by Kara Thomas
Jen wondered how much Mrs. Berry had to do with that. Susan’s mom was always there at the end of practice, always asking how you were doing, offering everyone rides home with a smile that made Jen wonder if she was secretly a psycho.
“What’s wrong, J-Ray?” Juliana flicked Jen’s bun.
Jen moved a hand to her neck, disoriented by the nickname Juliana had given her this summer. “Nothing.”
Juliana’s gaze swept past Jen as quickly as it had landed on her. Jen turned to see what Juliana was staring at. Or rather, who: Carly Amato, who had transferred to Sunnybrook at the end of last year.
Juliana gave Jen’s forearm a squeeze. “Be right back.”
Jen thought of the county fair, only a couple of weeks ago. She was waiting in line for the bathroom trailers, while Susan and Juliana were getting refills on their sodas. Whoever was in the bathroom was taking forever; just as Jen was about to give up and find a bathroom somewhere else, two girls stumbled out, helping each other down the steps.
One of the girls locked eyes with her.
“Hey.” Carly drew out the word. Her friend giggled. Jen forced out a smile.
Carly’s eyes weren’t bloodshot, like she was drunk or stoned. But her pupils were black holes, her spidery lashes blinking manically.
The girls stumbled off. Jen watched them link arms, sidestepping a couple pushing a double stroller. The father looked over his shoulder, shaking his head at Carly and her friend.
They wound up at an ice cream truck, talking to two guys. One was tall and lanky with tanned shoulders and thick brown hair that curled around his ears. The other was shorter, more muscular, blond, his eyes hidden behind a pair of Ray-Bans.
Carly laughed at something the blond guy said, reaching over and giving him a playful shove. Jen wondered how they could be so easy with guys they just met. She thought of the look in Carly’s eyes. The way she’d wiped her nose.
She hadn’t told anyone, but watching Juliana tot off toward Carly, Jen wished she had.
Susan appeared at Jen’s side, squeezing the empty water bottle in her hand as if it were a stress ball.
“When did Juliana and Carly become best friends?” Jen asked.
Susan stopped squeezing her water bottle. “Cheer camp, probably. Why? You jealous or something?”
Jen knew Susan was messing with her, but she still felt a tug in her chest. The past summer had been the first she, Juliana, and Susan had been apart. Susan had forgone two weeks away at USA Cheer for an SAT prep course, while Jen spent most of her days entertaining her younger siblings for ten bucks an hour so her mother could go back to work full-time now that Petey was in kindergarten.
Susan and Jen eyed Juliana and Carly. Juliana said something that sent Carly’s head back in laughter. Jen felt unease settle over her, followed by a primal urge to yank Carly away from Jules.
“I don’t trust her,” Jen said to Susan. What she really meant was Carly scares the shit out of me, but Susan didn’t even seem to be listening. The gears in her brain were probably turning over the homework she had to do when she got home, mentally organizing her binders with those colored tabs Jen and Juliana made fun of her for getting excited about.
“Please, Allie.” Carly’s manufactured baby voice carried across the gym. “Just let us show you!”
“Show what?” Jen found herself across the mat from Juliana, Carly, and a pocket of seniors who had Allie surrounded.
“A swan dive.” Carly’s gaze raked over Jen like she’d never seen her before in her life. “Our group leader at camp taught us how to do one.”
“Well, that was super irresponsible of her,” Allie said. “They’re illegal at the high school level.”
A chorus of just let us try it/it’s not like we’d do it in competition/come on, Allie, pleeeeease from the rest of the girls. Allie, fearing mutiny, held up her hands.
“We can maybe try it after we run through the routine.”
“Yaaaaaas!” Carly grabbed Juliana, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Juju was so good at it.”
Juju? What the hell? Jen tried to catch Juliana’s eye, but the other girls were already crowding her.
“What even is a swan dive?” one of the seniors asked.
