Borrowed - Chapter 2: Fourteen an Hour

Fourteen an Hour

Rowan

Ostrander Commons at 12:15 on a Thursday sounded like a hangar full of trays.

The dining hall ran the length of a football field under a vaulted ceiling of exposed ductwork, and every table carried its own weather system. Engineering kids hunched over laptops by the outlets. Rugby players stacked plates into towers by the windows. The salad bar sweated under its sneeze guard, and the pizza station pumped out the smell of scorched cheese and oregano, a smell that clung to your hoodie until laundry day.

Imani Brooks had claimed a two-top by the dessert case, which meant she'd been there since noon.

She was hard to miss. Five-ten, deep brown skin, box braids piled into a bun on top of her head and wrapped with a crimson scrunchie. Gold hoops. A practice tee that read COMETS CHEER across the chest in cracked white vinyl. When she saw me she flung up both arms like I'd crossed a finish line.

"Ro! Sit. Eat. I got you a cookie."

"You said you wouldn't pay."

"I didn't pay. I swiped your card." She slid my student ID across the table. "You left it on the counter at the register. Twenty minutes ago. You walked right past me."

I hadn't. I'd walked past the register twice, circling, not hungry, and left with a tray holding one glass of chocolate milk. I took the ID and the cookie. The cookie was still warm, chocolate chips gone soft enough to stain my fingers.

"How are you?" she asked. "And don't say fine. Your face is doing the thing."

"What thing?"

"The thing where it's a closed door with a sign on it." She bit into her own cookie and talked around it. "My grandma had a door like that. Said Do Not Disturb in four languages. My grandpa disturbed her anyway for forty-one years."

"The pool's half empty," I said. "They started draining it Tuesday night."

Imani stopped chewing.

"I went up the ten-meter," I said. "Sat there. You can hear the pumps through the whole building, like something breathing." I turned the milk carton in a slow circle on the tray. "Petrakis gave me till Friday on my keycard."

"Oh, Ro."

"My dad's got me a spot at Superior State."

"Already?"

"Everybody says already."

"Because it's Thursday." She set the cookie down. Her eyes, dark and steady, stayed on my face long enough to make the back of my neck prickle. Then she leaned in on her elbows. "Okay. I'm going to say something, and you're going to let me finish before you make the face."

"I'm not making a face."

"You're making the pre-face." She pulled her phone out, swiped, turned it toward me. "Watch."

A video. Shaky, vertical, filmed from the edge of a mat. A long, low-ceilinged gym, cold blue light. A girl with auburn hair in a high pony ran a round-off, back handspring, and threw a twist. Her arms went early. Her hips lagged. She came out of the twist a quarter short and landed crooked, one foot skidding, both hands slapping the mat to save herself.

"Again," said a voice off-camera. Flat. Familiar.

I didn't ask who it was.

The girl went again. Same arms. Same lag. Same crooked landing. On the third try she bailed in the air and landed on her back with a hollow slap that made the phone's tiny speaker crackle.

"That's Brynn," Imani said. "She's our best flyer. She's been stuck on that double for six weeks. Our coach went in for hip surgery in August and won't be back till November. Our grad assistant's good at cheer, he's fine, but tumbling's not his thing, and the girl who coached tumbling graduated in May." She tapped the screen. "Brynn's going to break her neck."

"She's throwing her arms before her hips finish."

"See? See?" Imani slapped the table. A rugby player two tables over turned around. "That. That's what I'm talking about. You looked at it for eight seconds."

"It's the same thing divers do. You want the twist so bad you go hunting for it. You've got to set first. Hips, then shoulders, then arms."

"Say it slower so I can type it." She didn't type it. She put the phone down and folded her hands like a loan officer. "Jordan, our GA, has a work-study line in the spirit budget. Tumbling consultant. Fourteen an hour, eight hours a week. Tuesdays and Thursdays. He already signed it. All it needs is your name."

"Imani."

"Let me finish."

"You put me on a budget line before you asked me?"

"I put you on a budget line in case." She ticked off fingers. "One. Your scholarship ends in December. Two. Your meal plan is tied to your scholarship. Three. You were sitting on top of a diving board over an empty pool at night, which, babe, I love you, but that is a country song."

I opened my mouth. Shut it. The milk carton had a picture of a missing dog on the side, part of some shelter campaign. Bo, three years old, last seen near Millbrook Park. Somebody loved Bo. Somebody wanted Bo to come home.

"The email," I said. "The one that cut us. It put your program in the same sentence."

"I know." Her voice dropped. "We got one too."

"What did yours say?"

"It said review." She shrugged one shoulder, a small hard motion. "Nobody knows what that means yet. Jordan won't say. Sol's been in her office with the door shut for two days."

