I’m fine, I repeated internally. Only I knew exactly what Ava meant. Three layers of concealer couldn’t hide the purplish circles seeping out from the skin underneath my eyes. The space between my ears rang, I hadn’t taken a bite out of anything all day, and now my stomach felt as hollowed out as the inside of a jack-o’-lantern.
I scanned the fifteen pairs of eyes that circled me and reminded myself not to feel claustrophobic. They were supposed to be looking to me for guidance. I was, after all, their captain.
“Erica,” I snapped. “Spit out your gum before I chew you out. Ashley, core tight. Paisley, less bitch face, more smiles. Remember to put the ‘cheer’ in cheerleader.”
“Okay, captain, whatever you say. But remind me again. Who’s going to put the leader in there?” Paisley pinned a phony smile across her face.
Several girls snickered but stopped when I shot them a poisonous stare. I could tell the events of last night left them a little more nervous around me than usual. I seemed to have something of a ticking bomb effect.
Sweat pooled between my fingers. I shouldn’t have stopped taking Sunshine only a day before the big game. Everything felt wrong. Like I was half a beat off and couldn’t tell whether I was too fast or too slow.
I mustered up my best can-do attitude. “It’s a full house,” I said. “Let’s get ready to bring it.” I put my hand in the center of the circle, hoping that the girls wouldn’t notice the way it trembled, the way I trembled like a junkie in rehab. More hands stacked over the top of mine. “One, two, three, break!” In unison we all raised our hands to the ceiling and whooped.
I was the first one barreling out the door. I sashayed and waved my pom-poms. The smile I held felt as though a Barbie manufacturer had molded it into place. Do what they expect, I commanded.
I caught sight of Liam near the sidelines where he was stripping off his warm-up layers. I pulled my eyes away and hoped he didn’t notice. The fabric of my already fragile world was tearing apart. No more Sunshine. No more gimmicks. Like it or not, I was going to have to do this on my own. We arrived in front of the home crowd bleachers. I bumped elbows with Oiler Dan, the school’s big-headed mascot, as I found my place in formation.
“Watch it.” The kid underneath the mascot head staggered, catching himself on the table with the Gatorade dispenser.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
Get it together. I stretched my fingers at my side and rolled back my shoulders. Nerves. I made sure I was in alignment with the other girls. I was Cassidy Hyde. Cassidy-freaking-Hyde. And I could do this.
But as I stared up into the screaming sea of faces a wave of nausea nearly knocked me sideways. Cold perspiration popped up on my upper lip. I closed my eyes and blew out a long breath. Shut it all out. Everything that happened in the last week, shut it out. This was my chance.
“Ready?” I clapped my pom-poms—one orange, one black—twice. “Okay. Five, six, seven, eight.” The other girls joined in with our first cheer of the night. “Beat ’em, bust ’em, that’s our custom. Beat ’em, bust ’em, that’s our custom. Let’s go, Oilers, readjust them!”
I executed a high kick, spun on my toe, and finished with my hands straight out and forming a T with my body.
“Go, Oilers!” Ava bounced out of the ending pose. She raised her eyebrows and nodded at me as if to say, good job.
Behind us, the first quarter had begun. Each time our players got the ball, we encouraged the fans to cheer and when the other team charged for their basket, we led the fans in a cheer of “De-fense!”
When I looked up, I saw the weird sophomore girl with the VW Beetle that I’d first met outside of practice a few nights ago, this time just staring at me. Her black bangs framed the pale moon complexion of her narrow face. A prickle worked its way up from my toes all the way to the top of my scalp. What was her name? Lena? She wasn’t watching the game. She was watching me.
The sight of her distracted me. I leaped into a straddle jump. My knees knocked together hard as I landed and I had to force myself not to flinch.
Lena’s eyes unsettled me. They felt so familiar, more so than they should. I recovered from the jump and tried to ignore her. But my legs were feeling shakier, whether from withdrawal or something else, something worse, I couldn’t tell. But Lena’s presence pushed on my consciousness like a finger kneading a bruise.
