The Accident

by Devyn Forrest

Please just let me make it to Nationals.

  Chapter Eleven

  “The date will stay as is. It’s normal to still have some minor headaches, but overall I think you’re doing just fine,” Dr. Patterson told me in his office the next day. I had woken with one of the worst headaches I had ever experienced and I needed to make sure I was still okay. I had a feeling it was related to the three drinks I had, but I needed to be sure.

  “Okay. Thank you,” I said. All the color returned to my cheeks. I blinked at him feeling grateful.

  “Are you okay?” Dr. Patterson asked. He sighed and clucked his tongue. “You can talk to me, you know. If anything else is bothering you.”

  “I’m okay. Thank you. I guess just a little overwhelmed with everything and of course, my nerves are a mess about Nationals,” I said, smiling at him. I pushed up from the table and the paper beneath me crinkled up. “I think I should find a hobby to make the time to November tenth pass quicker than what it is.”

  “As long as that hobby only requires light work,” Dr. Patterson said. He scrubbed at his balding head and gave a sad shrug. “I know you’re disheartened, but remember this. You’re still a good six months from Nationals. Thanksgiving is coming up, as is Christmas, and maybe this means you can take a real breather and get a fresh start.”

  A knock at the door brought Coach Jonathon inside. He glowered at me. “What happened, Rooney?” he asked. His voice was sterile.

  “Just a really bad migraine,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Oh, that’s not good,” he said, giving me a worried expression. “You’re supposed to be my top gymnast and I haven’t even had you on the mat in weeks.”

  “Yeah. Because it was my fault that the balance beam broke beneath me,” I said. My voice simmered with sarcasm, and it snapped his lips shut. I knew everyone still had it in their heads that I could sue at any time. Although I had never considered it for a second, I could still use it as a powerful tool—something that demanded their attention at any moment.

  “Right.” Coach Jonathon sighed. We heard someone call his name from down the hall. It sounded like Mallory, who, I had witnessed at practice, had gotten a real chip on her shoulder since she had recently become the third-best gymnast and, therefore, the focal point of Coach Jonathon’s newfound life. He looked defeated. “Coming, Mal.” His eyes found mine again. “I hope you feel better, Rooney, and let’s get you back out here. Are you going home for Thanksgiving?”

  I blinked at him. “No. I think I’ll just stay here.”

  “Right.” He caught on to exactly what I meant. I wasn’t about to go back to that shit hole of a foster home and I’m sure I wasn’t welcomed back either. “Well, good. Let’s practice all the way through. The second you’re cleared, I’m ready for you. We’re going to win Nationals.”

  When Coach Jonathon shut the door closed, Dr. Patterson let out a low whistle and said, “Jesus. There’s so much pressure on you girls. It would kill me, and I went to medical school.”

  I got up and thanked Dr. Patterson. He held my eyes a bit longer and said, “Keep your chin up, Rooney. You’re going to get better. And maybe Coach Jonathon’s right. Maybe you’ll win Nationals. It’s good to think of the future, rather than linger in the past. But I guess, due to your past, you know that already.”

  They were really nice words to hear in the midst of absolutely-fucking-hating myself for thinking Poppy could be nice or a friend. I had nobody to blame for that but myself for being naive. I sauntered back to my dorm room, starting to feel the migraine subside. As my shoes whipped through the dying autumn grass, I passed Clinton en route to swim practice. His eyes glittered when he reached me. Memories of our steamy session on the rooftop of the dorm filled the air between us.

  I grinned sheepishly, and my heart fluttered. “Hey,” I said.

  “Couldn’t believe what I saw you do last night out there on that branch like that. I thought you were going to kill yourself,” he said.

  “Doesn’t it take an element of self-hatred and idiocy to even become an athlete like we are?” I asked.

  He sniffed. “An element of self-hatred and idiocy,” he repeated. “I can’t believe you’ve hardly gone to school before. You sound too damn smart for your own good.”

  I tried to think of something good to say. I wanted to impress him, and I knew he was mostly impressed with intelligence. As he ducked away, I called out, “Être au taquet!” It was a silly French expression that literally meant “to be at a piece of wood.” To the French, it meant, basically, “give it your best.”

  He spun back and arched his brow, clearly shocked. “I didn’t know you were also taking French.”

  “Yes. I’m in year one. I guess you’re in year three already,” I said, assuming.

  “Just two. I took Spanish the first year. The language is fascinating, isn’t it?”

  “It is. But also… God, I mean. It’s obvious why we’re all in there, isn’t it? Every single time I’m in there and reading my textbook and trying to form the words in the back of my throat, all I can think about is how badly I want to be in Paris for the Olympics. It’s like I fall into a daydream and then I look up and realize… I’m still in class. And now that I have been benched due to this damn concussion, it’s even worse. Not fun sitting on the sidelines.”

  Clinton chuckled. “Don’t take it too hard. You’ll be back, good as new before you know it.”

  “Sure.”

