Matt makes me point my foot in all directions–up, down, left, right, “north by northwest,” he says and Emery chuckles, so I finally offer up a tiny smile to make him quit trying to make me feel better.
The little ones walk on their toes across the beam, arms held high above their heads, still staring. “Focus, ladies,” Vanessa snaps as one wobbles. Erica whispers to Nicola, who shakes her head. Even though they weren’t at Regionals that day, I know the question is on their minds. On a scale of one to broken, how bad is it this time?
I smile wider, ignoring the throb in my ankle, until they look away.
When Matt’s finally satisfied, I’m left alone with the blue gel icepack. Amateur status. Give me plastic bags of ice cubes. That’s the way to numb this.
By the time my teammates leave the floor and swing through their bar routines, I’m still icing. When I try to stand, Matt gestures for me to sit back down.
Great practice. Glad I took a chance and failed, the way I always do. Whatever resolve and belief I’d mustered at the beach seems to have drifted away with low tide.
The chains holding up the bars rattle as Emery releases the bar, flips twice, and lands with a large lunge. And winces. She nudges off her grip to examine her palm, and I can see the blood from over here. “Boo. Party foul.”
Nothing better than having a callus explode. My hands have pale-yellow circular scars marking the places where the skin has torn open.
“Let me see!” Erica runs over.
“Erica, you’re so gross,” Nicola groans. Emery flicks the flap of skin in Nicola’s direction, making her squeal.
When it comes to rips, you wrap up your hand with tape and get right back on the bar. Rolled ankles, you wait a little longer. Torn ACLs, that’s a whole other kind of waiting.
“Hey, Matt?”
I look up because although I’m not Matt, it sounds as though Emery’s talking to me.
She toys with a roll of tape in one hand, her lips twisting as she contemplates her next move. “I know we still have half an hour left but I have this huge midterm tomorrow…”
“Go ahead,” says Matt. “Savannah, you take care, okay?”
I smile. I wave. I hop away on one foot, shooing off offers of help. I am the model of good injured behavior. Even Vanessa cracks a smile when Tiana runs over to hug me good-bye.
I want to hide in a corner and never come out.
WE SIT ACROSS from each other on the stiff McDonald’s plastic chairs, a veritable feast in front of us. “To Vanessa.” Emery holds up a French fry. I brandish one of my own.
“To the diets of champions,” I say.
“How’s your ankle, for real?” Emery mumbles between bites of cheeseburger.
I’ve got my foot up on the adjacent chair. “Not that bad.”
“But.” She twirls a fry, gesturing for me to continue.
“I know it’ll be fine by the weekend.”
“But.” The fry comes dangerously close to my face.
I bat it away. “But…it sucks.” I drop my eyes and examine the swelling under the fluorescent lights. A little puffy around the knob of my ankle and a little bruised.
She pokes at my cheek with the fry. “Before you came back, I almost quit.”
“Why the hell would you do that?” I all but yell. “You’re God’s gift to South Ocean.”
She laughs so hard that she nearly knocks over the tray. “Can I use that on my college applications?”
“You’re powerful, graceful, good at competing– you’ve got everything.” Everything that I’d once had.
“Shut your mouth, Gregory. You’ve got it backwards. Did you know I cried when they took you to the hospital at Regionals? The judges had me go last on floor because I was a mess.”
“Then you won.” Of course. It’s my turn to jab her with a fry.
She rolls her eyes. “Then I went to Nationals, came back, and half the team was gone. Don’t get me wrong, the twins are darling, but they’re kids. We did twoa-days three times a week. Worst summer ever. Plus someone kept saying she’d stop by and never did.” This French fry of choice is smothered in ketchup. “Mom kept suggesting that I switch to Express.”
“No,” I protest. “She knows better than to send you to hell itself.”
There are some things in life that change. The robot army of Express Gymnastics, with identical hair and identical perfect toe points and leaps, is not one of them. After every competition, I’d stand nearby as Emery’s mom hugged her and said, “Watching all these skinny kids makes me crave wings,” to which Emery would answer, “How hot and where?”
