This is what fearlessness looks like, Katie thought. What desire can do.
“God,” Jim Chu muttered. “She’s like a machine. A perfect machine. Do you ever want to open up that head of hers and see what kind of wiring she has?”
“My daughter’s not a machine,” Katie said. “She’s extraordinary.”
“Where’d Dad go?” Drew whispered.
Touching her ribs, the phantom bruise from Devon’s phantom kick, she peered out to the double doors, but Eric was gone.
Back down on the floor, Devon was waving up at her, her face streaked white, those dark eyes. A face ghostly and exultant.
Mom, she seemed to be calling out. Mom, I did it!
She was smiling.
“Twenty-seven years ago, when Tina and I opened BelStars,” Teddy began, assembling everyone at practice’s close, “it was basically a garage. We had to drag big fans across the concrete to keep the girls from fainting. Well, to keep me from fainting. Eventually, we moved to a church basement with a swamp cooler, then an old ballroom with warped wood, three floors in a warehouse. All before finally breaking ground a decade ago on what is now a state-of-the-art facility. And you may have noticed something about this facility. Look up.”
All eyes lifted upward, to the suspended light banks and timber beams and far beyond.
“You may think you see a ceiling,” Teddy said. “But your eyes deceive you, my friends. There is no ceiling. BelStars has no ceiling. No ceiling, no roof, no limits. Your dreams are ours. Our only limits are the skies. The heavens. Am I right?”
The applause came fast and loud, ebullient, a hundred ripped palms slapping, a hundred pounding parent feet in the stands.
“And look at us today,” he continued, turning toward Devon, beckoning her over. “Despite recent distractions—or perhaps because of them, as we return from them stronger, more committed—we are on a miraculous path. Because, after all, today we are in the presence of a future Olympian.”
Head dazed and wobbling like a drunken sailor, Devon walked over to him, his bear arm encircling around her, usurping her, tucking her in his chest’s deep pocket.
The claps and cheers and raised hands, they were everywhere, parents rising, draped jackets slipping from their arms, hats off, cheering and shouts, the girls on the floor yelling, twirling grip tape, unfurling wild streamers of it in the air, Jordan Siefert and Dominique Plonski bent down and hoisted arms full of foam cubes from the pit, hurling them in the air, a ticker-tape jubilee.
That pit, that pit, which had brought Ryan into their world—
And finally, the frenzy nearly at its peak, parents stomping in the stands till they shook, Lacey Weaver ran to the chalk bowl, plunging arms in, lifting them toward Devon, the chalk atomizing.
Covering Devon like confetti, like snow.
Screaming now, all of them crowding her, their hands white, their bodies too. Surrounding her, crushing her. Swallowing her whole.
A panic in Devon’s eyes, Katie was sure she saw it before the swarm of arms and ponytails blocked her view.
Devon, Devon, Devon.
Devon, do it for us. Devon, we’re counting on you. Devon, do it.
Chapter Twenty-One
It was nearly nine o’clock when practice ended. Everyone else, all the boosters, all the girls, were decamping for a chili dinner at Teddy’s house. To mark his triumphant return.
“Aren’t you coming?” Cheyenne Chu shouted at Devon from across the parking lot. Cheyenne was hopping on her legs like a bunny and Molly was scolding her, “Not on that right ankle, little miss!”
“We’re going home,” Katie said, grabbing Devon’s shoulder. “Right away.”
Devon looked at her, her face darkening.
“What about Dad?”
“Why isn’t Dad here?” Drew said when they got home, drive-through tacos seeping onto the kitchen table.
“He’s not coming home,” Katie said, looking at Devon. They locked in a long, complicated gaze.
“I’m not hungry,” Devon said, running up the stairs before Katie could stop her. “I’m taking a shower.”
“Is it because of what I told you?” Drew asked. “Because Devon’s here. She’s allowed to be here. Because—”
“No. That’s not why.”
“Mom,” he said, “I’ll never tell again. I promise.”
The graveness in his face: someone who’d witnessed horrors and miracles and knew how to endure them.
“Drew,” Katie said, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For everything.”
Everything before, everything to come.
She knew Devon was talking to Eric on her phone. Katie could hear her through the bathroom door. She was in there a long time and Katie could hear her pacing, her voice high and inaudible.
Finally, she came out.
“Mom,” she said, her face marked where the phone had been. Like a stamp, a seal. “You don’t understand. You’ve got it wrong. About Dad. Whatever you think you’re wrong.”
Katie looked at her, waited for more.
Devon’s mouth was open, but she couldn’t seem to make the words come.