I counted out the beats. Four, five, six. This time, when I twirled in step with the other Oilerettes red swam in front of my vision and I saw myself clutching a knife and plunging it deeper and deeper into cold skin. I stumbled out of the spin and righted my balance using Ava’s arm.
Her eyes bugged, but she held me upright. “Are you okay?” she asked through gritted teeth.
“Fine,” I said. I missed the next two dance moves and then fell into formation. My teeth pressed into my tongue, giving me something on which to focus besides Lena and the images swimming before me. My stare couldn’t help landing on Lena every few seconds. Why was she watching me like that? What had she been talking about the other night and why didn’t I remember her when she clearly thought she knew me?
I didn’t remember a lot of things.
It was nearly halftime. My throat was bone dry. We were in the middle of one of my favorite cheers—“Let me hear you stomp your feet!”
I ducked to set down my pom-poms in preparation for our first stunts. We’d been working on the lifts for weeks. My body was fever raging, forehead flushed with burn. The sellout crowd stomped their feet in response and it shook my heart. I huddled in with my stunt group. Ava held a poster with the word Fight painted on it. Ashley took the other side. I tried to focus. But all I could see was blood. All I could see was me in it. The hypnotist’s memory hovered halfway between real and a dream, but how could it not be real when the evidence was buried in my backyard … wasn’t it? Statistically speaking, any other option didn’t make sense.
“Count, Cassidy,” Ashley hissed. She had her fingers locked together, ready to grab Ava’s—our flyer’s—foot in the hold.
“What?” I blinked. “Right. Sorry.” I clasped my hands together, too. I realized I’d lost track of whether the Oilers were winning or losing in the game behind us. “Five, six…” Ava gripped my shoulder. “Seven, eight.”
The soles of Ava’s sneaker found my hand. I bent my knees and rocketed her into the air. Her body went rigid. I watched her from my vantage point on the ground as she held up the sign. Days ago, I’d felt renewed strength coursing through me. Today, my arms felt flimsier than cooked spaghetti.
Holding Ava’s foot in one hand, I turned out and thrust my fist into the air at an angle. I held the pose and recited the lines of the cheer. My enthusiasm was bleeding out. I couldn’t focus.
Just a little bit longer. I watched Ava closely. It was time for the catch. I felt the pressure on my hand as she bent her knees. She jumped and touched her toes. A shooting pain split through the center of my skull and cracked open the camera-eye view in which trickles of red streamed down a boy’s face like a sad, violent Harlequin doll.
“No!” I screamed, and jerked away reflexively.
But gravity worked fast. Ava was free-falling. Her dark hair trailed her like fluttering streamers. One foot nailed Ashley in the mouth. As she stumbled back, Ava’s other foot hit the floor at an unnatural angle. There was a sickening crack and she crumpled on the gym floor. A collective gasp sounded from the crowd. A whistle blew and the sneakers behind us stopped screeching.
I turned to see the basketball clutched at Liam’s side. The whole team stared. On the ground, Ava was writhing. Her thigh bone jutted out in a way that it shouldn’t. A thick bulge showed a sharp split in the bone of her leg. My stomach churned.
I glanced wildly at Ashley. She was hunkered over. Blood poured into her cupped hand. Erica’s arm was already wrapped around her back. Ashley’s red mouth worked and then she spit a tooth into her palm.
The weight of the entire gymnasium’s stares bore down on me. “I—I’
m sorry.” My voice was paper-thin. “I didn’t mean to—”
Faceless adults began rushing onto the courtside. I took a step back. Then another. And another. I turned my back and I ran. My shoulder crashed through the double doors and I sprinted through the halls of Hollow Pines High until, half-blind with panic, I found the exit and fell gulping for oxygen into the fresh air.
I crouched in the fetal position outside where my knuckles pushed against the concrete. What was happening to me? What was wrong with me?
Oh god.
I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed that the earth would either swallow me whole or self-destruct.
“Cassidy?” Liam’s voice came from behind me. It now seemed a lifetime ago that I would have swooned at the mere mention of my name on his lips.