"Who's Sol?"

Imani's grin came back, slow and wide. "Our captain." She picked up her cookie again. "You'll know her. She'll be the one yelling at you."

* * *

The Annex squatted behind the field house, a long ribbed hump of corrugated steel the color of old bone. A 1971 sign above the front door still said CARVER STATE ICE ARENA in raised letters, though someone had stenciled SPIRIT in crimson across the last two words and the stencil hadn't quite covered them. The old Zamboni door on the north end had been welded shut. A rusted padlock hung off the weld anyway, like a joke nobody had finished telling.

I pulled the side door at 3:41.

The cold hit first. Not lake cold. Refrigerator cold, damp and close, the type that climbs your shins. The building had stopped making ice in 2004, Imani said, but nobody had ever ripped out the pipes, and somewhere under the floor a compressor still kicked on every few minutes and hummed through the soles of my sneakers like a big animal purring.

The rink was gone. In its place lay a spring floor, forty-two feet square, blue carpet over plywood over foam over springs, framed by grey panel mats. Overhead, the old arena lights hung in steel cages, half of them dead, the other half washing everything a cold, faintly greenish white. Chalk dust drifted through the beams. In the northeast corner, an orange bucket sat under a brown water stain in the ceiling, and every few seconds, a drop hit the bucket with a flat, patient tock.

Twenty women sat on the floor in a loose ring, stretching.

Some lay on their backs with a leg pulled overhead. Some knelt in lunges, rocking. A Bluetooth speaker on the bleachers played something with a lot of synth and not much melody. The whole room smelled of foot spray, Tiger Balm and the musty sweetness of old carpet. At the edge of the ring, a girl in a grey hoodie held a gimbal with a phone on it and filmed everybody's hamstrings with total seriousness.

"Ro!" Imani waved from the ring. "Shoes off. Mats are freezing till four, sorry, it's a whole thing."

I toed off my sneakers by the door. The mat bit my socks like snow.

A man crossed the floor toward me with a clipboard against his chest. Twenty-four, maybe. Carver State cap with a sweat ring around the band. Lanyard. The pinched, hopeful face of somebody who'd been put in charge of a room that didn't listen to him.

"Rowan? Jordan Pike. GA." His handshake was damp. "Thanks for coming. Seriously. Imani said you're…" He gestured at the air, at my whole body, at diving in general. "You know. Twisty."

"I can twist."

"Great. Great. Girls?" He turned. Raised his voice half a notch. "Girls, this is Rowan, he's going to help with tumbling on Tuesdays and Thursdays, he's a diver, he…"

"Was a diver."

The voice came from the far side of the ring. Flat. Clipped. The same voice that had carried through the vent Tuesday night and counted a stranger into the air.

She was the smallest person on the floor, and every head turned when she stood.

Five-five, if that. Built compact and dense, like a fire hydrant. Warm brown skin. A mass of dark curls pulled into a high ponytail and anchored with a crimson bow, the loops crisp and symmetrical, as if she'd measured them. A tiny gold stud in one nostril. Black practice shorts, a crimson sports bra, a cut-off tee with the sleeves gone. White athletic tape wound around both wrists, frayed at the edges, grey with chalk.

She stood with her feet planted shoulder-width apart, rooted into the blue carpet like the post of a dock.

I'd seen that stance from thirty-three feet up. My throat went dry.

"Sol," Jordan said, in the tone of somebody stepping onto thin ice. "We talked about this."

"We talked about it. I didn't agree to it." She walked toward me. Not fast. She didn't need fast. She stopped a body-length away and looked me over from my socks to my hair and back down, and the look carried no hostility at all, only measurement. Height. Shoulders. Weight. Hands. The way a contractor looks at a wall to see whether it'll hold.

"Marisol Reyes," she said. "Captain."

"Rowan Lindqvist."

"I know who you are. You're on the poster in the natatorium hallway." Her eyes flicked to my chin, to the scar, and back. "We don't need a boy explaining twists."

Nobody in the ring moved. The bucket in the corner went tock.

"Sol." This from a tall blonde with a deep tan and teeth white enough for a dentist's billboard. She lay on her back with one leg hooked over her head and didn't bother to sit up. "Let him try. Brynn's going to snap her spine before November."

"Thank you, Kenzie," said the auburn-haired girl from the video, from her spot beside her. Brynn. Freckled, fierce, shins mottled with mat burn. "Love that for me."

Sol didn't look at either of them. She held my eyes, and the pause stretched until I could hear the compressor kick on under the floor, a low shudder that came up through my heels.

