Practically Ever After

by Isabel Bandeira

  I ran through my notes one more time, making sure I hadn’t missed anything from my visit to the PT’s office or from all the research I’d done both before and after talking to the PT and her patients. I had a list under the “user needs” column I’d turned into another list of more engineering-talk sentences under another column my teacher and Oliver called “design inputs,” where needs like “fit” became inputs like “has to fit hands for 90 percent of the population.” But, even with all of this information, my sketches and ideas kept coming out too close to things I’d already seen in my research, the opposite of innovative. I balled up another sketch and stared at the blank paper, doodling another really bad attempt at a hand and, after adding a few lines and straps, dropping my pencil and balling that sheet up, too. That one had looked just like the glove one of the patients had been using, too.

  I groaned and dropped my head onto my arms. Maybe there were only so many ways to make this kind of glove, or maybe I just wasn’t creative enough. Maybe fighting with Leia had killed my creativity and I was going to fail this project thanks to emotional burnout. I wasn’t the super-creative type. I didn’t have Alec’s art skills or Phoebe’s way of looking at knitting patterns and figuring out how to change things around to make something new. I’d been at the literal drawing board for two days straight and nothing was coming. A few little changes here and there, but not enough to count as something new or even remotely better than the existing product. And I had too much pride to turn in something that wasn’t better or new.

  Peeking at my notes, a growing sense of dread bubbled up from my stomach as I thought about starting completely from scratch and what that would do to my schedule. I picked up my pencil to try again, but then my alarm went off—6 a.m.—and I reluctantly stood and padded towards the bathroom. Project or no, a shower was non-negotiable, especially since I’d fallen asleep in my dance clothes and looked like a cross between the Bride of Frankenstein and one of the sewer rats I’d spotted the last time I’d been in NYC.

  I’d grabbed one of my parents’ shower tablets from their bathroom a few days ago for a morning like this and flung it onto the shower floor before turning on the water. As soon as it started fizzing, the air filled with citrus and eucalyptus, which Mom always swore was better than coffee for waking up. I stepped into the shower and tried not to think—not about my project or my schedule or Leia, but my brain wouldn’t stop buzzing and jumping from idea to idea, refusing to focus.

  “Be in the moment,” I said to myself, immediately feeling stupid for trying to regurgitate one of the yoga mantras I’d heard when Leia had dragged me to one of her classes. The stretches and exercises had been nice, but if I heard one more self-help-y platitude from the instructor, I would have probably turned warrior pose into a real warrior moment.

  And then…

  I reached out to grab my shower pouf, and a line of shampoo on the back of my hand caught the light, the little bubbles sparkling like rhinestones. I stopped my hand midway to the pouf, slowly rotating and moving my fingers around in different ways as an idea started forming in my head. I remembered how my grandmom had complained about how ugly her glove was and so had Julia and the other patients, but what if…

  What if it was meant to stand out, but in a good way?

  What if I could make something not only functional, but beautiful? Something that would fit in on the runway at New York Fashion week but that would also let the wearer use their hand again to do everyday tasks, and maybe help rehabilitate them along the way. Swirls and joints played across a mental sketchpad and I hurriedly shut off the water even though I was still covered in soap and shampoo. I had to get this down before I lost all the small details weaving themselves together in my brain.

  Everything else disappeared into the background as my thoughts coalesced into a coherent something that I knew would work.

  The towel did nothing to keep me from trailing a series of puddles behind me from the bathroom to my desk. My hair dripped water and shampoo onto my engineering pad as I sketched out the idea and made tons of notes that I hoped would make sense later.

  “This might actually work,” I muttered to myself, adding a note about small springs and pointing to some of the linkages with neat pencil strokes. The sketches weren’t much, but they captured the idea just enough that I’d hopefully be able to build on it as soon as I got myself to a computer loaded with CAD.

  My phone beeped, breaking my train of thought, and I realized I was soaking the carpet and my engineering design textbook, and that I had less than half an hour to get my butt out the door and to school. Making one last note, I rushed back into the bathroom, still on a design high as the ideas kept tumbling from me. I still had a lot to figure out, but now it felt real, and different and possible. It definitely could work.

  May

  WEEK 22 GOAL: Keep moving

  Chapter 26

  Conversations at the ‘cool kids’ tables really weren’t too different from my regular table, just with fewer comic book and Star Trek references casually thrown around. Plus, dissection of the latest parties or soccer finals took up more of the bandwidth than, say, if Auburn High school really had deserved to win first in the Science Olympiad nationals. I missed my band of misfits and I was dying to show them the design I’d come up with for my project, but Phoebe had made it clear the minute I’d walked past her locker that she didn’t want to talk. Sitting at a table for twenty minutes with that sort of tension didn’t appeal to me.

  Just as I opened my lunchbag, Alec passed my table, balancing a tray full of lunch trash, and Ashley poked me in the arm with a baby carrot.

  “You know, your friend might actually be cute if you worked your magic and made him over one day. I’d even think of dating him,” she said, pointing the carrot in his direction once she had my attention. Ashley was the Photogram influencer definition of hot—tanned skin, toned hourglass figure, perfectly flatironed black hair, light violet eyes she swore were real but we all knew were contacts. If Alec knew she was talking about him, he’d probably pass out on top of the salad bar.

