by Belle Payton
That reminded Ava about Charlie. She needed to figure out what to do about him. Should she tell him about Jack? Or just let things . . . fade out naturally?
Her phone buzzed with a text from Jack. Was that fate speaking to her? She felt her face get warm and hoped Tommy wouldn’t notice.
Of course Tommy noticed. He raised one eyebrow. “Need to reply to that, Ave? Don’t let me stop you.”
She flushed deeper. “Guess I better,” she said, and left the room.
CHAPTER
Twelve
Alex swallowed hard and braced herself. It was Thursday afternoon, at practice, and Annelise, the flier, stood above Alex’s head. One of her feet was in Lindsey’s intertwined hands, the other foot was in Rosa’s. Her arms were up in a high V. Alex was the back spotter. Emily was the front spotter.
Coach Jen was counting them through the high stunt called an extension prep. “. . . Five, six, seven, eight!”
Lindsey and Rosa hoisted Annelise up into the air. She twirled once around, her body taut, her arms clasped to her chest, and then bounced down into the girls’ waiting arms. Alex caught her from behind, and together they lowered her feetfirst to the floor.
“Nice, girls,” said Coach Jen. “Let’s do it one more time.”
Alex reapplied her lip balm from the tube Ava had loaned her. As Coach Jen began the count, she hastily shoved it into the tiny pocket of her shorts and braced herself to spot Annelise again.
“. . . Five, six, seven, eight!” The two bases and two spotters clapped, turned, and hoisted Annelise.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight!”
Up she went in a high V, and then dipped down.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight!”
Up she went, spun, and—
“Eeee!” shrieked Rosa, as all of a sudden she toppled to the ground.
In slow motion, Alex saw Annelise spin once in the air, and wobble lopsidedly where Rosa was no longer standing.
Alex lunged to the side and threw her body underneath the spinning girl, who fell down to the floor on top of her. Alex’s chin hit the ground hard and Annelise landed mostly on Alex’s back and upper thighs. She felt a sharp pain radiate from her chin to all her nerve endings.
Alex saw spots in front of her eyes. The pain in her chin was considerable, but she couldn’t reach up to feel for damage because her arms were pinned underneath Annelise, who was still lying on top of her.
There was a great deal of commotion as Annelise was lifted off her, and Alex was helped to her feet. She could see a small crimson smear on the floor where her chin had been.
“Oh my gosh, she’s bleeding!” Alex heard Emily say with a gasp.
Rosa was on the floor, wailing. “I slipped! I’m sorry! My foot just flew out from under me!”
Alex glanced down at the floor, hoping against hope that she wasn’t going to see it. But there it was. The tube of lip balm. She must have dropped it in her haste to recap it, and Rosa must have slipped on it.
People were crowding around her, but she managed to kick the tube out of the way. It bounced and rolled behind the heavy gym curtain divider.
“Is Alex okay?” Alex heard Annelise ask through the crowd.
“She cut her chin,” said Lindsey.
“Are you okay?” she heard Emily ask.
“I’m fine!” said Annelise. “I landed completely on Alex, though! What about Rosa?”
“She’s okay,” Alex heard Sam say, as though through a fog.
Coach Jen pushed her way through the group and gently cocked Alex’s head back a little bit so she could look at her chin. She pursed her lips. “Your chin is cut pretty badly,” she said. “This is going to need stitches.”
Stitches! Alex had never had stitches in her life. Ava had had them multiple times, thanks to all her sports and her daredevil climbing and bike riding. But not Alex—she was always the careful, deliberate one. “I can call my mom,” said Alex in a small voice.
Mrs. Sackett was at the school in fifteen minutes, a smear of paint on her chin and still wearing the blue-and-white-striped apron from her pottery studio. On the way to the walk-in clinic, she called their pediatrician’s office. On speakerphone Alex heard the nurse say they’d call ahead to the walk-in clinic.
