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Robby’s dad drove the hand-me-down minivan like it was cool, slung back in his seat with his legs wide and sunglasses on. In the passenger seat, Robby marinated in the carcinogenic reek of hot plastic and old cigarette smoke. He wasn’t embarrassed about the old van—he’d had worse—and he wasn’t mad at his dad about it, but Miyagi-Do was the last place on earth he wanted to go.
They parked in front of the garish vinyl Eagle Fang sign that hung crookedly on the fence next to Mr. L’s wood-cut bonsai sign. Sensei Kreese had howled with laughter at the ridiculous, toothy bird; Robby's face burned all over again at the memory.
“Listen, dad.”
“Yeah?” His dad was impatient, distracted.
“I’m not into this. I’m just gonna...” What? Go back to the car? take a walk? It didn’t matter, as long as he didn’t have to be here.
His dad’s face crumpled. “Maybe this was a bad idea,” he acknowledged, looking around at the yard, at Mr. LaRusso and Miguel.
“Real turd in the punchbowl, huh.”
His dad paled. “That’s not what I meant. I meant, this is a lot for you to handle all at once. You just came home.”
“Home,” Robby repeated, flat.
“Yeah. Home.” Brusque, sharp.
“Whatever. Can I go?”
“Did you like training with him?” His dad's question was abrupt.
“It was all right.”
It was fucked up. Kreese’s Cobra Kai was a vipers nest where he pitted his students against each other to compete for his respect and favor. Under that kind of pressure, nearly all the original students had been supplanted by hardier, meaner stock. Natural Cobras, Twig had called them.
Robby had already cast his lot with Cobra Kai, so he’d worked doubly hard to secure his position in the tribe. What other choice did he have?
Two days ago
His dad’s door was faded from sun and long years of neglect, the wood at the bottom so swollen with rot that Robby had to kick it free of its frame. The door swung in and thwacked into the wall, leaving another scar in chalky paint.
“Shit, sorry.” He caught the door on the rebound and closed it, more gently. Only then did he notice Mr. LaRusso at the rickety dining table. His dad’s laptop was between them, open and plugged in. His dad fidgeted, rolling a well-chewed pencil across a yellow legal pad with a deer-in-the-headlights look that told Robby he hadn’t been expected home yet.
“Hey, Robby!” Mr. LaRusso called.
Mr. L’s tone was jovial, but to Robby, it rang false, betrayed by the pity underneath. An image flashed through Robby’s mind: Mr. L standing over Sensei Kreese, blood spattered across his shirt and desperation etched into his face. His dad pissed him off but Mr. LaRusso made him feel naked, like he knew exactly who Robby was and he didn’t like what he saw.
He pushed that image away and kept his head down. “Just going to my room.”
His dad hesitated. “Yeah, sure.”
He closed the bedroom door and pressed his ear to the hollow door to hear their conversation.
“I don’t know how to do any of this shit,” his dad complained. “Shan took care of it.”
“Okay, yeah.” Mr. LaRusso’s voice, quiet and calm. “It’s right here on the website, look. Proof of identity and age, does he have a driver’s license? Learner’s permit?”
“I have to ask him, I dunno.”
“Okay, then proof of residence, like a utility bill-”
“Got plenty of those.” Both men chuckled warmly. When had his dad and Mr. L become friends?
“All right. How about immunization records?”
His father’s silence was profound. The laptop lid slammed shut. “No fucking clue."
“And she's still not-?”
“She’s not picking up." His dad was about to cry. "She met some guy and split.”
Mr. LaRusso was as patient as he was with the under-twelve class. “C’mon, it’s okay. We’ll get copies from his old school. Look, John, I’ll go with you. First thing Monday.”
Robby shoved his earbuds into his ears and sank below the surface of the music until the rest of the world faded away. It felt like drowning.
Now
“You know what? Forget these nerds.” His dad jerked his head at the Miyagi-Do students, relegating them to the background. “Show me what the old man taught you.”
“What? Here?”
“Yeah, here. Not here here. Inside.”
Mr. LaRusso watched from the other side of the yard. Signals passed between the two men—a raised eyebrow, a subtle shrug, a nod—then his dad turned the full force of his attention on Robby.
“Just us,” his dad continued. “LaRusso’s got it covered out here.”
When Robby was released from Sylmar Juvenile Detention Center months ago, he’d found his dad and Mr. L eye to eye, glaring. He hadn’t heard them, but he’d seen how Mr. L bit his words between his teeth, watched his dad jut his jaw and ball up his hands. For an eternity of seconds, neither man had noticed him.
