Letters to Nowhere(8)

“Diet?” Bentley’s forehead wrinkled and he scratched the top of his bald head.

“The team nutritionist’s diet. She meets with the elite girls and our families every six months and we get detailed menus to follow.” How did he not know about this? And here I was worried that he’d crack the whip on the food issue and he was seconds from buying me a Big Mac and fries.

“Maybe I do remember someone mentioning the nutritionist,” he said finally. “Does Stacey know the details?”

“Uh…yeah.” She was the one who got on us when any of us tried to cheat, like at competitions when we traveled as a team and went out to dinner together. Stacey was convinced that one meal without a leafy green food would ruin our immune systems forever. And white bread would make us all fall off the balance beam instantly. “It’s just empty calories,” she always said, and, “It doesn’t leave any room for good food.”

I could honestly say that I’ve rarely cheated on my diet. I liked all the foods that were recommended to us. But I’ve seen Blair go home after practice and eat nothing but two candy bars and a bowl of Lucky Charms, then work out again for four hours later that day. Everyone else cheated, but we’d never rat each other out. Ever. It was part of the teammate bond.

“I’ll talk to Stacey,” Bentley said. “She can fill me in.”

Jordan rolled his eyes and got up from his chair, tossing his plate into the sink with a loud bang. Coach Bentley sighed as his son left without a word. Obviously, this wasn’t a hugging kind of father/son relationship.


January 29

Mom,




Complete and utter humiliation. That’s what happened to me tonight. I hadn’t even been close to prepared to walk in on Jordan and his prep school girlfriend. Maybe if they had been vertical instead of horizontal it would have been twenty percent less embarrassing? Now I have to think about that every time I see him. This is going to be so much fun. If you could answer this, I know you’d have something funny to say that would help me feel a little less like an ignorant homeschooled girl. I’m not ignorant, it’s just new to me. Boys in the house. Boys in the house kissing girls…




Love, Karen



***

After finishing all the paperwork, I finally made myself walk up the stairs. Jordan’s bedroom door was open, his body stretched across the bed, textbooks and notebooks spread out in front of him as he scribbled on a page. Remembering Blair’s concerns, I knocked lightly on the door frame and he looked up right away.

“Is it okay if…if I use the shower? You don’t need to go in there now…do you? Because I can totally wait or whatever.”

He looked mildly amused with my obvious distress. “The bathroom’s all yours, Karen.” As I started to turn away, he added, “Just don’t mess with those magazines under the sink.”

My eyes widened. Jordan laughed and looked down at his notebook again. “Kidding.”

I let out a breath before walking away.

“I removed all traces of porn this morning before you got here,” he said to my back.

Being an only child had left me highly unprepared for a number of situations. I was clearly in over my head. Not something I felt often.

The shower went without any indecent exposure, but even gobs of fruity shampoo and body wash couldn’t keep the smell of home out of my nostrils the second I walked into my new bedroom. It hit me right in the gut and for a minute, I thought I might be sick. I didn’t dare open the box that held my sheets and comforter. Instead, I opened the door to my new bedroom closet. With an extra blanket and pillow from the upstairs hall closet, I slid the closet door shut, pressing the blanket into the tiny space under the door, before curling up on the tan carpeted floor.





CHAPTER THREE





When I woke up after my first night in Coach Bentley’s home with a sore neck and aches in my lower back and stomach, I didn’t think anything of it. I had slept on a closet floor after all. And I was a veteran when it came to sore muscles.

Blurry–eyed, I glanced at my cell phone: 5:28. Too early for a check–in call to Grandma and too late to fall back asleep, not that I could with all these aches.

After crawling out of the closet and hiding the blanket and pillow on the top shelf, sealing the door shut to keep it clean until tonight, I allowed myself thirty seconds to find a pink leotard and a pair of sweats before heading into the bathroom.

Coach Bentley was already in the kitchen when I got downstairs. A large silver bowl filled with apples, oranges, and bananas now sat on the table. He pushed around what looked like scrambled eggs in a skillet with one hand. With his other hand, he opened the fridge, reached in and produced a paper bag, holding it out to me.

“It’s your lunch,” he said. I took it out of his hand, setting it on the table. “You have that appointment at eleven thirty. The one your grandmother set up for you. We won’t have time to come back for lunch.”

The shrink. I’d almost forgotten. It was part of the agreement to let me stay here. I had to see some woman who had a PhD in talking about dead parents.

“Right, the appointment.” I picked up an apple from the bowl and bit into it, just to kill the silence. There had been no apples in this house yesterday. Coach Bentley must have talked to Stacey and gotten up early to shop for groceries.