To understand her reasoning, you have to kind of dig deep into the heart of championship athletes—the kind of humans who will do anything to win. The kinds of creatures who will, I don’t know, tamper a balance beam in order to concuss the only other girl on the team who might beat you. The head and heart of those kinds of competitors are tricky places and tend to be particular. And prone to superstition.
The superstitions of top-level athletes? They’re funny. I’m sure you’ve heard of them. Like Serena Williams, apparently, won’t change her socks during an entire tournament. They must stink to high heaven after her last game, but to her, I guess it’s worth it. Then, there’s Michael Jordan. He always wore his University of North Carolina shorts under his actual NBA shorts when he played, for good luck. When you think about the things we athletes do for “good luck,” we seem like superstitious freaks, but it’s honestly the only way we know how to operate. We create false “rules” around something, and then if we don’t follow those rules—we fall apart. We don’t perform well. We lose.
And we live in a world where losing feels like death to us.
So when Poppy started the rumor around school that I was “cursed” or synonymous with “losing,” I guess everyone kind of latched onto it, because the idea of ignoring it was too scary. What if they accidentally were “okay” with me and then didn’t make it to Nationals? What if they smiled at me in the hallways and then they were kicked out of Denver Athletics? Too much was riding on this. Besides. Poppy was queen-bee of the school, and the fact that she hated me was enough of a reason to avoid me. Nobody wanted to touch me with a ten-foot pole.
When Chloe first told me about it that first night on my bunk bed, I kind of laughed it off. “What do you mean? So, Poppy is just telling everyone I’m bad luck? And that they should avoid me? And they believe her?”
Chloe nodded. “This is kind of serious, Rooney. Poppy is still the queen around here, and she did get the top scores at the mid-semester competition.”
“Only because I literally didn’t get to compete!” I cried out. Anger swirled in my stomach. “God, this is fucked up.”
“I just don’t want you to be surprised when everyone at school ignores you,” Chloe explained. She sighed and stuck another Twix into her mouth. “God, these are good.”
“Chloe. Are you going to ignore me?” I asked.
Chloe frowned. “No way. Fuck no. I wouldn’t do that.”
But there was a tiny flicker of doubt behind her eyes. I knew we, as athletes, we're all susceptible to this feeling, and my heart thudded with fear. I reached forward and grabbed her hand. “Chloe, I swear. If I do anything to make you slower at swimming, I’ll get the hell out of Denver Athletics, okay?”
Chloe shook her head softly. “No. You’re not going anywhere.”
We both glanced down at the computer. A Walk To Remember had been completely forgotten, just a frozen Mandy Moore in the middle of a weep-session. I reached forward and clicked play, and Chloe and I sat back with our sugar-feast. I could tell we both still stirred with sadness, fear and worry about whatever would come next.
But nothing could really prepare me for that Friday. Friday was the first day I was cleared off of bed rest and allowed to attend practice and school but not fully participate. I darted out of bed at the god-awful hour of five with Chloe and had a funny pang of nostalgia for those lost hours at the hospital when my body and mind had been allowed to rest. Chloe and I ducked into the hall and then parted ways outside in the chilly early-morning air. It was now late-October, and the aura of everything was almost sinister, spooky. The trees had cast strange shadows across the lawn, and the air smelled earthy.
“Good luck today,” Chloe said. She gave me this really sad look like she was looking at me for the last time.
“Right. The whole ‘bad luck’ thing,” I said. “I think, after everything, I can take care of it.”
“I know. I just worry. Like a mom,” she said and shrugged her shoulders.
The walk to the gymnastics auditorium felt strange like I hadn’t made the trek in years, rather than just a week. I had my gym bag over my shoulder, despite basically expecting a few hours of sitting around and stretching. I was so unused to just sitting around doing nothing that I’d started to feel like a blob of nothing, some muscle and a little bit of fat, about to just lay flat on the earth to let nature take me back over.
When I entered the gym, all the girls were already there, seated in their normal circle and pressing their hands over their outstretched toes. The second I walked in, everyone stopped talking, and the air felt hollow and stretched out. Coach Jonathon wasn’t anywhere to be seen yet.
Poppy was seated on the far end of the circle, faced toward me. Her eyes pegged mine immediately, and she gave me this wholesome smile. I knew exactly what her game was. I marched up to the girls and gave Poppy a huge grin.
“Girls, hey. I’m so glad to be back,” I said. My voice echoed out across the gym.
“Oh. She’s so glad to be back.” Poppy mimicked my voice back to me. Her eyes flashed. “Who wants to tell her how glad we are to have her back. Anyone?”
Nobody brought their heads up to look at me. I felt a huge distance between us like I was on the other side of the Grand Canyon calling for them.
I flashed my head to the side and spotted the now-fixed balance beam. “Wow, it looks like they really put that thing back together again,” I said. “So weird that it just broke like that. Isn’t it, Poppy?”
“Against all engineering odds,” Poppy affirmed.
I would never in a million years learn how she did it. In some ways, I wanted her to just fess up to it so I could figure it out.
