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“I don’t know anything about your relationship with him. Why don’t you go to one of your friends? No, never mind that idea,” she said, and shook her head. “What about Mieke? You always used to blab to her.”
I had talked to our neighbor when I was a kid, yes, but never about personal things. “We’re really having problems.”
“Then break up with him. Don’t waste your time with someone who’s no fun.” She rustled in her purse and took out a tube of lipstick. “Look at this color.” She stood at the mirror next to her door and examined her makeup. “Want some? It might be good on you, too.”
“No, thanks.” I tried again. “Ward and I have been together for so long. I can’t imagine not being with him anymore.” No, I could—that was one of the problems I was having. “Everything has been about him for six years. That’s almost a third of the total time that I’ve been alive.”
“That’s even more reason to break up with him, that and the fact that he’s such a dick.” Aubin had never, ever liked him and strangely, Ward hadn’t liked her, either. It was one of the things that had made me sure he was the one for me: he hadn’t been bowled over by my beautiful, perfect sister.
She put the lipstick away and played with her new haircut. “Are you sure this isn’t too short?”
“I think it’s awesome.”
She turned to study me instead. “You should do something with your hair, Sissy. You only wear it in a ponytail all the time.”
“Not at games,” I protested. I always did it up for the Woodsmen events, forcing curl into it and spraying it until I knew it would stick that way, at least for a little while.
Her phone vibrated and she checked it. “Erin’s in the parking lot. Are you good now?” She walked back to the door. “Am I going to need a coat? Probably,” she told herself, and opened the tiny closet to get one. Then she glanced back at the place where I’d planted myself next to her couch and hadn’t yet moved from. “I have to go,” she said more pointedly, but then she sighed. “Why don’t you go talk to Mieke about this? She’ll probably have good advice.”
“Ok.” I followed her out of the door. Her teenage neighbor emerged again but she ignored him. Another of her conquests, I supposed. Northern Michigan was full of men who wanted to meet/date/love Aubin, but would never get the chance. She ran lightly on her heels over to Erin’s car, and I walked to mine a lot more slowly.
“Sissy!”
I turned to look at her.
“Are you all right?”
I nodded and got into my car. I let myself imagine as I drove, going into a daydream about driving to a different place, a townhouse just like Aubin’s. I’d make dinner, and then my boyfriend would come home. We’d hang out together, not doing too much, just watching “The Last Dancer” on TV and laughing, trying out some of the moves because he insisted that I was his instructor. Dreaming had gotten me through a lot, and this was going to be no different. I could pretend anything. My imaginary life could be however I wanted it, with whoever I chose to spend it. So I pretended, not caring that it made driving more dangerous, right up until I got home.
Ward’s car was parked on the road in front of my cottage and when I turned into the driveway, he got out and stood waiting for me. Reality was happening now.
Chapter 8
“I’m sooo glad we’re back in here,” Danni said. She looked at the ceiling, though, which still had three gaping, extra-large holes in it, and then at the Woodsmen-orange buckets placed strategically around the locker room floor to catch drips from the pipes above. A frown settled on her face. “It could be better, though.”
“‘Better?’ Are you referring to how we’re not allowed to use the plugs?” Pressley pointed at the various outlets around the room, all of them covered with yellow caution tape and signs warning us of the danger of electrocution if we touched them. “Also, the toilets in our bathroom aren’t flushing. And they need to.”
Danni rubbed her forehead and sighed. “I’ll talk to Sam and Rylah again, but I think they’re doing all they can. We’re just at the mercy of the situation right now.”
I nodded as I stood at my locker, looking at the pictures I had taped to the back of the metal door. Danni was correct: there was nothing we could do about our current situation except to try to live with it the best we could and hope for things to change. I touched the picture of my dad, smiling next to Aubin in her wedding gown, one of the images he’d said were just for show. Then I looked at the larger picture of Ward on his twenty-first birthday, also smiling toward the lens and saluting it with his beer. He had his arm around me and I was smiling, too, like I was so happy. Had I been, really? Even back then?
“What the hell, Sissy?” Erin demanded, and I realized that I had shut the locker door with way, way too much force. I’d slammed it, actually, as hard as I could.
“Sorry,” I told the other Wonderwomen. “My hand slipped.”
No one really answered but probably no one really begrudged me letting out a little anger, either. It had been a truly terrible practice—like, we were running into each other and tripping, that kind of a practice, and Rylah and Sam were furious. Tomorrow was the first home game of the regular season, the real wins and losses that counted toward the record that would lead the team to the league championship. Or not.
And from start to finish today, we’d all had problems. Sidney N., who sometimes had memory issues, started the wrong dance and three other girls had gotten totally confused and followed her in it. Something was wrong with Chanel’s stomach, like maybe she’d eaten something bad, and she’d had to run out of the studio with her hand clapped over her mouth. I had landed funny out of a jump and my foot was hurting enough to make me worried, but I hadn’t told anyone that.
Then we’d all returned to our locker room where the lights flickered and, apparently, we couldn’t flush in the bathroom.
“What are you saying, Sissy?” Ani asked curiously. “Did you just whisper something about a toilet?”
I’d been imagining myself in one, actually, spinning around frantically and trying to keep my face, then my mouth, then my nose above the water. I remembered exactly how that felt from years before when our rowboat had sank and I’d been alone in the darkness, flailing for help and trying to scream, but feeling a terrible certainty that I’d never make it to shore.
“I had a tickle in my throat,” I told her. I’d been doing that more and more, talking out loud to myself as I lived a lot of time in a world of my own imagination. I had totally spaced out for almost an entire class period yesterday, to the point that I’d been startled when the guy next to me asked me to move so that he could get out of his seat because it had ended. I hadn’t even noticed it passing by.
That was what time had been doing for the last few weeks. Days had slid together to form a month, and suddenly the regular season was upon us and I wasn’t sure how it had happened. I’d been working so hard on getting through each hour that they were gone before I’d realized it.
