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i.
Jenny is the only girl in the Saturday morning beginner’s class.
After weeks of clandestinely riding her bike over and peering through the windows, seeing dozens of students and not a ponytail in the bunch, she was expecting this. Her mom was not.
Laura chewed her lip when she dropped her off, watching boy after boy run inside, shoving, shouting, yanking the necks each other’s loose, white tops hard enough to choke. They’re all eleven or twelve too, but somehow so much bigger than her kid.
“Are you sure you’re gonna be okay in there?” she asks. Jenny pulls at the passenger side door, desperate to run out, to join them, but Laura holds the lock down. “Baby, I’m serious. I don’t want any of them giving you trouble.”
“Mom, it’s fine. I’m gonna be late.”
Laura reaches over and fingers the end of Jenny’s long, blonde braid. She put it up herself, her daughter is not known for her coordination – yet – and if she had her way it would hang down her back in a rat’s nest. “Just be careful, okay?”
Jenny nods, eyes darting to the front door of the dojo, feet bouncing against the carpet of the brand new Mercedes Sid bought her mom in June. “I will.”
“Listen to everything your teacher says.”
“I will. Mom, I gotta go.”
Laura finally unlocks the door and Jenny shoots out like a bullet.
They call her princess. They call her baby, little girl. They pull on her hair and make fun of her when she can’t do as many push-ups as Sensei Kreese requires, even though she’s not the only skinny sixth grader who collapses before they hit thirty. They spar, and even though they're all white belts who don't know how to do much yet but throw their weight, that's enough to beat her. She falls on her back again and again and again and the tears start stinging at her eyes.
Bobby Brown, whose in her English class at the middle school, loudly crows that her mom must be screwing Kreese real good if he’d let such a loser – a girl – into their class.
Everything goes black in Jenny’s eyes for a second and when her vision clears she’s got Bobby’s chest pinned under her legs and is punching and scratching his face hard enough to bring blood to the surface of his skin.
Kreese makes her sit in the equipment room until class is over. When he comes and finds her he doesn’t scream, or kick her out of class, or tell her to act like a lady. He grins.
“Knew I saw a cobra in there. You’ve got that killer instinct. If you were a boy, you’d’ve made a hell of a soldier.”
Jenny’s whole body feels warm. Kreese meets Laura out in the parking lot and tells her for a fee, he’ll do extra one-on-one training with Jenny for half an hour after her class. He reaches in the car and grips Laura’s hands and says it’ll be worth it, because Jenny Lawrence has got potential to be a champion.
"Stay tough, princess," he says, chucking her shoulder as she gets into the Mercedes and buckles up.
"I will, Sensei," she says, very seriously.
ii.
She’s fifteen. She is blonde and blue-eyed, She has a flat, hard stomach from training and enough money to buy all the make-up that MAC can make, even though her skin is naturally poreless and smooth. She is a knockout.
“Thank God you’ve got your mother’s looks,” Sid says, when Jenny slaps her admittedly abysmal report card on the dining room table. “No way you’d get anywhere in life on your brain.”
Jenny sometimes feels like she’s wearing a costume, like she’s just imitating the girls in her class that she spends hours staring at, trying to figure out what they’re doing that she’s not. The ones who seem so comfortable in their glowing skin, their perfumed, shiny hair and tight jeans that show off every curve.
That must be the reason she’s staring, right?
Kreese adjusts her stance and his hands linger on her hips.
Rumors float around that she fucks all the other Cobras. That the only reason the four of them flank her in public, buy snacks and steal booze and tease the people she tells them to, is because in private she’s on her knees for them out back of the dojo.
Dutch slides his hand up her leg and inside her mini-skirt and she knocks him down hard enough that he loses three teeth and has to go to the dentist to be fitted with veneers.
Guys don’t try to touch her, after that. Rumors quiet, after that. She stops wearing skirts because she never liked them anyway, after that.
Tommy is the first of them to get his license, so they all pile into his truck and head to the beach with a cooler full of stolen beer, the August before their junior year. He tries to start a fire with twigs and a Bic lighter while Dutch and Jimmy run into the ocean, splashing that quickly turns to sparring.
She and Bobby are sitting in the dunes. Drinking beer, wet with condensation, enjoying the last few weeks of freedom, when Bobby finally asks the question that’s been hanging over her – all of them, really – since high school started.
“Jen, are you, like...a dyke?”
Jenny shifts on the sand, squints out at the red sky over the ocean, turning dark. When she looks back over at Bobby, he’s up on his haunches, and it takes her a second to realize he’s in a fucking fight stance, ready to strike first if she gives any indication she’s considering kicking his ass for the question. There are still faint white scars near his left eye where she put him in his place during their first karate class together.
She smirks, twisting her mouth to one side. “Would it matter if I was? I’d never fuck you anyway.”
Bobby drops back onto his ass and shoves her, laughing. “Screw you, princess.”
He doesn’t leave. She breathes.
