I Swear

3. BETH

By the time I got to school my eyes were so red and puffy from crying that they were almost swollen shut. I looked like Mary Alice Splinter that day in eighth grade when she bobbled her approach on the springboard and smacked the vault with her forehead. It was the last practice before the winter invitational, and Mary Alice was our strongest all-around competitor. I remember watching her hold her head and wail into the mats. I stood there, helpless, while the coaches tended to her. The worst part of all was the sickening feeling that we’d already lost before we’d had the chance to compete—like everything was over before it ever started.

I remember feeling helpless as I stood there watching life buzz by around me. All the other girls seemed to know what to do. One went to the school office to get a secretary to call Mary Alice’s mom. Two more went to her locker to get her things. Another helped the coaches apply cold packs and talk to Mary Alice while we waited for the ambulance.

Then there was me. Helpless little me.

I had my growth spurt in sixth grade. It lasted exactly three months. I got my period, grew four inches, and stopped. I will forever be exactly five feet tall. I’m a gymnast chick. I’m tiny. Those girls with no boobs you see on TV, who stand on the balance beam during the Olympics and their knees and elbows look like they’re bending the wrong way? That’s me.

Most of the girls on my gymnastics team will get too tall or too fat or too bored to keep training. Not me. I’m the perfect size and shape. I’ve got NCAA Division I lines. And the scouts are interested.

On that day back in eighth grade, feeling helpless, watching them wheel Mary Alice down the hallway to the ambulance, I made a list in my head of things I needed to do that day. When I got back to class, I wrote them down:

1. Send Mary Alice a get-well card. Or balloons. Or something.

2. Run through floor routine again tonight after practice.

3. Call Mom, tell her I’ll be late because I’m working the floor routine.

4. Make sure red competition leotard is clean.

The list made me feel like I was doing something, like life wasn’t happening around me, or to me. The list made me feel like I was in charge of something in those moments after Mary Alice went to the hospital.

It made me feel not so small.

We lost the meet that weekend in March, but a high school coach from across town saw me compete. Afterward he came up and handed my dad his card.

“Your girl is Division One material, Dad.” When the coach smiled, he had a dimple on one side of his face. “Guy Stevens. Give me a call next week. I’m at Westport High. Best public school athletics department in the Northwest. Our girls have taken the Class 4A championship at state the last three years.”

My Dad thanked him, and then the coach turned to me.

“You got killer moves, little lady. If you can convince your dad to send you my way, we’ll get you in shape for the Olympics.” Later that summer, Coach Stevens invited us to a cookout. “My niece will be there,” he said. “She’s Beth’s age and she’ll be playing volleyball at Westport this fall.”

And that’s how I met Leslie Gatlin.

She wasn’t as petite as I was, but I remember taking one look and thinking how delicate she looked. And tan. She seemed to be spun out of brown sugar and air, like a heavy rain might wash her away completely. Her dad was an a*shole who talked about housing prices and market values without anyone else getting a word in edgewise. Her mom was slurring good-byes when they left that night, plastered on white wine spritzers.

Leslie and I talked about school at first—where she’d gone, where I’d gone—and at some point during that evening, my dad decided that I could change districts and go to Westport to train with Leslie’s uncle. For some reason, I told Leslie about Mary Alice and about the list I made and how the list made me feel powerful and unafraid even in the midst of chaos.

Then we laughed and made a list together. It was a list of silly things that we would never do in high school:

1. Run when we weren’t in a practice or competition.

(It makes you look like you’re not in control.)

2. Let any boy get to second base on the first date.

(It makes you look desperate.)

3. Miss a game, a meet, or a practice for any reason.

(It makes you look lazy.)

4. Drink booze before we were twenty-one.

(It makes you look like a loser.)

We were in the driveway, lying on the hood of her dad’s truck, staring up at the stars. The metal was still warm from baking in the summer sun all day. I asked Leslie how she’d gotten so tan, and she explained that she’d come back from vacation the day before. She told me all about her trip to Cape Cod and the sand and the sun and the sailing.

And a boy named Jake.

Thinking of that night made me cry again, this time harder. My head hurt so badly from the snot and the tears and the pressure that I could barely see.

I pulled up to the rear entrance of the school so I could go in the back door between the gym and the music building. The traffic out front seemed a little crazy and I knew I’d have a better shot of making it to the bathroom to wash my face and put on some mascara without being seen if I went in the back way.

