Heroine(62)

“How did you feel the next day?” Carolina asked. “That’s always my thing, you know? Like, how can I just get up and use the bathroom and brush my teeth and drive to school and talk to Mom without thinking the whole time, I’m not a virgin anymore?”

Bella Right only shrugged. “You just don’t. It’s supposed to be this big life-changing thing, right? But it’s not. You’ve still gotta pee, and eat and go to school and do all the same shit the next day just like you did the one before. Only difference is a guy’s dick has been in you. And you know what? By third period it’s like it wasn’t even a thing. I had sex, but oh well. I couldn’t spend all day thinking about it, right? So I go to fourth period, and then someone asks me what’s for lunch, and pretty soon it’s just another day. Nothing’s different. Not even me.”

It’s true for me too, although the only thing that’s been in me was a needle. There is clarity to my day that I’ve never felt before, a distinct line between what things are and what they are not, as if my mind has found new, more accurate definitions for everything. I know who my friends are, and which ones belong in what parts of my life. I can sit at lunch and give Carolina hell for missing that line drive, and not wince when she hits my arm for it. The bruises there can’t hurt when she touches them, because her hand cannot cross the boundary between the two worlds. How can I feel pain from bruises she does not know I have, and that I refuse to acknowledge when I am with her?

There is a feeling of superiority as well, something I have never carried with me off the field. I eat my sandwich, each bite heavy in my mouth, more food than I need. I listen to my friends talk, their words fluid and easy between them. For once I do not feel the need to participate, to make my own words and fit them with theirs, putting pieces of a conversation together.

I keep quiet, holding things close to me. I know things they don’t know. I don’t need food. I don’t need words. I don’t need anything.

Right now, honestly, I really am okay.

And it’s not a lie.

We’re eight games into the season, undefeated. It’s nothing more than was expected of us, and Coach tells us in the locker room not to get cocky. We haven’t seen any real competition yet. That’s coming on Thursday. Normally Coach doesn’t let up during the season, pushing us at practices in between games just as hard as preseason. But it’s raining now, the field nearly underwater. She tells us to do two miles in the hallways, then put in our reps in the weight room.

Bella Right rolls her eyes, mutters, “Hoo—fucking—ray.”

We trade spikes for sneakers, trying not to groan. Running indoors is absolute shit. The tiled floor has no give and if you don’t know how to land on your feet just right you’ll wake up the next day with shin splints. Normally I can feel the impact right up to my teeth, and I’m not looking forward to putting in my time after Carolina and I are finished stretching. But once we’ve shot down the science hallway, circled the auditorium, and passed the vocational tech rooms, I realize I feel nothing.

It’s the heroin, what’s left of it, rushing through my bloodstream, feeding my brain, liberating my heart. I take a deep breath, my lungs incredibly open.

“What are you smiling about?” Carolina asks, her own breathing a little shaky, her arm held a little too close to her side, protectively.

“I feel good,” I tell her as we jog through the cafeteria, a group of boys glancing up as we pass.

“You look good,” she admits after a second, her eyes trailing over me. I know she hasn’t missed the fact that I’m wearing long sleeves, pushed up just below the elbow.

Behind us, the boys catcall the Bellas and Lydia, followed by yells as Bella Right wings a softball at them. She carries two with her when we run indoors, specifically for that reason. Carolina and I both laugh, the sounds mixing together as they always have, hers high and feminine, mine a lower note. I smile even wider, lengthening my stride on the last half mile, pushing Carolina to keep up with me.

“It’s like that, huh?” Carolina asks, sucking wind but answering my challenge.

I pass the locker room door a split second ahead of her, momentum taking me past the drinking fountains and a few lockers before I can slow down.

“Perdedora,” I say to her.

“Pendeja,” she shoots back, sweat streaming down her face.

I don’t remember the last time I spoke Spanish with her. It feels good, even if we are just trading insults. We set up our weights, counting reps and spotting each other, laughing at Bella Center when her squat produces a fart that can be heard over the music.

“Jesus,” Lydia says, pinching her nose. “Somebody put a bucket under her.”

The baseball game was rained out and their coach gave them the day off, so we’ve got the room to ourselves, our muscles tearing and lengthening, our tongues loose as we tease each other. The door to the outside is open, letting in a cool breeze and a whiff of rain, washing away the smell of our sweat. No one questions my long sleeves, and I break my deadlift record.

I feel good.

I feel like I can have both things.





Chapter Forty-One


betray: to violate trust, prove treacherous to, or abandon another Luther is waiting for me by my car after Wednesday’s game. I don’t see him until I’m fumbling for my keys. My head is down, mind rolling over the fact that I missed a pop-up in the third inning. We won anyway, and it’s the kind of catch that would have been nothing short of a full-on run-and-dive miracle move for anyone else. But for me, it should have been routine, and I couldn’t do it.