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“Guess I’d better go before they start practice,” I said, grimacing. “Not that I get to do much today.”
He sighed softly, his lips twisting to one side. “You know, it sounds like you’re going to have a lot of free time on your hands. If you’re interested, I think I have an idea on how to spend all that time.”
I narrowed my eyes. This felt like a trap. “What’s that?”
“It involves a closet, me, you, and several more rounds of seven minutes in heaven. We can pick up where we left off all those years ago.”
I pulled my chin back and made a face. There he was. The real Jayden. It hadn’t taken him long to reappear. The bees buzzing in my stomach had effectively been exterminated. “Um, hard no.”
The teasing grin was back. “Wow, not even a second to consider it? I’m hurt, Amanda.”
“Don’t need it, thank you very much.” I calmly tucked my hair behind my ears and pursed my lips. “And if I ever say anything different, it’s because I’m sick, hallucinating, and need to be rushed to the hospital.”
His laughter followed me down the hall as I went around him and made my way toward the locker rooms. He couldn’t even be serious for five whole minutes. Jayden had always taken particular joy in teasing me. I was pretty sure he got off on making me blush until I was tomato red.
Dang my pale skin.
Not that any of the offers from him were real. Jayden knew that me and him in a closet together for any amount of time would’ve led to nothing less than murder in the 2nd degree and forty years in the state penitentiary. Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration. But there was no mistaking the way he loved to try and push me over that edge.
It wasn’t until I was out on the track, with the sun beaming down, did I finally start to feel calm again. This was where I could get my frustrations out. Forget about Jayden and his cocky grin. Lose myself in some calisthenics and push everything else out of my head. Team warm-ups had already begun, so I joined in the session and did what I could on one foot, keeping a wary eye out for our coach.
The coach who had trained me through middle school and high school track had to retire unexpectedly this year to take care of his sick wife. It put all of us in panic mode—probably me most of all. The school had to scramble to find someone to take his place and had come up with a new candidate.
The infamous Coach Padilla.
She was supposedly an experienced track coach with years of experience at some rinky-dink school in Texas, but that meant nothing to us. All we wanted to know was if she would be the one to help us take the sweeps at state tournament this year. It didn’t matter if she had horns and green skin, we just wanted to win for the first time in fifty years.
As it turned out, Coach Padilla didn’t have green skin or horns. She was a forty-something-year-old woman who marched around the track, her nose directed at her clipboard of student names, wearing a blue wind-suit with her short brown hair tucked under a matching baseball cap. She was tall—like Amazonian-tall, with thick thighs and muscular arms. She constantly wore a scowl and it was hard to tell if she was angry or if her face was just frozen that way. But it hadn’t taken her long to get a reputation for being tough as nails.
So far, I’d stayed under her radar. Ran the drills and didn’t make too much fuss. My running times spoke for themselves. It would’ve been fine for me if I never spoke a word to Coach Padilla, but it seemed like today my luck had run out.
“Hale!” Coach strode toward me as I did my last one-legged squat for the warm-up. She was giving me a beady-eyed scowl under the bill of her baseball cap.
My stomach clenched in anticipation. “Yeah, Coach?”
She stopped in front of me and crossed her arms over her wind jacket. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Warming up.”
“And why is that?”
I looked around for assistance, but my teammates were avoiding my gaze. They were all petrified of Coach. “Just trying to stay limber for practice.”
She shifted her weight on her feet and stared down her nose at me. “What practice? According to the call I got from your momma this morning, you’re not supposed to be practicing for the next three weeks on that ankle.”
I puffed out my cheeks and shook my head. Of course, my mom had called Coach Padilla. I had hoped it would slip her mind this morning, but obviously, even getting behind at the restaurant hadn’t pushed it out of her head. Today was getting better and better.
“Doc said I couldn’t run.” I leaned on my crutches and shot her an innocent smile. “So I won’t. But I still want to train. I can’t start slacking now.”
She shook her head sharply from side to side. “Nope. You’re off practice until further notice. You’re welcome to watch from the sidelines, but no training, is that understood?”
My mouth fell open and I gaped at her, feeling all the injustices of the world heaped on my shoulders at once. How was I supposed to stay in track shape if I wasn’t allowed to work one single muscle? I was going to fall so far behind that I’d never catch up. It wasn’t fair. I’d worked practically my whole life for this. “But Coach—”
“On the sidelines, Ms. Hale,” Coach repeated, shooing me off the track with her clipboard. “Don’t let me see you set foot or crutch on this track again. I want a complete recovery of that limb of yours before districts.”
In the short time I’d known Coach Padilla, it had been made crystal clear that there was no arguing with the woman. Padilla’s word was law. So I shuffled over the track and exited through the gate, parking myself on a cold metal bleacher to watch the rest of practice. Resentment flared up inside me for everything that had led me to this moment—the moment when my life plans would go up in a big cloud of smoke.
This wasn’t winning. It was far from winning. It was like I was in last place in the 3200 meter dash with a full lap between me and the next runner. And the distance between us was increasing.
