“Ah shit,” I said. Now that I wasn’t in the throes of passion, it turned out that being caught naked would be kind of embarrassing.
But Camden had quickly hopped to his feet and lifted up a wicker trunk that lined the patio. He brought a couple of fleece blankets, wrapping one around his waist and holding the other one out for me. He didn’t leer at me as I got to my feet or stare anywhere I didn’t want him to. He just wrapped the blanket around my chest and we quickly scooped up the clothes from the garden before we caused a scene. I grabbed the half-full bottle of wine, made another sad face at the overcooked food as he turned off the grill, and we scampered back inside.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Then
The girl hated gym class more than anything else. Even by the time tenth grade rolled around and she had made a few more friends, the class still scared the hell out of her.
By now, most of the girls in her class knew there was something wrong with her. Not just in the way she walked but they figured out she had something to hide, too. Some would come out and ask her what happened, others would ask why she always changed in the girl’s toilet stall instead of out in the open like everyone else.
The girl always had an answer. To the first question, she would tell people she was attacked by a shark. Sometimes it was a bear. Other times it was a tragic skiing accident in the Swiss Alps. There was always an exciting story to think up and the girl was a natural at lying. The second question was worse. If she admitted the accident had given her scars, the scars, those burned red ribbons of horror, they would always ask to see. So the girl told the others that she was shy, or that it was against her religion. With high school being the cesspool that it was, that started a rumor about her being a frigid prude. Well, it was better than the one that had her sleeping with Camden McQueen in the ninth grade.
But no matter how used to the questions and the whispers and the looks that the girl got, every time gym class would come, she’d be a barrel of nerves. It didn’t help that in the tenth grade she got Mr. Kane: a tall, paunchy asshole of a man with a balding crew-cut and the desire to make every girl’s life a living hell. Mr. Kane wasn’t even a proper gym teacher—he taught law class to twelfth graders. And yet there he was, barking at young girls to give him push-ups or a few more laps around the track.
The girl hated to run. It wasn’t that she couldn’t, but she was slow and her run was worse than her walk. She couldn’t do sports like soccer or hockey either, anything that could involve impact for her scars or required a lot of balance and quick turns. Consequently, she was always picked last when it came for teams for the sports that she could play.
On that particular day it was a game of soccer in the sun-baked grass field behind the school. As she had done many times before, she went up to Mr. Kane and told him she couldn’t play and would have to sit it out.
And like the many times before, Mr. Kane turned to her with nothing short of disgust.
“Again, Miss Watt?” he sneered over his clipboard.
She swallowed hard and hated how she had to prove her disability when most of the time she was trying to hide it. “Yes. You know I have a disability.”
“Actually, I don’t know. I never received a doctor’s note and you look right as rain to me. I’m a bit tired of these excuses, Ellie. You can walk, right? So you can play soccer.”
She shook her head and stood her ground. “It’s not an excuse. I can’t. I might get hurt and then I won’t be able to walk for days.” Why did he have to be such an asshole? Couldn’t he see from her eyes how sincere she was?
By now a few girls had crowded around him, girls she wished would go back to touching up their makeup on the sidelines. Vicky and the girl now had an uneasy truce, but as the years went on, new mean girls took the reins at the school and didn’t ignore her the way that Vicky did now. These girls loved to tease the girl every chance they got.
Mr. Kane folded his arms over his fat stomach, an almost impossible feat. “To tell you the truth, I think you’re not giving yourself enough credit. Soccer never hurt anyone. You’re just hurting yourself—and your grades—by refusing to play. Maybe you should stop being a little baby about all of this and man up.”
The girls snickered and Mr. Kane looked ridiculously pleased with himself. The girl felt an anger pushing up through her veins like a swarm of malevolent bees.
“I’m not a baby! I have a—“
“A disability, yes we know. But what is your disability? Does it have a name?”