She nods in agreement. “There’s no way we’d be able to afford a gym like Express. Also, I love Matt and even Vanessa’s kind of a real person when you’re alone with her at a meet for long enough.”
“Who would have thought?” I swipe the fry before she can jab it at me again, popping it in my mouth with one bite.
“Then I saw you flipping on trampoline, not caring that Coach Barry was grilling you the whole time,” she says. “You were doing it for you, and even though this college bullshit is going to give me an early death, I’ve been thinking about that ever since.”
“About that.” I poke at the bottom of the cardboard container for the burnt bits. “I e-mailed Englehardt from Ocean State.”
“You did?” She nearly launches herself from her chair. “Was he pumped to hear you’re back in action?”
“So pumped that he can’t put it in words.”
“Oh.” She slides back down. “Shit, I’m sorry. I’m telling you, his assistant coach? No sense of humor. None. What about Owego? Barry was all about you.”
“You mean he was all about you. He probably wants me to bait you to go to Owego.” It’s not supposed to sound bitter, but the force of the words makes me clamp down on my tongue.
Emery tugs out her phone. “They have some awesome vaulters. Honestly, I’d think about it if there was even a chance they could offer me money.”
“What about an academic scholarship?”
“Ha! Hilarious. Unless you want to lend me some of your GPA.”
We lean in together as Emery’s zebra-painted nails type in the search query and the video loads. The first girl barrels down the runway, does a round-off onto the springboard, back handspring onto the table, flips over completely stretched out, and sticks the landing. In the background, Coach Barry leaps into the air with his fists pumping. “Great!” he bellows over the sound of the team cheering. Surprised, I am not.
“She’s their leadoff,” Emery informs me.
“That was pretty damn real,” I agree.
Side by side in the chairs that spin halfway and then send you back, we work our way through Owego’s roster. “This girl was the North Carolina state champion on beam.”
Cassie would laugh, call me a stalker with a teasing grin, but this is the kind of sleuthing that I loved to do. Emery doesn’t get bored, either; she finds videos of the Ocean State girls with their stone-faced assistant standing in the background, not reacting to anything the athletes do. She replays one of the videos until it becomes hilarious, adding her own commentary, and as we laugh I realize that my ankle hasn’t so much as twinged in the past half hour.
“This was fun,” she says when we pull up in front of my house. “We should get food tomorrow night, too.”
“Perhaps we should add a leafy green to our meal next time.”
High beams flash twice.
“That sad-ass pickle was totally a leafy green.” Emery flashes her high beams in response. “It looks like you’ve got a stalker out here.”
“Oh, that’s Cassie.”
“Cass! Tell her I say hi,” Emery says heartily. “Is she really friends with that kid Nick from my school?”
“Always Late Nick?” I say automatically. “We know him from working at the beach.”
“He’s the biggest douchecanoe I know. Text me about your ankle tomorrow, okay?”
As I limp over to Cassie�
��s window, she leaps out of the car. “What’d you do?”
I roll up the leg of my sweatpants to show her the damage. “The usual.”
“Holy crap, Savs!” She squats down and pokes at the swelling, withdrawing her hand when I flinch. Her fingernails are bitten down to the quick. “It looks like a freakin’ softball.”
Irritation mixed with despair rises up in me. It’s true that my ankle’s huge, but it’s a sprain; it’s just how they work.
“You need to stop doing this to yourself.” Her voice drops, becoming soothing. “You don’t have to prove anything.”
I do have something to prove–that I’m better than, braver than what happened at Regionals.
“You’re going too far again,” she says when I don’t answer. I don’t want to talk about this. I want to wake up tomorrow and have all of these aches and warning cracks be a memory. “Like when you’d research those girls from all over the country. You were so worked up over things you can’t control. It took over your life.”
“I know.”
She rubs my shoulder. While it’s a gesture I feel stupid offering up, she does it expertly. I’ve required a lot of shoulder rubbing in our years of friendship. “All I’m saying is, if you want to stop, nobody will judge you.”