  “Be still my heart, is Cassie rubbing off on you?” I winked at Cassie, who just rolled her eyes and gave a little shake of her head before turning back to her phone. “Unfortunately, Alec really likes his doesn’t-give-a-damn geek look, so it’s take it or leave it with him,” I said.

  “Shame.” Ashley followed Alec with her eyes until he got close to us, then bounced up from her seat to go talk to someone at the table next to ours. I narrowed my eyes and looked from her to Alec—if she weren’t so high maintenance, I’d actually consider trying to get the two together. But the thought of subjecting him to someone who once made the whole squad late to a competition because she couldn’t find her mascara stopped that idea in its tracks.

  Alec slid onto the bench next to me, completely oblivious of the crush-drama that had just happened. Except for giving one of those guy-nods, he ignored the football team at the table and dove straight in.

  “Look, I’m not in the mood to get involved in whatever drama you have going on with the others, but can you explain to me why you’ve abandoned me at a table with the hair gel king?”

  Tyler looked up from decimating his third burger and snorted. “Let me guess who you’re talking about.” He faked a moment of deep thought. “Lambert?”

  I held my hand in front of my nose to keep from spit-snorting my chocolate milk. “Please, let’s be fair. Em confiscated most of Kris’ stash.” Even though he’d made major strides in the past year, Em’s boyfriend wasn’t the most popular person in athletic circles.

  “Well, he must have hidden a tub in the student council office, because that hair isn’t moving today.” Alec picked some of the feta cubes off my salad and popped them in his mouth before I could intercept him. “Anyway, you three need to fix what’s going on or I’m going to have to find a new lunch table for the rest of the year. Like this one.” He looked over at Tyler and the others and was greeted with shrugs.r />
  “Tell that to Phoebe. She’s the one being unreasonable. Honestly, you would think my friends would give a crap about me and how I feel, not try to trick me or turn their backs on me when I actually need them.” I blew air through my lips to settle the shaking that was threatening to turn into tears. I would not cry at school.

  “Dude. It takes skill to get both Em and Phoebe mad at you.” He pointed out.

  “Em’s fine.” I said, waving in the direction of our table, where Em was waving her arms around animatedly as she spoke. “She gets over stuff fast. But you know Feebs holds grudges.”

  “True,” he acknowledged. “What if I broker a peace settlement? I could be like the UN of our lunch table.” He leaned forward, propping his elbows eagerly on the table.

  I raised one eyebrow. It was a rare but useful skill. “What are your proposed terms?”

  “Lordy, you two’ve spent way too much time in model UN,” Cassie chimed in from the other side of the table.

  Alec ignored her and put on his ‘negotiation face.’ “One coffee at the bookstore café after school. Phoebe will feel like she has the upper hand because it’s on her turf, but she’ll be distracted by all the new releases since it’s Tuesday.”

  I kept the eyebrow up but nodded slightly in appreciation. I liked his train of thought. “Diabolically good proposal. What do you expect from me?”

  “Show up and actually hear them out,” Alec said, his tone and demeanor the same ones he used for negotiations in model UN. Cassie hadn’t been far off with her joke. “Let those two do their whole emotional dumping on you before you try to fix things.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “I don’t try to fix things.”

  “Please, you’re worse than me. Leia calls you out on that all the time.” At my cringe, he added, “Sorry, forgot. So, are you willing to try?”

  “Of course.” I pushed him towards our lunch table. “Go see if they are.”

  He leaned into my push like he was lounging, trusting that I wouldn’t pull back my hands and let him fall. “I kind of like this. It’s like being a Jedi ambassador.”

  “That’s not going to get you cool points at this table,” I pointed out before giving him another nudge. “May the Force be with you, Obi-Wan.”

  He held up his hand in the Vulcan symbol, mixing fandoms, but, as he walked away, curled all his fingers down so he was just giving me the middle finger. Behind me, Tyler snorted.

  “Really mature,” I said to both of them.

  “Hey, you lost cool points with that Obi-Wan thing, too,” Tyler said.

  “Cool points are overrated when you’re the epitome of coolness,” I quipped back.

  “Ding, ding, another two points for using a word like ‘epitome,’” Cassie said, making two imaginary lines in the air. “At the rate you’re going…”

  I tossed my hair over my shoulder and flipped my legs over the bench to face the table again. “I’ll be the epitome of SAT-word-using cool people,” I finished her sentence and winked, glad for the distraction from my friend drama. Alec would figure it out.

  Chapter 27

  I was in the zone, so focused on my work that the media center around me disappeared. Curves and straight lines merged into each other on the 2-D sketching grid, shooting dimensions at me as I clicked away at the model and made it just a little bit thicker. With the change in place, it rendered back into the 3-D assembly: a shiny metallic image twirling on my screen. I rotated it to an angle where I could get a good look at how the change affected the aesthetic.

  “That’s really pretty.” Cassie leaned over my shoulder to stare at my screen, then straightened up and stepped over to my side, hands on her hips in mock reproach. “But we have to go. Coach is going to kill you if you’re late, you know.”

