Strange Light

Coach Clovis

Anna went to school feeling much better.

She and Emma Kate had fallen to sleep on the couch watching their favorite cooking show, after eating leftovers. Their parents didn't get home until well after Emma Kate's bedtime- they tended to stay late at work. Their arrival woke the sisters up, and they trudged upstairs to bed. Anna noticed that the lights had not appeared for several hours. She tentatively decided she shouldn't bother her parents, and she set her alarm for the next day.

Emma Kate had scared her, with all the talk of funny lights and those being what she had seen when she was sick. But when Anna woke up and felt fine, she thought that it must have been nothing, that they were both mistaken.

Above all, she did not want to go to a doctor and complain about something that ended up not being anything. The idea gave her anxiety. She had always been the kind of person who refused to go to the doctor for fear of being labeled overreactive. When she had hurt her knee at dance practice a few months ago, she'd refused to go to the doctor and let it get better on its own. There was no way she was going to be the girl who cried wolf when nothing was actually wrong.

So, she went to school.

As soon as she walked in the front doors, she saw her dance coach.

She froze.

Coach Clovis turned around, saw Anna, and immediately raised her arm to point an accusatory finger at her.

"Anna Marie Elizabeth March," she boomed.

Anna wanted to melt into the floor. She looked for an escape.

"Don't you run away from me!"

Anna stood where she was and waited for her dance coach to storm through the hallway towards her. The students standing around tittered. Everyone was aware of Coach Clovis' enormous personality and her booming voice. She bore down on Anna like a freight train, towering over the teenagers she passed. Anna was not afraid of Coach Clovis- she knew that her coach loved all her dancers and was always looking out for them. But Anna was deathly afraid of being yelled at in front of everyone.

"You," Coach Clovis said, stopping in front of Anna, "better have a fantastic excuse for me."

"I'm sorry," Anna said.

"Sorry? Sorry?"

"I got sick."

"What is this, the eighteenth century? The team captain is your best friend, and you couldn't have sent her so much as one of those barfing emojis?"

Anna looked around furtively at the students in the hall. Only a few were watching, but it still made her nervous.

"I was... really sick. I didn't think about it."

"How sick? So sick you forgot the team, the practice, your coach?"

"I was... like... throwing up and everything..."

Anna's face was bright red. Coach Clovis' expression softened. She said,

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah."

Coach Clovis sighed loudly. She pulled Anna into one of her famous unexpected hugs that you don't ever think you need but realize you do.

"You'll be at practice today," Coach Clovis said firmly.

Anna nodded into the wool of her coach's track jacket.

"I know it's been a stressful time for you. I just don't want you to start backing out of something I know is important to you."

"I'm not," Anna said quickly.

Coach Clovis released her. "How's Emma Kate?"

"Good."

"Yes?"

"Yeah, she says she feels back to normal."

"Good." Coach Clovis nodded, and the bell rang. "Practice. After school. You will be there. Or I will find you."

She gave Anna such an exaggerated warning look, complete with raised eyebrows and widened eyes, that Anna couldn't help but smile. Coach Clovis left her to go back to her classroom, and Anna took a deep breath.

Candice was waiting for her outside of their first period class.

"Girl..." Candice said, and Anna braced herself for another lecture. Candice only took seriously two things in her life: her position as dance team captain, and her role as a best friend and confidant.

"You won't believe what Josh just called me."

Anna relaxed a little.

"What?" she said, following her friend into the classroom.

"Candy. He called me Candy."

Anna snorted. They took their seats in the back of the room, side-by-side.

"It's not funny!"

"That's what I used to call you," Anna said.

"Yeah, but you have special privileges. Josh doesn't. He called me Candy and won't even text me back, he is pushing it... pushing it."

Anna took her notebook out and laid it on her desk. The teacher was starting to pass out graded homework. Candice slapped her folder down. She had the same folder for all her classes. She shoved all her papers inside and just spent ten minutes trying to find her homework every class. Teachers had learned to accept it- Candice always did her homework. It just took her some time to locate it.

"Hola, Señorita Candice," Mrs. Cruz called from the end of Candice's row. "Your work?"

"Just a sec," Candice called, riffing through her catch-all folder. "It's in here..."

Mrs. Cruz moved on, as she always did. By the time she got to the last row, Candice would have found it. Anna was so busy watching her friend try to find her homework that she didn't notice everyone in her row turn to look at her.

"Señorita Anna?"

Anna looked up. Her Spanish teacher was staring at her from the front of the classroom.

"Donde está tu tarea?"

"Uh..." Anna froze. She felt her heart rate pick up.

She hadn't done it. She'd been so stressed about her headache and Emma Kate's dire prediction that she had completely forgotten the verb forms sheet.

"I..." she began.

"Did you forget it?" Mrs. Cruz asked.

Anna closed her mouth. Her reputation as an excellent student would save her. Mrs. Cruz wouldn't guess she hadn't done it.

But was it lying to say yes? I mean, she had forgotten it. Forgotten to do it.

"Yes," she said, looking as apologetic as possible.

Mrs. Cruz sighed. "Mañana," she said sternly.

"Yes, course," Anna agreed.

Candice's hand shot up, clutching her rumpled homework.

"Here!" she said.