Jenny gets her black belt the same week she turns sixteen. She trains six days a week for the state-level tournaments. She ditches class and comes to school late, all to get more time at the dojo in. Her grades go from Cs to Ds to Fs. Kreese tells her she needs to go on birth control because “your monthly curse” could put her off her game.
When Laura finds the pills on her dresser she’s not mad. She’s excited.
“Our Jenny’s got a boyfriend!” she says, beaming at dinner, the finally implicit in her voice. “Is it Bobby? I bet it’s Bobby, he’s always been sweet on you.”
Jenny wouldn’t be a champion if it wasn’t for her mom. She can give her this lie, this gift. She shrugs, smiles.
All the mercy in her life is reserved for Laura.
She doesn’t lose a single point in competition the entire year. One hundred and eighteen matches without a misstep. Though she never sees the papers where things like this are written down, "J. Lawrence, U-18, (COBRA KAI)" holds the record for longest streak of perfect play in the State of California for twenty-two years, until some bitch boy from Topanga knocks it off the board in 2006.
If she could’ve known that, it might have made the events of her senior year a little easier to swallow.
iii.
Danielle LaRusso is tiny, even more petite than the cheerleaders who weigh ninety pounds soaking wet. She has dark, messy hair and a smart mouth and can’t dress herself to save a life.
She starts talking up Ali Mills, who looks into it, like she and Jenny didn’t make out in secret all last summer.
Whatever. They’re probably just friends. Ali was probably normal, deep down, just wanted to experiment, and Danielle was another straight girl coming around to make Jenny feel like a freak.
She tells the guys to kick Danielle's ass. They shift around, hemming. Fighting Jenny is one thing, but whaling on girls is the kind of thing that could get them expelled.
“That punk is dangerous,” she insists, leaning against her motorcycle in the parking lot. “If we don’t strike first, she will.”
And that’s just how primo her best friends are, because they trust her, they’ll do what she needs even if her reasoning sounds a little bullshit. They kick and throw and Jenny loves them even as her stomach flips more violently every time she hears that Jersey accent.
Danielle hoses her down when she’s trying to smoke pot in peace. Danielle spends more and more time with Ali, who never meets her eyes in the hallway anymore. Danielle learns how to fight.
Jenny wants to kiss her so bad she punches through one of the mirrors at Cobra Kai and Kreese just tells one of the lesser mortals to clean it up.
“Get some band-aids. Ms. Lawrence, to the front.”
She warms the class up with blood running down her wrists.
A few months later, she learns a great way to end a crush is when the girl crane-kicks you in the face.
Your nose bleeds and the closest thing you have to a father wraps his arm around your neck until all the air leaves your body because he taught you every move in your arsenal and knows you’ve always had trouble with sleeper holds, a lot of girls do, the upper body spatial reasoning is tricky, and that's what you are, isn't it? A stupid little girl who thought she was special when all you are is a loser–
Jenny’s on the pavement and Tommy is trying to pull her back up and Danielle and her old-man coach are there, yanking Kreese off of her. Anger and humiliation boils over because fuck them, for seeing this, for causing this.
Fuck Danielle LaRusso.
iv.
Laura gets cancer. Jenny cuts her hair to her chin and goes off birth control for the first time in fifteen years and gets so fucking wasted she decides thirty-two is a great age to try fucking a dude for the first time. He's some barfly whose name she wouldn’t have remembered with a gun to her head, had that little pink plus sign not shown up six weeks later.
Laura dies. Jenny ignores the morning sickness and dizziness and weight gain until it’s too late to get an abortion. People hold open doors and try to pick up her groceries for her, like she's weak. People touch her stomach a lot. People are not expecting a pregnant woman to jab them in the neck.
Bobby finds out and forces her to take vitamins and clears her apartment of Coors and even drives her to the one ultrasound appointment he can convince her to make. He lets her squeeze her hand so hard she breaks one of his fingers, when they tell her the baby is a boy.
When labor starts, she drinks on her apartment coach until it’s not enough to numb the pain of contractions and when Robby's born – they barely make it into Cedars-Sinai – the ER nurse tells her she’s lucky he doesn’t have fetal alcohol syndrome, what the hell was she thinking?
Loser, loser, loser.
He lives with his dad, after that. She knows she should call more. She gave him Bobby’s name, an honor for the man who probably kept him from being born with three ears or something. She keeps a picture of his soccer game on her fridge. She pretends these things are enough.
v.
Miguel tells her “dyke” is considered a “slur” and she shouldn’t “use it”.
“I am a dyke.” She blinks, crossing her arms over her black gi as the kid shifts from foot to foot on the mat, looking increasingly uncomfortable.
“Yeah – and that’s great! – It’s just, like, what if someone called you that...in a bad way?” He’s got those big dark eyes, so innocent. She feels like boys used to be tougher, in her day.
“Then I’d kick their ass. Why are you trying to do mind puzzles on me? Get started on your push-ups.”
Miguel sighs and obediently gets down on the floor. Jenny opens another Coors and sits with her back against the mirror, watching him. He’s got potential. Like she did once.
