Merry signed happily. Dream team perfect.
Of course, her mother would be having a bird about the split dismount—technically, you could break a leg—but if she fled away from the trophy ceremony before her family could make it down out of the stands . . . Hi. Smile. Smile. Big trophy. Hand it to Crystal.
Bye Bye. She was off toward the bus.
“Hotdog beach,” said one of the girls from Prep World with a glamorous platinum sneer.
Even one of the four judges had to stop herself from applauding. She quickly glanced around with a guilty gaze before bending over her clipboard. But then all four of the judges bent to confer. Merry bit her lip. She knew they were going to be docked for an illegal move. But she knew that in their hearts, judges were hotdoggers, too. They had to be impressed.
Campbell wanted to be angrier than she was. But all around her, athletes—even boys—were cheering for these little girls who had turned a sissy pastime into a demonstration of raw guts and power. How mad could she get?
Merry watched the judges closely. From the judges’ body language, the Ridgeline Rockets knew the cup was theirs, but they could only stand politely, in rest stand, until the verdict was final. People in the stands were screaming, on their feet.
“Did you see that little girl?” a father called out.
“She’s my daughter!” Tim roared. Campbell elbowed him in the ribs.
Campbell stood up and began shouting, in a voice she hoped Merry could hear, that Meredith wouldn’t be leaving the house until summer. Merry sneaked a glance at her coach. Becky Everson had her hands in her pockets and was looking down at the toes of her shoes. But finally, she seemed to decide that it would improve appearances if she was behind her squad, win or lose. Slowly, Coach began to applaud, too. She would give Merry a lecture. But she admired her guts.
The judges stood.
After the announcement of the winners and the victory cheer, Kim came running and lifted Merry off the ground. “My total hero!” she said. “The flying shrimp rides again!”
David appeared behind his sister and said, “Some move, Meredith.”
“Just for you!” Merry giggled, flipping one of her hands in a parody of her crowd wave.
“Too bad you’re a baby girl, shrimp,” David said, and Kim punched him.
Meredith could have fainted with pure joy.
Will Brent seemed to shrink in her mind to a little mannequin, and then to a concept. She saw her parents approaching, with Campbell literally shaking her fist.
“Run!” Merry yelled. “Here come my parents! See you at home! Love you, Mom! I gotta make the bus!” Campbell broke into a fast trot, but Merry lost herself in the crowd.
“You’ll never catch her,” Mallory told her mother.
“She was pretty amazing,” Tim admitted.
“She’s practically a convalescent!” Campbell said.
“I just said she was pretty amazing. She’s got a lot of guts. You can’t deny her that, Cam.”
“It’s because she has this big crush on Kim’s brother,” Mallory told them. Adam stuck a finger down his throat and mimed gagging.
“That’s absurd,” Campbell said. “She’s a child, and he must be seventeen.”
“He’s sixteen,” said Mallory. “I agree with Adam.”
“I’m five years older than you are,” Tim reminded Campbell, mussing her hair.
“Shut up,” Campbell said. “That was a different time. . . .”
“Pioneer times,” said Adam.
“You, too,” Campbell told him. She was disgruntled. “This ruins the whole trophy thing. Why did she take such a chance? And David Jellico? Bonnie would kill him if he’s encouraging her. It’s ridiculous. She’s thirteen!”
“I’m hungry,” said Adam.
Campbell did a quick inventory. The crowd was shoving her forward toward the doors. Astonishingly, Adam was still wearing both his gloves. She could feel the lump of her leather driving gloves in her own pocket, hear the sharp jingle of her keys. Tim’s sleepy, goofy grin told her that she would be driving home. And she didn’t want to spend two hours waiting to get out of the parking lot. Grabbing Adam’s hand, she broke into a trot, calling back that she’d get the van and pick Mally and Tim up. Her phone vibrated. She snapped it open. Meredith! The little minx. She was apologizing in advance. Well. It had been a lousy few months for Merry. She deserved this. Campbell typed back,
Congrats, brat
.
No one noticed that Mallory had stopped and was slumped against the school wall, panting, her lips pale. Tim was still talking with her, talking through the routine as if she were a step behind him, pointing out that though his heart was in his stomach when he saw Merry dismount, he secretly knew she could do it. Tim said, “You don’t think your dad’s so old, do you, Mal? Adam? Where’s Adam? Oh, he went with Mom. You know I can still beat
you
one-on-one . . . Mallory? Mal?”
