Thankfully, the locker room is devoid of people, and I strip off the ruined dress as fast as I can, trying not to think about the fact that tons of people, maybe even Rakesh, just saw my unimpressive breasts. I'm embarrassed, but it's deeper than that; I feel violated in some way, like they saw more than skin out on the dance floor. It's ridiculous, but I can't shake the feeling that when my dress came down, all my new classmates saw a little piece of my messed up heart and mind, too, and any minute now Janel or one of the other girls is going to bust in here and tell me that she knows I'm an imposter, that I'll never have what it takes to be a cheerleader, and that I'd be better off going back to my old school and forgetting I ever met them.
God, maybe I should, I think, tugging my sports bra on over my head and slipping my arms into one of my familiar running shirts. How do you even recover from being the girl who flashed everyone at the fall dance?
I sit down on a bench and drop my head in my hands. Other than my stupid foot, I'd really been starting to like everything about this school. Sure, I still miss my brothers, and I still resent my dad for what he's done, but he's barely around, and I've almost been able to pretend that I'm just living in the city having a crazy adventure all on my own. Some adventure; maybe I've got a career in porn instead of running.
I don't know why my dress snapped, but I do know one thing; I never want to face anyone who's seen my topless, even if that means I have to avoid Rakesh forever.
Soft footsteps sound on the tile floor behind me, but I don't look up. After a moment, Coach Cypri's voice pierces my gloom. "I heard you won."
I risk a glance at her, wondering if she's laughing at me, too, like all my classmates probably still are, but her face is unreadable. I sigh heavily. "If that's what you call it."
She holds out her hand, and I realize she's brought the apple with her. "You got the apple. You get the prize."
I laugh bitterly. "The only prize I want right now is for this night to have never happened."
She studies me for a moment, but then she simply says, "Done."
I snort. "Right. I wish it were that easy." No gift certificate or whatever it actually is is going to help me now.
Cypri shrugs, but her eyes glitter with something I can't name. "It's only ever as easy or as hard as you make it. Now, don't you think it's time to go home?"
My shoulders sag. Even my coach thinks I've screwed up past the point of repair if she's telling me to go home instead of giving me some syrupy pep talk about moving on from minor setbacks and getting back out there. Without looking at her, I stand up and grab my bag, kicking the dress further under the bench. "Fine. I'll see you on Monday."
I go out the back way, cutting through the door at the back of the locker room instead of going out to the gym and facing everyone again, and even though it's dark outside and I'm alone, I'm too numb to be worried about walking through the city at night. My misery must create some kind of protective shield around me or something, because I make it back to the apartment without anyone even glancing my way. When I get inside, I strip down, remove the cast, and hobble into the bathroom to take a long, hot shower. Even though I stand under the water until my leg starts to ache, nothing can erase the memory that plays on looping repeat in my mind; the sensation of water on my chest, the stares of my classmates, and their whispers and laughter as I fled.
Feeling pathetic, I crawl into bed and burrow under the covers, wishing it could be as easy as Coach Cypri said.
***
I wait for my phone to ring, for any of the cheer team to call and check on me and make sure I didn't die of embarrassment or something, but nobody gets in touch, and I try to focus on homework over the weekend instead, even though I'm alternately mortified and furious that none of my so-called friends cares enough to call.
On Sunday, somebody knocks on my bedroom door, and I try not to sound too eager as I say, "Come in."
My dad opens the door a crack. "I wanted to talk to with you. Can I come in?"
"It's your house," I tell him, trying to act like I don't care.
He slides in the door and leaves it open, staring around my room for a moment. He looks like he's never seen it, but I haven't really bothered to decorate or change much of anything, so the room still looks a lot like it did when I moved in. Except for the pile of clothes on the floor, and the fact that I hid that stupid photo.
I watch him for a moment, and the longer I stare, the more I realize that I'm searching his face for signs that we have anything in common. Genetically, sure, I know I share a lot with him, but I haven't really bothered looking at him to see if I can actually see it. The set of his jaw reminds me of the way I look before a race, and there's something about the shape of his ears that vaguely reminds me of mine, but other than the eyes, those are the only pieces of me I see in his face. I wonder if I look like my mom, I think, the thought rising unbidden. I didn't really make a careful study of the picture, since I've done my best not to think about her even before I came here, but now that my dad has pushed back into my life, I realize that she's the piece of the puzzle that's missing. Would she like me, I wonder, or would she be just as cold as Dad?
Jerking my mind away from those dangerous thoughts, I turn back to my desk, waiting for him to say something. Springs creak, and I realize he's sat down on the edge of my bed. After we sit in silence for a few more seconds, I finally swivel around and raise one eyebrow at him. "What?"
"When did the doctor say you'll be up and around again?"
I roll my eyes. "If you haven't noticed, I've been up and around plenty since I fell."
He makes an impatient sound. "When will you be able to get back to running?"