  “It’s the end of May,” I said, distractedly, adding another round to the main linkage. “It’s not like we’re cheering at graduation or anything, it’s just a game.”

  “She’ll still kill you.” She reached over and flicked my arm with a finger. “And that would totally ruin graduation. It’s less than a month away—they’ll never be able to get the bloodstains off the field in time.”

  I looked away from the screen long enough to let out a little snort-laugh, and shake my head at her. “Okay, just let me save this. I’ll meet you in the locker room.”

  Cassie didn’t budge. “I know how you get when you’re doing something like this. I’ll wait.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “You’re lucky I came in here when I did and you’ll thank me later when you’re not doing an extra lap during warmups.” She pushed her hair behind her ear and studied my screen again. “What is that? I’m not kidding when I said that’s gorgeous. It looks like one of those hand-flower bracelets or something.”

  I checked the length of one of my linkages against the size chart in my notebook and added another two millimeters to make sure it would fit right. “It’s for my engineering design final. It’s a glove for people who’ve had strokes and have trouble unclenching their hands. Oliver is working on something like it for paralyzed people and when he showed me his design, something about it stuck with me. I thought it might be fun to mix function with fashion.”

  She looked from my notebook to the screen and over to me. “It looks amazing. So tell me again why you’re going to study oil and stuff?”

  “You know I wanted something in engineering, so—” I twirled the assembly around on the screen one more time before reluctantly hitting save and logging out. I still had a few fixes to make if I wanted the design to look just right. “Highest median salary.”

  Cassie rolled her eyes. “Of course. I forgot about that.” She tugged on my sleeve as soon as I stood, practically dragging me out of the computer lab. “It’s a shame,” she said absently.

  “What?” I had to pick up my pace to keep up with her as she wove through the hallway.

  “You could totally have been the Lebutton of medical-ish stuff for people.”

  Even though the idea gave me visions of people walking down runways at fashion week in gorgeous prostheses and baroque-inspired cyberpunk ambulatory aids, my common-sense side squashed it quickly. “I guess I just want something with guaranteed security, you know?”

  “You sound like my dad.” Cassie waved at the other girls in the locker room before tossing her bags into her locker and starting to change. “Just remember,” she added, her voice muffled through her shirt, “nothing’s really guaranteed.” She yanked on her sports bra and tilted her head thoughtfully for a second, adding, “well, except dying, but I’m pretty sure nerds like you are going to figure out how to change that, too.”

  I wiggled into my shell and snorted. “Doubtful.”

  “All I’m saying is that you’re really good at making things and people look good. It’s too bad you’re just going to stop doing it.” Cassie glanced up at the clock on the wall and quickly finished tying her sneakers. “C’mon. We’ve only got ten minutes to stretch.”

  I pulled my hair into a high ponytail and waved at her to go ahead while I finished pinning it in place. “Be right there.” As soon as she left, I took a deep breath and stretched my arms over my head, shaking out the last of my design ideas. Time to focus on cheers and tumbling. Another deep breath, and I headed out of the locker room and over to the side of the soccer field, where Cassie and the rest of the squad were stretching.

  Coach caught my eye and pointed at her watch. “Six minutes before we start our group warmup, Grace. Do something.”

  “Got it.” I dropped onto the ground next to Cassie and started rolling my ankles. “Made it.”

  “You’re welcome.” She winced as she rolled her shoulders. “My back is so sore from the Pilates class I took yesterday. I’m ready to just shake my pom-poms once at the crowd and call it a day.”

  “I know how you feel. Ever since I got back into dance, all of my old injuries have been popping up to say hi.” I rocked from side-to-side slightly, feeling my right
hamstring get looser with every rock. Ever since I pulled it in the fall, it always took the longest to warm up enough to do any acro for cheer. “I’ll talk to Coach and try to convince her to pull all the flying parts out of our routine. It might be nice to be able to walk tomorrow.”

  She giggled and turned her straddle into a side split. “Good idea.”

  A little bit of silence and I tried to sound casual as I said, “Congrats on prom queen, again. You and Christian looked really cute together up there. And Mike looked like he was okay about the whole thing.” I wasn’t digging for info on how to deal with a breakup, I told myself, but a part of me was still hoping she would say something.

  “It’s been, what, four months? Mike moved on pretty quick. I think one of the monitors caught him making out with Bridget Leon under the bleachers a few days after we broke up. And then Alyssa Kingsley, Kylie Young, Nikki Shah…” She counted off the names on her fingers with a bitter little grin. “Trust me, he wasn’t devastated or anything.”

  Considering he nearly killed a guy for doing the same with Cassie the last time they broke up, apparently not. “So, what happened, anyway? I never got a chance to ask. You broke up with him, right?”

  “It was kind of mutual.” Cassie stood and I followed her, the two of us balancing against each other as we stretched out legs into pikes. “He already was complaining that he felt trapped, like he couldn’t do all the things he wanted to do with his friends because he had to spend time with me and so he’d do annoying things, like not show up for our dates or cancel on me to go do something with the guys. So I decided to give him the time he wanted and started hanging out with Christian, instead.”