"What do you mean?" Reagan asked.
"People see a girl who can fight, they're going to try to get you to fight when you shouldn't. Make it look like you started it. Make it look like you're the problem. You understand what I'm saying?"
She was quiet for a moment.
"Don't fight the fight they want," she said.
"Fight the fight you're ready for," he finished.
She'd been hearing that phrase since she was seven years old.
She thought about it on the bus. Eleven hours, two transfers, one paper bag sandwich. She thought about it as she stood in that parking lot in the early morning mist, reading the campus like a map.
She'd worked too hard for too long to lose this in the first month.
So, when the trouble started, and she already knew, somewhere in that quiet part of herself, that trouble was coming, she would wait. She would be patient.
She would be ready.
* * *
Caldwell College had about 2,000 students. Small enough that everyone knew everyone's business within a week. Large enough that you could disappear if you wanted to.
Reagan did not particularly want to disappear. But she also wasn't looking to announce herself.
She moved into her dorm room on the third floor of Carver Hall. Her roommate wasn't there yet.
Reagan chose the bed by the window. Not for the view, but because she'd have her back to the wall and could see the door. Old habit. Ray Dunbar had spent years teaching her to always know where the exits were.
She unpacked in 40 minutes. Made the bed with military corners the way her father had taught her. Put her books on the desk in the order she'd use them. Hung her training schedule on the wall next to the bed.
Then she sat on the edge of the mattress and was very quiet for a few minutes.
This was a thing she did before competitions, before hard conversations, before anything that mattered. Just a few minutes of stillness. Letting the world settle around her.
Then she got up and went to find the cafeteria.
* * *
The cafeteria at Caldwell College was called Founders Hall, which was a grand name for a room with drop ceilings and linoleum floors, and a salad bar that had seen better days.
But it had big windows on the south side, and at 11:30 in the morning, with the autumn sun coming through those windows, it wasn't bad.
Reagan got her tray. Scrambled eggs, toast, orange juice. She was watching her weight class for the upcoming competition, but she had some room to work with. She picked up a coffee. Black.
She scanned the room.
It was already about half full. First day, so people were still figuring out the social geography. Where to sit, who to sit with, all the invisible negotiations that happen in the first week of any new place.