AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And Lyle from security was concerned, too,” she continued. “He was in his office and saw you walking in from the parking lot. He thought you might have been limping.”
“I’m fine, all good,” I repeated. “I wasn’t limping and I’m ready to go.” I would not, under any circumstances, let these women down. I would show everyone watching, and maybe one particular person, that I was perfectly great. I was going out on that football field wearing my uniform because he couldn’t control me, just like he couldn’t track me anymore. I was courageous. I was victorious.
I was so scared that I almost threw up.
And then, for the first two quarters of the game, I put on the worst performance of my life. I barely held everything together and I prayed that the cameras wouldn’t focus on me, although they often did since I was doing gymnastics solos. At least I didn’t end up on the turf by mistake, but I knew that it hadn’t been good. Sam didn’t have to say anything, he only had to look in my direction before we went out for our halftime performance.
“I’ll fix it,” I told him.
I tried, but I couldn’t. I didn’t fall but I was still off, a beat behind, a half-step slow or fast, wobbly, just wrong. “Monday,” he said pointedly to me outside our locker room at the end of the game, and then swore a lot when he heard a yelp and the sound of rushing water. Someone had kicked over one of the orange buckets that was catching the leaks from the ceiling.
Sam and I would talk about my performance on Monday, but I had the rest of the weekend to get through, first. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and wondered how long I could delay the inevitable. Obviously Ward knew where I was tonight, even with my phone still turned off and even with the tracker back at my house, both of them hidden under my bed with their batteries removed. I had an image of myself smashing it all with a hammer, the one we’d used when we’d installed the new front door of my cottage. Bang, bang, I smacked it and plastic and metal pieces flew everywhere, and then I went to Ward’s car and started to hit that, too, but with a hammer as tall as I was.
“What did you say?” Malina asked me. “I’ve never heard you swear before, Sissy. Wow! It was like you were channeling Sam without Rylah there to correct him.” She tilted her head. “You ok?”
“I’m not going to run away from this,” I told her. “I can’t hit it with a hammer, but I’m not going to run away.”
“Are you talking about the performance today? It wasn’t that bad,” she answered and stared at me. “Is that what you mean? You’re kind of scaring me.”
“Sorry. I’m fine, all good,” I assured her. “I better get dressed.”
I did, slowly, and thinking the whole time. As far as I knew, Ward hadn’t come to the game tonight. Wonderwomen didn’t get free tickets like the players did for their families, and he didn’t want to pay to see the team in person. That meant he wouldn’t have been allowed to get into the stadium, but he could wait for me at the gate like he usually did and then follow me wherever I went.
I could ask someone for a ride. I looked around the room at the other women and knew that I couldn’t risk him hurting any of them. Maybe I could go to stadium security and tell them the story, but then everyone would know. The gossip would spread through the whole Woodsmen “family” and anyway, the guards’ jurisdiction extended only over this property. They would want to call the police, an idea I also considered now as I had many times before.
I was pretty sure that I could get a court order saying that Ward had to stay away but when he got mad, nothing would have stopped him. I had no faith that a piece of paper would do anything except make him worse, even more furious and even more sure that I deserved whatever he would dish out to me. I’d spent the past six years calming him down, trying to anticipate problems before they even occurred so that I could fix them and prevent his anger.
Trying to press charges or getting a personal protection order would only ratchet everything up, the opposite of what I’d always worked towards. I had talked to a counselor once, one time when I’d been almost as scared and desperate as I was tonight. She had told me to get the order but also that to be safe, I had to leave and stay elsewhere. Like I would put someone else in danger with my presence, like I had the money to just get on a plane and fly away. There were shelters, but what would happen to my dad if I weren’t around? I took care of everything in our house, from the bills to the food, to keeping things mostly clean, doing the laundry, making sure he got to work.
I didn’t think Ward would really get in trouble, either, even if I did everything that I could to legally stop him. After all, nothing had happened to him last winter. He’d gotten arrested in a bar downstate, where he’d driven after our fight and had thrown down with a much larger guy. But afterwards, his parents had bailed him out and he’d walked away. He’d come home and picked up right where he’d left off and then the charges had been dropped. Valerie and Kevin had insisted that he go to therapy, which he had for a while to keep his job at the marina. I’d had hopes at the beginning that it was working, but it hadn’t made any permanent difference.
That all meant that I’d be forced to run, to run and hide. But if I made myself disappear, then I couldn’t go to class anymore and graduate from college, after all the time and money I’d put into getting that dumb degree. I couldn’t be a cheerleader anymore either, and maybe that sounded petty and ridiculous when I was talking about losing my life, but I loved the Wonderwomen squad. I’d have to give up everything I loved. I’d have to leave my family and my cottage, maybe forever. I’d have to restart somewhere totally new and as much as I said that I wanted to travel, this was home. I’d never be able to come back, because I didn’t think that Ward would ever give up.
I was the last person to walk out of the locker room and I still hadn’t made any decisions about my future. Regret about removing the tracker nagged at me but it was too late to go back, and I didn’t really want to. I didn’t want that tracker and I didn’t want Ward. I also didn’t want to be afraid anymore, but I was. My legs, which had felt heavy and stiff for the whole game, now were like weights that I was dragging rather than using to walk.
I got to the door that led outside, and I even put my hand on it to push it open. Then I stood there frozen. What was I doing? Was I going to sneak around for the rest of my life? Was I going to resort to breaking things and hiding the evidence under my bed like a little kid? Aubin would never have acted like that. The first time that a guy mistreated her, she would have dropped him. What made me take it?
“Everything all right?”
I jumped at least three feet in the air but it was only one of the Woodsmen security guards, probably doing a sweep to make sure we had all cleared out. “Yes, everything’s fine,” I told her when the fear dissipated. “I realized that I left something that I need to get.” She nodded back and I turned around and went off toward the Wonderwomen locker room.
Most people considered Woodsmen Stadium to be a labyrinth. It was about a hundred years old but it had been remodeled, redone, and expanded enough times that it had gotten increasingly confusing, with rooms in unexpected places, stairs where you didn’t think they should be, and lots and lots of hallways that branched more than they needed to. There were even rumors about hidden tunnels around the building, and some of the staff claimed that it was haunted because they’d heard noises from within the walls.
When I’d finally gotten myself to this stadium as a teenager, I’d made it my mission to learn it like the back of my hand. That was why I didn’t have any trouble finding my way past the player Hall of Fame and toward a side exit that didn’t get very much use. I tried to act like my sister as I walked down those hallways, waving at people and smiling, saying hello, and generally behaving like I owned the place and was meant to be there. I certainly didn’t slink and hide as if I was going to a restricted area meant only for the Woodsmen.
Which I was, I was doing exactly that. I walked out through a door and into the team parking lot, which was still full of cars because it took them longer to get out of the stadium after games. I could hear excited chatter from the fans waiting behind metal barricades at the players’ usual exit.
I was going to have to wait a while, too, but it was ok. I sat on the ground next to the big truck in the semi-darkness of the lights high above on the poles, hoping that no one would see me. I put my dance bag against the tire and leaned on it. The game had started late and I was so tired from the stress and the hours I’d been awake the night. I had a hard time now not falling asleep, and maybe I did a little.
“Oh, damn!”
I jerked awake.
“Lissa? Are you all right?” Hands lifted me into the air.
“Bowie?” I asked confusedly. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same question,” he said, and I blinked myself into consciousness. “You were curled up on the ground next to my tire. I’m glad it was the driver’s side, or I wouldn’t have seen you there.”
