Walking past, she thought she heard Hailey say, Is that how you like them now, her voice peculiar. Like little boys. Like that one time when Hailey couldn’t get Ryan on the phone and said to Lacey Weaver, Your mom would tell me, right, if Ryan was screwing that hostess? The one who shakes her tits at him?
(“Mom,” Devon said, “that’s how she talks when no adults are around. She’s so…nasty.”)
Then Ryan came to practice again. He stopped her at the vending machine. He said he was sorry if Hailey had made her uncomfortable but not to worry about it. It was Hailey’s way. She’s always been jealous as a cat, he’d said with a shrug.
But that made Devon worry about it more. And something about the way Hailey had started looking at her, watching her on the beam, even in the locker room.
Then, last Friday, she was running, shin splints aching, in Hood Park, just off Ash Road, and Ryan spotted her, gave her a ride home.
That night, she got the first text.
I know whats up.
I know u were w him last nite. I could smell yr disgusting wrist grips in the car.
And then more came, and they got nastier.
Gym bitch, nasty whore. You’ll get yours.
(“Mom,” Devon said, “I never answered any of them. I stopped reading them. I’ve heard things about Hailey. How she’d beaten up girls. Crazy stuff.”)
The next night, Saturday, she was at Lacey’s birthday party when Hailey called.
At first, she was really nice, like the before-Hailey, the one who brought her famous funfetti cupcakes on birthdays and snuck them out for secret frozen-yogurt runs in her little purple car. She said that she was sorry about any bad feeling between them and wanted to explain in person and would Devon consider meeting up, to talk?
But the more she spoke, the stranger Hailey sounded. Her words seemed to stretch out and then speed up, and her mouth seemed too close to the phone. It gave Devon a bad feeling, and she said she couldn’t see her, she was at Lacey’s party. She didn’t even have a way to get there.
Something told her not to go. It felt like a trap.
But then Hailey said, It’s because you’re seeing him tonight, isn’t it? He goes to you after me, doesn’t he. He puts his hands on you and your little-boy body. Do you even have tits? Do you even have pubic hair? That’s how he likes them. Freaks with a freak foot.
Devon hung up.
But all night, Hailey’s voice kept needling her brain.
It was like in a horror movie, when a person you are very close to, like one of your family, changes. A vampire, a zombie, voice dropping low, eyes murderous.
Like how Grandma was that time. Right after they started the dementia meds. You’re as dark as your dad, she’d whispered as Devon leaned over to hug her powdery bones. You’re trying to murder me.
“And then the next day, we all heard about Ryan…the accident,” Devon said to Katie now, grabbing for her pillow, twisting it. “And the calls started, and more texts. So Dad said to block her.”
Katie looked at her, trying to unravel it all. Her daughter snared in such big drama, a seamy love triangle with an unhinged young woman, and Katie never knew it. Freaks with a freak foot. It was too awful.
“Then, today,” Devon said, sitting up to face Katie. “Mom, she must have been hiding in the locker room. She must’ve been waiting for me behind one of the shower stalls. If you hadn’t come…”
There was a pause, Devon’s chin shaking slightly.
“Oh, Mom,” she finally said, turning her face away. “The way she looked. Mom, she wanted to kill me.”
It was a thing you never expect to hear from your child. They had a long moment where Katie wrapped her arm tightly around Devon’s hard, hewn shoulders and neither said anything.
“What happens now?”
“Your dad and I will take care of it. She will never get near you again.”
“Should I have told the police?” Devon asked.
Katie looked at her, the snarl of panic over her eye. “We’ll figure it out.”
“I didn’t want to tell,” Devon said. “I mean, that’s Coach T.’s niece, you know?”
“Oh, Devon,” Katie said, feeling a rush of heat under her eyes. “That’s very generous of you. After everything.”
Sometimes, in the blur and burr of Devon’s extraordinary upbringing, she worried about how Devon would ever learn people skills, social skills, empathy even. But here it was. Devon thinking foremost of her beloved coach. Always thinking of the burdens of parents and parent figures everywhere.
“But,” Katie said, taking a breath, “if anything goes further, we might have to talk to the police about it. This might be evidence.” Evidence. The word heavy on her tongue.
But Devon just bit at her thumbnail like she did before a floor routine. She’d learned long ago how to beat down her fear.
“Are you mad at me, Mom?”
“No,” she said. “No, Devon. None of this is your fault.”
Devon looked at her, big-eyed and immaculate, thumbnail still between her teeth, looking for all the world like Devon at age eight. Or like Devon at thirteen, still carrying that plush tiger in her travel bag, sleeping with it between her legs.