“I’ll show you guys,” Carly said. “There’s videos on YouTube.”
Allie sighed in defeat, backed away to let the girls scramble onto the mat. Carly lay down at the head of the pack, holding her phone so everyone could see the video she’d pulled up.
The cheerleaders in the video formed a basket. At the end of the line, a girl climbed onto the shoulders of two of the bases. Launching herself forward into a front tuck, she dove Superman-style and landed in the outstretched arms beneath her.
“This is so dangerous,” Allie muttered, over gasps of Holy shit, that was insane.
Juliana was beaming, sitting cross-legged on the mat with her shoulder touching Carly’s. Jen pictured Juliana sailing through the air as if she weighed nothing, and her stomach knotted up.
She thought of Susan standing behind her, living in a world devoid of basket tosses and swan dives and filled with applications to Brown and Stanford.
Jen thought of her friends slipping away from her and how it felt like she was hurtling toward the edge of something they couldn’t be pulled back from.
When I wake up, my last message is still unanswered.
Be careful of what?? Read at 9:03 p.m.
I rub my eyes and look at the time. I stayed up too late, staring at the screen of my phone, waiting for a response. The faint sound of the shower from the master suite next door means I slept through my first alarm; Tom gets into the shower every morning at 6:30 on the dot.
I throw a clean pair of dance clothes into my gym bag and stuff myself into a pair of jeans. The SUNY Binghamton T-shirt Matt gave me before we broke up is at the top of my dresser drawer; I grab it and guide my arms through the long sleeves, fumbling my way into the bathroom to brush my hair.
Once I’m dressed, I sit on the edge of my bed and unplug my phone from the charger. I don’t have time to be dillydallying, but I pull up my thread with the mystery number and reread the messages. I tried searching the number online last night, but all Google could tell me was that the cell phone was registered in Ulster County—which I already knew from the area code.
I can’t get the owner’s name, but Tom definitely can.
Did. Tom must have had Jen’s phone for years. He would have seen that Jen spoke with someone the morning she died, and he would have used his omnipotent cop powers to look up the number’s owner. If he didn’t already know who it was.
But why did he keep Jen’s phone in the first place? Did he also think there was more to her death than the coroner’s conclusion—a nonsuspicious suicide?
Or is there a more fucked-up reason?
My mother’s voice carries up the stairs. I open my bedroom door and shout back. “What?”
“Rachel is here.”
I glance at my phone; Rachel is ten minutes early, today of all days. I grab my stuff and fly downstairs.
Chaos is waiting for me. Petey forgot about a sheet of math problems in his homework folder, and he flips a shit over his Cocoa Puffs.
“I’m gonna get a demerit!”
Mom is supposed to be at the playhouse early today, but she drops her toast and coffee and sits down next to Petey to help him with multiplying by six. Upstairs, Tom is stomping around, yelling about how Mango peed on the carpet and he’s going to be late for work. The whole scene makes me wish Jen could come back just so I could ask her why she left me with these people.
Even though she’s early, I don’t want Rachel to wait, so I grab my breakfast to go and head outside, travel mug of coffee and a cider doughnut in hand.
Once I’m buckled in, I take a greedy bite of the cider doughnut, feeling Rachel’s eyes
on it.
“What is that?” she asks.
I imagine her breakfast of black coffee and half a cup of fat-free yogurt. The Unofficial Dance Team Diet. “A doughnut,” I say.
“Oh,” she says, like she’s never seen one before. In her cup holder, there’s a water bottle filled with something that looks like pee. Her quarterly cleanse of dandelion tea, cayenne pepper, and maple syrup. It’s supposed to make you drop ten pounds in a week. No doubt this was prompted by the way her chest strained against her new uniform top and the scorching look Coach gave her.
There’s a bus stop at the corner; the driver must be super late today, because a girl is still waiting. An oversized cardigan hangs off her slender figure. She nibbles on her thumbnail, eyes cast down so she doesn’t have to look at us.
