Beyond the Point

by Claire Gibson

  “Dani, I must say, I’ve never seen a black person with freckles,” her friend’s mother had said once, as if Dani were a new species at the local zoo. “Where does that come from? You know, in your gene pool?”

  At the time, Dani just shrugged it off and said she wasn’t sure. But if she were asked that same question today, she would say, “Mrs. Littleton, no offense, but I would never ask about your gene pool.” Or, more likely: “That’s easy. One of your ancestors probably raped one of mine.”

  Smiling, Dani would of course add that she was joking. But every joke comes with a dose of truth, and sure enough, when Dani’s aunt had dug into the family history several years earlier, it turned out their great-great-grandmother, Scarlet McNalley, had birthed eight children with her slave owner’s son. That was why light skin ran in the family genes.

  Most people in the community had pigeonholed Dani as a superstar athlete. She couldn’t really blame them, since her most public achievements took place on the court. But when she earned a near-perfect score on the PSAT, suddenly, Dani was being recruited by the Ivy League for her brain even as state schools chased her for her brawn. People kept assuming that Dani was going to UConn or Tennessee. But that’s what made today so exciting. Because while everyone in the community thought they knew where this shooting star was headed, they were wrong.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  “Open up, D!” her brother shouted. “I’m going to wet myself!” Opening the door, Dani stared straight ahead at her little brother, dressed in long khaki pants and a maroon shirt, the uniform for the arts school he attended. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “I don’t really have to go. Mom just said to—let me see if I can do this right.” Twisting his face and sticking out his hip, Dominic pointed a finger toward his sister and turned his voice into his mother’s. “Get your ass out the door or you’re going to be late!”

  Wrapping her little brother’s head under her arm, Dani rubbed his cranium with her knuckles until his glasses nearly fell off. “Well why didn’t you say that, bro?”

  THE COURSE OF her fate had changed last fall, when a thin brunette woman arrived at the Lincoln High School gymnasium. Though she hid in the shadows, the woman’s tall and thin silhouette was the picture of pure authority. Her dark hair was sliced with streaks of silver and cut short for easy maintenance. Close-set blue eyes with raised eyebrows made her look strangely alert. Her nose was small and upturned, softened by rosy lips and a quick smile. The femininity of her facial features was offset by the rest of her body: ungraceful and bony arms and legs mimicked the sharpness in her fingers. She was a beautiful woman, but intense, for sure. A hunter.

  Unlike other university recruiters who’d leave halfway through practice, Catherine Jankovich stayed to the very end, through conditioning. When she stepped out of the shadows and introduced herself as the head women’s basketball coach at West Point, Dani was impressed by her stature.

  West Point. Standing in front of the coach, Dani racked her brain to remember how she’d heard of it before. Eventually, a picture from her AP history textbook surfaced in her mind. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington had chosen West Point as a strategic position during the Revolutionary War. A hillside overlook onto a narrow hairpin turn in the Hudson River, West Point was the perfect position from which to capsize British ships as they tried to navigate north from New York City. Against her better judgment, she was intrigued.

  “West Point?” repeated Dani. “Is that a high school?”

  “No. It’s a college,” the coach said.

  “They have a women’s basketball team?”

  “Would I be here if we didn’t?” the coach said, setting her jaw slightly. “I know you’ve got a lot of other colleges trying to get you to pay attention to their programs, Dani. And that’s great. You deserve those choices. You’ve earned them. But I happen to think you need to go to a school that will serve you athletically, academically, and personally. West Point is not exactly a normal school. But I have a feeling that you’re not necessarily a normal girl.”

  That in itself might have been enough to convince Dani to pack her bags and buy a pair of combat boots. But when the coach explained how West Point operated, Dani felt transfixed. An interested applicant couldn’t just apply—she first had to interview with her congressman or senator to receive a nomination. With that nomination in hand, an applicant could send on essays and transcripts and SAT scores to West Point’s admissions office. But even then, only 10 percent of applicants were accepted. Of those, less than 15 percent were female. As a university, West Point had a reputation for excellence, and its students went on to leadership in business, military, and government sectors. It wasn’t a normal school. It was better.