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and stood up. “What?” The word scratched my throat.
“I figured someone needed to check on you, too.”
“Don’t you have a game to play?”
Sweat glistened off his arms. “We’re taking a brief intermission.” He flashed me the same lopsided grin that had managed to sneak through my walled-up defenses that night at the party when all I’d wanted was to be alone. Didn’t he realize that he was intruding again? “While we wait for the ambulance to arrive.”
I grimaced. I tried to imagine myself through his eyes. Did he wonder what had happened to Cassidy Hyde the Homecoming queen? Or did he think that he had it all figured out?
“It’s not like she’s going to die, you know,” he said. “Ava’s too big to be a flyer anyway.”
“That’s not true,” I mumbled.
He glanced back over his shoulder at the closed door. In the distance, I thought I could hear sirens.
“Do you have any on you?” I peered up at him, forlorn. I hadn’t taken it last night. I hadn’t taken it and it hadn’t helped. What more did I have to lose? The answer felt like a resounding nothing.
“Cassidy…” He ran his hand over his face.
“Do you?” Here was Liam, temptation staring me right in the face and I wasn’t sure I cared enough anymore to resist. He didn’t answer. I took that as a yes. “Please,” I said.
“Last night—”
“I don’t care about last night.” I shook my head. “It’s been a really shitty day. I’m asking you, as a friend.” Which was a lie because as of this moment, I didn’t have any friends.
He reached into the top of his sock and extracted a recognizable, clear plastic baggie with two pale yellow pills inside.
My heart performed a stutter step.
I licked my lips and eyed the tablets, tantalized. “I’ll pay you later, I promise.”
He shook his head. He was no longer making eye contact with me. It was like I was a beggar on the street. “Forget it,” he said. “I think you’d be doing yourself a favor if you tried to forget this whole day. Pretend it never happened and move on. Life’s long, Cass.” He flicked the plastic bag to me and it floated down into my lap. “You’ve got to stop dwelling on the past.” Tears brimmed on my lower eyelids.
Forget. That was what I’d been doing. My unconscious mind was chewing holes in my memory, leaving missing pages, the plots of which I could only guess at. In this tiny plastic bag was happiness, however temporary.
“Thanks,” I said. “I will.” He wanted me to forget because he thought that what I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me, but maybe it could hurt someone else. Maybe it already had.
My nerves were worn to fraying, sparking wires. I had nothing to spare. No willpower. I thought I was a better person than this, but maybe, right now, I just wasn’t.
The ambulance screeched to a halt in the parking lot. Red and white lights flashed. Doors slammed and urgent, hurried voices riddled the night. Seconds later men in white scrubs were hustling up the walkway, carrying a stretcher between them.
I waited for Liam to leave before emptying one of the pills into my hand and popping it in my mouth. Then, I stood up, brushed past the medics on their way into the gymnasium, and waited to forget.
SIXTEEN
Marcy
Corbin College lost the baseball game 4–2. This wasn’t Brody’s lucky night.
My first thought for tonight had been California—Jessup. I knew where he lived. Now that I knew where he lived I could find a way. But then there was the baseball connection with Jock Strap. And the moment I had seen the team schedule, the opportunity had seemed too good to pass up. So I didn’t.
I had listened to the groan of the crowd from the bottom floor of the stadium, waited while the fans departed, deflated with mustard stains on their cheeks and foam fingers pointed down at the ground. I was there as the lights clicked off one by one, shutting down the top floors, the middle, and then the corridor where I stood lurking in an empty alcove.
A janitor pulled a squeaky mop bucket past, humming along to a tune that was playing in his headphones. The locker room exit swung open and I was there to watch. Suddenly interested again, I straightened. A gradual trickle of baseball players began to flow out, having changed out of their dirt-streaked uniforms into street clothes, mostly of the T-shirt and jean variety.
My fingers twitched at my sides. I felt the closeness the way one might sense subtle movement by the quiver of water in a still glass.
I first saw him in profile, walking out with his head down, punching the buttons on his phone. He was alone, though a few more players straggled out behind him.
