“Either you go next time or you go home,” Matt says without turning around. If anything’s guaranteed to piss him off, it’s making a stupid mental error in front of the little kids.
Emery’s eyes meet mine. She looks about as good as I feel, which is total crap. “I’m sorry–”
“You’re too good for this, Emery. How many times have I told you? Let your mind work for you.”
“It’s not–”
“Stop. The more excuses you make, the more you’re overthinking. One.”
“I’m not–”
“Two.”
Matt doesn’t need “three.” Emery goes. She sprints with long, purposeful strides and as soon as she hurdles, I know it’s going to be a good vault. Her feet hit the springboard and her back arches as her hands touch the table. She pushes off, flips and twists once with her body straight, lands with an extra step. I should be happy for her, but it was all inevitable. Matt will shake his head when I don’t go for the full tonight into the pit. But for now he won’t push me as much as he pushes Emery, because neither of us knows what will happen after I lift into the air and twist. That’s the part I’m not sure I want to know.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MY PHONE BUZZES. Picking you up in five minutes, Cassie writes. Be ready.
I’ve spent the last week running to her house after school. We’d go up to her bedroom and sit on her bed, surrounded by the blanket from Peru, the carved wooden statues from Switzerland, and the creepy stuffed animal rat that her father brought back from Australia. She’d ask me stories about school and tell me about her doctors and nurses. While it’s all surface-level–“the doctor was convinced for, like, a full day that I was fishing and I was too out of it to correct him”–I’m glad she’s speaking about it. She doesn’t ask about gymnastics or Marcos, and I don’t bring them up.
With all the zeal she saves for end-of-the-year essay-writing binges, Cass has convinced her team of medical professionals that she’s ready to return to school, the place she hates most. The place that I’m pretty sure was a huge contributor to her stress.
I’m going to wow them, she’d texted me after Juliana, Marcos, and I had left her house, rumbling away in Marcos’s car. I don’t want to be left out of anything else.
Has enough time passed? Is she really ready for this? There’s no opportunity to ask, to express my concerns, because not a minute later, I hear the music approaching.
It feels right to sit beside Cassie on the deep-blue fabric seats, pushing aside the various trinkets she’s collected over the years. The car chimes until she tugs on her seatbelt, the other hand tuning the radio. “Cass, I can do it,” I always say, and she replies as usual, “I got this.”
The radio’s too loud, a cup of iced coffee rattles in the center console, and the only indication that anything’s at all amiss is the slim stretch of eyeliner she applied to each of her eyes. She never wears makeup to school. She says the place isn’t worthy of it.
I wonder where the note is now; if Marcos took it and flung it into the water, or if he’s still carrying it with him. “You’re okay to go back?”
She swings out into the road after the briefest pause at the stop sign. “Okay as I’ll ever be.”
Not exactly reassuring. “I have the chemistry and precalc notes,” I tell her. “We can go over them together.”
She kicks up the volume with her pinkie finger. A guy with a super-strong Long Island accent shouts to us about “Anthony’s Pizza, Great to Meet Ya!” over the radio. “Oh, good. Let’s invite Mr. Riley.”
I roll my eyes, although I have to say that this Cassie–turning up the radio, loading up the sarcasm– feels a lot more familiar than the Cassie at her kitchen table, looking at all of us like we’d conspired to betray her. “How’s therapy going?”
She flips to the next station, then the next, then the next. “Can we talk about something else? I’m sick of talking about myself. It’s all I’ve been doing.” She half-smiles. “Turns out I’m a little fucked up. Who would have thought? So, you and Marcos. Has your dad looked up his GPA yet?”
No, she’s not shaking me off. I’m tired of filtering in bits and pieces from Juliana and Marcos. “What did the doctors say?”
A long, slow exhale. Like if she does it for long enough, she won’t have to answer. “Which one? I guess this is what it’s like if you commit a crime. You talk to different people all day long, telling them the same stories.”
Stories about what? Her fingers tremble slightly as she reaches for the iced coffee, and if I wait long enough, she might tell me something real. Something she’s been avoiding.
“Everyone’s been…really nice. Not judgy.” She hits a song she likes and switches away again. I’ve distracted her. “I had to promise not to try to self-medicate again. Or not to not medicate. That was part of the problem.”
That was the part Juliana had known. “They called the guidance office and my teachers are going to hold my tests for now. Praise Jesus.”
My sneaker nudges the stress ball rolling around on the floor. Instantly, my ankle cracks.
Cassie winces. The sound’s always grossed her out although she’s the one who cracks every single knuckle, ten in a row. “How the hell did you go from zero to sixty in one practice? What’s this noise about competing again?” She’s switched the subject too quickly for me to wrangle it back. “I think this is too much for you.”
It’s the first time she’s asked me about myself since the afternoon Marcos, Juliana, and I went to her house. The questions make me grip the passenger-side door handle because I know that no matter what I say, I’m going to have to defend it. “Like El Pueblo?” I say sarcastically.
“How was that, by the way? See any drug deals?”
“Is that what you say to Juliana?”