I end, out of breath, suddenly back in the gym. The girls on the bleachers are standing up and whistling. They clap and stamp their feet, and my friends are the wildest of all. Over by the entrance to the court, I see Jack Masselin, paint-spattered and beaming like the sun. He’s slow-clapping, and then he taps his forehead in a salute before vanishing. He and the rest of my fellow delinquents are painting the bleachers today.
Heather Alpern says, “Libby, that was wonderful.” And for the first time, I look directly at her.
Caroline goes, “How tall are you?”
And something in her loud, flat voice makes my stomach drop. The girls on the bleachers fall quiet and settle back into their seats.
“I’m five six.”
“How much do you weigh?”
“One hundred twenty pounds.”
Everyone stares.
“I’m sorry, did you mean my physical weight or my spiritual weight?”
The girls on the bleachers giggle. I am dripping, but I dab at my upper lip and the back of my neck as demurely as Queen Elizabeth.
“The weight that determines what size costume you would need.”
I say, “Is there a weight limit for this squad?”
Caroline starts to speak, but Heather Alpern interrupts her. “Technically, there is not a limit. We don’t discriminate against size.” But they do. I can hear it in the careful way she’s picking her words and I can see it in the tight corners of her smile.
“So why do you need to know my weight?”
Caroline sighs. Loudly. Like I’m as dumb as a rock. “For costume size.” Then she smiles this slow movie-villain smile. “Would you be willing to lose weight if you were wanted?” The word echoes across the court. “You know. If you were to make the team?”
Ms. Alpern shoots her a look. “Caroline.”
I say, “How much weight are we talking about?”
Caroline says, “A hundred pounds, probably more. Two hundred-fifty, maybe.” Which is ridiculous, because that would mean I’d weigh about the same as my aunt Tillie’s dog, Mango.
Like that, I’m a kid again in ballet class, and Caroline is my teacher, frowning at me in this same exact way, a way that tells me I don’t belong here, even though I probably belong more than any of them because the dance is in me, and there’s a lot more of me than there is of them, which means there is a lot more dance in there.
“Would you?”
“Caroline, enough.”
“You want to know if I’d be willing to lose two hundred pounds so that I can dance in formation and carry flags with you?” I’m hot with anger, which doesn’t help the dripping, but I make my voice quiet and controlled.
“Yes.”
I fix my eyes on Ms. Heather Alpern, because she’s supposed to be in charge here.
“Absolutely not.”
I’m supposed to go back outside to the bleachers to serve my sentence and do my civic duty, but I can’t. Instead I call Rachel and ask if she can take me home.
By the time we finish painting the locker rooms, it’s almost 5 p.m. The sky is thick with gray and the air is heavy, the way it always feels before it rains.
Through the wide window of Tams’s house, I can see a clump of kids, and I think, Great. This is why I don’t volunteer to pick Dusty up, because this right here is the stuff of nightmares. I can’t find him in a crowd, and my parents think Dusty’s too young for a phone, so it’s not like I can text him to say I’m coming, wait outside. The few times I do go get him, I usually wait in the car and blow the horn.
Because this apparently isn’t a one-on-one Tams and Dusty playdate situation but the ten-year-old equivalent of Coachella, this is what I do now. The rain pelts the windshield like gunfire. The clump of kids doesn’t move, so I honk again.
I wait a couple more minutes, and then I turn off the car and twist the rearview mirror so I can look at myself. The guy who stares back at me has seen better days. He’s still got a split lip, and an eye that’s fading from black and blue to violet, thanks to defending Jonny Rumsford. Super.
I search for anything I can use as coverage, for my face and from the monsoon. There’s an old jacket, which must belong to Marcus, wadded up on the floor below the backseat. I grab it and lunge out into the rain, jogging up the walk, jacket wrapped around my head. I can hear the mad chatter of a thousand high-pitched voices as I ring the doorbell. The door flies open, and I’m greeted by a blond woman with short-cropped hair. This, I think, is Tamara’s mom. She invites me in, and I say through the jacket, “That’s okay. I don’t want to bring all this water in. If you could just send him out.”
“Nonsense, Jack. Come on in.” She holds the door open wider, and the wind is blowing rain onto her and onto the floor around her, so I step inside.
“It’s really coming down,” I say.
“You’re telling me. They were supposed to be outside all day.” She laughs, but it’s laced with hysteria, and I can see how tired she is.
I’m hoping Dusty will yell hello or otherwise identify himself, but the kids all blink at me, and one of them says, “It’s like God is peeing.” And this must be some really clever ten-year-old joke, the kind you need to be ten to appreciate, because they all start laughing until they practically fall down.
The woman says to me, “Please take me with you.”
I laugh as I stand there, trying to seem calm and casual and Hey man, whatever. Meanwhile, I’m trying to find Dusty in the bunch of kids, but they all look the same. Skinny, short, ears that stick out. All the kids are wearing party hats and only a handful of them are obviously white. I feel a distant flicker of panic in my chest.