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When the two boys went outside, Miguel went to grab his blanket from where he had left it on the porch. It had gotten cold outside. Robby had his coat on still and, now that Miguel was wrapped up in his blanket, he thought it would probably be okay. Miguel sat down next to Robby.
Robby was the first to speak. “Why are you being so nice to me? I’ve done nothing to deserve it.”
Miguel thought for a moment before answering. “Because you need help, and I’m the only one who really knows how to help you in the way that you need.”
“What do you mean?”
“I used to have panic attacks too. They’re a lot less frequent now, but I still feel the anxiety bubble up sometimes.”
“That doesn’t really explain why you helped me, Miguel,” Robby said.
“You needed help calming down. Who am I to deny you that? Besides, my mom and your dad are dating. We can’t exactly go around wanting to kill each other. I just decided to take the first step.”
The boys sat there in silence, neither one wanting to say a word nor did they feel the need to speak, not now that everything was out in the open. Then Miguel began to shiver. It was a lot colder than he thought it was.
Robby noticed Miguel’s shivering and took off his coat. He offered it to Miguel saying, “Hey, you look cold. Take my coat.” Robby was thinking about what Miguel had said about first steps as he gave him the jacket. Maybe this was Robby’s first step.
Miguel took it hesitantly. “Won’t you be cold?”
Robby shrugged. “I’m used to the cold. The backroom at Cobra Kai was freezing.”
Miguel slipped on the jacket as he realized that Robby had experienced far more trauma in Cobra Kai than he had. Robby also had a justification for his anxiety. Not that he needed one, but it made Miguel feel sympathetic to know that Robby had also experienced immense amounts of trauma.
Robby sat on the step, hugging himself from the cold. Miguel hesitated for a moment before wrapping an arm around Robby, bringing the blanket with it. Now both boys were wrapped up in the blanket. Robby leaned into Miguel’s shoulder. It felt so nice to have this affectionate physical contact and not to expect harsh treatment afterwards.
“Is this okay?” Miguel asked, just to make sure that he wasn’t making Robby uncomfortable.
“Yeah,” Robby whispered in response. There was a long beat of silence. Then Miguel spoke.
“I’m sorry about the things that happened to you when you were in Cobra Kai,” he said quietly.
Robby pulled away from Miguel and away from the comfort that Miguel was trying to offer him. For some reason, the words felt fake and Robby didn’t want Miguel’s fake sympathy. “You know nothing about what happened to me at Cobra Kai, Miguel. Nothing.”
Miguel sat in stunned silence for a moment. He and Robby had been doing so well, but now they weren’t, and Miguel wasn’t sure he understood why. He moved to join Robby. “Then why don’t you tell me?” Miguel said.
Robby’s face scrunched up a little at this. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to tell Miguel. Robby did want to tell him about the trauma that he had experienced, for some unfathomable reason. But it felt odd that Robby wanted to tell Miguel about this more than he wanted to tell his own father. Maybe because, if things went bad, he didn’t have to talk to Miguel again. He would still have to see Miguel, especially if Carmen and Johnny kept dating, but he wouldn’t have to talk to him ever again. He couldn’t have that with Johnny.
Miguel misread Robby’s decision-making expression to mean that he didn’t want to share. He tried to backpedal some. “Obviously, you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to, but it might make you feel better to tell someone, even if it’s not me,” Miguel said.
Robby made a decision at that moment. He knew that he was going to tell Miguel. He didn’t know why he trusted Miguel, but he did. “No, I want to talk if you want to listen.”
“I’ll listen,” Miguel said. At this point, he tried to wrap Robby up in the blanket again. Robby accepted the warmth and comfort. He knew that he was going to need it to get through this conversation.
“Okay. First off, I’ve had anxiety for a long time. It’s nothing new. I just used to be able to deal with it better, back when I had to deal with it alone. I never got officially diagnosed and definitely never got treated, but I know it’s there, and that it has been there for a long time,” Robby started.
Miguel simply listened and didn’t make comments.
“It got worse after the school fight, and even worse in juvy,” Robby said before pausing. This was kind of serious emotional stuff to drop on a kid who Robby had thought of as an enemy until recently.
“Of course it did,” Miguel said. “How could it not?”