He whirled and sprinted back up the long hall. Fifty feet ahead of them, Campbell heard him and started to fight her way back through the crowd. People were still talking about Meredith:
Did you see that short, little girl flip? Isn’t it something what kids can do now?
No one seemed to notice Mallory at all.
Sweeping Mallory up in his arms, Tim crouched against the concrete wall and called out to Campbell, “What is it? Look at her, please?”
“Sit down,” said Campbell. All of them sat down on the floor of the hall. Her eyes on her watch, she laid her fingers against Mallory’s wrist. “She’s sweating. Her pulse is racing. I don’t know what’s wrong with her. Mally? Are you sick to your stomach?”
“No,” said Mallory. How could she explain? How could she explain the waking dream that had gone streaking across her mind like a sped-up snippet of film?
She could as easily explain the composition of the rings of Saturn to an infant.
What she could ask, finally, was, “Is Merry taking the bus? Or did she ride with Kim?”
“I know she’s on the bus. She just sent me a little text message! I assume that Kim is, too,” Campbell said. “What’s this got to do with Merry?”
“I really, really did see it, then,” Mallory whispered.
For the second time in three months, which also was the second time in her life, Mallory fainted.
“She’s fine,” said Dr. Staats. “If I had to guess, this is stress-related or hormonal. We’ll take a little blood and check for a virus. She’s got a lot going on. Puberty can be weird.” Mallory sat glumly on the paper sheet of the examining table. She wished, not for the first time that night, that a high-tension wire would fall on her and twist her into a little black pencil of ash. If humiliation could kill you, she’d be dead ten times in the past ten minutes. Adam sat in the corner, with the twisted fingers of a rubber glove hanging from his nostrils, grinning and letting his tongue loll out.
He might be stupid
, thought Mallory,
but he knows what puberty is
.
The beauty of Ridgeline was in things such as this—a doctor who would leave home late on a Saturday afternoon and unlock the clinic personally because a child she’d delivered was in trouble. Dr. Staats was at the clinic before Campbell wheeled into the parking lot. When Campbell saw the doctor’s familiar car, a snazzy vintage Corvette, she exhaled with relief.
“Can Adam please leave?” Mallory begged. “Please? He’s acting retarded and making me nuts.”
“Take him outside, Tim,” Campbell said. Reluctantly, covertly grabbing a few more surgical gloves as he passed, Adam followed his father out into the waiting room. Mallory supposed she should be grateful for Dr. Staats coming over to the clinic on her day off. Campbell insisted at first that they stop at the nearest urgent care; Mallory protested so loudly that her father jumped and Campbell swerved: If she
had
to see a doctor—and she did
not
have to see a doctor—then it was going to be
her
doctor, though this was absurd because she was fine and all she wanted to do was go home and why didn’t anyone get that?
And then, suddenly, in what seemed to all of them to be the middle of her rant, Mallory fell asleep and didn’t wake up until they were in the Ridgeline Medical Specialists parking lot. Although she couldn’t know, this would be the pattern: the lurid picture, colored like a bad movie in shaky cam, slammed against her visual field, the faint, the hysteria—then sleep.
“Mally, have you ever had a blackout before?” Dr. Staats asked.
“Not like this,” Mallory said. “It wasn’t exactly a blackout. I passed out during the fire. This was just . . . I can’t explain it. It was like a shock.”
“Like something frightened you?”
Yes,
Mallory thought.
Like something frightened me. And I’d love to tell you what but you’d put me in the hospital for going psycho. Which I probably actually am.
“Sometimes when people enter puberty, hormonal changes . . .” the doctor began.
“It wasn’t that,” Mallory answered. “I know it wasn’t.”
“You might not feel developed in other ways,” Campbell began.
Mallory put her hands over her ears.
“Oh, please kill me,” she said through her teeth. “Doctor Staats, have you met my mother? My mother is a nurse! We’ve had the changes-in-a-woman’s-body conversation about every Thursday since I was nine years old. It’s right before the if-you-ever-need-birth-control-you-know-you-can-tell-me conversation. I’ve never even kissed a boy. Please!” Mally pleaded. “I’d know if I were having my period. Or a mood swing. Or anything. And if I was, Meredith would be having it, too. Maybe we should go home. What if Merry fainted, too, Mom? What if she’s on the kitchen floor and hit her head?”
