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When he calls time, I nearly collapse, most of the boys looking as pissed off as I feel. We gulp water, hinge at the waist, and pant. My legs feel like they’ve been microwaved.

“Guys, this is Scotty,” Ford says standing next to me.

I give a half-assed wave.

“She your girlfriend?” one kid asks with a smart-ass smirk.

Ford and I exchange looks, his amused, mine annoyed.

“She’s Zeb’s sister.” At the mention of my brother, my spine snaps upright. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, waiting for an explanation. Ford doesn’t give one, yet they all look at me with a sort of recognition. There’s no way they knew my brother. Most of them weren’t even born until after he died.

“Guilty as charged,” I admit.

“That why you’re here?” one of them asks.

“Uh.”What the hell is going on?

“She’s just here to hang out,” Ford answers, looking at me while holding out a pair of gloves. “She’s helping me with the demos. You have to watch her, though. She’s been known to go off half-cocked unprovoked. Ain’t that right, Scotty?”

I look at the gloves, the boys, and then back to him before taking them from him. “That’s right,” I answer, turning to the boys to add, “but I only go off when provoked.”

When they laugh, Ford breaks us into pairs. He kicks our asses with an easy smile on his face for the next forty-five minutes.

“So you’re Zeb’s sister?” the kid with braces says as we wipe down the pads after class.

“The one and only,” I tell him.

“My sister did drugs. Pills mostly.”

I still my rag mid-wipe and look at him. “Oh.” He keeps working, not bothering to look at me. “And how is she?”

He sprays another mist of cleaner on the mat. “Dead.”

I clear my throat as he wipes the surface. “That’s pretty shitty.”

He looks at me, surprise flittering across his young features. “Nobody ever responds like that.”

“Well, most people don’t understand how shitty it is,” I say with a slight smile.

“Jimmy, your mom’s here,” someone shouts from across the gym, making him look and raise a hand in acknowledgment. I take the cleaning supplies from him as we stand.

“Does it get easier?” he asks.

I answer him the most honest way I can: “Not yet.”

He nods, like he gets it, then says goodbye to Ford by way of a fist bump and jogs to his mom who’s waiting at the front door.

“I’m glad you came,” Ford says, standing next to me as I watch the kid leave. “You like it?”

“I won’t be able to move tomorrow, but sure. What is it? Who are these kids?”

He brings his hands to his hips, glancing around the gym before answering me. “They, uh . . .” He drops his chin to his chest, sniffs, then looks at me again. “They all lost someone to addiction.”

The words seep into me so deeply that the next time my heart beats it’s borderline painful.

I have the sudden urge to wrap my arms around him and cry, but instead: “The jump roping was pretty awful.”

He vibrates with a soft laugh. “Tell me something real right now.”