Ginny Cordero.
“Pull over,” I tell Rach. “We should give her a ride.”
Rachel’s nose twitches. “Are you sure there’s room…?”
“Why are you being so weird? She’s on dance team.”
“I’m not being weird. I just…” Rachel doesn’t finish her thought. But she pulls up to the curb where Ginny is waiting. I lower my window.
“Hey,” I say. “Do you want a ride?”
“Oh.” Ginny looks at me, then at Rachel. The note of surprise in her voice and the mistrust in her eyes make me sad. Like she thinks this is a trick or something. Us being nice.
“That’s okay,” she says. “The bus will be here any minute.”
My stomach clenches. Is she thinking about what she heard—or didn’t hear—outside Brandon’s office yesterday? Does she think I’m being nice because I want to figure out what she knows?
“Thank you, though,” Ginny adds. “I’ll see you at practice today.”
“Yeah. See you then.” I raise the window. When we reach the light where my street meets the main road, Rachel massages her thumb until the joint cracks.
“You know my dad fired her dad?”
I relax a little; it’s natural Ginny would feel awkward around Rachel. “No. I didn’t even know he worked for him.”
Rachel’s dad owns Steiger’s, the auto body and tire shop in town. The business has been in their family for years; Rachel’s uncle—Bethany Steiger’s father—was co-owner.
Thinking about Bethany makes me think about the cheerleaders, which makes me think about my sister, which makes me think about the unanswered text message. All the thinking makes my head fog. As we pull up to Alexa’s house, I slip my phone out of the side pocket of my backpack.
While Rachel is busy texting Alexa to tell her we’re outside, I text the number again:
Rachel’s voice draws my attention away from my screen. “She’s running late. What a surprise.”
“Well, we’re early,” I say. I set my phone on my lap so I can open my travel mug. While I’m taking a sip of coffee, my phone shimmies.
“Is that Alexa?” Rachel asks. “Is she complaining about me for telling her to hurry up?”
I snatch it up before Rachel can look at my screen. “It’s my mom.”
While Rach is scrambling for her own phone, probably to hound Alexa again, I open the text.
Alexa climbs into the car and wrinkles her nose at the water bottle. “Is it this time again?”
“Leave me alone,” Rach says. “Not all of us can eat whatever the hell we want.”
Alexa rolls her eyes. “I don’t know how that doesn’t give you the shits.”
“I never said it doesn’t.”
Alexa gives the back of Rach’s headrest a playful smack. My phone vibrates; I have another text from the number, even though I never answered their last message.
I try to tune out Alexa’s manic cackling at something Rachel has said while I figure out how to respond. I decide there’s no reason not to go with the truth.
He/she texts back immediately:
Alexa leans forward, resting her chin on my shoulder. “Ooo, who ya texting?”
I wiggle away from her and turn my phone over. “No one.”
“Bitch, do you have a secret lover?”
“Bitch, it’s none of your business.”
“Knock it off,” Rachel says, and even though Alexa yawns and leans back in her seat, I suspect she’s straining to get a look over my shoulder. I slip my phone into my backpack.
We get to school five minutes before the first bell. I head straight for the bathroom, away from my nosy-ass friends, and shut myself in a stall. Grab my phone and reread the last message.
A whole minute goes by. Outside my stall, I hear Mrs. Brown, the hall monitor, doing her daily sweep of the bathroom, barking at the girls by the sink to finish doing their makeup and be on their way; the first bell is about to ring any second now.
I swallow a grunt of frustration and fire off another text:
The bell rings; I stick my phone in my jeans pocket and flush the toilet for show. Hurry past Mrs. Brown and upstairs to my homeroom. As I’m sliding into my seat, my phone vibrates.
It feels like all the air has been sucked out of the room. Out of me. The second bell rings and Mrs. Barnes’s voice comes over the loudspeaker, asking us to stand for the pledge of allegiance.
