Page 29 of Blade
They were quiet until they reached Avery Hall, then slipped past Edie’s apartment, where the door was closed anyway, a reality show blaring—big surprise—and up the stairs to the bathroom, where Indy went right into a stall, locked the door, and started crying all over again.
Twenty minutes later, she hadn’t budged.
“Indy—come on. We have to go,” Kayla said, while Jolene twisted her hair, up and down, up and down. A sign that she was losing her patience. Ana knew—the field was waiting for them, the two sixteen-year-olds who’d been looking forward to this night for weeks.
“Just go without me,” Indy said.
This sent a shock wave through Ana—she and Indy usually banded together,IndyAna, not drinking more than a few sips of beer and avoiding the rest of it, except to take it in, as observers. Not that theydidn’t wonder, didn’t think about the boys they saw there and who saw them. But for Ana, it still felt like she was playing at all of this. The same she’d felt trying on her mother’s clothes when she was little. Wrapping every single scarf around her like a tapestry. The scent of her mother’s perfume spilling into the air. Clinging to her skin for hours after she’d put them away.
Jolene bit her lip. “We’re not leaving you behind. Just open the door.”
Kayla was more direct. “Open the damn door, Indy!”
Ana leaned against the row of sinks, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror—long hair falling around her one bare shoulder, painted eyes and lips and cheeks. She looked every bit as old as Kayla and Jolene, minus the subtle curves, but that was hidden beneath the part of the shirt Jolene hadn’t cut off.
She realized, now that the show was over and it had gone so well, that there was more excitement left in her stomach. Excitement for the field, and the party, and the possibilities—of what, though? Being someone else, maybe? Not Ana the skater rounding the corner, fighting with her own mind, her fear. Not Ana the Orphan at Avery Hall who cried in closets. Whoused tocry in closets. Whose mother was sick. But Ana—a teenage girl, aprettyteenage girl, about to go to a party.
Come on, Indy.Giving advice was usually Jolene’s job, and being tough was Kayla’s, but they were sucking at all of that tonight. Their brains had been hijacked by yearning.
So Ana stepped away from the sink and said, “Indy—you knew Patrice wasn’t going to let you go home. What else happened? Just tell us.”
Indy inhaled a huge sniffle, then coughed. Then blew her nose into a wad of toilet paper that she dropped to the floor with a pile of others.
“Indy?” Ana said, Kayla and Jolene now holding their hands like they were praying, apparently happy to cede their roles in their Orphan family if it would get them to the field faster.
“Come on, Indy—it’s me!”
Finally, Indy started to speak in a long ramble.
“I told her how I was falling. And that Dawn didn’t care and that Bobby would never make me fall like this, he would find another way, and she said that was never going to happen. Even if I came home, she wouldn’t let me train with Bobby, and I asked why. And she just saidbecause...”
Another sniffle, another wad of toilet paper hitting the floor.
“And then we both just kept saying that,why, because, why, because—and she never gave me an answer.”
Jolene’s maternal instincts were suddenly piqued, because she stopped twisting her hair and said, “So you went for the Axel to show her how bad it was? How hard you’ve been falling?”
Then Kayla rolled her eyes. “But she’s never letting you leave. I don’t know why, but you have to stop obsessing about Bobby Stark. It’s just making things worse.”
They were all sick of hearing about Bobby, who’d been Indy’s coach since she was five years old and who believed in her not just like a coach, but “really believed in her” like no one else ever had. They’d seen him before at competitions. To Ana, he looked like a tired old man, especially next to Coach Emile.
Still—they’d seen something else tonight. The way Patrice had almost teleported herself into Indy’s body while she performed, and the way Dawn’s face had lit up a little when Indy fell, so hard the entire arena gasped. The whole situation was a rivalry dumpster fire that had been burning for decades, and now Indy was right in the middle.
The room went quiet.
Indy sniffled, loud as thunder. But then she said in her most quiet voice, “I don’t want to fall anymore.”
Ana, Jolene, and Kayla looked at each other, shaking heads and shrugging shoulders, and Indy blew her nose, sniffled, blew again, until finally, the lock slid open, then the door.
She stood there in her bra and underwear, lean muscle head to toe, one hand braced against the wall. The other holding down the topof her underwear, exposing her right hip—and a giant plum-colored bruise—and stunning them into a collective silence.
It ran from her waistline all the way down her thigh to just above the knee, with shades of red, yellow, purple. Some spots appeared to be popping out, protruding from beneath the skin like they wanted to explode.
“Holy shit, Indy,” Kayla said, as Jolene reached out to touch it.
“What do I do?” Indy asked.
Ana stared at her best friend, at her bruise, and wondered how she hadn’t noticed it before.