“I called her. She’s fine,” said Campbell.
Great,
Mally thought. The least Meredith could do was go crazy at the same time.
“She’s just worried about you. Kim is there with her.”
Kim?
Mallory thought.
Oh, no, please no, I can’t talk to her with Kim there!
So Mallory concentrated on how to get Kim out of their house, or at least out of earshot, while Dr. Staats and Mally’s mother talked for about six hours about possible reasons for Mallory’s dizziness, from low blood sugar to an ear infection. Finally, Dr. Staats patted Campbell’s arm, gave her a lab slip, and promised to rush the blood work through.
Mally thought she would scream if she didn’t get out of the room.
She didn’t want to tell Merry what she’d seen.
But she had to.
Who else was there?
She thought of Eden. No. Eden was a high-school girl, a basically normal, decent person. Mallory had already creeped her out once. She thought of Drew. She longed for Drew. But did she really want her only true friend to think she was nuts?
Mallory just knew that Merry had blabbed something to Kim and she was furious. How much had Merry told about what was happening to them? No matter what she’d said, it was too much. It was dangerous—especially with Kim! The fewer people who knew, the better. She flipped open her cell phone and texted Merry:
Lts tlk wen I gt hm. Aln. K?
She hoped she wasn’t interfering with the monitors for someone stroking out somewhere else in the clinic. It said right on the front door that cell phones were not allowed. No. She remembered now. The clinic was closed. They were the only ones there.
Campbell, watching, would have assumed Mallory could simply call Merry on the telepathy beeper. But was that working anymore? Did that work only if both of them had it turned on or if a crisis slammed through whatever else one of them was thinking or doing? She could ask Merry, but Mally was too fierce. Mally would clam up.
As for Mally, this wasn’t something she wanted to talk about with Merry
except
if it were face-to-face and with words.
It was like a dream; but it wasn’t a dream.
It was, she supposed, a vision. Like the vision she’d had with Eden.
But why?
Why then, why just—blam!—walking down the concrete hall that led to the convention center parking lot? What were they even talking about? Adam said he was hungry. Then Adam took off with Mom. Her father was talking about Merry running off with Kim, and about how great Merry was, and how great Tim was . . . but it wasn’t about Tim. Kim.
That was it!
Her mother got all pissed that Meredith had a crush on David, how Bonnie would be mad if David liked Merry, too.
David Jellico.
And what would her mother say if Mally just blurted it out right now
: I saw your best friend’s son kill a dog. I saw it. I saw him hang a dog on a tree until it died.
She had to see Merry. It was probably better that Merry wasn’t home alone, she thought. But what did it matter? If Kim was there and David showed up, they’d ask him in without even thinking about it. They’d make him hot chocolate.
Oh, come on!
Maybe she was only mad at David. Maybe she was jealous of Merry’s crush on David and not admitting her own feelings. That was it. No, that wasn’t it. David was an ass. But not a dangerous ass. Just an immature jerk. But where was David? Right now?
If only there was a way she could put her hands over the eyes of her brain, and stop seeing it over and over and over.
It was too pitiful and awful. She had to be some kind of lunatic even to think about it. A black-and-white dog, middle-sized, with a ruff on its throat, its legs clawing the air, its mouth dripping foam, a rope around its poor neck, and David (
It couldn’t be David!
) slowly pulling the rope higher and higher off the ground, over the branch of a tree. She knew the dog. She had seen that dog before. Mallory tried again to wish the picture from her brain. This was going to happen, actually happen. That much she knew for sure. Her heart began to thud, and her breathing came in gasps.
“Are you feeling faint again?” Campbell asked.
“No, Mom. I’m fine. I’m totally starving, though,” Mally said, trying to sound like a normal whiny teenager. “I’m tired of sitting here.” God! She had to pretend and see this, too? The movie burst across her mind again. Rocks and trees. Something else in the background—a hill, a cliff? She recognized it, but she couldn’t think. She didn’t know where the freaking place was. “Mom, Dr. Staats, I didn’t have anything to eat since breakfast. I was nauseated at lunch from all the junk we ate in the hotel last night. And then I got hungry but the lines were too long at the concession stand at the meet. That’s what’s really getting to me. It has to be.”