Coach Jen had bandaged Alex’s chin with gauze and tape. It hurt, but the waves of guilt washing over her made Alex feel so much worse. She had caused the accident! This was all her fault. Her mom kept glancing anxiously at her as they drove to the clinic, one hand on Alex’s knee.
At the walk-in clinic, they were seen almost immediately by a nurse, who examined Alex’s chin. She asked Mrs. Sackett a bunch of questions and wrote everything down on a clipboard, and then hurried out. A moment later the doctor walked in. Her name was Dr. Kumar. She was young and nice, and told Alex everything she was going to do before she did it. The numbing shots hurt a little at first, but after that, the stitching part was just a disconcerting tugging. At last Dr. Kumar finished and taped Alex’s chin with a surprisingly small sticky bandage. Then Dr. Kumar asked Alex a bunch of questions, shone a light into her eyes, and made her go through a series of exercises like extending her arms out and touching her nose, first with one index finger, then with the other.
“I think we can rule out a concussion,” Dr. Kumar told Mrs. Sackett, patting Alex on the back. “But keep an eye on her, and be sure to call if you have any concerns. She can visit her regular doctor in a week to have the stitches removed.” She handed Mrs. Sackett an information sheet about how to care for Alex’s stitches, and another about concussions.
Mrs. Sackett thanked Dr. Kumar, and after the doctor had left, helped Alex collect her things.
“I’m going to keep you home from school tomorrow,” she said to Alex. “Even though the doctor doesn’t think there’s much danger of a concussion, I’d rather play it safe and keep an eye on you for a day.”
Alex started to protest. That would mean she’d miss the pep rally at school! But as she thought about it, she liked her mom’s plan more and more. How could she face her teammates? She stared down at her T-shirt, which had three dark drops of blood on it.
As they drove home, her mind flashed back to what had happened. Rosa slipping. Annelise falling. She, Alex, diving headfirst underneath Annelise in order to cushion her fall. The whole thing had been Alex’s fault. Rosa had slipped on Alex’s lip balm, for sure. On top of the gnawing guilt she was feeling, Alex was also acutely aware of another, darker voice, telling her that if this was the worst thing that had happened, she was very lucky. She had no business being on the team. How could she have thought she would be good enough to be an Ashland cheerleader? She could have caused someone a serious injury.
When they got home, Alex told her mother she was going upstairs to bed.
CHAPTER
Thirteen
On Friday Alex stayed in bed as she heard Ava getting ready for school. Her mom had, as usual, been right. Her chin did hurt, her stitches itched, and she didn’t want to face everyone at the pep rally.
She made it through a dozen of her vocabulary flash cards, finished the English reading through the following Wednesday, and worked on some sample math problems. After lunch she watched a documentary about termites from an African country called Burkina, although her heart wasn’t in it. She couldn’t stop thinking about what a terrible thing she’d done.
By early afternoon, she came to a decision. She went downstairs to the kitchen, where her mom was paying bills at the table.
“Mom, could you drive me to school?”
Her mom frowned. “I’m not sure that’s a great idea. The school day is almost over. What’s the point?”
“I need to talk to Coach Jen. My chin is fine. It’s really important that I do this. I want to set something straight. Please, Mom? The rally starts at two thirty, and it’s over by the end of the school day.”
Mrs. Sackett stood up. “Okay, honey. If it’s important to you, I’ll bring you
to school.”
Alex hugged her. Sometimes her mom just seemed to understand.
Ten minutes later Alex knocked softly on the open door of the English department office. Coach Jen was also a sixth-grade English teacher. By a stroke of luck, she was the only teacher in the office. She was grading a stack of papers.
“Alex!” said Coach Jen, standing up and coming around her desk. “How are you, you poor thing?”
“Hi, Coach,” said Alex. “I’m okay. I got three stitches. My jaw hurts a little, but other than that, it’s not so bad. Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Coach Jen’s eyes flicked to the clock above the doorway. “The rally starts in twenty minutes, and I should go check on the team soon, but sure, if we make it brief.” She pulled up a chair for Alex. “Sit.”
“Is Annelise okay?”