That’s another reason she likes to keep her back to the mirrors. She’s still considers herself pretty hot, but fuck, did the drinking do a number on her skin. What she wouldn’t give to get that back. Time is constantly moving around her too fast, and every day she feels like she's stumbling in her efforts to run, to catch up with it, each slip only leaving her farther and farther behind.
“Where’d you even learn these stupid word rules?” She asks, taking a sip.
Miguel takes a second to answer, breathing jagged and uneven. “My girlfriend Sam, her moms are like your age, they hate it.”
“They sound like pussies,” Jenny says. Miguel rolls his eyes. “Hey, I saw that. Seriously, what, are they like those earthy lesbo therapists who think no one should have a gender?”
“No, Sensei,” he says. “They own LaRusso Auto in Encino. You know the commercials? One of her moms does the karate thing?”
Miguel gasps as Jenny’s foot is suddenly pressing down on his back, his arms and legs collapsing flat on either side of him.
“Danielle LaRusso. She has a wife? They have kids?” Not an accident like her, a real family?
“Sensei, my spine–”
“Answer me!” Jenny barked.
“Yeah, I guess!” Miguel grunts and rolls, throwing her foot off of him and sitting up. “Why, what’s wrong?”
Jenny tries to swallow. “Nothing. I was teaching you about the element of surprise. Always be ready for anything.”
“Oh–”
“We’re done for today. Go play video games. Something violent, you gotta stop with this feelings shit.”
She throws on a hoodie and the dark sunglasses she wears when she needs to hide the fact that she’s hungover or crying or was both recently. She brushes her hair out with her fingers and wanders through the car lots, into the showroom, trying to look inconspicuous. In her ratty jeans and Timberlands, though, she knows she sticks out like a sore thumb.
There Danielle is. She looks smaller and younger than her fifty years, no surprise there. With glossy hair and an expensive looking shift dress, grinning over a Mercedes with a customer. Her gold wedding band glints in the sunlight.
She gets the sale. She and the customer shake hands and walk over to a glassed-in office. Another woman, equally as beautiful, taller and paler, stands and greets them, and Danielle leaves her to start the paperwork. But not before resting a hand on the small of her back, the tiny, intimate gesture of people who are so comfortable in each other’s space touch is as natural and easy as breathing.
The wife. They look like an advertisement for skincare and luxury and never needing a vibrator ever again. They look happy.
Why do they get to be happy?
“Jenny?”
She cringes, turns, smiles without her teeth. “Hey, LaRusso. Looking good.”
And then she runs, two blocks past where she can see the dealership just to be safe.
vi.
She’s got Miguel washing windows when Danielle shows up in the dojo, still wearing her Louboutin heels like a dickhead.
“Why were you at the dealership today?”
Jenny shrugs, unsteady on her feet after an entire evening of drinking every Coors Banquet she could get her hands on. “Who says I was?”
Danielle raises an eyebrow. “I said Jenny? and you turned around and greeted me by name.”
Jenny burps into the back of her hand. “Rumors and hearsay.”
“Okay, whatever. I came here as a courtesy because you looked like…” Danielle cuts herself off, breathes deep. So fucking proud of herself for being the bigger man, as always. Jenny lurches forward without warning and punches her.
Danielle catches her wrist, and in one fluid motion kicks off her shoe and sweeps her leg under Jenny’s, knocking her down.
Standing over her is the only time LaRusso ever looks tall.
“Get your life together, Jen.”
Jenny just looks up, head lolling. “I didn’t know you were like me.”
A scoff, a rueful shake of the head. “I am nothing like you.”
“Yes, you are,” she says forcefully, trying to make her understand, do this right, for once. She rolls back onto her shoulders and pushes herself into standing with a kip up. Huh, she didn’t know she could still do that. “You have your wi…” she points to Danielle’s ring. “You’re…”
“What? Gay? ” The word rings in the empty, quiet room, and Jenny flinches instinctively. “Jesus, it’s 2018. Why do you care?”
Jenny knows Miguel is shrinking in the doorway of her office, can sense it without turning around. “Diaz, back room,” she barks, and he scurries away so fast she’s not sure if Danielle even recognized him.
It’s not really of interest to her right now.
She surges forward again and kisses Danielle, bites down on her lip. A stunned little noise, and there’s a beautiful, fizzing second where Danielle kisses back, hand on Jenny’s bare shoulders.
Then it’s gone. She’s gone.
“Huh,” Danielle says. Her lip is bleeding, She wipes it off with the tips of her short, perfectly manicured fingernails.
“What?” Jenny snaps.
Danielle toes her shoes back on, starts walking backwards towards the front door. “The events of our senior year just became very clear to me, is all.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Jenny says, but there’s no real heat in it.
“You’d like that, huh?” Danielle is smiling now, opening the door to the cool night air. “See you around, you basketcase.”
“See you around, LaRusso.”
The door closes. Jenny manages to stay standing until she sees Danielle’s car pull out of the parking lot and onto the freeway.
She drives a fist into her thigh, exhales through her nose.
Stay tough, princess.