Beyond the Point(32)
Faintly, she recognized the sound of Avery’s voice.
“It’s going to be okay, D.”
A warm hand squeezed her upper arm, and opening her eyes, Dani saw a blond angel looking down at her. Avery.
“I’m here with you. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Call Wendy,” Dani said through clenched teeth.
“Who?”
“Wendy Bennett.”
“I’m putting in an IV,” someone else said. “Quick pinch. There you go. We’re going to get you hydrated and figure out what’s going on. A little ibuprofen in there to help with the pain.”
Relief suddenly spread through her veins. Her body relaxed; it stopped fighting. And her mind wandered into a blackness that felt like bliss.
8
Fall 2001 // West Point, New York
On a clear Tuesday morning in September, every blade of grass at West Point looked like a tiny saber, reaching for the sky. The color turquoise stretched overhead without a single cloud to interrupt its hue, and as Avery moved toward Thayer Hall, her dark gray uniform shirt tucked into wool pants, all she could think about was how quickly life can change. All it took was an instant.
She’d seen it with her brother, Caleb. In one moment, he was an innocent sophomore on the way to acing Algebra I; the next, he was wearing an orange vest, picking up trash on the side of the highway for community service. She’d seen it this summer with Dani, too. With one misplaced step, she’d morphed from point guard to patient, undergoing emergency surgery to repair what the doctors had determined was a torn ligament. It was awful; Avery had never seen someone’s face so contorted in pain.
That day, the EMTs had loaded Dani’s body into an ambulance and drove her from Camp Buckner to Keller Army Hospital, which looked more like a Gothic castle than an infirmary. Without asking permission, Avery had hopped in the back of the ambulance and refused to leave Dani’s side until the nurses wheeled her back for surgery. For hours, Avery sat in the hospital’s cold waiting room alone, until the woman Dani had told her to call, Wendy Bennett, had arrived. She’d only met the woman a handful of times, at basketball games, but her presence somehow forced a crack in the dam Avery had constructed to keep her emotion in check. Still dressed in BDUs, her face painted green and black and brown, Avery had fallen into Wendy’s motherly embrace, smearing camouflage face paint against the woman’s white shirt.
“It’s okay,” Wendy had said. “It’s going to be okay.”
“I was horrible to her last year . . . I—”
“Stop that. People remember who showed up for the crappy moments far more than they remember who showed up for the party. And you’re here, aren’t you? You’re here.”
If she was honest, Avery still felt ashamed of how she’d acted toward Dani last year. Bitter and resentful, she’d isolated herself, choosing to believe that she had enemies rather than risk being rejected by new friends. But the summer had proven her wrong. Eight weeks had multiplied—breaking into tiny fragments, like the loaves and fishes from that old Bible story—until they’d spread into a million moments, some bitter, some savory, and some sweet. Time was malleable that way. Weeks could feel like years, if you filled them to the brim. A day could manufacture memories to last a lifetime.
During a late-night game of Never Have I Ever, Avery had even admitted to Dani and Hannah that she’d slept with John Collins last year. While Hannah winced, as if Avery’s fornication had caused her physical pain, Dani didn’t seem shocked or appalled; she just laughed and shook her head, which helped Avery feel at ease for once. They’d never spoken of it explicitly—Dani had never asked for an outright apology—but somehow, over the course of the summer, her fiercest competition had become one of her closest friends.
After the surgery, the commandant of cadets had agreed to let Dani move into a spare bedroom at the Bennetts’ house while she recovered. Wendy’s daughters were all in college, leaving three empty bedrooms and three empty seats at the dinner table, where Avery and Hannah would often join Dani, savoring Wendy’s cooking. Vegetable lasagna. Roasted chicken with tabbouleh. Grilled salmon with mango slaw. There was always a gallon of cookie dough ice cream in the freezer, and Wendy would present it nightly with a pile of spoons, as if bowls were an unnecessary step between their stomachs and delight.
If Avery had ever felt embarrassed by Dani’s nudity, all that dissipated as she and Hannah took turns helping Dani into the Bennetts’ guest bathroom shower. Tears came often for Dani in those days, and not just from the physical pain. It was hard, Avery knew, for this former powerhouse of a woman to be so powerless. Everyone wants to be the friend who helps. No one wants to be the friend who needs the help.
“Shit, Dani, do you have to be as thick as a horse?” Avery had said once as she lifted Dani off her wheelchair and into the shower. Dani had clung to Avery’s shoulder, and in the end, they both ended up drenched in soap and water.
“This is what I like to refer to as karma,” Dani had replied.
Spending time at the Bennetts’ was just one of many new privileges they had, now that they were sophomores, also known at West Point as “Yuks.” The academic calendar boasted six B-weekends, when upperclassmen could leave campus in civilian clothes and pretend to be free for a while. And while Yuks still were low on the totem pole, they had far more freedom than they’d had the year before, and Avery relished every opportunity she had to leer at new plebes whenever they called minutes in the hallway.