Tough Love at Mystic Bay

By Elizabeth Sowden and Rebecca Dimyan

Grace Haddonfield is a four-star chef with a bitter past. At 14, Grace finds herself at odds with her controlling mother who has her kidnapped in the middle of the night and taken to a boarding school for troubled teens. Grace spends several months at Epiphany Lake Academy where she must rise through the ranks of a cult-like program. When she realizes that the program has set her up to fail, she attempts to escape from Epiphany Lake and winds up somewhere even worse: Mystic Bay, a barbed-wire facility in the Dominican Republic. Grace's defiance against her captors lands her in solitary confinement, where she gets through the long hours by indulging in vivid fantasies about food.As an adult, Grace is successful but lonely and struggles to reconcile her triumphs with the injustices she has endured. When she meets a woman named Jess in a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class, she has the chance to make the kind of connection that's been missing from her life. Tough Love at Mystic Bay follows Grace as she unlearns harsh lessons and rediscovers friendship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Running Wild Press
• Release date: Apr 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781947041547

Book preview

Titles

Book 1: Before School

1

Jess never washes her gi. She claims it’s because she’s afraid that it will shrink. She says she doesn’t need to wash it because she airs it out on the clothesline after every class. But we all know that none of this is true; she refuses to wash her gi because she knows that by smelling like weeks-old sweat, she can get her opponents to tap out sooner. We all try to get to class as early as we can so that we can partner up before Jess gets there.

This morning, I slept a little too late. Then, I hit every single light on Nicollet Avenue. By the time I got to the gym, everyone had a partner to roll with. Everyone except Jess.

Jess is sitting on top of me, pressing the entire weight of her double-D chest on mine. As she smashes my face with her collarbone, the smell nearly makes me choke. It reminds me of my first week in culinary school when one of the chefs opened a tin of fermented herring from Norway and told us if we wanted to be chefs, we had better learn to appreciate strong odors.

Jess shoves one hand into my collar. All I can see is the fire-breathing rooster on the front of her rashguard. My eyes water from Jess’s fumes, blurring the flames from the rooster’s mouth. As she reaches for the second grip, I buck my hips hard and shift her weight to the side. Finally, I’ve escaped and she’s no longer sitting on me, but before I can think of what to do next, she wraps her legs around my waist and pulls me in guard. From this position, Jess controls my body and restricts my movements by squeezing my ribcage with her knees and keeping my torso pressed tightly against hers. Every time I try to sit up, she pulls me down hard with her thighs. Her hands clamp down onto my arm and she swings her body until it’s perpendicular to mine. Even through the thick cotton of my sleeve, I can feel her fingers digging into my flesh. She tries to finish the armbar, but for a split second, her grip loosens and I yank my arm free.

Jess attacks my other hand. She grips my sleeve and shoots her feet over my head, forcing me flat against the floor. My face hits the mat, and suddenly I’m no longer in my jiu-jitsu gym. I’m face down on a concrete floor in a dog cage. I’m fifteen-years-old and a two-hundred-pound man is kneeling on my back. The tropical heat makes sweat drip into my eyes. He bends my arm and twists it hard until the muscles in my shoulder start to tear.

Before Jess can complete her omoplata, I tap hard. She eases up, and I push away from her. As I stand up, I’m shaking and breathing heavily. She stares up at me, bewildered. Sunlight streaming through the grimy windows illuminates the short blond hairs on Jess’s scalp and the whitish lashes that surround her ocean-blue eyes. The instructor’s disco music, which is playing at a low volume on the gym stereo, re-enters my awareness. All around us, other pairs of grapplers run through various techniques. The mirror at the front of the room is almost completely fogged over.

James, the instructor, makes a joke about Jess’s funk, but when he sees my face, he realizes that Jess’s nasty gi isn’t what’s upsetting me.

Grace, he says to me, are you alright?

Sure, I say, nodding. I just need a minute.