"Another month, maybe." My fingers twitch; I've been so tightly wound since the dance, all I want to do is put on my shoes and pound the pavement, but I don't want him to know that. "If I decide to go back to it, that is," I say, lying and watching his face.
He narrows his eyes. "You won't turn down the sponsorship. It's a valuable opportunity."
I snort. "Valuable for you. I don't care if I make you look bad; you shouldn't have agreed to something like that without asking me."
He glares at me, but I glare back, and for a moment, we just sit there at a stalemate. He looks away first, and I repress the flicker of triumph that fills my chest at such a stupid victory. "I'm thinking of you," he says finally, not meeting my eye, and I resist the urge to snort again.
"Whatever. In the end, it's my decision, right?"
He nods after a second, and I'm surprised. I was expecting him to sit there and argue with me, to tell me he's going to force me to do it, no matter what. I wasn't expecting him to act...almost human. Before I can react, he stands up. "Your Mom loved to run," he says, actually looking at me again. "It was in her blood. She wouldn't stop, even when she was pregnant, and the doctor's told her it was okay." He pauses, his eyes skimming the room, and I wonder if he's searching for the photo. "You get it from her."
With that, he leaves, closing my door before I can even process the bombshell he's just dropped in my lap. When I'm sure he's not hovering outside waiting to pounce, I tear across the room and pull open the dresser drawer, taking out the picture and studying it with intensity. Mom ran? I thought, looking at her delicate, feminine face. In the picture, she looks like the perfect stereotypical woman, complete with a rapturous expression as she stares up at me and my dad. I trace her form through the glass, wondering about her. Am I a runner because of her? I close my eyes, willing myself to try to remember what it felt like to bounce along inside her womb while she jogged her way through pregnancy, but the earliest memory I have has nothing to do with either of my parents; it's the morning when Miles walked me and Cal to the preschool in the church basement up the road from our house and dropped us off. No matter how I try, I can't remember anything from any earlier in my life, and I glance at the picture again. They kept me for at least a year, I realize, staring at my baby face. What would it have been like to actually grow up here?
I glance around the room and then I shake my head. I wouldn't have grown up here; I don't know where the certainty comes from, but I'm suddenly positive that my mom would never have picked a sterile apartment at the top of a hotel as her home. Would we have even lived in the city? I wonder, trying to imagine what my life would be like if she were still alive. Frustrated, I set the picture down on top of my dresser, not wanting to look at it any more. Dad may have distracted me for a minute, but there's no point wondering about things that I can't change. Life happens, I think bitterly, whether we want it to or not.
On Monday, I debate for a while about skipping school altogether, but finally I realize that I'll go crazy if I have to stay in the apartment one more minute, so I get dressed, pull on my cast, and head out into the fresh air. It's a beautiful fall morning, which just makes my mood even worse; this would be the perfect day for a long run, but instead, I have to hobble around in the stupid boot and face the people I flashed on Friday. I hesitate at the entrance to the school, but then I square my shoulders. "Nothing they say can hurt me," I whisper to myself as I head up the steps and into the school building.
I'm tense as I walk through the halls, waiting for people to point or laugh or something, but nobody pays me any more attention than usual, and my shoulder start to relax when I make it to my locker unmolested. Janel bounces up to me as soon as I get the locker open, and I tense again, waiting for her to say something.
"What a boring weekend. Did you do anything fun?"
I stare at her, wondering if I heard her right. "Not really," I say slowly. Should I mention the dance? I pull my bag up and start taking stuff out and stashing it in my locker.
She sighs and leans back against the locker. "Sucks that the harvest dance got canceled. I was really looking forward to it."
My hand stills. "Canceled?" I echo, feeling foolish.
She nods. "The DJ backed out at the last minute, and they couldn't get anyone else. They told us on Friday; don't you remember?"
I shake my head, feeling numb. What is she talking on about? "Seriously?" Is this her idea of a joke, to pretend it didn't happen?
Janel gives me a look. "What's wrong with you, anyway? You're not usually this cranky."
I hesitate, and then I shrug. "Bad weekend, I guess."
"PMS?" she asks sympathetically. "Me, too. The whole team, probably."
I stare at her blankly, and she chuckles.
"We always pull each other onto the same cycle. There's some weird thing about girls who spend time together; makes for one hell of a bad week, though, when we're all feeling pissy and bloated."
I almost blush. I'm not used to having girlfriends, and this is not the kind of thing I would have ever in a million years said to Miles or Cal, but Janel's right; I should be starting my period any day, although I've never really used PMS as an excuse when I've felt crappy before. It feels like I've stepped into some creepy alternate reality; instead of dealing with my embarrassment from the dance, I'm standing here listening to Janel talk about chocolate and tampons.
"I have to go," I finally blurt, slamming my locker and turning away from her.
Janel shrugs. "See you at practice," she says as I head into the crowd.
