Death Cultivator by eden Hudson (knowledgeable books to read .txt) 📗

Y since middle school, and he wouldn’t shut up about all the tournaments he’d won. I’d never been to a martial arts class in my life, just tried to pick up what I could from movies and YouTube.

Besides, nobody brings an audience if they think it’s going to be a close fight.

I let my backpack drop and put my hands up. It hurt the road rash on my palms to make a fist, but it’d be better than breaking my fingers.

His buddies went crazy. They really wanted to see me get stomped. Which made sense, considering I’d insulted every one of them at one point or another. You get pretty good at verbal defense when you’re the only kid in the school whose dad’s in prison.

Blaise grinned and bounced around with his hands down, coming at me with little jabs, then bouncing away. I took most of them on my forearms, keeping my fists in a high guard. The blows weren’t heavy. I would’ve thought he’d hit harder than that, but they barely stung.

Then suddenly, I saw my shot. Blaise threw a body shot combo. I ate both punches, and while I was in close, swung my elbow like an axe. His nose crunched, and blood shot out everywhere. He stumbled back, holding his face.

Somebody watching yelled, “Holy crap!” in one of those ecstatic voices.

I should’ve gone in for a kick to the shin—go ahead and chop the tree down, like the muay thai guys would say—but I was as surprised as Blaise that I’d hit him. This was my first fight with another person, and it wasn’t going like the movies at all.

Blaise let out a yell like some kind of berserker and tackled me. All the air shot out of my lungs, and I slammed into the side of my junky Oldsmobile. The metal dented, and the horn started honking. Not the car alarm sound that came from the cars of kids whose parents had bought their vehicles for them. Just one long, endless blare that meant the wadded-up piece of cardboard I’d stuck in the crack of the steering wheel to keep the horn from going off continuously had fallen out again.

I tried slamming elbows down on Blaise’s back and throwing knees into his chest, but it wasn’t doing any good. He kept me pinned to the car, pummeling my ribs with his fists. No more controlled shots that barely stung; these were serious I’m-gonna-kill-you punches that felt like shotgun blasts to the side. The only time he backed off was to smash his shoulder into me again. I doubled over, the strength going out of my arms and legs at the same time.

Blaise let me drop.

“Yeah!” he screamed, throwing his hands up like the crowd was going wild. “Mess with the best, die like the rest!”

I swallowed and tried to get up. My ribs didn’t like the idea. Felt like something was broken in there.

“Want some more, pitstain? Huh? You want some more?” Blaise kicked me in the ear.

I folded over, grabbing my head. The ear was still connected, but it’d felt like his kick had ripped it off.

“Eat it, loser!” Blaise crowed.

Now that he was back on top, his dumb friends were all yelling and shoving each other around like he’d just KOed Connor McGreggor. Isobel was there, too. She looked a little freaked out by all the blood, but her and Hannah were cheering Blaise on anyway.

“That’s right!” Blaise yelled. “Don’t come at me unless you want all your teeth knocked out!”

This was the part where I was supposed to get back up no matter how many times he knocked me down. Except when I started to get up, he planted his foot on my collarbone and pinned me to my car. I tried squirming out from under his shoe, but I couldn’t get loose.

“What’s that, Grody Flake?” Blaise leaned down with his hand cupping his ear like he was some kind of pro wrestler selling his crap to the cheap seats. “You want your mommy?”

That set his buddies off again.

“No.” I swallowed some bloody spit. “I want yours.”

If you’ve never been punched in the head while it’s pressed up against a metal car door, I don’t recommend it. The next thing I saw was black.

Freezer Burritos, Westerns, and Kung Fu

I STOPPED ON THE RUSTY metal steps leading up to the trailer house. Gramps and I still called it “the trailer house” like we needed to specify which house we meant, even though he’d lost his farm when my dad skipped bail and the bondsman took it forever ago.

Before I went inside, I checked my face in the window of the screen door. Skinned chin, right ear swelling and red, a big ugly splotch of blood on my T-shirt. I hurried up and swapped it out for my gym shirt, stuffing the bloodstained one down in my bag. With Gramps’s eyesight, he probably wouldn’t notice the chin and ear, and the shirt would hide the bruises on my ribs.

As soon as I stepped inside, I heard the familiar sound of snoring and the TV in the living room playing Gunsmoke. It’s weird how easy it is to relax as soon as you walk into your own house. Like, you think you’re relaxed most of the day at school when no one’s paying attention to you, but once you’re back home, surrounded by all the familiar smells and sounds you’re used to, that’s when it really kicks in.

“Hey Gramps, I’m home,” I called, letting the screen door swing shut behind me.

The snoring cut off, and the recliner in the living room creaked. Gramps let out a growl as he cleared his throat.

“Grady?” he croaked. “How was school?”

“Fine.” Instead of heading straight for the fridge like usual, I went down the hall and shoved my bloody shirt into the washer along with my gym stuff. I peeled off the replacement shirt and threw it in, too, because it actually did stink like pits. “I’m