  Clinton held my eyes for a long moment. “Maybe we’ll all be there,” he offered and shrugged. “Maybe we’ll all actually make it, you know? It’s all we ever think about. It’s all about mindset, Rooney.” He shot out and pointed at his head and shot me a smile.

  “Crazy to think it’s only a year and a half away,” I murmured.

  “It’s going to be a wild ride. Let’s see how long we can make it last,” he said as he walked off.

  Clinton had given me fresh energy. After a pit-stop at the main dining hall to grab another thing of ice to press against my head for my migraine, I scampered into my dorm room to find Chloe yanking a brush through her chlorinated hair and dancing to Billie Eilish. She whipped her hair around and smiled wide.

  “You disappeared last night! God, I’m so hungover. Practice is going to be a nightmare and…” Her eyes faltered for a minute as she studied my face. “What’s wrong?”

  “Just another migraine,” I told her. “Probably from the drinks last night. The doc said I was fine.” I didn’t want to tell her what had happened between Poppy and I. It felt too personal.

  Chloe smiled. “Well, I’m glad you’re feeling okay.” She drew her brush so hard through her hair that I heard some of it rip out. Then, she scrunched her nose and gaped down at the teeth of the brush and sighed. “If I don’t quit swimming soon, I’m going to go bald.”

  “Yup, bald would not suit you, girl,” I returned and let out a laugh.

  **

  Poppy kept her distance after the party incident. I was able to just do my own thing without drawing attention to myself. I didn’t want to add any more power to Poppy’s whole scheme, so I was grateful for this—grateful that I didn’t have to divulge to the entire school what she had done or said to me. A few people whispered about it, but I heard more than one other student say, “Fall out of the tree? No way. I watched Rooney walk across that branch like it was a fucking tightrope. It was so cool.”

  I had successfully gotten rid of the whole damn bad luck vibe, which was cool. I heard I had won the costume contest, but nobody had been able to find me at that point in the night, and somebody had stuck the crown on Zed’s head. There were hilarious photos lurking around of Zed with a very red drunken face, in that ridiculous Ghostbuster’s uniform, with his hand around a red cup and with his other arm wrapped tight around Theo’s neck. I looked at the photo and felt a tug at my heart. These boys had their way and I thought maybe I was falling for them hard.

  It was almost funny how the dates worked out. After a week or so of trai
ning after November tenth, the day I was cleared to get back into the gym, most of the students went home for Thanksgiving break. Thanksgiving was early that year, November twenty-third, and most students took that Monday through Friday off, then arrived back the following Saturday for a jam-packed four weeks of practice before Christmas. Now, deep into November, Nationals had become our focus. Even Chloe had stopped eating her usual amount of junk food and had busied herself with learning even more about nutrition. I caught her eating a protein bar and some carrots in bed and demanded, “What have you done with Chloe?”

  But this meant that after all the students left, it was just Coach Jonathon and me at the gym. I was grateful not to have any distractions considering everyone would be gone for the holidays. Throughout the first week or so of training, I’d done pretty light work, barely anything at all, since Jonathon had wanted to keep things easy on me. Now, it was time to really give it my all.

  I donned my leotard, swept my hair into a perfect ponytail, and appeared before him on the mat. I had never really grown up at church, but the act of standing out there with him all alone felt as close to religion as I had ever experienced.

  “Are you ready, Rooney?” he asked. “Are you ready to retrain those muscles and get back to where you were? If anything, we have to take a good, hard look at some of the ways you have trained improperly in the past and force you to relearn basic elements again. I don’t want to say that your previous coach was bad. It’s very clear that she did the best with what she had. But you’re going to the next league, Rooney, and you have to fight for it. It means no more messing around.”

  I centered my face and made heavy eye contact. “I’ll do whatever you tell me to do, Coach. I’m here to win and nothing less.”

  The one-on-one practices were, to put it lightly, grueling. I had never been in the army, but the kind of—do it and do it again over and over again until your muscles screamed and your brain shut down seemed to be the central theme of what happened during my practices that week. After not using my muscles in that way in quite some time, I ached at the end of each day and moaned softly in my bed until Chloe came up, stuffed an Oreo into my mouth and played a funny movie. Since Chloe was from California, and her parents didn’t have much money, they had decided she wouldn’t return for Thanksgiving and instead wait for Christmas.

  “Does that make you sad?” I asked her a few nights before Thanksgiving. “Missing your family on Thanksgiving?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. She lifted her blonde hair in front of her eyes and studied the split ends. “I mean, I used to love Thanksgiving. You know that nobody on this earth likes to eat more than I do.”

  “That’s very true.”

  “But honestly, I know it makes my parents so happy that I’m here. I can almost hear them bragging about me to their friends and the rest of our family. ‘Chloe is going to the Olympics and she’ll win.’ Ha. It sounds crazy, but I like working hard for them. It’s for me, too, but they never had anything. And if I can make them feel like they’re worth something, then I want to.”

  I nodded against my pillow. The internet fucked up and a thinking circle formed in the center of her computer screen. The silence stretched between us.

  “You do realize you’re the only family I really have besides Jeanine, now,” I told her. “Don’t know what I would do without you.”