“I wasn’t like all of the other kids in there, Miguel. I wasn’t. They all did things on purpose, the stuff that landed them there at least. I didn’t do it on purpose.” Robby paused here and turned his head to look at Miguel. He needed to be sure that Miguel heard this next part. “I didn’t mean to hurt you that bad. I never wanted you to go over the banister.”
Miguel looked straight back at Robby and said, “I know. It took me a long time to accept, but I know that you didn’t do it on purpose.”
Robby smiled weakly. “The guilt I felt led to a lot of bad decisions, Miguel. I just need you to know that I don’t blame you before I go on. It’s not your fault, it’s mine.”
Miguel nodded, but he was extremely confused.
Robby simply continued on. “When I got out, I joined Cobra Kai because Kreese said that it would help me control my emotions. And I felt so much, Miguel. Mostly fear. But I learned in my life to translate fear into anger, externally, at least. Kreese said anger was good and that I had a lot of it, but really I was just so afraid. I had wrecked my whole future by accident and had no idea what was coming and I was so afraid, but that fear came out as aggression.”
Miguel winced as he heard what Kreese had said to Robby, encouraging the boy’s aggression. It sounded like something that John Kreese would say, but that didn’t change the fact that it hurt to hear that the words were spoken in such a way.
“I knew that Cobra Kai was bad news. I’d heard enough about it from Mr. LaRusso and my dad, but I didn’t really see any other choice. Besides, I deserved whatever they were going to give to me, at least, I thought I did.”
“What happened, Robby?” Miguel asked.
“A lot of things,” Robby said quietly. “I had to stay in the dojo because I had nowhere else to go.”
“I heard about that,” Miguel whispered.
“They locked me in,” Robby said. There was a long pause as Miguel took in the information.
“They locked you in?!”
“Yeah. They didn’t want me running off or something, I guess.”
“I’m sorry man,” Miguel said. He had no idea what else he could possibly say.
“It got worse,” Robby whispered. It was getting hard for him to talk about things now. Now that he was getting to the actual trauma. Robby was trying to decide how much of what happened to tell Miguel. “Because I lived at the dojo, I got ‘extra lessons’, which were basically an excuse for Kreese and Silver to throw every kind of abuse that they could think of at me. They even used a taser on me a couple of times.”
This shocked Miguel to his core. He had known that Kreese was a fucked up man, and, based on Mr. LaRusso’s reaction, that Silver was worse, but he couldn’t imagine anyone using a taser on a kid.
“The worst thing was the verbal abuse, though. I can handle physical abuse. I’d been doing it for years. Not all of my mom’s boyfriends were good people. But it was the emotional abuse that was worse. They convinced me that I was alone, that there was no one in the world who really loved me. They told me that I was worthless,” Robby said. Robby decided that he had to tell someone about everything and that person may as well be Miguel Diaz. “It got so bad,” Robby said quietly. “That I started to believe it. It was my fault that my dad and Mr. LaRusso left me there. I had been the one to push away, so I had no right to believe that they didn’t care. They tried to care and I didn’t let them.” Robby pulled away slightly, and, as much as Miguel wanted to chase after him, he didn’t. Robby probably needed some space. “The loneliness and depression got so bad that I needed to do something about it,” Robby said, rolling one of his pant legs up. The skin was covered with scars, some faint and white, others clear and dark. “I started cutting to cope with the mental pain I was feeling.”
The scars concerned Miguel. He had no idea that the other boy was doing this poorly. But he also felt a strange fascination with the self-bestowed markings. Miguel didn’t really understand why someone would hurt themselves like that, which was why he was so curious about it, but he also didn’t want to ask about it yet.
Robby had decided at this point that he had gone this far and may as well go all the way.
“After a while the cutting wasn’t enough,” Robby said. He paused. His heart was racing. No one knew about his suicidal thoughts, but here he was about to tell Miguel fucking Diaz.
He must have paused for a long time because Miguel started speaking to him, saying, “What do you mean, Robby?”
Robby took one more deep breath before answering. “I wanted to die. I was suicidal.”
“I’ve been there,” Miguel said, trying to comfort the other boy. “After the school fight, I felt so lonely and was in so much pain that I wanted to kill myself, but I didn’t. And, clearly, you didn’t either.”
