Of all the classes I wish I didn’t have to take, PE tops the list. Theoretically it should be easy-peasy. Just change into baggy maroon pants and a gray T-shirt and stand around with the other sixth-grade PE class, waiting for stuff to happen. After changing in the locker room, doing the roll call, and getting things explained to us, we usually end up with maybe twenty minutes of actual sport time, if we’re lucky.
But sometimes we actually have to do work. Like today.
The morning sky is still overcast and cool. The smell of the grassy lower field combined with the dirt smell of the baseball diamond makes me a little nauseous, like it always does, because it means something I don’t want to do is about to happen. In the dirt surrounding the blacktop, squirrels run around, not even caring that a bunch of middle schoolers are right in front of them. If any of us move, they just jump into one of the many burrows.
I wish I could follow them.
Ty’s in this class, too. So far I’ve been able to avoid talking to him or looking at him, but I don’t know if that will last forever.
The two teachers set up orange lines of cones on opposite ends of the basketball court. There are two sixth-grade PE classes, so the teachers usually like to team up in one lesson. My teacher is Mrs. Balding, who says she’s been here for a hundred years, though she went to school with Dad. She moves slowly, like an injured sloth, sighing as though putting out the orange cones is the hardest thing she ever did.
Ms. Evans, the other sixth-grade teacher, puts down her cones, then scurries toward us like a squirrel who’s had too much coffee, stopping right as she gets to the front row. Some of the kids shriek-laugh. “You ready for this?” Ms. Evans shouts and claps, like we’re in some kind of nightclub instead of standing on a field. This is her first teaching job and she’s a little too enthusiastic, if you ask me.
“Yeah,” we mutter.
She puts a hand over her ear. “That was weak! Let me hear some energy!”
“YEAH!” the other kids shout. I pretend to shout, but I don’t make a sound.
Mrs. Balding turns over a big orange bucket and lowers herself onto it. “Let’s just get on with it.” She takes a sip of coffee out of a giant 7-Eleven mug.
“You know what today is?” Ms. Evans points at the cones. “PACER test. PACER stands for Progressive Aerobic Cardiovascular Endurance Run.”
Cardiovascular? I swallow. That can’t be okay for me, can it? Then again, my doctor didn’t excuse me from anything. He says as long as I don’t do a marathon I’ll be okay. I do the mile and stuff. I just do it slowly.
Mrs. Balding says, “This is just a test to see how your personal cardio is. It is not a race. There is no winner.”
The kids murmur. A kind of discomfort ripples through my abdomen. It’s not a race but it feels like a competition. And I’m not good at competition.
Ms. Evans counts off ten of us. Including me. “Stand on this line.”
Great. I should have hidden in the back. I go put my toes on the white painted stripe on the asphalt.
“What you’re going to do is just run to the other cones, where we’ve drawn the line.” She takes a small wireless speaker out of her pocket. “When you hear a beep, the lap is over. When you hear the triple beat, that’s the signal that it’s going to get faster.” She holds up a hand. “Now, if you don’t get back to the line before the beep, it won’t count. If it happens twice, you’re out. Okay?” Ms. Evans touches a button on her phone.
“The PACER test will begin in thirty seconds,” a voice says through the speaker.
The other kids get in a ready stance. I imitate them, though I feel as if my feet have grown roots through the asphalt. I put my palm over my chest. I mean, the doctor would excuse me from PE if I couldn’t do this, right? He said not to get my pulse up too high. The pacemaker won’t do anything unless my pulse gets really, really fast and then stays that high, or goes into an irregular rhythm.
What if my heart stops right here in front of everyone?
I almost raise my hand to get Mrs. Balding’s attention, when I hear a voice I recognize muttering. “She’ll get out of it. Watch.”
Ty.
If this were the old days when Alexander Hamilton was alive, this would be like challenging me to a duel. Like slapping gloves across my face or whatever they did. I grit my teeth. Now if I don’t do it, I’ll be proving Ty’s point.
I push my worries aside and clench my teeth. I’ll show him.
