Part 19 (1/2)

”You let go,” she says. ”Just like before you learned how to spot.”

Grab for the body, not the limb.

”You had my wrist, and then you didn't anymore. You let go. Like always.”

My head hot, my stomach bucking, I press my napkin to my face. I can't remember the last time I ate anything and I almost wish I'd really eaten that m.u.f.fin. Almost.

”That's not a special dream,” I say. ”Nothing even happened.”

”Everything happened,” she says again, plucking lip gloss from her jeans pocket. ”You know how it works. All will be revealed.”

I try to roll my eyes, and that's when my stomach turns hard, and I have to reach for the napkin. The gagging is embarra.s.sing, but nothing really comes up other than chocolate residue, a muddy slick dripping down my wrist.

”Lovergirl,” Beth says. ”We gotta get you your gunstones back. You're going feather soft. Now that I'm captain again, I'll get you tight. I'll get you good and tight.”

”Yeah,” I say, watching Beth swizzling that gloss wand like a magician. ”How come I'm always the one doing bad things in your dreams?” I say.

She hands me the wand.

”Guilty conscience.”

After world civ, I see Beth again. She's waiting for me outside the door.

”Splitsville,” she says. ”I knew it. I knew something was gonna blow. Coach and Will, c'est fini. c'est fini.”

”Huh?”

”He's not at the recruiting table today,” she says. ”It's just that redhead PFC.”

So fast, I think. I think. So fast. So fast.

”That doesn't mean anything,” I say, turning. But she grabs me by the belt loop. Part of me is glad her morning spookiness is gone, and she's just regular bada.s.s Beth, but another part of me doesn't like all the jump and spark on her.

”I've done recon,” she whispers, so close I can see the dent in her tongue where her stud used to be before she decided tongue rings were JV. ”Bitty PFC says they don't know where the Sarge is. And he's not answering his phone.”

I don't say anything, just spin-dial my locker combination.

”So get this: PFC says sometimes Sarge just AWOLs. And they don't bother him about it, don't report it. 'It's his way,' that's what the scrub tells me. They let it go because he's had some trouble in his life. Something about his wife and a plate gla.s.s window,” Beth says, not quite rolling her eyes.

”So why's that mean he broke up with Coach?” I ask, pretending to look for something in my locker.

”I'm telling you, Papa's got a brand new hag,” she says, whistling a little. ”Who d'ya think? I speculate Mrs. Fowler, Ceramics, always rolling those clay pots with her legs spread so the boys can see.”

”I don't think so,” I say.

”Well, if it was RiRi she'd've posted pictures of it on Facebook by now. I don't think he goes for young trim anyway. And we know it isn't you. you.”

”Who cares, really,” I try, my head blurred.

She pauses a beat, taking the measure of me, and smiles. ”Addy-Faddy, I wonder if that's what you were doing last night.”

”What?” I whisper.

”Comforting our jilted Coach, of course,” she says.

”No,” I say, tapping my locker door shut.

”I have better things to do,” I add, trying to match her crocodile smile, and maybe beat it.

I don't see Coach all day, until practice.

I text her four times, but she never replies.

Six hours of wondering about her, about how she's moving through her day. If she feels the same swampy misery inside of me.

Seeing the s.h.i.+ny brown leaf of Coach's hair from behind, her yoga-taut posture, I'm almost afraid to look at her face. For our eyes to lock and for everything to come pitching forward until I can smell the smell, hear the gurgling aquarium.

What can it be like for her?

But when she turns around-shouldn't I have known?

Her eyes breezing past me, as if we hadn't shared anything at all, much less this.

Oh, the flinty grace, it's stunning. I think it must be pharmaceutical, and I look for the slight drag to her foot, the tug in her speech. But I can't be sure.

All I know is she's got her stunt roster, her purple gel pen with the click-click-click as she ticks us off, roundoffs, walkovers, handstands, handsprings, front limbers.

Tumbling drills, two hours' worth. Best distraction ever.

We do back tuck after back tuck, bounding from standing pike into flips, handsprings. Our bodies bucking, and when I spot RiRi and watch the row of girls, I get a kind of calmness that hums in my chest. The promise of order.

My body, for instance, it can dip and leap and spring and I am as if untouched, no fear flapping behind my eyes can touch my body, which is invincible and all mine.

It's when I'm spotting RiRi on the last turn that I spy Beth, lingering tardily by the locker room door in practice shorts.

It unnerves me, but I brush it off, and instead my eyes catch the flash of hot-pink daisies that sprinkle before me every time RiRi's skirt flips up.

How is it other girls' panties are always so much more interesting than your own, I think.

”Okay, let's see those Scorps,” Coach says.

Everyone groans, quietly. RiRi says she's not nearly ”stretchy” enough today, but she can't do one, a decent one anyway, because you have to be small, small enough to fly. I am, or almost. I was. And I still can do it. The body remembers.

It was Beth who first taught me the Scorpion, her hands on my back leg, lifting it slowly behind me, easing it higher and higher until finally my left foot met my raised-up hand. Until my body became one long line.