Perhaps for his own amusement, the sergeant paired Scratch, the smallest of the bunch, with a dense, brutish boy at least twice her size. The boy, a well-dressed, proud son of an earl, immediately complained of the indignity that was fighting a Lakes-milky slum rat in dirty clothes. He pleaded with the sergeant for a more suitable opponent, perhaps his cousin, a reedy, green-eyed youth with a perpetually bored expression and overgrown eyebrows. The sergeant didn’t budge, however; and after a few minutes of pointless wheedling, the son of an earl finally relented, stomping into the ring, grumbling all the while.

Ten-year-old Scratch sized up her opponent. In the midmorning sun, his skin was as pink as a plucked chicken, and when he pouted, his stuck-out bottom lip was a ripe cherry. He was coated in a layer of baby fat that hid a robust well of strength, as she discovered when he threw his first punch, knocking her onto her ass in the dusty earth. Even now, she could feel the spreading ache in her seat of a bruise to come, the sting of humiliation prickling behind her eyes, and the terror of being dubbed worthless before she even had a chance to prove her mettle.

Then, someone shouted, “Get up and fight!” And she did as she was told.

She fought as only a girl who had tasted the first bitter hints of failure could. She spat the poison from her body by sinking fists into flesh. The terror and anger of teetering on that precipice fueled her, and she fought with terrible, unsteady desperation. She would not go home, could not, and the unfortunate boy before her was taught the cruel lesson of her determination. She landed punch after punch in his soft belly, and when he went down she boxed his ears and head, then his hands when he brought them up to protect his skull. Only after the sergeant had called “Enough, girl,” did she finally relent, leaving her bested foe bloody-nosed and trembling in the dirt.

Pity for the boy rose like bile. He lay on his side, wiggling like a frantic maggot suddenly exposed to light. Her assault had left him leaking blood and mucus from his nose and mouth, bubbling frothy red with his ragged panting. Limpid threads hung at his shoulders and collar where his fine clothing had torn at the seams. He looked smaller somehow, deflated; and glassy-eyed like a gutted fish. He trembled.