I go to the bathroom and lock the door. With my back against the wall, I sink down to the floor and sob. It’s been more than fifteen years since I was locked in a dog cage at Mystic Bay, but suddenly I feel like it’s just happened.

After a few minutes, I feel calm again. I splash my face with cold water and walk back out onto the mat.

Feeling better? James asks.

Yeah, I say, I’m fine.

James pairs me up with one of the guys. A purple belt named Darrin pulls me in guard and holds me close to his chest so I can’t posture up. I inhale deeply, breathing in his Hawaiian Fresh scent.

After class, James and I are the last to leave.

Listen, Grace, he says as he unlocks his car. The rear end is crumpled and the trunk seems to be held in place by bungee cords and duct tape. The dented driver’s side door gives a shudder as James jerks it open. If Jess did something I need you to tell me. It’s really important for me to make sure that all of my students are safe during training.

I shake my head.

It wasn’t anything that Jess did.

The wind picks up. Yellow leaves tumble through the alley. I can feel James looking at me, but I don’t say anything more.

Is there something you want to talk about?

I shake my head, and suddenly I’m fighting back tears. I never talk about Mystic Bay. Nobody ever believes me when I do.

Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me, James says. His car starts with a rumble. I watch his taillights disappear as he drives away.

When I get to work, the stainless steel counters, appliances and exhaust hoods gleam, newly cleaned and ready for tonight’s dinner service. Mariachi trumpets blast through a small radio, a sunny contrast to the mellow piano arrangements playing in the dining room. We have a brief staff meeting before we get started on prep.

Soon, the sound of hot oil crackling and my cooks chopping vegetables drowns out my thoughts. Every station is busy. As soon as we send dishes out, new tickets come in. On the other side of the door, the room is dim, with candles in frosted votives burning on each linen-clothed table. Black and white photographs of rain-glossed cobblestones, crowded metro cars and grevistes in newsboy caps line the walls. A small alcove hosts a baby grand piano where a musician sits and plays Debussy each night. Most people prefer that side of the door, but for me, the kitchen –with its heat, its noise and its fluorescent lights –is the only side I want to be on.

I place a chicken leg skin down in a pan full of hot, rendered fat. I watch the skin tighten and crisp. When I’m happy with the color, I take the meat out of the pan and pour chardonnay into it until the liquid is a quarter of an inch deep. I set the meat back in it, skin side up this time, and let the meat gently braise in the butter-colored wine.

I nestle the cooked chicken thigh on a bed of pommes puree next to a small stack of slim, tender asparagus stalks. A simple dish that’s well executed is better than a hundred fancy ones. The pretentious fucks down the street have redone their menu so many times the servers spend their entire shifts running back to the kitchen to ask questions. Greens with grapefruit curd and pine vinaigrette. Deep-fried pork belly with chokecherry yogurt. Salmon carpaccio with smoked raisins and pickled fennel with a rhubarb-and-limoncello reduction. Thirty different kinds of aioli. I wish they’d call it what it is: mayonnaise with a little more flavor.

I think about what David Desmarais, the chef I studied under at Le Cinq in Paris, used to say about restaurateurs like these. "Imbéciles qui pètent plus haut que leurs culs," he’d say. Imbeciles who fart higher than their asses. Chef David was half Moroccan and grew up in Marseille where he got his start, cooking in seaside cafes. His wavy, once-black hair looked as if all the color had simply rinsed out of it. He had enormous, bronze fingers that at first looked too big to be anything but clumsy, but Chef David could dice an onion in seconds. His mantra was fais pas le con. Don’t fuck around.

When dinner service is over and I’m helping my staff clean the kitchen and prepare for tomorrow, I overhear one of the new food runners talking to my sous chef, Corey.

I really want to meet her, I hear her say. She looks like she’s about eighteen-years-old. Her hair is freshly dyed black, but I can tell from the roots that it was, until recently, electric blue.

I’ve been working with her for years, Corey replies. She never hangs around. Once the burners go off, she splits.