“Well, that’s great. Now nobody else will get hurt.” I reached up and touched my head and gave her this pouty face. “I guess you’ve probably never had a concussion like this, have you, Poppy?”
Poppy shook her head hard so that her blonde ponytail popped around. “Oh my god, no way. I hardly ever fall. I guess you know that after training with me for so long.”
“Yeah. You’re pretty fucking great. Like, I think every day about how much I want to be you,” I said. My voice was cold and harsh and I glared at her. I wanted to march over, grab her ponytail, and yank it from her head. Then, I glanced around at the girls beneath me and said, “I guess I won’t be seeing or talking to many of you anymore. Too bad. I guess Poppy’s word is better than mine.”
The second I said it, the door burst open to reveal Coach Jonathon, and another guy I didn’t recognize. Coach Jonathon spoke with a glum face, in an undertone that made it difficult to hear him. His words were directed toward the guy beside him, a twenty-something muscular beauty, and a guy I immediately recognized as none other than Jeremy Cotter, the Olympic gold medalist from six years before.
“Fuck,” I whispered. Yet again, I felt like I was in the company of a god or a celebrity.
Poppy blinked wide eyes toward me. I had a weird feeling. She rose from her stretch and kind of did this little hop-skip-jump as Jeremy Cotter approached. Coach Jonathon’s face turned to stone, as Poppy sprung toward Jeremy and wrapped her arms around him. Her shriek was way too fucking loud for five-thirty in the morning.
“Jeremyyyyy,” she said.
“This is highly irregular,” Coach Jonathon said.
“Ha. He always sounds so stupid,” Poppy said. She drew back and gripped Jeremy’s muscular biceps and beamed up at him.
“What is going on?” Mallory demanded from the stretch circle. She spoke directly to Coach Jonathon, who seemed just as perplexed as everyone else.
“Hey,” Coach Jonathon said. He shuffled his hand over his hair. “Poppy’s parents have requested that she have her own personal trainer for part of the year, and they’ve hired… none other than Olympic champion Jeremy Cotter.”
My jaw dropped. The thought of hiring someone special outside of the actual fee at Denver Athletics actually made me want to explode. Coach Jonathon grabbed the collar of his shi
rt and yanked it away from his neck.
“It’s just intense competition leading up to spring Nationals,” Poppy said, from where she stood next to Jeremy. “I want to make sure I’ll come out on top.”
“Sure. Of course.” Coach Jonathon smacked his thigh with his clipboard and glanced toward me. I wondered if he suspected the truth, that Poppy had corrupted my performance. Course, Poppy could have gotten away with literally anything. He cleared his throat and said, “Everyone outside. Run the usual route. Rooney, I need to talk to you for a moment, please.”
The girls sighed as they eased out the door, all except for Poppy, who stayed back with Jeremy. He leaned into her as he told her his plans for her training that day. I watched the rest of my team with actual jealousy, aching to stretch my legs out on that familiar run. Coach Jonathon let his shoulders hang and said, “Let’s go to my office, okay?”
I had never been to Coach Jonathon’s office. It was lined with old posters of when he had won Nationals when he’d been featured on a cereal box—a time he had been on a commercial with Serena Williams herself. I blinked at everything from the sticky chair in front of his desk and waited for him to speak.
“God, Rooney,” he said, looking at me with sadness in his eyes. He then palmed the back of his neck before continuing. “I don’t really know what to say, except that I’m really sorry about what has happened. The balance beam should have been checked and rechecked and I really don’t know what happened.”
I looked at him steadily.
“I have a pretty good indication that Poppy toyed with it, but I have no proof.” I finally said, looking at him. “As long as I can start to practice again, that is all that counts right now. Maybe I needed the break for a while—a time to think about things.” As I said it, I hardly believed it, but at least it rang true at the moment.
Jonathon looked like he hadn’t slept. He scratched his skull again and muttered, “Poppy has always gotten away with too much since she has attended this school. What you’re saying could be a serious accusation, so just tread lightly. Her family has deep pockets and can do a lot of damage. In the meantime, I’ll do what I can to keep an eye out and her away from you.”
I gave him a small, but still sad smile. I appreciated his words and he was right. I had to be careful because I had no proof of anything. Accusing someone of this just because I didn’t like someone sounded just like a teenager trying to get revenge in the eyes of an adult. It was petty bickering to them. For now, she would get away with this stunt, but it would be the last. My eyes and ears were wide open.
“Jeremy Cotter is a fantastic trainer,” Jonathon continued a moment later. “But it’s really out of line to bring him to this school. I’ve helmed the gymnastics program here for years, and I’ve done it well enough to bring girl after girl to the Olympics. I don’t know what she’s going to get out of him that she can’t get with me or the other coaches.”
She wants an edge over me. We both know that.
The truth hung in the air. He glanced at me and I think, nearly offered up this conclusion, but then backpedaled. “All we need to focus on is getting you healthy. And honestly, Rooney, this means that once that happens, I can put total focus on your training. Nationals is in April up in Seattle, and I think you can win if you focus the way I know you can.