The voice intones, “Start.”
The other kids start jogging slowly to the other line. Okay, this isn’t so bad. I get there only a little bit behind the others. We wait.
BEEP.
We run back to the other side. The world jiggles as my feet pound the earth, making me feel dizzy. Crud. I slow down. The kids on the sideline stare at me. Ty smirks. My chest burns. But I’m not sure if that’s because of my heart or the smirk. They’re thinking, Really? On the first lap?
BEEP.
The sound goes off before I reach the line.
“That’s one missed,” Mrs. Balding says from her upside-down bucket.
I get to the line, my skin hot, as if the stares are coals burning me.
BEEP BEEP BEEP.
“It’s a little faster now,” Ms. Evans calls. “You can do it, Ava!”
My heart’s beating so fast. Dr. White always tells me not to worry about my heart because the device will do its job. “It’s there so you can do more things, not fewer,” he always says. “You just live your life.” But I can’t help worrying. My fingers go up to my neck, for my pulse. Steady. Fast, but steady. That’s good.
My feet slow even more. I concentrate on the asphalt, how my scuffed white shoes look against the darkness of it. I hear the kids snickering. They don’t know about my heart. Why would they? I look perfectly normal from the outside. You can’t see my scar most of the time.
Still, it’s not okay for them to laugh. If I were braver, I’d tell them so. If Zelia were here, I wouldn’t even be doing this. She would have roared at the teachers for even making me try.
BEEP.
I’m not even close to the line.
“You’re out, Ava,” Mrs. Balding says. She knows about my heart, but she hasn’t let me get out of stuff. I don’t know if it’s because she thinks I can secretly do everything or if she’s trying to be encouraging.
I slink away, my head down.
“Don’t worry about it,” Ms. Evans calls after me. “It’s only a personal time. It doesn’t count against you.” She doesn’t know about my heart because she’s not my teacher. I feel like I’ve disappointed her. I want to explain why I couldn’t do it, but I’d rather poke myself with a cactus spike. She’ll look at me sympathetically and tell me it’s okay, and everyone will watch, and I’ll feel a million times worse.
Mrs. Balding gestures Ms. Evans over. I watch them whisper. They glance over at me. This makes all the other kids glance over at me, too.
If the world were going to end, now would be a great time.
I pass Ty, who’s standing with his arms crossed and his eyes narrowed into a glare. Faker, I hear him think, and I turn my sweaty face away. I’m not a faker.
Am I?
Dr. White says it’s okay to do PE, and he says not to worry. Maybe I could have tried harder. Pushed a little more. I probably gave up too soon.
Ms. Evans comes back, a slight frown furrowing her brow. “Great job, Ava.” She gives me a fist bump. “Tell you what. Hang out by the locker room and catch your breath. Then you can walk some slow laps around the basketball court if you want. Okay?”
I glance at Ty and catch his eye again. He glares and I look away. It’s not like I’m happy about any of this. It just feels like I’m not good enough. Again.
“Okay.” I go over to the building and slump down on the concrete, the pink stucco wall sticking into my back, and watch the other kids for the rest of the hour.
Chapter 11
“How many turtles?” Mr. Matt crinkles his a
lready crinkly eyes at me from his oversized yellow chair. It’s an hour after school, and I’m at my monthly therapy appointment.
I’m looking out the second-story window, down behind the building. There’s water running there at the bottom of a hill. He calls it a river, but it’s really a concrete runoff ditch. So it’d be a stream or a creek, not a river, if you want to get technical about it.
Though it’s totally man-made, there are plants and turtles and fish as if it’s a real stream and not just water from the occasional rain or the sprinklers from the people up the ridge. I guess nature tries to find a way to survive no matter what.
“I count three turtles.” This is our routine. I tell him how many of each creature I see. I know why he does it—(a) so I’ll relax and (b) because when I’m anxious he wants me to notice things around me.
“Really? I only saw one yesterday.” Mr. Matt cranes his head over his desk to look.
