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There were murmurs beginning to circulate in the group, and I could feel the guillotine lowering, the blade getting closer to my neck.
I couldn’t even get enough saliva in my mouth to formulate words in response to Riri. That was when Neidin said:
“And why were you in front of Simon’s door?”
The air went still. Each blade of grass seemed to grow rapidly beneath my feet, to twist its tendrils up into the air, wrap around me and suck me into the earth.
Neidin said, “I guess I shouldn’t have done this, but when I went into my room, I looked through the peephole, out into the hallway, and… and… you put on heels. And then you knocked on his door. I told myself that maybe you two were going out clubbing, since you’re twenty-one and all, but—” she broke off. After a moment, she finished, “but now I don’t think that’s what happened.”
And then, from the silence, came Grace’s voice.
“Just tell them, Catya,” she said. “It’s time.”
“Grace—”
“If you don’t, I will.”
Her eyes, which had been affixed to the ground, rose to meet mine. They blazed with anger and disappointment.
Somewhere else in the huddle, Simon’s shoulders stiffened, and his lips drew into a firm line. He was preparing for the blade, just like me. Could I bring myself to tell the truth, or would Grace out me first?
My courage came too slow.
Grace, somehow even more let down than before, said, “Fine. You won’t tell them? I’ll do it, then.”
The girls parted so that Grace could move to the center of the circle, and face the whole team as she announced, “Catya’s been sleeping with Simon. That’s the big secret. They’ve been sleeping together, and I think we’ve all deduced by now that last night she was up with Simon until early morning, got no sleep and that’s why she’s playing like shit.”
A whole ring of mouths hang open in my direction, stunned. Neither Simon nor I opted for a single word.
“Is that right, Catya?” she asked. “Did I miss anything?”
“What do you want me to say, Grace?” I murmured. “No. You didn’t miss anything. That’s pretty much the whole story.”
Grace nodded, then swiveled around to face Simon, who looked as if he’d left his body and was in an entirely different dimension. That is to say, his face was blank, absolutely, eerily devoid of emotion.
“Coach Simon?” Grace said, forming the statement into a question. “You got anything to add?”
His eyes bored holes into mine, and the girls watched the tension fly between us like it was a ball on the tennis court.
At last, he replied, “No. I don’t have anything else to say.”
“Well, all right, then,” Grace concluded. “Great talk.”
Time seemed to freeze frame, with the team in mid-gasp, mid-whisper, Grace staring at me with utter dismay, and Simon, looking at me with the full knowledge behind his bright blue eyes that we were both so, so screwed.
Chapter 25
Simon
I was done for.
What else was there to say? There would be no coming back from this, of that I was certain. I might as well just go on and book my flight back to London.
Originally, I’d had reasonable faith that Catya alone could keep the secret. She was smart, mature and we’d established several times that we’d keep everything between us. I now knew, of course, that she’d told Grace about what happened, so my trust was ill-advised. Could I blame her, though? No, of course not, my brain replied. You can’t blame her for any of this.
But that aside, I’d believed we could keep this from getting to higher powers when it was just the two of us in the know. With the whole team in on the thing? It seemed unlikely. No — impossible. Asking any group of twenty-odd people, but especially a group of young women who spend all day together chatting, to keep a secret of that magnitude… it wouldn’t work. I felt fairly confident that David and all the other powers that be would know about Catya and me within twenty-four hours. Maybe forty-eight, if the gossip mill was churning sluggishly. An invisible hourglass had been started on my remaining time at ULA, and the sand was running out fast.
Needless to say, the bus ride back wasn’t as fun as the bus ride there. Everybody was wide awake, but there was silence, save for the occasional frantic whisper — a whisper which it was safe to assume referred to me, or Catya. You could’ve tried to cut the tension in the air with a knife, but I suspected you’d require something closer to a metaphorical chainsaw.
The ride back seemed to take twice as long, but nobody complained, or even asked for a bathroom stop. There was the scent of fear in the air, fear of trying to address this enormous thing that had just happened to us all, as if to be the first one to bring it up was to sacrifice yourself.