I will, a tiny voice says. She’s right, though. She’s cheered for me when I won the all-around and sat beside me in the emergency room. If anyone has a well-rounded outside perspective, it’s her. Emery’s biased– her body hasn’t turned against her–and Marcos, well, he encourages me but does he really get it?
“What are you doing here?” I bite down on my bottom lip to fight off the radiating pain that increases with each step.
She wraps an arm around my back, hoisting me up. “I had a craving for lab reports and Slurpees. Mostly Slurpees.”
Once we’re inside, my mom rushes over with an ice pack. “We can take you for an x-ray tomorrow,” she says, eying my foot like it’ll display a list of what’s wrong if she stares long enough. I grit my teeth.
“It’ll be okay, Mrs. Gregory,” Cassie says. “Savannah said it’s already feeling much better.” I shoot her a grateful look as my mother, with a final concerned glance, leaves the room.
Cass sits next to me with her laptop, analyzing the data we collected during lab. “These things are pointless,” she says while typing approximately three thousand words a minute, all correctly spelled. “It’s so obvious what results they want you to find.”
Deep within the recesses of my gym bag, buried under chalk, grips, and the limbs of the Beast, I dimly hear “Stairway to Heaven” playing. I take a peek. Marcos.
It feels right to sit here with Cassie without bickering or cold words. If I answer, Cass is going to get worked up all over again.
So I let it go to voicemail.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“HERE COMES THE hero,” Juliana says dryly as we stand by Cassie’s locker.
Marcos arrives with Andreas, Rena trailing not far behind. I see an apology in his eyes. Then he sees Cassie, and the look hardens.
A ball of tension settles in my stomach. No better feeling than to have a boyfriend who doesn’t get along with your best friend, despite the fact that he saved her life. I expect him to stay where he is, safely across from our semicircle, making sure that Andreas doesn’t fall over. Andreas is clearly hurting this morning; he has a swollen jaw that makes his smile look like he’s been injected with Novocain. “Mornin’, ladies,” he manages. Rena whacks him gently without missing a beat.
Marcos crosses the circle, leans his chin on my shoulder, and wraps his arms around my waist. I’m immediately engulfed by the warmth of his embrace, the feeling of his heart beating through his thin navy-blue shirt against my back. At the same time, nerves shoot through me. Cassie was right. He didn’t listen to me in the hallway, when I cautioned that jumping in after Andreas could ruin his shot at a scholarship.
Cassie’s eyebrows shoot up. Andreas’s lips twist in a painful smile. Juliana, however, is all business. “You shouldn’t have gone in there yesterday,” she chastises Marcos. “One of these days, somebody’s gonna get into real trouble, and at this rate, it’ll be you.”
His Adam’s apple moves against my shoulder. “Tell Andreas to stop getting in over his head.”
“It’s not just his fault. We all remember your black eye.”
“I already apologized.” Andreas presses an ice pack to his face, shoulders slumped. “Hey, Savannah, can I come flip around in your gym?”
“No,” Rena and Juliana say in unison.
“You guys have no sense of adventure! Come on, you know I’d be a natural.” He raises a bandaged hand. Not so convincing.
Two juniors bump into Cassie and don’t apologize; they’re so caught up in their conversation. Whatever Cassie hears, though, makes all of the amusement leave her face. She crosses her arms, shoulders rolled forward ever so slightly. They must be talking about her.
When she meets my gaze, I raise my eyebrows. Everything okay?
She shakes her head slightly then looks over my head at Marcos. What does that mean?
“You would snap your neck on your first try!” Rena exclaims. “Remember ice skating?”
“We had to sacrifice an entire night to make sure you didn’t sleep through a concussion,” Juliana agrees.
“Practice for nursing school, am I right?” He loops an arm around both of them.
“No art school?” I say.
Juliana snorts, yet there’s the tiniest flash of wistfulness in her face. “I’m not spending all that money for stuff I can do on my own.”
