawl. Gabe, on his way to watch the match, had found his brother bleeding on the sidewalk and held him as he died. That was fifteen years ago this week, and the old ache and regret shadowed Gabe as relentlessly as Alex now shadowed his fight moves.

       Gabe sped up, working Alex until he was about to drop.

       “Done,” Gabe said, tapping Alex’s fists. “Here’s your punishment. A hundred words on ways you could have beat Li’l B without using your fists. Also, you’re on your own this week. No clinic with me or Conrad.”

       “No!”

       “No?”

       Alex blanched. Back talk was not allowed. “Sorry. What about the meet?” He was pushing hard to take a trophy this time around.

       “You’re lucky you’re still here. Train up the newer fighters. You want to coach one day, right? You’ll learn, too.”

       Clearly crestfallen, Alex set off to take his punishment.

       With Robert’s death so fresh in his head, doubts darkened Gabe’s thoughts. Had he gotten through to the kid? Sometimes it seemed hopeless. No one escaped the fight he got dropped into, try as he might. The match was rigged, the outcome set, the winners and losers known in advance.

       Dead-end thinking. Useless. He leaned on the padded bar of the ring and surveyed the place. STRIKE was a tough gym, known for training winners, and Gabe was damned proud of it.

       He’d equipped it frugally with secondhand gear, donated items and punching bags he’d made himself by filling military duffels with sand.

       His pride and joy was the ring—a regulation MMA Octagon he’d inherited from Kurt Cost, the coach he’d found for Robert, who had later trained Gabe.

       He even loved how it smelled—of sweat, rubber, dust and a hint of laundry soap left from when the gym had been a Laundromat, since the school was located in a failed strip mall.

       Now the music of the place washed over him—the shouts, grunts, thuds and clunks of his fighters building their bodies, beating their weaknesses, boosting their strengths, learning self-control and discipline.

       He watched them work, sweat pouring down their bodies, muscles straining past all endurance, pushing themselves and each other with all their might. Each boy had a story. Each boy needed STRIKE.

       Every month they scraped together the fifty bucks Gabe charged in addition to the “scholarships” he provided from the cash he’d also inherited from Kurt.

       Damn it, STRIKE was worth it. It made a difference. He had to believe that. His boys’ lives hung in the balance. If the new principal had a heart in his chest, he’d see that, too.

       FELICITY SPENCER’S©HEART raced. She hadn’t expected a line at the bakery counter and time was tight if she was going to set up her meet-the-new-principal breakfast before the teachers began to arrive. This was her first day and she wanted to greet each person when they entered.

       She’d called ahead with her order of pañuelos—Mexican sweet rolls topped with flavored sugar—from the market near the school, but there were four people ahead of her and service was slow at Feliz Mercado, which had tables in the bakery area for diners to enjoy their purchases.

       She shifted the sack she carried from one arm to the other. She’d spent too much of her paltry savings—come on, first paycheck!—on the freshly ground Italian coffee, real cream and three kinds of juices she’d bought. But she wanted to show her staff she valued them even in this subtle way.

       First impressions were crucial.

       She wiped the trickle of sweat from her temple. Her walk from the light-rail stop had been short, but the early March sun was warm even at 7:00 a.m. She’d selected her apartment because it was only a few stops from Discovery Middle School, since she had no car.

       Now the bakery smells reminded her she’d had to skip breakfast, since she hadn’t had time to unpack her kitchen boxes. She’d moved into the tiny studio apartment only two days before.

       The job offer had come abruptly, contingent on an immediate start, since her predecessor had been fired.

       She was excited…and scared. This was her first principalship and it was at a middle school. Her experience as an assistant principal had been at two elementaries. On top of that, Discovery was a charter, also new to her.

       She faced challenges, for sure, but she would meet them head-on, as always.

       If she could just get to the darn school in time. She glanced at her watch. Hurry up!

       She caught snatches of conversation from the nearby tables in both English and Spanish. She hoped her high-school Spanish would be enough to communicate with the non-English-speaking students and parents.