Abigail Abernathy attends her first fight at the Circle, an underground fight club at Eastern University, with her best friend, America Mason, and America’s boyfriend, Shepley Maddox. Shepley’s cousin, Travis Maddox, is the reigning champion of the Circle. In her pink cashmere cardigan and pearl earrings, Abby feels like “a schoolmarm on the beaches of Normandy” (2). She pushes forward to see better and is sprayed by blood when Travis crashes an elbow into his opponent’s nose. After the fight, Travis steadies Abby when someone in the crowd pushes her. He tells her the sweater looks good on her, then disappears.

The next day, Travis enters the lunchroom cafeteria with two blonde sorority girls whom Abby thinks of as the Barbie twins. One attempts to sit on his lap, but he pushes her off when the girl insults America. Travis flirts with Abby and calls her Pigeon. Shepley warns Abby not to fall for Travis, and she says she won’t: “He oozed sex and rebelliousness with his buzzed brown hair and tattooed forearms, and I rolled my eyes at his attempt to lure me in” (8).