"Cheer isn't diving," she said. "We don't get a water landing. We don't get a judge who scores the entry. We get a floor that's been sprung since the Clinton administration and a ceiling that leaks. You want to help, you can stand by the speaker and keep the playlist going."

Somebody on the floor whistled low. Imani shut her eyes.

My face went hot. It went hot fast, all the way up to my hairline, the way it used to on the platform when a dive went flat in front of my father. My hands curled at my sides. The cold from the mat climbed my shins and settled in my knees.

I didn't say anything.

I walked past her to the tumbling strip.

It ran along the east wall: a sixty-foot runway of panel mats laid end to end over the spring floor, frayed at the seams, patched with grey duct tape. I peeled off my hoodie and dropped it on the bleachers. Rolled my neck. Rolled my wrists. My socks were already damp. I peeled those off too.

The mat under my bare feet was so cold it ached. My toes curled.

Behind me, the speaker kept thumping. Nobody turned it down.

I hadn't tumbled since I was eleven. Since the summer Dad drove me past the gymnastics club and kept driving to the pool, because gymnastics was "dancing on a mat" and diving was "a sport with a scoreboard." But diving lives in the air, and the air doesn't care where you learned it. We'd spent six days a week on dryland: trampolines, spotting belts, foam pits, a hundred twists a session until twisting lived in my spine the way breathing lives in your lungs.

I stood at the end of the runway.

Breathe. Arms up.

The board doesn't care.

I ran.

Three steps. Hurdle. Hands down, round-off, snap. Feet hit together and I was already going backward, already blind, hands slapping the mat in the handspring, a cold sting in both palms. Rebound. Up. Set. Hips first. Chest open. Arms last, close and tight across my chest, and the world turned over once, and spun, one full rotation, ceiling, cage lights, chalk dust, the leak stain, the floor coming up…

Land.

Feet together. Knees soft. Arms out.

Stuck.

The mat stung my soles. My chest heaved. The building had gone still except for the compressor and the speaker and the bucket, tock, and the blood slamming in my ears.

I turned around.

Twenty women stared at me from the floor. Holly, the girl with the gimbal, had lowered it to her lap, her mouth open. Brynn had sat up. Kenzie had unhooked her leg. Imani pressed both hands over her mouth, eyes shining.

Sol hadn't moved.

She stood in the middle of the spring floor with her arms crossed and her weight in her heels. Her face didn't change. But her jaw slid to one side, a small lateral movement, as if she were biting the inside of her cheek. Her eyes didn't blink. I counted. Four seconds. Five.

"Full-twisting layout," she said. "Off a round-off back handspring. Cold. No warm-up."

"I warmed up walking here."

"Your left arm came in late."

"It came in on time. My right arm came in early."

A muscle at the corner of her mouth jumped, so fast I almost missed it.

"Fine," she said. "Show Brynn."

* * *

For the next ninety minutes the Annex heated up one degree at a time, and I picked up the names of things.

What I called a set, they called a load. What I called a half twist, they called a full, because cheer counted twists from a different starting point, and nobody had bothered to tell the divers. What I called a two-and-a-half, Sol called "whatever that was," until Brynn finally called it a kick double, and I wrote it on the inside of my wrist in ballpoint so I wouldn't forget.

I worked with Brynn on the strip. Over and over. Round-off, handspring, set. Set, Brynn, wait, you're throwing your arms before your hips finish, you're hunting for it.

"I'm not hunting for it."

"You're hunting for it like it owes you money."

Brynn glared at me, red-faced, hair stuck to her forehead. "Do you talk to everybody like this?"

"Only the ones who can do it."

She stared at me. Then she turned and ran the pass again.

She threw her arms early. Landed short. Swore.

"Okay." I walked down the strip to where she stood with her hands on her knees. "You trust your arms more than your hips. So we take the arms away."

"What?"

"Hug yourself. Arms across your chest, hands on your shoulders. You don't get to use them. Hips first. Then let the arms come."

She stared at me like I'd asked her to tumble blindfolded. Then she crossed her arms over her chest and ran.

Round-off. Handspring. Set. Her hips went first. They had no choice. Her arms stayed glued, and she rose higher than she had all afternoon, a beat higher, and turned over, and the twist came around clean, and she landed with both feet together.

Short. Still short. But square.

The ring of women on the spring floor broke into a ragged cheer. Brynn stood frozen on the strip, arms still crossed over her chest, panting, eyes wide. Then she pointed at me, one finger, like pointing at someone across a bar.

"Again," she said. "Spot me."

I spotted her.

I stood beside her on the strip and put one hand flat at the small of her back and one under the back of her thigh for the rotation. Light. A guide, not a grip. My father used to grab my ankles when I was learning back two-and-a-halfs, yank me through the rotation, leave bruises shaped like his thumbs. I never grabbed. I'd sworn at fourteen that I'd never grab anybody.