“There are three today.” I sit on the blue couch and pick up the red stress ball and begin squishing it.
“How’s school?” he asks. I look up at him, taking in his dreads neatly pulled back with a colorful blue-and-white scarf, his pressed khakis, his spiffy brown shoes.
I shrug. What am I supposed to do, give him a complete rundown of everything that happened today? Ty flashes into my head and I give him the boot. I don’t need to think about him, though every time I have to talk to him I feel like I’m about to be questioned by a judge or something. Instead, I tell him about PE.
“You tried it.” He nods with a smile. “That’s something to be proud of.”
I shake my head, unable to get out all my thoughts through my mouth. I don’t tell him about how what I feel and what the doctor said don’t match. Or about Ty or the other kids.
“It was always Zelia who encouraged you at school. How are you doing with her absence?” Mr. Matt asks.
I shrug again. “It’s still weird. I mean, I talk to her on FaceTime or Skype. But it’s not the same.” I don’t explain how it feels like I’m nothing without her. Like she was the engine in my car. And how, with her new pink-and-blue hair and her theater, she feels like a totally different person with a different life.
“Friendships can change with distance.”
I swallow. Ours wasn’t supposed to. We were supposed to go to college together. Live next door to each other. Go to the retirement home together. “I guess.”
“It’s important to allow your friendships room to evolve. Be open and supportive.”
I squish the squishy ball and tune him out. I don’t come here to be lectured. I can get that at home.
“How do you feel about the change, Ava?” He crosses his legs, waiting for me.
I don’t want to talk about Zelia anymore. Last time I was here, right after school started, I spent the whole session crying about her and felt awful afterward. I change the subject.
“I might have made a new friend.” I tell him about Cecily, and how she asked me to do improv.
Mr. Matt’s eyes widen and he almost jumps out of his chair. “Shut the front door!” he nearly shouts, and I roll my eyes at his corniness. “Improv? That’s great!”
I look at my fingernails, thinking of improv and how it made me want to run away and do more of it at the same time. “I don’t know if I’ll go back.”
“It’ll be good for you, Ava,” Mr. Matt says. “Do you know that there are improv classes for anxiety? I’ve only seen them for adults or I would’ve sent you.”
I sigh impatiently. I don’t care if a billion people do improv for anxiety.
“What’s the worst that can happen?” Mr. Matt counters. That’s his favorite question.
“I go there again, and Cecily ignores me, and they all ignore me because they secretly hated me and were only being polite the first time.” I move my shoulders up and down.
“Then you don’t have to return.” He leans back and looks at me. “You’re good at making up stories.”
I nod, wondering what his point is. “So I’ve heard.”
“But you tend to make up negative ones—you think of all the bad things that could happen. However . . .” He widens his eyes again. He’s got very expressive eyes. “It’s just as possible that the stories could be positive. Things could end well. So why not make up positive stories about what might happen?”
This hits me like a small punch to my gut. I grunt. “I guess I’m wrong, then.”
“You’re not wrong, Ava. Just tell me—what’s the best thing that could happen?”
I know what he wants me to say. That I’ll have a great time. Everything will be sunny and full of rainbow goodness. I try to make my mouth form the words, but suddenly it seems there’s a brick wall between my brain and my tongue.
I get up and go look at the turtles instead of answering.
Chapter 12
I try as hard as I can to be invisible. It’s our second improv class, and the other kids are sitting up front in the theater. I sit in the sixth row. Nobody notices I came in—they all have their backs turned, so they would have to completely swivel around to see me.
I bite down on a hangnail, rip it off. Exactly the thing Zelia told me not to do. Zelia’s into manicures—her specialty is leopard spots. “How you treat your nails gives me anxiety,” she’d say. But no matter how many leopard spots Zelia painted on my nails, I just couldn’t keep from chipping or peeling them within a day.
Now my nails haven’t been painted since she left. I sigh a little. If Zelia were here, I wouldn’t be sitting alone. She’d be telling me how these kids really feel about me because I can’t seem to figure it out.