Robby’s hands started shaking nervously, but he couldn’t stop now. “It wasn’t just thoughts, Miguel.”
“What do you mean?” Miguel prompted after Robby refused to go on.
“I mean, I had a plan. A whole ass plan. And I would have gone through with it Miguel,” Robby was babbling now, and Miguel couldn’t get a word in. “I was going to do it on the night of the All-Valley, after the tournament. I was gonna go back to the dojo and take out the razor blade I had hidden and slash my wrists so deep I would bleed out on the floor. I would have done it too, if my dad hadn’t been there already.”
“Wait,” Miguel said. The boy’s head was spinning now. He had asked Robby about the things that happened to him in Cobra Kai, but he hadn’t been expecting anything like this. Miguel didn’t know how to deal with this. He wanted to be able to help Robby, but he had no idea how.
When Miguel spoke, Robby froze. He must have gone too far. He probably shouldn’t have told Miguel about that. He probably shouldn’t have told anyone about that.
“I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have said that,” Robby said, his voice barely above a whisper.
Miguel was quiet for another moment before he responded. “Does anyone else know?”
“About the fact that I had planned to kill myself? No. I didn’t know that anyone would care.”
“So, Sensei doesn’t know?”
“No.”
There was a moment of silence before Miguel continued. “I think you should tell him.”
“No.”
“If you’re thinking and feeling this way, Robby, you probably need more help than I can give you alone. I want to help you, but I don’t know how.”
“I’m not ready to tell him yet.”
Miguel couldn’t comment on that, after all, he would be afraid to tell his family about having suicidal thoughts too. “Okay,” Miguel said, accepting Robby’s reluctance. “Do you still feel that way?”
“No,” Robby lied. The truth was that some days he woke up and would rather not be on earth at all. Some days he still wished he was dead. He just wasn’t ready to do anything about it yet.
“Okay, then,” Miguel said. “Just promise you’ll talk to someone if you ever start to feel bad again.”
“I promise,” Robby agreed. But he knew he wouldn’t be talking to anyone about this. He shouldn’t have even talked to Miguel about this.
Miguel wrapped the blanket tighter around the two of them. Robby said, “You told my dad that you had something that you wanted to talk to me about in private. And I don’t think that you meant to ask for my whole life story, so what do you want to say?”
“I just wanted to offer for you to be able to come to my apartment if your dad ever stresses you out too much. And the offer still stands.”
“Oh,” Robby said. He hadn’t been expecting Miguel to be so nice to him, let alone after everything that he had just unloaded to Miguel. But when Robby looked at Miguel, he could see the sincerity in the other boy’s expression. He smiled weakly and said, “I might just have to take you up on that.”
“Do it,” Miguel said, almost like it was a dare. There was a moment of quiet, then both boys burst out laughing.
“Maybe we should go watch the movie. Our parents are probably worried about us by now,” Robby said.
Miguel nodded.
The boys went into the LaRusso backyard only to find that nobody had started the movie. Robby was confused, but Miguel understood what had happened. Miguel laughed. “You guys didn’t need to wait for us to start the movie.”
Robby tilted his head in confusion. No one had ever waited for him before, let alone a whole group of people. Maybe they had been waiting for Miguel and didn’t care whether he came or not. That must have been what it was.
Then Sam gestured for Miguel to come sit with her near the front, where Eli and Demetri were also sitting. Robby went to slink away to sit with the parents. It was clear enough to him that he wasn’t welcome there. But Sam began to gesture more insistently. “Robby, you too!” Sam shouted.
Robby smiled and followed Miguel over to where the other kids were sitting. He was still tense, because it was obvious that Hawk had a distaste for him, which was fair. Robby had cut off his mohawk. But he calmed significantly once he realized that Sam and Demetri, who were his first real friends, still wanted him.
The group of Miyagi-Fangs (and Robby) sat and watched Kung-Fu Panda. Every so often, Miguel or Sam or Demetri would lean over and whisper a fun comment to him. Sitting there, watching this movie, with his friends, old and new, Robby felt better than he had in a very long time. He just hoped the feeling would last.
But the good feelings never last.