They’re talking about me. After we close up, most of the staff heads out to a bar. They’ve invited me a hundred times but I’ve never gone with them. I’m afraid of the questions they’ll ask. What high school did you go to? Oh, really? I went there too. Why don’t I remember you? Why don’t you ever date anyone? Why don’t you ever hang out with us? Why don’t you ever do interviews like the other chefs in town? Why do you seem like you’re hiding some big dark scary secret?

‘Night, Grace, Corey says as he changes out of his black chef’s coat and into a denim jacket that is too big for his narrow frame. Thick brown stubble sprouts along his jawline. It matches his wild, Romanian eyebrows.

Have fun, I reply.

You can come, you know, he says.

No, thanks, I say, and he gives me a sideways grin before he turns to leave. Corey has been my sous chef for three years. Before he was hired, I became notorious for burning through sous chefs. In my first two years as head chef, I fired three sous chefs and had two more quit. Until Corey came along, I didn’t think I’d find anyone I could trust to do things right, but I refused to settle for mediocrity in my brigade. I remembered what Chef David told me: Don’t fuck around.

Corey and I walk outside together where he joins the rest of the front-of-house staff. They set off in the direction of the bars on Washington Avenue. They take long, easy steps. Their work is done for now, and they’re flush with tonight’s tips. They smile and give each other playful shoves. The night swallows echo of their laughter as they disappear around a corner.

I get in my car and put the key in the ignition, but I don’t start the engine. My chest feels tight and my eyes are hot. Why can’t I be more like they are? Why can’t I hang out at bars and laugh and tell stories like a normal person? I shut my eyes and rest my forehead against the steering wheel. A car pulls up next to me. A squad car. I dry my eyes and turn on my car. Last thing I need is some cop thinking I’m drunk. I can’t say the alphabet backwards.

At home, I try to sleep, but every time I close my eyes, I hear girls screaming. I hear boys being tossed against the wall. I hear loud, droning self-help recordings. I hear the blast of the alarm, signaling some kid’s attempt to escape. I hear the crackle of radio transmitters –a sound that meant someone was watching.

Finally, I reach for my iPhone and open the Netflix app. I watch old episodes of Frasier until I fall asleep.

2

Spring, 1998

Eighth grade fucking sucked, I wrote in LaKeisha’s yearbook. I’m so glad we’re finally getting away from this crap-hole. Things are going to be so much better next year when we get to South High. I can’t wait. Thanks for being my best friend over these past couple of years. I hope you’ll still be my best friend next year and the year after. Love, Grace.

You can’t write that! LaKeisha said and grabbed a black pen.

What do you mean, I ‘can’t write that’?

You can’t write curse words in my yearbook! And you shouldn’t write negative things about our school in it. She tried to cross out what I’d written, but I wrestled the pen away from her.

You can’t censor me! I cried. "Those are my words!"

Yeah, well, it’s my yearbook!

She tried to snatch the pen back from me, but I hid it in my pocket.

Fine, she said. I’ll leave your nasty-ass message alone. But when my mom sees it she’s going to say you’re a bad influence.

Who shows their yearbook to their mother?

LaKeisha giggled and crammed her yearbook into her backpack. She took out her compact and touched up her eyeliner. LaKeisha liked to wear heavy black eyeliner, combat boots and a black shawl made of crushed velvet. She wore white lipstick sometimes, too, but the assistant principal always made her rub it off. She had a silver ring through her left eyebrow. I wanted an eyebrow ring too, but my mother said it would make me ugly.

I still can’t believe we’re the only Sheridan students to get accepted into the Liberal Arts program at South High, she said.

Why the fuck not? All the other kids in this school are morons.

Grace! Watch your language, LaKeisha scolded.

Come on, I said. You know I’m right.

LaKeisha’s eyes swept the lunchroom. One of the boys dumped a carton of chocolate milk over a half-eaten burrito and shoved it at another boy. A group of girls whispered and giggled and squealed over pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio. A boy in a Smashing Pumpkins t-shirt knelt on the table, playing air guitar and headbanging until one of the lunch aides yelled at him to sit down.

