Page 12 of Power Play

The following morning, I stood in front of the mirror before dressing for rehearsal. My stomach looked flatter, and the skirt zipped easily. Relief settled through me so completely that I forgot how hungry I’d been the night before.

Downstairs, my mother noticed the difference.

“Much better,” she said as she smoothed one hand over my waist.

My father looked up from the financial section of the newspaper. “Ready for the quiz?”

“Yes.”

“No careless mistakes?”

“No.”

He nodded with quiet approval.

For the first time all weekend, I felt as though I had become the daughter they still deserved. My body looked disciplined, my father believed my mind was prepared, and nobody could see what making both things true had cost.

I skipped breakfast before leaving the house. By lunch, hunger had turned sharp enough to make my hands shake, but the emptiness felt cleaner than failure.

I told myself I would eat after the quiz, then after rehearsal, then when I had earned it. Each promise sounded reasonable when I made it, and I didn’t understand yet that this was how it began.

1

Six months ago

Charm

The Sin Bin is loud enough to make thinking impossible, which is precisely why I come here when I’ve spent an entire day thinking myself into a crisis.

Summer has packed the bar with students pretending tomorrow doesn’t exist, locals escaping the heat, and half the KFU athletic department drinking like preseason conditioning is a rumor someone started to ruin their evening. Music pushes through the speakers beneath the roar of conversation, glasses knock against tabletops, and the kitchen window opens every few minutes to release another wave of heat and fried food.

I stop inside the entrance long enough to search for Bliss and find her behind the bar, bent over the register with a pencil trapped through the knot of hair piled on her head. She’s wearing her referee shirt tied at the waist, black shorts, and the same expression she gets whenever someone asks whether tequila is gluten-free.

Aura moves behind her with a tray balanced against one palm, navigating a cluster of men who have apparently mistaken the aisle for a place to stand and admire themselves.

“Move,” she tells them, and they move.

I smile before I reach the bar because being near them does that to me. Bliss and Aura have been my home since I was twelve, when every room in my house felt too quiet and every adult spoke to me as though grief might break apart if they used their normal voice. They never treated me like the girl whose brother died. They treated me like Charm, who hated raisins, loved clothes, and could be convinced to jump from Bliss’s bedroom window if Aura went first.

I barely see Bliss now that she and Cade have discovered they can’t survive more than twenty consecutive minutes apart. I don’t resent her for it. Bliss has spent years offering everyone else pieces of her happiness as though she could keep them alive through force of personality alone. She deserves every irritatingly devoted second Cade gives her.

Still, I miss her, and tonight, I need both of them badly enough that I spent the entire drive rehearsing how to ask for advice without sounding like I’m one academic inconvenience away from a complete psychological collapse.

Bliss looks up, spots me, and abandons the register in the middle of whatever she was doing.

“Cee!”

She rounds the bar before I can brace myself and wraps both arms around me. The force of her hug sends my purse sliding down my shoulder, but I catch it before it hits the floor.

“Hello to you too.”

“You came to see me.” She pulls back and holds my face between her hands. “Did something happen? Are you sick? Did your father finally ban happiness? Blink twice if you need extraction.”

“I came voluntarily.”

Aura appears beside us and sets down her empty tray. “She never comes here alone on a Friday night voluntarily.”

“I come here.”