On the spring floor, out of the corner of my eye, Sol stood with three bases and a flyer, running a stunt sequence on her counts. "Five, six, seven, eight." Load. Up. Hit. Down. She watched them. She didn't watch me. But every time Brynn went up on the strip, Sol's count stalled, a half-beat hitch, seven, eight, and when Brynn landed, the count picked up again.

During the water break she sat alone on the bottom bleacher, rewrapping her wrists. The old tape came off grey and stiff. Under it, the skin of her palms was ripped in two places, ragged pink half-moons below the fingers. She pressed the fresh tape down with her thumb in a slow, careful spiral. Didn't look up. Didn't wince.

I stood ten feet away with a paper cup of water and couldn't come up with one reason to walk over.

So I didn't.

* * *

At 5:50 Jordan blew a whistle. It came out more of a squeak.

"Okay, girls. Bring it in. Bring it in, please. I've got…" He held up his phone. The screen trembled. "I've got the email. From the AD. About the review."

The room changed temperature.

They came in from every corner of the spring floor and sat in a tight cluster at his feet. Nobody stretched now. Brynn pulled her knees to her chest. Kenzie sat with her back straight and her chin up, a pageant posture. Imani found my sleeve without looking and tugged me down onto the mat beside her, and I sat with my bare feet tucked under me on the cold blue carpet.

Sol didn't sit. She stood at the edge of the group with her arms crossed and her taped hands tucked into her armpits.

Jordan read it out loud. His voice wobbled on the first line and steadied after that, as you steady after the first step onto ice.

"'Following the department's review of non-revenue programs, the varsity spirit program will retain varsity status for the spring term contingent on competitive results. Specifically, the all-girl team must earn a national championship bid at the Midwest Bid Qualifier, hosted by Kessler University on December first. Should the team fail to earn a bid, the program will transition to club status, effective January first. Club status does not include athletic scholarships, travel funding, or access to department athletic training staff.'"

He lowered the phone.

"That's it," he said. "That's the email."

The compressor kicked on under the floor. The hum came up through the mat and into my shins and stayed there. In the corner the bucket said tock.

Nobody spoke.

I scanned their faces. Brynn's lips had gone white. A girl near the back pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. Kenzie's chin stayed up, but her throat moved, a hard swallow. Holly had stopped filming. Her gimbal lay in her lap, the phone's screen dark.

Scholarships.

The same word that had ended my program with a one-line footnote. The same email, cut from the same cloth, signed by the same man.

I looked at Sol.

She hadn't moved. Her arms stayed crossed. Her feet stayed planted. But one taped hand had come out of her armpit, and her fingers had found the tail of the crimson bow at the back of her head, and they were holding it. Not pulling. Holding. Her knuckles had gone pale under the brown, all four of them, tight as a fist around a rope.

"First of December," she said.

Jordan nodded. "Thirteen weeks."

"Then we win a bid."

She let go of the bow. Her voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. It landed on the room like a hand on a shoulder, and twenty backs straightened.

"Practice is six days a week starting Monday," she said. "Kenzie, I want stunt groups re-sorted by tonight. Brynn, ice that ankle, you were favouring it on your last two. Holly, I want every pass on film." Her eyes traveled the circle, face to face, and landed on me.

They stayed there.

The cold of the floor had climbed all the way to my hips. My hands had gone still on my knees.

"Tuesdays and Thursdays," Sol said. "Four o'clock. Mats are cold. Don't complain about it."

"I wasn't going to complain."

"You were." She turned toward the old skate-sharpening room in the corner, the one with SOL REYES – CAPTAIN on an index card taped to the door. Over her shoulder, without looking back: "Don't be late, diver."

The door shut behind her.

Twenty women exhaled at once.

Imani bumped my shoulder with hers, hard. "Diver," she whispered. "She gave you a name. She doesn't give anybody names. It took her a year to stop calling me you."

"She called me a diver."

"Ro. Babe." Imani shook her head at me with deep pity. "You're not one anymore."

Jordan crouched beside me and held out the clipboard. A work-study form. My name already printed at the top in his anxious capital letters. A line at the bottom, waiting.

I took the pen.

My phone buzzed in my hoodie on the bleachers. Once. Twice. A third time. I didn't have to look. Only one person in the world called three times in a row without leaving a voicemail.

I signed.

Through the door of the old sharpening room, through the thin gap at the bottom where the frame had warped, came the sound of someone counting, low and steady, under her breath.

"Five. Six. Seven. Eight."

And then nothing at all.