Robby hadn’t been surprised his dad still cared more about his rivalry with some guy from high school than he cared about him. He’d learned to survive that. He wasn’t sure he could survive his father’s direct blue eyes, focused only on him.
Robby shrugged. “Whatever.”
.
Mr. L’s training room was serene, walls the color of parchment, black mats over a pale plank floor. In the halcyon days when Mr. L had taken him under his wing, they’d trained in the dojo at the LaRusso family home, or here, outside. He’d never seen this room but his dad seemed at home here, his bare feet planted into the mat like the roots of a tree. His black gi hung loosely on his broad frame, faded with age and use.
“You were there, what, a month? Six weeks?” his dad asked with faux casualness.
“Little over a month.” Robby nudged off his shoes in the vestibule and set his hoodie, cellphone and earbuds next to them. He was dressed inappropriately for the dojo in a t-shirt and jeans; Kreese would never have allowed it.
“What did you think?”
Robby didn’t answer. Instead, he bowed, shallow and brief. And waited.
His dad blinked, frowned. Then, sighing, he took position across the mat. His eyes bored into Robby’s as he bowed, then he dropped his right leg back and shifted his weight to the balls of his feet. Robby could see Kreese’s teachings in his dad’s aggressive, pitched-forward stance and the whipcord tension in the tendons of his neck.
“You have heart, kid,” Kreese had told him after his fight with his father. “You’re loyal, but you lack control. You struck first, without strategy.”
Loyalty had never bought Robby anything. He had learned defense wasn’t enough; sometimes you had to strike first. He employed that lesson now with a fast jab his dad ducked easily, followed by a straight uppercut that his dad deflected with more difficulty.
His dad retreated. “All right. What else?”
“Devotion,” Robby said. “Discipline.”
“How did that work out for you?” his dad asked.
“Same as it usually does.” Robby rolled into a roundhouse kick; his father ducked under it. “Thought we were sparring.”
“No. You’re showing me what you learned.”
This is bullshit. “Fight back,” Robby demanded and shoved him, two-handed.
His dad fell back, graceful even in retreat. He'd let Robby push him nearly off the mat, but he still stood, steady and balanced. “Did you leave or were you pushed out?”
“What’s it to you?”
His dad dropped his arms and searched Robby’s face. “Kreese pushed me out when I lost the All Valley.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel sorry for you?” Robby shoved him a second time. “Cut and run when the going gets tough. Sound familiar?”
“Jeez, kid.” He shook his head slowly. "Is that what he told you?”
“Yeah,” Robby shot back. "But I didn’t need him to tell me that. I already knew."
A week ago
The door to Cobra Kai slammed behind him, muffling the sound of raucous laughter. Robby turned tail and ran, his face burning with anger and embarrassment.
It was a short skateboard run to his mom’s place—refuge.
She opened the door with glazed eyes and flushed cheeks, a look he knew all too well. He didn’t have to look around her to know she had a new man over. A glance at his phone told him it was after 10, which meant the man, whoever he was, would stay the night.
“Hey baby,” she giggle-whispered. “I didn’t know you were stopping by.”
There would be no refuge for him here, not tonight. He stared at his shabby sneakers, marooned on her threadbare welcome mat. “Can I get some stuff out of my room?”
“Oh, sweetie.” Her voice pitched high and childlike; her breath sour with wine. “It’s not a good time. Can you stay with your dad? Just for tonight. I promise. This is a good one, he’s so-”
“It’s fine, mom. I’ll figure something out.”
She giggled through a pout, crimped her fingers into a wave, and closed the door between them.
He could stay up all night, find an all-night restaurant to hang out in. He could call Tory later; she’d sneak him in through her window. Or he could try his dad’s.
Two dark miles stretched between him and his dad’s door. Would he be home? He texted; no answer. He forced his unwilling feet forward through his exhaustion until he reached his dad’s door, his legs trembling and the world spinning around him as though he were drunk. He knocked and waited, trying not to think about what came next if his dad wasn’t home, or didn’t answer.
After interminable seconds, his dad jerked the door open, squinting. “What happened to you?” His eyes scanned Robby head to toe, inside and out, and then he frowned. “Never mind. Your room’s still set up.” He stepped back from the door and gestured grandly inside, waving away the television blaring in the dark, the half-emptied pizza box and beer bottles littering the coffee table. He wore a t-shirt Robby had seen many times before, and gray sweatpants slung low on his hips.