“She’s fine. A little bruise on her elbow, but you bore the brunt of the fall. Rosa feels terrible about slipping. She says she stepped on something and just went down.”
Alex’s memory flashed back again to Rosa going down and Annelise tumbling. She stared down at the floor. “Coach Jen,” she said in a tiny voice, “it was my fault Rosa slipped.”
Coach Jen crossed her arms and cocked an eyebrow. “You were nowhere near her, Alex.”
“I dropped my tube of lip stuff. And she slipped on it.”
Coach Jen pursed her lips. “Ah,” she said. “Well, it was an accident.”
“No, but it’s worse than that,” said Alex. “I shouldn’t be on the team at all. I’m terrible.”
“Well, ah, you started out strong, Alex. Those first three days of tryouts, you looked like you deserved to be out there, but then—”
“Coach. There’s something else I really need to tell you.”
Coach Jen folded her hands in her lap and waited.
“I did something really bad. Those first three days of tryouts? When I was so good? That wasn’t me. It was my identical twin. She and I switched places and she tried out, pretending to be me.”
Coach Jen’s eyes widened ever so slightly, but she said nothing and allowed Alex to continue.
“But it wasn’t my sister’s idea at all. I’m the one who should get into trouble, not Ava. She just went along with my plan. See, I wanted to make the first round so badly. But then I planned to get cut and no one would be worse off. Plenty of girls made the first round, so it wouldn’t be like I was keeping someone off the team.”
Alex paused. She waited for Coach Jen to say something, to yell, to pick up the phone and call the juvenile detention center. But she just sat there quietly and waited for Alex go on.
In a rush, Alex finished blurting out her confession. “But then everything went really wrong when Ava was too good, and she made it. I should have told you right then and there, but, well, I really wanted to be part of the group. And I thought—I thought maybe I could do it. Which was crazy, because I stink.” She hung her head, her cut chin starting to throb. “I’m really, truly sorry. Please let Molly take my place. I don’t deserve to be on the team. I’ll go apologize to them and tell them the whole story, even though they’re all going to hate my guts and—”
“Alex.”
“—I’ll probably lose my class presidency and maybe even get suspended. And—”
“Alex?”
“And I totally understand why I shouldn’t be the assistant manager or the assistant to the assistant manager, but—”
“Alex! Stop,” said Coach Jen.
Alex closed her mouth. She waited for Coach Jen to start yelling.
“You’re right, Alex, that what you did was very wrong. But I think you’ve already punished yourself enough. And I do believe you’ve learned a valuable lesson.”
“Crime doesn’t pay,” Alex said seriously.
The corners of Coach Jen’s mouth twitched a little, and she nodded. “And I agree that you forfeited any right to be a manager, even if I did have a position available for you, which I don’t.”
Alex swallowed down the lump in her throat and fought back the tears of shame that were welling up in her eyes.
“I’m sorry about your injury, Alex. But it could have been so very much worse. You took a big risk not only with yourself, but with others. I shudder to think what could have happened. I do think you need to tell Rosa that the incident wasn’t her fault, because she feels terrible about the whole thing.”
Alex nodded miserably. Of course it had to be Rosa. Rosa would tell the whole world, and Alex would be shunned for the rest of her middle school career. She didn’t even deserve to be in the Square Dance Club, after all that had happened.
“But I think we can leave it there,” said Coach Jen. “I don’t think there’s any value in sharing the whole story with everyone. But Alex?”
“Yes?” said Alex in a tiny voice.
“Maybe don’t be so hard on yourself all the time. You don’t have to be good at every single thing. You’re good at enough!”
Alex nodded. “Thanks, Coach Jen. I’ll try. And I think I learned another lesson: Maybe I should be a little less quick to open my big mouth and make promises I can’t keep?”
Coach Jen chuckled. “Maybe, Alex. Now I need to go to the rally. I’ll speak to Molly about a permanent spot on the team. She was already going to fill in for you today.”
Alex smiled with relief. “Thank you,” she said, and she meant it.