A couple of people bump into me, but I barely notice, I'm so wrapped up in my thoughts. Is Janel serious? I wonder, thinking about what she said about the dance. Why does she think the dance never happened? Before my brain can pull the threads together, I turn a corner and spot Rakesh. He sees me coming and waves, and I feel a wave of heat wash over my body. Oh god. He asked me out and then I flashed him.
I think about running away, but I'm in the hall, packed in with other students, and I have no idea where I would go. Rakesh comes up to me, his smile easy, and I wonder fleetingly if he's going to pretend nothing happened, either. "Happy Monday," he says, smirking, "even if that is an oxymoron."
"Did you want to get tacos tonight?" I blurt, trying to steer the conversation back to his offer at the dance, rather than giving him a chance to tell me if he saw me topless or not. I realize suddenly that I'd rather not know.
He lifts an eyebrow. "You read my mind. There's this great taco fusion food truck that I like to stop at sometimes, and I was going to ask if you wanted to come with me."
A sense of déjà vu washes over me at his words. "Is it by the river?"
He nods. "You know it?"
I shake my head, feeling numb. "I think I heard someone mention it, is all." I say, trying to recover from the strange certainty that Janel was right; somehow, someway, the dance never happened. My stomach clenches a little bit when I realize that means that Rakesh doesn't remember holding me close or pressing his forehead to mine, and self-consciously, I take a step back. What else did I make up? I bite my lower lip, looking down at the floor, and the bell rings, saving me from my indecision.
I hurry away from Rakesh, barely noticing his wave as I go, but instead of heading to first period, I go to Coach Cypri's office outside the gym. The door is shut, and I hover in the hallway for a moment, torn with indecision, but then I knock.
"Come in," she calls, her voice muffled behind the door, and before I can lose my nerve, I slip inside her office and shut the door behind me.
"What happened to the dance?" I ask without preamble.
Coach Cypri is sitting at her desk, a stack of papers in front of her. She raises one of her perfectly shaped eyebrows and looks at me curiously. "What dance?"
I swallow, suddenly afraid I'm going crazy. "The harvest dance on Friday."
"It was canceled," she says, her eyes glittering.
"But I was there." The words slip out before I can stop them, and I pause, holding my breath and wondering what Coach Cypri is going to say. I don't know which is worse; that I imagined it all, or that it really happened.
She studies me for a moment, and then she nods once. "And you won the apple. So the dance never happened."
I stare at her, confused. "Wait, what?"
"Do you remember what you said when I spoke to you on Friday night?"
I dig back through my thoughts, and I vaguely remember that Cypri had come into the locker room to talk to me. She'd asked what I wanted for winning the stupid bobbing for apples contest. And I'd said I wanted the night to have never happened. "But that's not...possible!"
She smiles. "Nothing is impossible, Lana. You got what you asked for; you're welcome."
Pieces click together in my mind, and I shake my head, denying her words. "There's no way a person can make something that's happened not happen," I argue. "Nobody can do that."
Coach Cypri narrows her eyes. "Some can. And if you're going to question my gift, I might just have to reverse it and see if you'd rather live with that reality."
I swallow. She sounds like she means it, but the rational part of my brain holds onto the fact that a person can't do something like this; isn't it against the laws of time and space? "But how?" I finally ask.
Cypri compresses her lips. "It's better if you don't know."
Suddenly aware that I've been alone in the woman's car, I sink to the chair in front of her desk. "Who are you? Some kind of brain-washing expert or something?" My voice starts to go shrill, but I can't stop myself. "Have you done anything to me? Is all this just an elaborate hallucination that you've, I don't know, hypnotized me into believing?"
"You think it's just some carnival trick?" She asks, her voice dangerously soft.
I swallow and lean back in my chair. "No," I hurry to say. "It's nothing. Forget I said anything."
But Coach Cypri acts like she doesn't hear me. She leans across the desk, her eyes pinning me in place. "Lana, you must understand that once you know, things will never be the same. Are you sure you want to ask me these questions?"
My head is screaming at me to say no, to get out of her office, to run back to my dad's stupid apartment and forget I ever set foot in this school at all, but now that she's admitted there's something fishy going on, I'm suddenly compelled to know. "If you've had something to do with this mess that's my new life, I think I deserve to know," I say finally, trying to sound more confident than I really feel. "What are you?"
She leans back in her chair and studies me. "The better question would be, 'who are you?'"
I swallow. "You aren't really Coach Cypri?"
She chuckles. "Cypri is one of my names, but it's probably not the one you would know. Still, it works as an alias when I move among mortals."
Mortals. Oh my god, she's insane. I try to play along. "And you're not mortal?"
She nods slowly, her blue eyes locked on mine, and a tingle of something—magic?—jumps from her to me, like an electric shock, and I jump.
"What," I begin, and then I clear my throat, "who are you?"
The air around Coach Cypri begins to shimmer, like gold powder, and she laughs. "Can you figure it out?"