  Chloe brought her head up and blinked over at me. Her face was solemn as she searched mine. “You’re like the sister I never had.”

  As the night drew on, we both drifted off to sleep. Coach Jonathon and I practiced in the morning of Thanksgiving. Afterward, he took off for his brother’s place in Boulder, Colorado, and left me there on a very-empty campus, with a hungry belly and a hungry heart. I limped back to my dorm room, heavy with memories of past Thanksgivings. The previous year, I had tried to cook our dinner for all the kids and Karla and I, since Karla had scoffed and said she hardly had the time. I had pinched together some bills from my waitressing money and grabbed a few packages of instant mashed potatoes, bread and cheese, some pudding packets—pumpkin flavored, of course. My muscles had ached as I thought about these brand-new kids not knowing about the beauty of Thanksgiving. Even for me, Thanksgiving was something of a stitched-together holiday. I knew it was a time for family, gratitude and a time of thanks. But for me, it had been a time to watch Karla get wasted on the couch with her friends, or to watch my previous foster parents screech at each other about oven temperatures. I wanted to create something for the kids that I didn’t fully understand myself.

  Maybe that’s what parenting always was.

  It had been a success, but I also knew that the kids would never really get to experience whatever it was the other kids had. I hadn’t either.

  When I reached the dorm room, I cracked open the door and said, “Happy Thanksgiving!” in this boisterous and false voice. Chloe and I had planned to just eat sandwiches and chill in the room, and I was grateful for it—but also ached for something else. But immediately, I heard two voices cry back, “Happy Thanksgiving,” and I quickly looked up to see Chloe with none other than Jeanine, who wore a rugged-looking sports winter coat and gave me an enormous smile. I leaped toward her and hugged her hard.

  “Oooph. You knocked the wind out of me,” she said and engulfed me in her arms.

  “I had no idea you were coming!” I cried. I let her go as she beamed down at me.

  “Chloe was telling me that it’s been a grueling workout this past week since you’re back in the groove of things,” Jeanine said. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m rough. My muscles ache, but overall I’m good and just happy to be practicing again,” I said. “What about you? Why are you at my school?”

  Jeanine shrugged and then flashed me a smile. “It’s Thanksgiving. I didn’t want to spend it at my parents because things have been weird with them, so I thought I might come surprise you. Thought we could go out. And Chloe, of course, you’re welcome to come, too.”

  “As much as I wanted to spend today cooped up in this little room with you, Roon, I think I might just take you up on that offer,” she replied.

  It felt almost too good to be true. Chloe and I put on little dresses, both of which belonged to her, and donned our coats, hats and gloves and hopped into Jeanine’s car. I hadn’t been in it since Jeanine had taken me back to school after the incident at Mr. Everton’s. Back inside that little car made me remember all those times she had picked me up from the diner, or driven me back to Karla’s, or sat in the driver’s seat and lectured me about how I couldn’t let my circumstances get me down. “You are so much better than what you’ve been given,” she had told me over and over.

  Jeanine flicked on the radio and said, “I know how much you want to change it, Rooney. Just do it already.” And I quickly leaped up and turned the dial until Chloe and I found a station that played our favorite current pop songs. I yanked around to sing along with Chloe, who sat in the back seat.

  “You girls act like sisters,” Jeanine said as she gripped the steering wheel. “Although you probably don’t fight over boys the way me and my sister always did.”

  “Ha. I mean, Chloe has a boyfriend,” I returned. “He’s great and everything—actually, he’s our sugar hook-up.”

  “Sugar hook-up?” Jeanine asked and arched her brow. “You mean you guys are just… training as hard as you can and then going back on that training with literal trash?”

  “Hey! No lecturing today. It’s Thanksgiving,” I shot out. “Plus, we’ve really reared back, haven’t we, Chloe?”

  “We’re super focused,” Chloe agreed. “But anyway, yeah. Max is great. I wanted to go to his house for Thanksgiving, but it feels a little too new, I guess. Oh, he’s so perfect—” She bubbled over as she filled Jeanine in on her adoration for the funny runner. I couldn’t have picked a more perfect guy for her.

  “Oh, but enough about me. You should see the way the boys look at Rooney at Denver Athletics,” Chloe said.<
br />
  Jeanine’s eyes flashed so fast toward me that I thought the car might yank off the road. “Is that so…?” She gave me a sneaky grin.

  “Come on. It’s not like I’m seeing anyone,” I replied and twisted my hair as I looked out at the road ahead of me.

  “You could be seeing any of them and you know it,” Chloe said.

  My cheeks burned as Jeanine clucked her tongue. “My, my. How your life has changed, Rooney Calloway. Before, I never caught her looking twice at any boy. It was just full speed ahead on her goals.”

  “It’s not like I haven’t given that up,” I assured her.

  “She’s more intense than ever,” Chloe affirmed, giggling. “Just, you know. With the added benefit of occasionally making out with people which every teenaged girl needs now and then.”

  “Really,” Jeanine said. I could hear the sass in her tone. She always loved to poke and joke around.