The Blaze

Riverside, California, 1998. Teresa Zárate is eighteen, and her family's martial arts and boxing gym opens at 6:00 sharp.

She's there by 5:40, every morning, because she always has been. Vinegar water on the heavy bag. Towels sorted by tone. Leon, all seventeen pounds of black cat with a white triangle on his chest, making his inspection rounds. She counts streetlights: one-two, one-two-three-four. She counts her breaths the same way. She learned as a child, back when breathing was just bre...