Just then, a man and a woman in what Dad calls “business casual” dress (tan pants and button-up shirts) walk into the theater. The man has a buzz cut and looks like he’d always play an FBI agent in the movies. The woman has what my brothers call the can I talk to the manager? face, like she’s permanently unhappy with life and wants to complain about it to someone. She glances around the theater as if we’re inside a dumpster in a back alley. Her makeup is perfectly done and kind of heavy, like the ladies who work at the cosmetic counters inside department stores.
I dislike both of them right away, though I don’t know why.
Miss Gwen stops them at the doorway. “Can I help you?” she asks in a low voice.
“We’re from the Brancusi Group, out of New York,” the woman says, smiling. “I’m Brett Rosselin.”
I sit up straight. The developers are here. I turn my head so I’m not looking at them directly, like a spy.
“We’re here to invite you to one of our community forums.” The man hands Miss Gwen a flyer. He doesn’t introduce himself. “There are two different dates. The first one is an informal meeting here in Navegando Point, and the second is a public hearing at the Port of San Diego in November.”
Miss Gwen folds it in half without glancing at it. “We already got an eviction notice. What difference does it make?”
Brett, like some kind of robot mannequin, doesn’t blink. “I’m sure we can help you find a spot within our new development.”
“In between Gucci and Prada stores?” Miss Gwen sets the paper on the chair, and looks back at them with a tight smile.
“Listen.” Brett gets closer to Miss Gwen. “You can tell the owner of the theater that we can work together or apart. We want to work together.”
I stare at the floor. Weird that she’s saying she wants to work together, but somehow it sounds like a threat.
Miss Gwen wrinkles her nose. “Well, you can tell your manager that when he stops giving kickbacks to our elected officials, we can talk about what’s fair and what’s not.”
“We don’t do that,” the woman says quickly. “We are completely aboveboard.”
The man takes Brett by the elbow. “Thank you for your time, ma’am.” Brett turns back, her mouth opening and closing as if she wants to say something.
Miss Gwen calls, “Please shut the door after you! Thank you.”
/> I bet they’re not really going to find her a spot “within our new development.” Not in between all those fancy stores. I want to ask Miss Gwen if it’s true, but my throat clams up. My teacher shakes her whole body from her shoulders down and writes a note on her clipboard. “Ugh,” she mutters. Then she notices me. “Ava! What are you doing way in the back?”
“Ummm . . .” My whole body heats up. Now the kids turn and look. Something like hurt flashes over Cecily’s face, and suddenly I understand that Cecily doesn’t dislike me at all. My stomach free-falls into the center of the earth. Great. Now Cecily thinks I’m a snob, not wanting to sit with them.
I get up and move to the second row, right behind Cecily. My heart pounds in my stomach. She sits facing forward, listening to Miss Gwen talk about what we’re going to do that day. I have to do something. Make the first move, or she’ll think I hate her. I tap on her shoulder. “Hi,” I whisper.
She flashes her grin over her shoulder. “Hey. Glad you came back.” She reaches a hand out, and I high-five it, and I forget about the Brancusi people for now.
“Kids, I want you to know that the theater has to move out of this space next week,” Miss Gwen tells us. “We’ll be renting a classroom space at a public library to finish the class.”
“Already?” Ryan says. “My mom’s been looking . . .”
“They doubled our rent a few months ago.” Miss Gwen blinks rapidly. “We’re in the process of finding a new space. But I don’t want you to worry! Our community is too strong to just go away, okay?” She stares at us as if she expects a response.
“Okay,” we all chorus.
“Now get up on stage and let’s do some improv!” Miss Gwen claps.
I want to worry about the theater situation, but it turns out when you do improv, all you can do is concentrate on what you’re actually doing. Miss Gwen makes us stand in a circle. She’s holding a small blow-up beach ball striped in red and yellow. “It’s Loser Ball time!” she says, and the other kids clap. I don’t. This isn’t going to be good. I’m terrible at anything that requires hand-eye coordination.
Five Things About Ava Andrews Page 6