Underground

Chapter One

"Hi, honey." Dad's voice is overly worried as I pull more things from the rattly cardboard box in front of me. "How're you getting on?"

"Since you rang me half an hour ago?" I chuckle and stand with the pile of framed photographs, balancing them in my free hand. "I'm good, just hanging some things on my wall. What are you doing?"

"I've told you how proud I am of you, haven't I? I can't believe you're all grown up, in your apartment in a different city, going to college. It's like I blinked, and you grew up." I can only pray he won't start crying again like he did when he said goodbye to me this morning.

"I know, Dad, you've told me. A lot, actually," I answer.

"You're not bothering her again, are you, Andrew?" Mom's voice rings through the background of his call. I can hear him sigh and smile at this. "You need to let her breathe and settle in. She's a grown-up now."

"She'll always be my baby." I roll my eyes at his words; he can be slightly smothering at times. "Are you sure you're okay, Ava? Do you need anything?"

"I'm fine, Dad, I promise I'll call you if anything changes," I reassure him for the millionth time today. "Say hi to Mom for me."

"Hi, love!" her friendly voice chimes through the speaker. "Sorry about your dad, I promise I'll take all of our phones off him for the rest of the day."

"It's fine, I know what he's like." I manage to hang one of the photos in a kind of straight angle on the wall. "I love you both."

"We love you too, sweetie. I better hang up before your dad can take the phone off me." I can hear some kind of complaint from Dad as I say goodbye, hanging up before he can take the phone and talk for any longer than he already has.

"I don't know about you but I'm so over unpacking." Georgie stumbles into my half-finished room with a thud, throwing herself down onto my unmade bed. "Being an adult is hard work, I want pizza."

I lift an eyebrow at my incredibly unmotivated best friend who makes herself more than comfortable while I hang another photo on my wall. How she can be as stick-thin as she is with the amount of unhealthy food she eats still amazes me.

"Ava, please, I need food and I can't be bothered going grocery shopping after all this moving in stuff. Let's get junk food and watch movies all night to celebrate our first night of attempted adulthood."

"Do you ever think about anything other than your stomach?"

"Of course not," she states in a 'duh' tone and stretches, forcing herself to stand up. "Put some shoes on, you're driving."

"Right," I mumble under my breath, watching as she throws a smirk in my direction, adjusting her shorts on her slender waist.

I get my sneakers and pull the legs of my sweatpants down to my ankles again, grabbing my coat and my wallet as I follow Georgie into the living room.

"I vote we get triple cheese with extra bacon." My nose screws up at her suggestion, following her wild mop of dark hair out the apartment door. "I can easily eat a whole one by myself, so we'll have to buy a couple. Maybe some garlic bread too. What about ice cream?"

"I swear you should be 400 pounds by now," I grumble lowly, unlocking my trusty little Mazda hatchback that I proudly named Nelly on my 16th birthday. She climbs in beside me, shrugging innocently as she types away on her phone. "I'm going to get so lost trying to find my way around this place."

Our old hometown only has a few thousand people in it, the kind of size where almost everyone knows each other, and community gatherings are a regular thing on most occasions. Now we're in Boston, a huge city hours away from anything either of us are familiar with. We're enrolled in a college that has more students in it than our small, little city has in its entire population.

"Take this right," Georgie instructs, pointing down a well-lit up street that's rather busy for a Thursday evening. "I can't believe we're really in Boston."

I can't believe it either, it's an amazing feeling.

By the time I find a carpark around the side of the building, it's starting to turn a little dark. I'm suddenly grateful for the hoodie I pulled on before we left as I follow my fast-paced pizzaholic of a friend towards the large double doors of the restaurant.

It's surprisingly busy. A couple of families are scattered around in booths and there are a few people in the line in front of us as we join the queue. "What should we get?" Georgie's voice brings me from my daydream.

"The loaded meat supreme with extra sauce is the best," a deep voice answers before I can. My eyes lock with a surprisingly lanky male standing in the position in front of us in line.

The blonde male smiles boyishly, the boy beside him now turning around to face us as well. "You must be new here if you don't know about that pizza, it's legendary."

"It's our first day here, actually." Georgie returns both boys' smiles. They look about our age and they're both rather buff, towering over us easily.

"Well, in that case..." The blonde wriggles his eyebrows, extending a hand to her. "I'm Clarke, this is Isaac."

I already don't like this.

I shake both their hands once Georgie does. Isaac's hair is a slightly darker blonde than Clarke's and he has light freckles across both of his cheeks but besides that, the two of them look rather similar.

"Are you guys here for college?" Isaac asks as the line moves forward and Georgie nods. I don't miss the light pinkness to her usually tan cheeks. "Us too, well — we grew up in Boston, but we're staying here for college."

"Oh, cool, what are you both doing?"

"I got a scholarship for basketball," Clarke answers her. That doesn't surprise me. He's as lanky and tall as the players I've seen on TV. "Isaac's majoring in art."

"I'm majoring in art as well," she replies, catching Isaac's attention and causing him to smile. "Ava's doing an English degree, she's the best writer I've ever met."

I send her a sideways look. I'm probably the only person she knows who actually enjoys writing and literature.

"That's awesome, I guess we'll all be seeing each other around a bit then." The two boys are next in line, but they don't seem remotely bothered. "You guys should come with us to a fight tomorrow night, lots of people from college are going and we managed to score some free tickets."

"A fight?" Georgie asks curiously before I can politely turn the offer down. I've never liked any kind of violence — I can barely kill a fly without feeling terrible about it.

"Yeah, some guy's trying to take on Shawn Michaels for the title, he's going to get his ass kicked. I doubt he'll even make it through the first round."

Lovely.

"Who's Shawn Michaels?" Isaac smirks at this, obviously amused by Georgie's question.

"He's the best underground fighter in the world, hasn't been beaten once. Tickets are usually close to 200 bucks to watch him, but Clarke's got some connections through his basketball team."

Underground fighting? The idea of watching two men try to kill each other sounds less than appealing, but two men doing that illegally? No way.

I can barely watch wrestling and that's all staged.

"We'd love to come."

My eyes widen at Georgie's words. She can't be serious? An underground fight? Why in the world would she want to go to that?

She smiles at Isaac again and the realisation suddenly dawns on me.

Oh, that's why she wants to go.

"Great, we'll pick you both up on the way there at around six, is that alright?"

No. It's definitely not alright.

"Sure, you'll need my number, right?"

I can only watch as Georgie types her details into Isaac's phone, the boy she only met 10 minutes ago.

We have barely survived our first night of adulthood together and she's already managed to give her number to a complete stranger and agree to us both going to an illegal fight.

This is not going to end well.