“Probably people have mentioned to you that the school was worried you would sue. But I don’t think you’re the type to go that route, right?” he asked and raised an eyebrow.
Fuck. Maybe I just should sue.
Before I could answer, he continued. “I wouldn’t want to push you one way or the other, but it’s probably best to put everything behind us for now and focus on what is in front of us. Also maybe, Poppy being with another trainer, she won’t harass you so often. If you feel that’s what she’s been doing.”
I nodded in agreement, although my head was filled with screaming. Jonathon tugged a granola bar out of his desk and offered me one, but I declined. I thanked him, wondering if I was making a huge mistake in not making a bigger fuss—but god, all I wanted was for everything to fade away so I could focus again. I headed back into the gym, where the boys had already begun their training. The girls still had a good thirty minutes before they arrived back, dripping with sweat. I perched on the edge of the bleachers and watched as Theo swept his fingers through white powder and flew up onto the uneven bars. He wore only a tank top and a pair of tight shorts, and his muscles seemed in total control as he wound himself around and around the bars. His blonde locks whipped along with him and caught the reflection of the fluorescent lights. When he burst down to the mat, he landed perfectly, his chin high and his eyes toward the top bleachers. When his coach marched toward him to talk about his technique, Theo’s eyes turned to mine. He held my gaze for only a moment, then turned back.
My heart burst unevenly. I clenched my knees and felt an onslaught of fear. What if Poppy’s whole “she’s bad luck” thing had extended to the boys? Kissing Theo, Clinton and Zed had been my first romantic encounters, and truthfully, I had laid awake several nights over the past week rolling thoughts of them over and over in my head. The feel of Theo’s thick cock in my hand: so firm and wanting me and only me. Zed’s lips over mine, kissing me in a way that made me feel like the only woman in the world. Then, there was Clinton—the angriest of the three, the most dominant, who had drawn his hand around my ankle and yanked me into the pool and kissed me down beneath the surface.
They had brought me flowers on that first afternoon after the incident, but I knew better than to think that they weren’t susceptible to Poppy’s gossip. The brain of an athlete was a weird fucking place. Plus—there was the fact that, if I was a pariah at this school, why would they want to deal with me, anyway? They were the Brotherhood. They only dealt with the most beautiful, the most popular. Again, I tried to catch Theo’s eyes when he returned to the basin of chalk, but he gave me this arrogant, glaze-eyed look, and then turned to talk to another of the male gymnasts.
Fuck. I was a complete outcast. And I didn’t even have my one outlet that kept me sane, the only thing that had made me survive years and years of foster care and being nearly broke and hating everything about my life—gymnastics. I felt all sloppy like my muscles waned every second. The only thing I could fully focus on was a few weeks down the line when I could train again—with my focus being on Nationals in Seattle. There, I would face a man that may very well be my father for the first time. And nothing else mattered.
Chapter Six
It was more of the same throughout the week, even as I went back to regularly-scheduled classes. I had actually gotten a B+ on my mid-semester Biology exam—a fact that Mr. Collins seemed really surprised about since he had convinced himself that I lacked the education due to being a foster kid. Of course, the rest of the class made up excuses not to be my lab partner, each time Mr. Collins tried to partner me up with someone. Chloe had had to switch her schedule around to add a weight lifting session to her day, which meant she was no longer my safety net in Biology.
Later that week, Mr. Collins wanted to pair us up again, and I tried to make eye contact with Theo, Zed, and Clinton, but they had paired up with one another and now totally avoided me. I wasn’t even sure if a group of three was allowed, but Mr. Collins seemed to be one of the teachers everyone walked all over. I didn’t have the heart to do it.
When Mr. Collins continued to struggle to pair me up (everyone kept their eyes to the ground and drew themselves tight against their actual partners), Poppy took it upon herself to explain the situation, or how she felt it should be explained to Mr. Collins, “scientist extraordinaire.”
“It isn’t our fault she just isn’t good at science, Mr. Collins,” Poppy spoke up. “I mean, we were all in really serious academic programs throughout our entire lives. I learned to read when I was only four years old. Everyone said I could go to a serious college if I wanted to, but instead, I obviously took the harder track.”
Mr. Collin
s looked like he wanted to roll his eyes, but putting yourself at the mercy of Poppy was a difficult thing. Before he could speak, I broke the tense silence.
“It’s really crazy to me that despite not having all those years of top-level education with all those wonderful tutors, I still managed to get a B+ on the exam,” I beamed at her. “Maybe it was a stroke of luck or just genius on my part.”
Poppy snapped her head around and glared at me. This time, she actually hit herself with her long and bright ponytail.
“That’s right. She really did excellent on the test,” Mr. Collins said. “So, all of your comments are unfounded, Poppy.” He tilted his head and turned his gaze back and forth, from my smirk to Poppy’s. “You know, the two of you work so well out on the mat together. Why don’t you pair up for this lab? It’s really pretty simple—just a lot of measuring, pouring and investigating how acid interacts with various textures. Maybe you’ll even find that Rooney has something to teach you, Poppy?”
The Accident Page 4
