The Easy Part of Impossible - Sarah Tomp Page 0,67
lot like adrenaline. Except warmer, and deeper. Like hope, even if she wasn’t sure what she wanted.
“I wish I could see you dive,” he said as he buckled into the seat beside her.
Ria bit her lip, thinking. “I could do that. If you’re serious.”
“Isn’t it too cold? And dark?”
“Not everywhere.”
Thirty-One
Ria parked on the street, amid the dark, hulking buildings. As they approached the dry gym, she took deep breaths, scolding her thumping heart into behaving. This used to be one of her favorite places. She hated the way her nerves now felt jagged, and adrenaline waves sizzled and popped throughout her bloodstream.
The key was still hidden in the fake rock beneath the bush. She’d been the one to put it there. She was probably the only one who’d ever used it. The team spent enough grueling hours inside, no one else wanted to go to the dry gym more than Benny required. It had never been enough for her. She’d always wanted more. Here she was again, feeling eager and impatient.
She jiggled the key as she turned it, pressing her shoulder against the metal frame. Then the door opened and the smell of the gym—the dust of chalk, and the metal of the equipment, mixed with a hint of sweat and Bengay and something else, unidentifiable yet always there—stopped Ria in the shadowed opening.
“Is anyone here?” Cotton whispered behind her, warm and close.
“No.” She could feel the emptiness. The wide expanse of the place. No rustles or movements. No music. No creaking of the trampoline springs or ka-thump-bump-bump of the dry board. They were alone. The space was dim—the only light came from the front glass doors and the vents along the back wall where Benny had knocked out the metal grates.
It was cold, too. Eventually he would turn on heating fans and lamps, but that would be later, in full-blown winter. Until then, he’d make them work for warmth. They’d practice in mittens and head wraps, leggings and scarves; anything to keep the chill away.
Unless he was with her and the NDT. Then this place would be an empty warehouse.
She kicked her shoes off by the door and Cotton did the same. The words GOOD*BETTER*BEST were still scrawled across the walls in black paint, but the first two words were slashed with red, making them irrelevant. There was only room for the BEST here.
“This is interesting.”
“Yeah?” She tried to see it through Cotton’s eyes. The three trampolines, the row of weight machines, the mats on the floors, the walls, everywhere.
“Is this legal?”
“Us being here?”
“This place. All this stuff. It looks so dangerous.”
“It’s safe.”
And yet, it wasn’t the same gym she saw in her mind. Maybe it was the cold and the dim. Or the oppressive silence, broken only by the sound of their socks slipping along the mats. It seemed smaller than it used to be. Or emptier. Dingier and dustier. It’s not like she’d ever thought it was pristine, or even civilized, but now it looked more off-color, one step closer to condemned than she remembered.
Cotton picked up a competition manual. He’d found the one thing to read in here.
She slipped past the row of cubbies, and into Benny’s office. This was the place where he plotted and planned for each meet, compulsively checking scores and rankings.
“Which of your dives has the highest degree of difficulty?” Cotton called to her.
“Springboard or platform?” She opened the top drawer of Benny’s desk, but there were only pens and scrap paper. Ria pulled out a plastic bag holding at least fifty Sharpies.
“Springboard.”
Distracted, trying to sort through the papers in the second drawer, she said, “Probably one of my twisters.” The degree of difficulty was a way to measure a dive’s challenge. The higher the points, the harder to be perfect.
“What’s its dive number?”
She couldn’t find the NDT paperwork. Benny had given her the packet of information, but she didn’t have the paper she’d signed. She wasn’t sure where he fit into the words and lines of promises.
“If it’s a twister, I’m assuming it starts with a five.”
“You already know more than most people.” It was funny that he found the order and math of diving so interesting.
“Can you do a four hundred one dive?” He stepped inside the office, holding the open book.
“It’s a four-oh-one. Basic inward. You could do that dive.”
“No. I don’t think I could.”
Ria wanted a copy of that agreement, free of her parents’ eyes. Even if it was too complicated to read. Cotton could have helped her.