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On Thursday, Isabella called me. When I saw her name on the screen, I pressed the button to ignore the call. I didn’t have the energy to deal with her toying with me. I had already decided I wasn’t going to travel to Denver with the rest of the cheer team. There was no point if I was just going to sit on the bench the entire game.
Isabella’s call only reinforced another hard fact that I had been ignoring: that Brody hadn’t called me. He hadn’t even texted me. I knew he was trying to focus on the next playoff game, but I couldn’t help but feel like we were functionally broken up.
I finally broke down and called him Thursday afternoon. I needed to hear his voice, even if all he said was that he was busy and couldn’t deal with me until after Sunday’s game. The phone rang twice and then went to voicemail. That meant he had his phone on him, saw the call, and then chose to ignore it.
It doesn’t matter, anyway. Too much had happened. My cheerleading career was damaged, and so was my reputation at Utah. Even if Brody and I stayed together, could we really get past the damage that had been done? Relationships were fragile things in the best of circumstances. When they began with sacrifices like that…
I collected myself in my office, somehow managing to hold back from crying, and then went to my next class.
It was in the big lecture hall with stadium seating. A two-hundred-level class for sophomores, and a few ambitious freshmen. Most of the class was there when I arrived, and I quickly set up my laptop to the projector.
“Last week we discussed the course syllabus and the first two chapters,” I said as a greeting. “Before we get started, does anyone have any questions about the class requirements? Tomorrow is the final day to drop classes without a penalty, so speak now or forever hold your peace.”
Nobody raised their hand or spoke up. I started to go on with the lecture, but the door at the back of the hall banged open. A student in a hoodie stepped inside, and I started to make a joke about him getting here just in time.
But it wasn’t an ordinary student. It wasn’t a student at all.
Brody!