Slowly but surely I’ve become accustomed to spending time with Juliana. Sometimes she laughs at my jokes, although I can’t quite shake the feeling that she doesn’t like me, that I haven’t been fully accepted.
“Tell you what, Andreas,” I say. “If I make it through my competition, I’ll teach you how to flip, okay?”
Cassie’s gaze darts back and forth between us, like she doesn’t know which aspect of this situation to address first.
The bell rings. “See you ladies and Marc later,” Andreas says. “This ain’t over, Savannah!” Even Juliana offers a wave, still laughing at Andreas. As they walk off, I’m bummed that we have to go our separate ways. All of them add something: Andreas’s outrageous enthusiasm and ego, Rena’s feistiness, Juliana’s no-nonsense attitude (even when it’s aimed at me).
“I’ll see you later?” Without waiting for a response, Marcos spins me around and leans in. My heart starts pounding. I say a little prayer that Dad won’t walk by and move to meet him halfway.
Over his shoulder, all of Ponquogue watches us.
Jacki Guzman whispers to Blake Rogan. Tommy Brown nearly gives himself whiplash as he does a double take. Roberto Aguilar and Preston Bolivar cease talking to stare at us.
Of course people know. Hell, my father knows. After yesterday, though, there’s something beyond glance-and-move-on in their looks. In a flash, I remember Marcos’s T-shirt sliding out of my grip, the way he kept moving despite me calling out to him as he ran into the center of the fight.
This is the last thing Marcos needs–all of these eyes on him, the whispers, the clandestine elbows.
My eyes flit to Cassie’s, looking for support or confirmation or anything, really, but her eyebrows are straight up in surprise–seriously, Savs?
And I cough so that the kiss hits my cheek, not my lips.
“YOU HAVE TO talk to him,” Cassie says as we run laps around the soccer field. In spite of the chilly air that turns to smoke each time I exhale, I’m not struggling to breathe. Praise heavens or some kind of injury karma I’ve built up for good behavior, my ankle feels better. “You’re the only person he’s going to listen to.”
“I tried.” Today Andreas is stuck on the sidelines. Marcos jogs in place to chat with him despite Coach Doroski blowing his whistle threateningly. “I told him to stop yesterday. He didn’t.”
“In keeping with my
most-hated phrase, how did that make you feel?” Cassie’s long legs take one stride for three of mine.
“Scared,” I admit. The grass is slippery beneath my sneakers. We had frost last night, which has since melted into a glossy moist sheen over the field.
“I could tell. You had the same look on your face when he tried to kiss you.”
I cringe. “Was I that obvious?”
“To me, yeah. Marcos, I don’t know how well he knows you.” For several strides, she’s quiet. “You need an ultimatum.”
I don’t like the idea of an ultimatum. It feels heavy, like other choices I’m not willing to make.
“People like Marcos see what’s immediately in front of them,” Cass continues. “As soon as he sees someone in trouble, he doesn’t slow down to think about what his options are. You have to give him options.”
As we come down the straightaway, Andreas calls, “Looking fine, ladies! Keep it up!” Marcos rolls his eyes and extends his hand for a high-five. I slap it on my way past him, both of us smiling.
“You guys are adorable; I’ll give you that,” Cass says when we turn the next corner. “He’s going to be devastated when you dump him.”
My stomach drops. “Who said anything about dumping?”
Her Wiser-Than-You voice is back in full force. “Either he keeps you, or he keeps up his misguided hero act. He can’t have it both ways.”
“Why not?”
Cass sighs, emitting a long puff of smoke. “I know you really like him, but this is for his own good and yours, too. Wouldn’t you feel better knowing he’s not going to fly off the handle because Andreas gets caught up in dumb shit of his own making?”
I don’t want to end things with Marcos. The thought makes my heart hurt. On the phone with him as he scrolled through gymnastics programs all over the country, his genuine excitement at trying the jumps I showed him, the way his breath caught and his jaw clenched just before kissing me in the car…
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