“Can I crash here?” Robby asked. “I mean, if-”
His dad blew air through his nose and dropped his arm to his side. “Jesus, yeah, kid,” he said. “Stay as long as you like. You don’t have to ask.” Then he shocked Robby by hugging him. He smelled like sweat and Coors, but after long weeks without any touch that wasn’t a blow, it felt good.
Now
“Is that what you did?” His dad stood before him in a loose-but-ready stance. “‘Cut and run’?”
“No, I didn’t fucking run.” Too late, he realized what he’d just admitted. His face burned. “Twig said-“
“Twig?”
Robby rolled his eyes. “Kreese’s buddy, Twig. He liked Tory’s ‘fighting spirit’.” He said the words bitterly. “They made us fight. The winner stays.”
“She won,” his dad guessed, and blew out a breath like it was some kind of revelation. “That's nothing to be ashamed of. Tory's tough, and she came in with some training-”
Robby groaned and scrubbed at his face with his hands. His eyes prickled with tears and he blinked them back as hard as he could. No way he’s going to cry, not in front of him.
“Son, what-”
“Shut up!” Robby shouted. “He said I was just like you. Said I didn’t have what it takes to be a Cobra.” Robby shoved him a third time, then unleashed a fusillade of blows. "Come on, dad! Fight back!"
His dad dodged and blocked, grunting with the effort. "I'm not gonna fight you. I don't wanna-"
"Oh, you don't want to hurt me?" He hurled himself into a spin kick, aiming it squarely at his dad's chest. "You're a quitter. You're weak, you’ll never have anything."
His dad’s gasp echoed over the hard thump of the blow and the squeaking of his feet on the mat. The room stank of their sweat. "I'm sorry. I'm trying to make it right. Fuck, I’m trying.”
"It's too late.” Robby’s traitorous tears wet his cheeks.
The beginning
“It’s time. You two, face off,” Twig ordered.
Across the mat, Tory’s wide eyes met Robby’s. She didn’t move; neither did he.
“That’s an order.” Twig’s tone was deceptively calm, but they both knew what would come next if they didn’t comply. Around them, the other students murmured and shifted.
Tory glanced at Twig, then stepped on to the mat. She breathed in deeply, squared her shoulders, and waited.
There was no getting out of this. Twig's elimination matches determined who stayed and who left, and it was only a matter of time before Twig pitted his favorite against Kreese’s. A unit has only one leader, he’d said.
Tory would be a formidable opponent. Robby had a broader base of techniques; in a scored tournament, he would have the upper hand. But elimination matches weren't by the books, they ran to Twig's rules, and the winner was whoever was more ruthless, more willing to do damage. Desire was the tiebreaker; desperation drove the winning blow.
He and Tory both needed something, desperately.
Sensei Kreese looked on from the corner of the room, stolid, arms crossed. There would be no relief from that quarter because Cobra Kai wasn't the family Robby was searching for, and Kreese wasn't anyone’s father figure.
"I won't do this," Robby announced. "I forfeit."
"You can't forfeit," Sensei Kreese called out to him. "This isn’t a game, son."
The falseness of that word, ‘son’, in Kreese's mouth was cold confirmation. "No. I'm done."
"Then you're out." Kreese turned his back to him, then Twig, then the other students. Against a wall of white gis, only Tory still faced him. She bowed, deeply.
The end
His dad fell back, stepping off the mat with his arms out. Open. “Kid, it’s not too late.”
It was too late. He’d dropped out of high school, for fuck’s sake. He had an assault record.
“Robby, it’s never too late.”
His dad looked older than Robby remembered. The leathered skin at his neck, his creased eyelids and the wrinkles around his mouth all testified to a life hard-lived. Robby’s breath hitched in his throat, his fists clenched, his eyes burned.
“It’s not your fault,” his dad said, and took a step forward. His arms were open.
Robby’s feet were rooted to the mat, immovable. He’d always been second-best, or worse. It had to be something about him because, when it’s you against the world every time, it’s not the world that’s wrong. It’s you.
“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere,” his dad said. His hands were on Robby’s shoulders, then his arms. He could feel the rise and fall of his dad’s chest, still out of breath, and the heat of their fight radiating from his skin. “Please tell me it’s not too late.”
Robby let himself go, finally, let himself sag into the embrace. “Okay, dad,” he said, and it felt okay, like maybe it could be different this time.