gravity. Her shoulder folded, giving her chin nowhere to go but down, hard, into the pavement. She should have been ready, should have ducked and rolled, should have known how this talk would end. Her ragged breathing blended with the sound of his engine, the smell of her blood with his exhaust. By the time she’d sat up, pressing her sleeve against the stinging scrape, he was gone.
Five
On her trampoline, between Maggie and Sean, Ria leaned back and stared up at the sky. Her glasses had a smear on the lens, but she liked the way it made the stars look like they’d been spilled behind the tree. Her chin only hurt when she touched it.
“Starting tomorrow,” said Sean, “we’re seniors.”
“Finally!” said Maggie. “We’re going to take the place over. Chrissy is already working on a class costume for Halloween.”
“We’ve got to start thinking about the perfect senior prank, too. Charlie’ll be the mastermind, I’m sure.”
“And prom,” added Maggie. “We’ll have the most ultimate prom. But what about tomorrow? We should do something for the first day.”
“We’ll meet by the front window—the same spot where we’ll have lunch. The Senior Roost.”
“I’ve waited three years to sit there!”
“You made it. We made it. Right, Ria?”
“Okay.” It wasn’t the rightest answer, but it wasn’t completely wrong. She hadn’t given senior year a lot of thought. Or any. She was having trouble following all the plans Maggie and Sean had for this year, but plans didn’t mean actually happening, either. Her plans had been to not be here. She was supposed to have won Nationals and now be diving around the world. She would have had private tutors instead of boring classes.
She and school had a tumultuous history. In elementary school, she’d always been the skinny kid with big glasses. One step behind and two levels below. She counted backward and upside down. Letters had a way of mixing up and jumping around. Playing hide-and-seek and peekaboo. Looking like one thing but being another.
Diving had saved her.
Getting her body exhausted had given her mind a chance to slow down. Plus, it gave her plenty of excuses. If she was gone at a meet all weekend, it made sense that her report was short and messy. Once teachers heard her extensive practice schedule, they were more willing to make even more adjustments and adaptations.
But now she’d failed diving, too. She hadn’t escaped after all.
“We’ll rule the school,” said Sean.
“We’ll rule the universe!”
“Ruling the whole universe sounds like a lot of responsibility,” Ria said.
Sean ignored her ridiculous comment, keeping in line with Maggie’s excitement. “It’s going to be awesome.”
“What color is awesome?” What she really meant was, how could school be awesome? Those two ideas didn’t exist together in her mind. Even for brains like Maggie and Sean, “awesome” seemed like an awfully long stretch.
“Well, Random Ria,” Maggie said, tossing a seed pod at her. “‘Awesome’ can be whatever color you want it to be.”
Cotton had made caving sound awesome and amazing and mysterious and yet he hadn’t mentioned any colors besides mud-brown. He’d been muddened. That joke would be too hard to explain to Maggie and Sean. Maybe Cotton was just easily amazed.
“Let’s see if we can find some awesome right here.” She handed her glasses to Sean, then stood up, reaching for Maggie’s hands. “I challenge you to an Awesome Add-on.”
“You start.”
“You be judge,” Ria said to Sean, who had already moved to the edge of the trampoline. “Rate our color of awesome.”
He shook his head, slipping down to the grass. “No way. I’m not starting a war. I’ll film for any disputes.”
They both laughed. It was true. Their competitions were fierce and unyielding.
Ria started basic, with a backflip. Maggie did her own, then reversed the direction into a front handspring. Ria took those two moves and added a front flip, the force of it launching her precariously high, setting off a chorus of shrieks. By the time they’d added a total of fourteen moves, they both staggered around the trampoline, a floppy mess of breathless, hysterical giggles.
Her chin ached now. She must have bumped it again. “Truce.”
“Hell no,” said Maggie. “If you quit, I win. Otherwise we keep going.”
“I’m done. I quit.”
Her friend eyed her mistrustfully.
“Seriously. You win, Mags.” She’d let her have this one. There was no point in winning.
“Oh, thank God. My legs are Jell-O-fied.” Maggie slid to the edge and off. “We worked our legs today along to the entire Les Mis soundtrack.”