LaKeisha tugged on the ends of her curly black hair.

Yeah, ok, she said. I guess you’re right. Hopefully when we get to high school, everyone will be more mature.

On the first day of summer vacation, I lazed on the couch, watching The Montel Williams Show. The words Troubled Teens flashed on the bottom of the screen. An overweight mother with blond, chin-length hair cried as she told Montel about her daughter.

She talks back. She runs around with boys. She smokes marijuana. She’s completely out of control. I just don’t know what to do. The camera zoomed in close to the woman’s face as she flicked away a tear with her manicured finger.

Montel told the daughter to come out from backstage, and as she walked onto the set, the audience booed. She held two pixelated middle fingers in the air. The audience booed even louder.

Why do you act this way? Montel asked the girl.

Because my mom’s a bitch, she said. Another chorus of boos from the audience. Another close angle on the mom, crying.

Montel introduced another guest: the director of Epiphany Lake Academy. The man wore glasses and a gray suit. He was fat.

At Epiphany Lake Academy, we rehabilitate troubled teens like your daughter, he said to the crying mom. We have a staff of licensed therapists who are able to treat anything from ADHD to Oppositional Defiant Disorder, which I believe your daughter has.

The camera cut to the mother’s face. She was still crying, but now she smiled, like she was relieved.

Epiphany Lake Academy is offering a year of free tuition for your daughter, Montel said. Will you do what’s best for her? Will you send her to Epiphany Lake?

The mother brushed away tears with both hands and nodded vigorously. She reached over and hugged the daughter, who didn’t hug back. The camera zoomed in on the daughter’s face. She stared blankly at nothing.

I switched off the TV.

I went out to the garage and hauled out my bike. It was dark purple with the word Giant painted on the side and plastic tinsel sprouting from the handlebars. I put the kickstand down and left my bike in the driveway while I went back into the garage, hit the button for the automatic garage door, and dashed out as fast as I could while the door closed.

I mounted my bike and zipped through the alley, past garages covered in trumpet vines and backyards with thick, glossy rhubarb patches. I rode up Johnson Street, past the diner that served all-you-can-eat French fries, the bakery with the plaster cakes in the window, Jung’s Chow Mein and the abandoned movie theater.

When I reached Lowry Avenue, I made a right turn. I released the brakes and let my bike spin as fast down the steep hill as gravity would let it. Wind stung my eyes and whipped through my hair. For a moment, I thought if I pulled the handlebars up, I could take off like a jet.

At the bottom of the hill, I squeezed the brakes. I looked up. In front of me was a tall Queen Anne-style Victorian house. It was powder blue with white gingerbread and white fishscales under the main gable. All of the windows on the ground floor were boarded up, and some on the top floor were broken. Dark, rotting wood showed through cracks in the paint. The porch sagged ever so slightly.

Every day on my way to school, my bus had passed this house, and I glued my eyes to it. What was in there? Who did it belong to? What did it look like before it went to ruin? And why didn’t someone take better care of it? After all, it was clear that the people who built it cared about it.

I dismounted my bike. I crept around to the back of the house, through the weedy yard. A glassless transom window stared down at me like a dark eye. The windows back here were boarded, too, but the door looked like a padlock had been torn off of it. I touched the door. The wood was soft. Even without opening the door, I could smell the house: wet newspaper and mice. I was ready to push open the door, but I heard a car in the alley and I jumped back. The fear of some neighbor catching me made my heart pound. I grabbed my bike and rode away with stories of Victorian ghosts swimming around in my head.

3

I wake up a few hours later. It’s still early. I stumble into the living room, where the glow of my laptop screen is the only light. I log onto a web forum called Survivors of the Shadows and search for the thread about jiu-jitsu, the one where someone said BJJ helped him get over his past. I saw this thread a couple of weeks ago and decided to give jiu-jitsu a try, hoping it might help me, too. After that flashback, though, I’m not so sure.