“Brody!” I called softly from the shadows. He paused, looked around. “Pssst, Torres! Over here.” Brody backed up a few steps, narrowed his eyes, and stared into the darkness where I imagined he could see my two eyes gleaming. I stepped forward just enough so that he could see the outline of a girl.
One of the other players stopped. “Brody?”
Seeing me, he furrowed his brow, but he looked over his shoulder and waved his friend on. “Nah, man, I’m good.”
He slid his cap from his head and ran his hand through wet hair before replacing it. Brody Torres stared into my face. He had a dark beauty mark at the top of his right cheek, tan skin, and full lips that gave him the look of a Latin pop star. “Have we met?” he asked.
“Not formally,” I said, taking another step forward. The stadium was beginning to have an emptied-out feel, like a hollowed carcass. “I’m Marcy. You weren’t going to leave without giving me an autograph, were you?”
“You know we just lost in the last inning, right?” He sounded bored again. I was just a girl, after all.
Internally, my brain ticked off the reasons I hated Brody Torres. Cocky. Arrogant. Way too good-looking. Moody. I could shut my eyes and remember the way he baited me in only to drop me dead at Circus Master’s feet like a cat with a bird in its mouth. The memory of his disinterested laughter played.
I pushed my lower lip out into a pout and leaned against the side of the alcove. “Oh, come on, it’s for my little brother. He’s a big baseball fan.” I appraised Brody. Rounded muscles filled out the shoulders of his shirt. “Now I guess I can see why.”
He scratched his temple. “Fine, fine. What do you want me to autograph?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. How about a ball?”
“The team’s already closed up for the night.”
I lowered my chin along with the tenor of my voice. “So unclose it.”
He looked over his shoulder, but there was no one there except the sound of the janitor around the corner singing to music only he could hear. “A ball.” He rubbed his fist into his eye. “Okay, sure. Just—” He started to turn. I could tell he wanted to get this over with, to go home and watch SportsCenter.
“Can I come?” I cut him off.
“Girls aren’t allowed in the locker room,” he said.
I took another step forward. I doubted Brody was the only one that could act as bait. “What’s the required amount of time to pout in baseball anyway?” I asked.
“I’m not—” Half a smile showed up in the sha
dows under the brim of his cap.
“Now that’s a better look on you,” I said.
“You think so, huh?” His voice was gravelly. I had his interest.
We listened to the wet swish-swish of the mop and the off-key notes of the janitor.
“I’ve always wanted a tour of a locker room,” I said.
Brody’s skin was dewy from a fresh shower. He made a throaty noise somewhere between a scoff and a snort. “Why’s that?”
I dropped the decibel of my voice. “We’re all allowed our little fantasies, aren’t we?”
He wasn’t moving to leave anymore. “You go here?”
“Transfer student.”
“Oh, I’d have thought I would have recognized someone like you.”
I lightly touched his arm. Gentle, easy does it. “I would have thought so, too.”
“I suppose I could show you around real quick,” he hedged. “If you really want.” He spun his hat backward and the shadows cleared from his eyes.
This time my grin was genuine. “Sign me up.”
He looked both ways down the corridors. “Don’t tell anyone I did this, okay?” But he said this with a light chuckle. Like he was used to doing things he wasn’t supposed to do. A hint of sweat and grass stains still lingered underneath his freshly showered scent.
“Not a soul,” I promised.
He fished a key card out of his wallet. My heart pounded, mouth salivated. I followed him in. He flipped on a set of lights. A big, square room materialized lined with navy blue lockers. Damp towels were slung over benches. There was a hamper for dirty uniforms. Cleats tied by the laces hung off a few of the open metal doors.
“Not quite as exciting as you pictured, is it?” he said.
I walked thoughtfully around the perimeter, taking my time. I let myself relish the space like it was sacred. Because this is where it would happen, where I’d earn my second tally mark. So close, I thought.
“It’s running low on shirtless men. That’s for sure.”
Brody’s beauty mark disappeared into a dimple when he smiled. “Shirtless men were a key part of your fantasy?”
Teen Hyde Page 14