  Coach Jankovich had insisted on flying her in for an official visit, and three weeks later, when she stepped on campus, her decision was made.

  That day, the Hudson River was like a long glittering road, reflecting mountains on the east and granite on the west. Gray stone buildings towered over a green parade field, oozing with history and dignity. The campus teemed with handsome, athletic students in gray uniforms walking to class with full backpacks and square jaws. There were kids of every race, and girls like Dani, who didn’t seem to mind that they were wearing the same uniform as the guys.

  Dani’s mother had never been the type to cut out newspaper articles about Dani’s successes. Her ribbons and trophies had been lost or thrown away, not displayed around the house. “Let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth,” was Harper’s favorite proverb, a biblical reminder to her precocious daughter not to become a braggart. But walking around campus at West Point, Dani met the gaze of every cadet that passed her by, and saw in their eyes a familiar self-assuredness, like she was looking in a mirror. Here, confidence wasn’t a quality to hide; it was essential to survival.

  For twenty-four hours, a sophomore on the basketball team named Sarah Goodrich showed Dani around, answering her questions and introducing her to everyone they passed.

  “What’s it like playing for Coach Jankovich?” Dani asked, right when they started walking to class.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t played for her yet,” explained Sarah. “You know, this is her first year. You’re her star recruit.”

  With dark black hair, fair skin, and striking green eyes, Sarah looked like Snow White in a military uniform. Over lunch, she told Dani that she was one of five siblings who had all attended West Point, and that even though she’d been recruited by a different head coach, she would have played for anyone, just to say she played at Army. A psychology major, she planned to be an intelligence officer in the Army after graduation.

  “But that’s still two years away,” Sarah said knowingly. “A lot can change in two years.”

  At other colleges, kids wore pajamas to class. Here, they wore “as for class”—a uniform of dark wool pants, a white collared shirt, and a flat wool cap with a shiny black bill.

  “Then there’s gym alpha,” Sarah had continued, counting off the uniforms on her fingers. “Gray T-shirt, black shorts, ugly crew socks. Most of the time, I’m wearing gym-A. BDUs—that’s ‘battle dress uniform,’ and they’re the most comfortable. Then you’ve got full dress gray, which is the whole shebang, brass buttons, maroon sash, big feather on the hat. Sorry, am I going too fast?”

  “Nope,” said Dani.

  “Some girls take their uniforms home to get them tailored, but I don’t care that much. You get over it pretty fast. Looking like a dude.”

  Dani laughed at the casualness of Sarah’s confidence. Her face shined with the kind of dewy skin normally seen in celebrity magazines, and when Sarah talked about West Point, it was like she was in some kind of secret club where everything had a code name. There were so many inside jokes and terms, Dani wondered if she would ever learn them all.

  After shadowing her classes, Dani followed Sarah back to her dorm room, which was about as barebones as any Dani had ever seen. Two single beds sat on opposite sides
of the room, wrapped tightly in white sheets and green wool blankets. Sarah explained that she rarely slept under the covers, since it took so long to make up her bed to regulation standards. Instead, she and her roommate both slept on top of the sheets with blankets they kept stowed in their trunks.

  Two desks held identical government-issued desktop computers, part of every cadet’s incoming equipment. Sarah and her roommate both had wardrobes that housed their uniforms, hung in perfect order, the hangers evenly spaced two inches apart. Everywhere they went, doors opened and people shouted Sarah’s name—like she was famous.

  “Is there anyone here you don’t know?” Dani asked. They were on their way to dinner in the mess hall, guided toward a pair of arched wooden doors by a row of lights and a stream of students. The autumn air felt just cold enough for a jacket, but Dani’s whole body felt warm and alive.

  “That’s just how it is here. Four thousand students isn’t really all that many. You’ll see,” Sarah answered, reaching for the iron door handle. She paused and gave Dani a mischievous look. “You ready to see something crazy?”