I find the thread and add another message to it:

I’ve been going to BJJ classes for a few weeks now. But yesterday in class, we were drilling the omoplata, and I had a flashback. Did this happen to you? I’m just not sure I should keep going.

After my message posts, I start scanning other threads. The people on SOS are my only friends, even though I’ve never met any of them. I keep hoping to find someone I know, but so far I haven’t. There are a number of people on here who went to the same schools I did, but at different times. Some of them claim to have heard of me, like I was some sort of legend. That means they were there after me; no one from my time has found SOS yet. Everyone else on here went to other schools. Different names, different places, same shit.

A notification pops up. Someone has responded to my last post. I click on the thread.

Sometimes I get flashbacks just from looking at streetlamps. There is one on my block that flickers and sometimes it reminds me of the floodlights that were on all night outside our dorm. You can’t avoid flashbacks. Trying just makes it harder to move forward. BJJ has helped me learn to trust people again. I actually have real friends again. Plus, I’m in great shape. I’ve lost all the weight I put on after I quit meth cold turkey. It takes time and it won’t be easy. But keep at it. - NOLAJack

I’m a little annoyed at NOLAJack for saying he has real friends now. Am I not a real friend? But I know what he means. I can spend hours on here chatting with people who totally get where I’m coming from, but in the end it amounts to hours spent alone with a computer. At the gym, I noticed the way all the other people hung around after class, talking and laughing and making plans to do things together. I want to be a part of that, but walking out the door is just so much easier.

The light in my living room is turning pink. If I leave now, I can make it to the seven-thirty jiu-jitsu class. I stuff my gi into my backpack and lock the door on my way out.

Once a mechanic’s garage, the gym is a squat, rundown building that sits in the shadow of a freeway overpass. The roof leaks, and small animals sometimes find their way inside. When James opened the gym, he pulled down the lifts and spread blue foam mats on the floor, which still smells faintly of antifreeze. One wall is lined with mirrors that fog up on cold days when the gym is full of grapplers working up a sweat.

There are five other people at the gym when I get there. Four of them are sitting in a circle at one end of the mat while Jess sits in her own little corner, stretching. She waves when she sees me. James arrives and asks us to line up by rank. Jess, who has a blue belt, is at one end and I’m at the other. A lowly white belt. James guides us through the warmup and then makes us pair off. He pairs me with Jess.

Do you remember the side control escape? she asks me.

I nod. I think so.

I lie on my back while Jess digs her knees into my side and wraps her arms around me in a suffocating, sweaty hug. With all of the weight of her torso pressing me into the floor, I feel like I can’t move at all. A panic rises in my chest.

Relax, Jess says, without moving an inch, you got this.

Even though my heart is racing, I shut my eyes and go through the steps James taught us. First, I need to use my arms to create space so that her chest on top of mine. I jam my forearm into her windpipe and she backs off, giving me enough room to turn onto my side and move my hips away from her. Then I wrap my legs around her waist and pull her in guard. I’ve gone from a submissive position to a dominant one –a position that allows me to decide what happens next.

Jess grins. See? You got this.

James tells us to switch and give our partners a chance to drill their side control escapes, but Jess offers to let me keep practicing mine.

You can’t stop now, she says. Your escapes are getting good.

After several minutes of practicing, my thighs are burning and my heart is thundering, but I can escape from Jess’s iron embrace without thinking through the steps.

Thanks, I say to Jess when we’re finished.

She winks at me. Any time.

At the end of class, I peel off my sweat-soaked gi and suddenly feel like I’ve lost thirty pounds. The other students are folding their damp gis too and making plans to watch tonight’s UFC fight together.

Everyone straggles out of the gym and once again, James and I are the last to leave.

I’m glad you came back, he says. He gives me a knowing look, but he doesn’t say anything else.

James locks the door to the gym. I notice a small, pink jewel sparkling in his ear lobe. Just below his ear, there is a white scar that bisects his cheek. I realize I didn’t notice