I parked and grabbed my bag and blew my nose one last time. For some unknown reason the sky was clear and cloudless, and the sun was a little blinding for Seattle in the spring. Grateful for the excuse, I kept my sunglasses on and pulled the hood of my sweatshirt up.

I grasped the handle of the heavy back door and prepared to give it the big heave-ho muscle required to open it, but it was surprisingly light to my touch, and I realized too late that someone had hit the crash bar on the inside as I’d taken the handle. The door flew open like it was propelled by an explosive, and Bradley Wyst almost flattened me. He was moving so fast that he knocked my bag out of my hand and my sunglasses went clattering across the concrete.

“Dude! Look where the hell you’re go—” He stopped short when he saw it was me. I stopped and picked up my sunglasses and put them back on without dusting them off, hoping he hadn’t seen my eyes.

“Jesus, Beth.”

“What, Brad?” I stared straight at him, daring him to say a word. It’s a trick I learned with my little brother.

He seemed to be panting. He must’ve run the whole length of the building, from the senior parking lot to the back door. Brad was Jake’s best friend from kindergarten and had been Macie’s boyfriend since freshman year. He was taller than the rest of us, and usually quieter, the strong, silent type who stood at Macie’s elbow during parties, smiling and refilling drinks, happy to let her do the talking. It was strange seeing him in a hurry.

Brad scooped up my bag and handed it to me. “Sorry. Where’s Jillian?”

“Jillian?” I asked. “Macie should know. Isn’t Macie here already?”

He made a sound that wasn’t quite a snort and rolled his eyes. “Oh, Macie’s here all right. Have you seen Jills?”

I shook my head, but he’d already run into the parking lot.

“If you see her, tell her to text me,” he called over his shoulder.

I adjusted my hood again, then took a deep breath and heaved open the back door, hoping that I could make it through the morning crush to the bathroom without having to throw any elbows.

The back hall was deserted.

I stood at the door confused, fumbling to find my phone and check the time. It said 8:20. We had ten minutes until the bell rang for first period.

Where the hell is everybody?

I went into a stall and locked the door behind me. I needed to think for a second—to figure out what I was going to say to Macie. How was I going to keep her from telling everyone that it was my fault? Somewhere buried in those Facebook posts on Leslie’s wall, she must’ve seen the note. When she’d walked out of the bathroom this morning, she hadn’t told anyone else to go to Leslie’s page and post, only me.

That wasn’t a mistake. There are no mistakes with Macie.

The door to the bathroom swung open, and through the narrow space between the stall partitions, I saw two junior girls come in; one of them was crying.

“I . . . just can’t believe . . . she’s . . . dead,” she choked out.

The other one said nothing. She nodded and hugged her friend. I recognized them from the volleyball team.

“I mean . . . how can Macie stand out there and talk to them like she was her best friend?”

“Macie Merrick is a psycho, and she owns Katherine, Jillian, and Beth. You better not let any of them hear you talking like this unless you want to be next in the crosshairs.”

I felt an explosion in the pit of my stomach. The heat raced into my throat and I turned just in time to hit the toilet and keep from throwing up on my bag.

The sound startled the girls at the sink.

The one who wasn’t crying walked over and gently knocked on the stall door.

“Are you okay in there?”

“Fine,” I said. “Ate something weird last night.”

I flushed the toilet and unlatched the door. When they saw me, they froze. I fixed both of them with the stare that had silenced Brad earlier, then crossed to the sinks and cranked a large sheet of paper towel out of the dispenser. I turned on the cold water and gulped several mouthfuls straight from the tap before splashing some across my face with my hands.

I turned off the water, tore the paper towel from the dispenser, dried my face, then walked back to the stall for my bag. I returned to the mirror digging out some moisturizer and mascara. Both of the girls had their eyes trained on me when I looked up, and then quickly looked away.

“I overheard you say that Macie was talking to somebody?” I asked them, studying my reflection, then fishing for eyeliner. “Who was she talking to?”

The redhead frowned. “Um . . . the reporters? Out front? How’d you miss her when you walked in?”

Another day, I might have answered her. I might have asked her name. I might have told her that I came in the back door.

But on this day, I was already in the hallway with my bag.

Running.