Anything he says about what? I reply.
“Monica,” my homeroom teacher snaps. “Put the phone away before I take it away.”
I hide my phone in the hem of my shirt, my fingers trembling around it. When I sit back down, I steal a glance at the screen, at the one-word response.
* * *
—
I check my phone every free moment I get for the rest of the day, but my message—What is everything?—dangles there, unanswered. After last period, my phone vibrates.
I whip my phone out, but the text isn’t from him/her: It’s from Kelsey Butler. She says practice is canceled; Coach’s son is sick.
Rachel texts Alexa and me to tell us she has to stay for extra help in pre-calc, which means I have to take the bus for the first time this year. I don’t even know what number my bus is, and by the time I get it from Mrs. Barnes and run out to the parking lot, the bus has started to pull away.
“Goddamn it.” I run toward the bus, waving my hands. “Hey! Wait!”
The bus slows; the door swings open and I hop on, ignoring the filthy look the driver gives me. She doesn’t wait for me to sit down before hitting the gas; I lurch forward, grabbing ahold of the seat next to me.
There’s someone sitting by the window, but the space next to her is free. I plop down and drop my backpack at my feet. I glance at my seatmate; Ginny Cordero is staring out the window, hands folded on top of the messenger bag on her lap.
I tap her on the shoulder. When she turns her head, she doesn’t look surprised to see me, which makes me think the staring-out-the-window thing was her way of avoiding eye contact and hoping I wouldn’t sit next to her.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hi.” Ginny nods at the backpack wedged between my feet. “Do you need more room? I can move over—”
“No, you’re fine.”
“Cool.” Ginny looks down at her hands. Laces her fingers together more tightly. On her left hand is a scar on the knuckle of her middle finger, small as a grain of rice.
The bus hits a speed bump, and we lurch forward. At the back of the bus, two guys are shouting out the window; the driver yells at them to sit their asses down or she’s pulling over.
“It’s nice to have a day off from practice,” I say to Ginny, when I can’t stand the awkward silence between us any longer.
She comes alive a bit at my mention of dance team. “Yeah, it was lucky for me. I forgot my uniform money.”
I don’t tell her that lucky is an understatement. “You’re really good. How come you didn’t try out sooner?”
“I did,” Ginny says. “When we were freshmen
. I didn’t make it.”
I don’t even remember Ginny being there. “You used to do gymnastics, didn’t you?”
Ginny nods. “Yeah.”
“Why did you stop?” I ask.
“My dad— My parents separated and my mom couldn’t afford it anymore. The travel teams are expensive….” Ginny’s cheeks go pink, and I hate that I made her feel like she has to talk about this.
“Anyway,” she says. “I have dance team now.”
She’s wearing the same expression she had when she saw me leaving Brandon’s office. Does she think I’m being nice to her as an intimidation tactic to keep her quiet?
I swallow. “Yesterday, in the cross-country coach’s office…that wasn’t—”
Her voice is gentle as she cuts me off. “You don’t have to tell me. It’s none of my business.”
I know it’s different with her than with my friends, and it’s not fair to compare them. But for once, I’m thankful not to be hounded.
The bus driver slows to a stop at the intersection of Lennox and Wilson Streets.
“This is me,” Ginny says quietly. I move to let her get out.
She catches my eye as the bus is pulling away. Holds up a hand and smiles.
* * *
—
My mother’s car is in the driveway. Twice a week, she leaves work at noon. I head down the hall, stopping short of her office door, which is open. She’s facing the other direction, leaning back in her chair, turning a pen over in one hand. A man’s voice emits from the speaker on the phone cradle on her desk.
“I just don’t think we have the budget for that,” my mother interrupts him.
I tiptoe past her door and up the stairs. Once in my room, I deposit my backpack on my bed and sink into my desk chair, digging my phone out of my pocket. I reread the last messages the unknown number sent to me.