  Dani nodded and Sarah pulled the door open, revealing an expansive room of wood and stone. Inside, the mess hall walls stretched thirty feet high and were covered with golden lamps, state and Revolutionary War flags, oil paintings of epic battle scenes, and towering stained glass windows. The hall spanned the length of two football fields and it overflowed with the raucous, jovial sound of four thousand people breaking bread all at once. Cadets were seated ten to a table and there were 465 tables in perfect rows across six wings, likely in the same place they’d been for centuries. Each wing bustled with clinking plates, glasses, and silverware. Steaming dishes passed from one hand to the next, family style. One homemade pie rested in the center of every table, waiting for a knife.

  “Come with me,” Sarah said in Dani’s ear. “We’ve got to get all the way to the back.”

  In the back wing of the mess hall, the noise increased by a few decibels. On the far left, Dani identified the football team: hefty boys nearly busted out of their uniforms and chairs, shoveling food into open mouths. The men’s and women’s lacrosse teams sat on the right, the boys leaning back in their chairs, roaring at some joke, the girls leaning forward, rolling their eyes. Sarah guided Dani toward a sundry crowd of girls—some tall, some muscular, some white, some black—that filled three tables in the center of the wing.

  “Save yourself!” someone shouted from another table. “You’ll hate it here!”

  “Ignore them,” Sarah said. “Of course everyone hates it here. But we love it too. It’s hard to explain.”

  When Sarah introduced Dani to the team, they quickly pulled out a chair for her to join them.

  That’s all it took. An invitation and an empty chair. In that moment, Dani watched her future unfold before her. Wearing a uniform, joining the military? All that was secondary to the things she saw in the eyes of her soon-to-be teammates. They were like her. From that point forward, imagining a typical college, with its redbrick buildings and kids wearing hoodies and jeans, seemed lackluster. Boring, even.

  And so, when she returned to Columbus two days later, Dani canceled every other college visit she’d scheduled. Her parents tried to encourage her to keep her options open, but there was no need to look anywhere else. She’d found her path. Her future existed in the Corps Squad wing of Washington Hall.

  It was just like Coach Jankovich had said. At West Point, Dani could be all of herself. Not just a part.

  DANI SAT AT the center of a table in the Lincoln High School gymnasium, staring at a gathered crowd of parents, students, and reporters. Two football players sat on her right side, hefty and smiling, while two cross-country runners sat on her left, emaciated and frail. Each of the five athletes had a contract and a ballpoint pen waiting in front of them. Dani read the page for what felt like the millionth time.

  I certify that I have read all terms and conditions included in this document . . .

  When she looked up, she saw Mikey Termini, the short, balding reporter, in the front row rubbing the lens of his camera with a cloth. He’d written more stories about Dani’s basketball achievements over the years than she could count, and seeing her smile, he snapped a photo of her, checking the light in the room.

  “So where’s it going to be, Dani?” he asked. “UConn? Georgia?”

  “Ah, come on, Mike. You know I can’t tell you that for another . . .” Dani checked the clock on the gym wall. “Thirty seconds.”

  The crowd laughed. Dani’s parents stood near the back of the gym, their smiles only dimly hiding what Dani knew was a growing sense of dread. They were nervous, understandably. Dominic was seated behind them, his legs crossed in a pretzel shape underneath him, reading a book, as if all this fanfare was beneath him. In the moments that remained between her past and her future, Dani replayed all the reasons she’d made this decision, and all she felt was confidence.

  “Athletes, it’s time.”

  The boys on either side of Dani quickly picked up their pens and scribbled on the page, exactly what everyone already knew they would write. Dan Williams had committed to play football at Auburn. His tie was blue and orange. Tyler Hillenbrand had signed to play for Miami of Ohio—though Dani wondered if he’d ever see the inside of a classroom. The other two, both runners, had pledged to go the distance at Ohio State. Dani waited for the hubbub with the boys to pass. Then she leaned over, pen in hand, and carefully filled in the blank.

