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The words were like a hot iron poker, goading her forward. “I’m not quitting.” She growled, took a breath, and this time, with all her concentration focused on the beam, she hurried quickly across it like she was a rat coming down off a sinking ship.

Except there was no sinking ship.

Because she did it.

Because it wasn’t actually hard. And falling hadn’t vaguely embarrassed her.

She let out a growl and put her hands on her knees. “Why do I care so much about that?”

“About what?”

“Looking stupid. Because some people made me look stupid... Because...” She swallowed hard. “Because I felt stupid when I woke up one morning and my dad was gone. I didn’t know. I didn’t know that he wasn’t happy. I didn’t know he was going to leave.” Her eyes suddenly welled up with tears, which was dumb, because she didn’t cry about that. There was no use crying over a man who was half so ineffectual as all that.

“Hey,” he said, moving over to her. He reached out and cupped her chin, tilting her face up, and it was the strangest thing. Because it was a crackle of lightning electricity that transcended the sadness within her.

“It is just a terrible thing that people let you down and made you feel like you were stupid for expecting them to be decent human beings. You get cynical in the military. Of course you do. You can’t do work like that without a little cynicism. But I’ll tell you what. I can always trust my family. My parents. Even knowing what I do about the world, I always trusted them. You are not the foolish one. Your dad is. You’re not the foolish one.”

The words were like a balm, soothing. But also...highlighting how very much she needed a balm. How much of a wound this was.

“That feeling... The feeling just... It kills me. It reminds me of just the worst moments. That sensation of discovering that everything you thought is wrong. That everything you thought is just a lie. That’s what it reminds me of.” Her eyes stung, her throat ached. “It’s dumb. It’s just a balance beam. And all I did was fall off in front of you.”

“And then you got back on. And then you finished.”

“I did.”

“And you’re gonna climb that rope.”

“I don’t know if I want to climb the rope.”

Except now she felt like she did. Because maybe she would fail.

Maybe she wouldn’t be able to do it.

But this time she would try. She wouldn’t just sit down and refuse.

And yes, she still thought mandatory PE was stupid. But that wasn’t the point. Not right now.

“Okay. I’m going to do it.”

“You know sometimes the real issue is that you weren’t set up to succeed. Some of it is needing to teach technique, and work on your muscles a little bit.”

“I never really thought of it that way.” And she hadn’t.

But the truth was they hadn’t been taught any kind of technique in school. They had just been sent on their way. It had blown her mind when she’d found out that there were techniques to running. In school, they had just sort of sent you careening around the track and hoped for the best.

She had to wonder if there was something truthful in that. Something she hadn’t ever really unwound before.

Maybe some people just flailed around the track more convincingly. Maybe there wasn’t something quite as fundamentally wrong with her as she thought.

She had always thought the girls who showed up with the perfect hair and makeup when they were thirteen years old were perhaps a different species from her. That they had it together. But, of course, her mother hadn’t been showing her how to put makeup on, and partly because she hadn’t found it all that important.

Maybe the thirteen-year-old girls who’d had perfect makeup had their own neuroses. Their own problems.

She had always just assumed they were prettier. That they were more clever, or maybe more female.

She had never been the life of the party, but she was a very good and loyal friend.

She had always done well being driven to school by Gideon. She could talk to him and Lydia; she didn’t have any problems with that.