“Why don’t you come along? You can tell the team your decision.”
The squad was in the locker room, getting dressed in their uniforms, when Alex and Coach Jen appeared in the doorway together. The pep rally was due to start in ten minutes.
“Girls,” said Coach Jen. “Alex has something to say to you.”
Something in her tone must have told the girls it was serious, because they all stopped what they were doing and turned to listen.
Alex stared down at her shoes and cleared her throat. She was more nervous than she’d been before her presidential candidate speech in front of the entire school. “Guys, I came to apologize to you.”
Now the girls were so quiet you could hear the ticking of the clock above the door.
Alex took a deep breath and went on. “I was the reason Rosa slipped. I dropped my lip balm on the floor. And I haven’t been—um—myself the last few days. I don’t think I’m cut out for cheerleading, after all. I told Coach Jen that I’m resigning from the team.”
Alex saw Lindsey and Emily exchange a shocked look.
“I’m especially sorry to Annelise, for almost dropping her on her head. And to Molly, for almost taking her place on the team even though she deserved it. And to Rosa, because she slipped on the lip balm that I dropped. I wasn’t paying enough attention to Coach Jen and I was careless.” She looked up at them. “So, well, sorry again,” she said, and walked out of the room without looking back.
She’d asked her mom to wait for her in the car, and now Alex hopped in and buckled her seat belt in silence. Her mom didn’t ask her anything. She seemed to sense that she should leave Alex alone. They drove home without speaking.
Once back, Alex headed up to her room, closed the door, and buried her face in her pillow. She stayed that way for a while. She wondered if her parents could afford boarding school. Or reform school. Or a study abroad program that started the following week. She wondered if seventh graders were allowed to join the military, or the Peace Corps. She had to go somewhere, because she couldn’t bear to think of showing her face at Ashland Middle School on Monday.
About an hour later, the doorbell rang. She heard her mother answer, voices murmuring together, and feet on the staircase. And then there was a knock at her bedroom door and it was Emily and Lindsey, still in their cheerleading uniforms.
If they noticed Alex’s face was swollen and blotchy from crying, they pretended not to. “How’s your chin?” asked Emily, moving into the room and sprawling onto Alex’s bed.
“A little better,” said Alex in a tiny voice. She couldn’t believe they were sp
eaking to her in such a normal way. “How was the pep rally?”
“It was pretty fun,” Lindsey said.
“How did Molly do?”
“She was good,” said Emily. “Her ankle seems to be better and better. I think she’s going to be a really nice addition to the team.”
“We’re all leaving for the game together around six,” said Lindsey. “You’re going to come, right?”
Alex nodded. “I guess I have to. My dad’s the coach and my brother’s a player. But I’ll sit with my mom. I understand.”
“But the whole team is sitting together!” said Emily. “You have to come!”
“I’m not on the team anymore,” said Alex. “Remember how I quit?”
Emily and Lindsey exchanged looks.
“Tell her,” said Lindsey.
“Tell me what?”
“We had a team meeting after the pep rally,” said Lindsey. “No one’s mad at you. Not even Rosa. She knows it was an accident. And we understand why you decided to resign, although Em and I are sad about it. But then we proposed that you should be our public relations person. Like, head up the fund-raising for our new uniforms, and do the posters for all the pep rallies. That kind of thing.”
“Public relations?” breathed Alex. Her heart leaped with joy. “I’d be perfect for that job!”
“We know,” said Emily with a laugh. “That’s just what we told Coach Jen, and the rest of the team agreed!”
“The first thing I’ll do is make sure everyone’s new uniform is properly fitted,” said Alex excitedly. “Even a quarter of an inch in the hem, or a simple tuck in the waist, can make a huge difference in the way the uniform fits each person. Plus, the other day I saw some absolutely adorable polka-dot ribbon at the craft store that would totally go with our colors!”
Lindsey and Emily both smiled.
“I can be ready for the game in ten minutes!” said Alex, and galloped off to get dressed.