  She paused before the waiting crowd. Mikey Termini snapped a photo, sending a flash of light throughout the quiet gymnasium. Then Dani picked up the contract and read the final line.

  “‘This is to certify my decision to enroll at the United States Military Academy at West Point.’”

  A gasp emanated from the crowd, followed by a roar of applause and a whistle from her father—the tallest man in the room, forefinger and thumb in the shape of a circle under his black mustache. Dani smiled, the freckles on her face nearly jumping with excitement. Classmates shook her hand. A line of adults formed around her to ask questions and offer hugs and well wishes. While the boys still had nine months before they headed to college, Dani had to report to West Point for Reception Day on June 29. As she scanned the room from right to left, she tried to etch the scene into her mind, so she could remember it forever.

  If this was her destiny—if this was her fate—then so be it.

  2

  Winter 2000 // Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  Snow fell from a charcoal sky, sticking to the ground and melting on the surface of a hot tub full of teenagers. Underneath the surface, legs and arms tangled, while above it, Avery Adams closed her eyes and swayed to the sounds of Third Eye Blind coming over the radio.

  Wisps of platinum-blond hair curled at her neck, which was encircled by the black strings of her bikini top. The warmth of alcohol inched toward her cheeks and the smell of chlorine seeped into her skin, while inside Kevin’s house, the party grew louder. Though she could have stayed here forever, eyes closed, muscles relaxing in the Jacuzzi, Avery knew she needed to get out before the steam and alcohol went from her cheeks to her head. She was an experienced enough drinker to know when she’d hit her limit.

  As she stood, Avery’s body emerged from the heat into the cold, drawing the eyes of every high school boy at the party. Toned shoulders, slender stomach, muscular legs—she had the body of an athlete, hewn from years sprinting up and down basketball courts, encouraged by the voice of her coach on the sidelines, shouting: “Faster, Avery! GO!”

  She shivered, quickly realizing the difference in temperature between water and air.

  “Hey, hand me one of those,” she ordered.

  A football player named Marcus Jones reached over the side of the hot tub and grabbed a folded towel from a plastic chair. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked as he passed it over.

  “Inside,” Avery explained, then shook her cup. “Time for a refill.”

&nbs
p; “Here,” he said, reaching for her cup. “I’ll get it for you. Stay.”

  “I can take care of myself.” Avery stepped over the edge of the hot tub. Her mother always told her never to take a drink that someone else poured; it was one of the few rules Avery actually followed. “Plus, I wouldn’t want your pruney hands all over my cup, anyway.”

  “These?” he said, raising his palms out of the water—they were large, wide-receiver hands, dark on top and pink on the undersides. “You and I both know what these hands can do.”

  The rest of the guys in the hot tub laughed, while the girls seemed to share a collective sigh of relief that Avery was leaving. Her presence attracted attention from the boys that they hated to share, Avery knew. But she was used to both responses—the attraction and the jealousy. She wavered, sometimes relishing her role as queen bee, and sometimes trying to shrug it off her shoulders, a weight she’d never intended to carry in the first place.

  Ignoring Marcus, Avery wrapped herself in the towel and weaved her way through the warm house, between people dancing. A crowd encircled the dining room table, watching a group of guys who were in the middle of a game of flip-cup.

  “Go! Go! Chug!”

  Avery rolled her eyes. She was so ready for high school to be over. Senioritis felt like sitting in a brand-new car with no gas: all of the promise, none of the horsepower. Kids from her high school talked a big game about going to college out of state, but in the end, they’d all end up at the University of Pittsburgh. The boys would play the same drinking games in college until they were fat and bald. The girls would join sororities and attend themed parties until they gained communications degrees or engagement rings or fetuses—whichever came first. It was sad, Avery thought. So predictable. So convenient. So not her future, if she had anything to say about it.

  She’d seen what the American dream achieved—and it wasn’t happiness. Her mother and father coexisted in their house. Other than attending Avery’s basketball games as a pair, they might as well have been strangers.