MY MOM GREETS ME AT THE TRAIN STATION WITH A LONG hug. She makes me feel like I’ve been off to war instead of just in the city for a few weeks. “Oh, Sweetie. I’m so sorry this happened.” Tears make the mascara drip down the side of her face. “I can’t bear to see you hurt.”
My swollen eyes start draining again. It’s not really crying at this point: Tears are just running without my control.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Nope.” I bite down so hard on the word that my teeth ache.
She doesn’t respond to that, and for once I’m grateful she doesn’t try to rub it in or make it worse. Or even try to make it better.
My bedroom feels small and shabby when I get home. I try lying on my lumpy twin mattress, but my body won’t let me sleep. Instead, I clean.
I throw away every scrap of old paper. I dig through my drawers, pulling out tights I haven’t worn for years and the ballet slippers I grew out of in ninth grade. I make a stack of paperback romance novels to donate to the library. They’re all stupid anyway. Who needs some gorgeous, muscly guy to sweep you off your feet? I can say from personal experience it doesn’t end well.
My mom comes in and watches. I know she’s hoping I’ll break eventually and tell her everything. But I’ve moved from sad to angry. I’m angry at Emma for putting me in this position. I’m fuming at Scott for putting a paycheck over his client’s wishes. I’m pissed at Gabe for being … Gabe.
When I don’t say a word to her, she sends my dad to try. He leans a shoulder against my door frame and says, “Your mother thinks you’re going to talk to me. Are you?”
“Not planning on it.” I’m not angry at him, but anything I say to him will make it back to Mom.
He’s silent for a long time. “For what it’s worth, I think Emma was wrong. I understand what she did from a business perspective, but that doesn’t make it right.”
My eyes well up with tears again, almost managing to push me from angry back to sad. But I hold on to that little ball of anger. It’s hot and tight, and so much nicer than the dreariness that accompanies my sadness.
“Thanks,” I say as I toss all the paperbacks into a box. “Want to put these in the Goodwill pile for me?”
At some point in the middle of the night, finally tired, I lie down in a pile of old clothes on my bed. Everything went from amazing to awful in a heartbeat. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. This is what I’m famous for—falling down, causing disasters, forgetting, blowing up every important thing.
I really thought this summer would be the end of CalaMaddie McPherson, but it looks like I’ve just opened another chapter of the never-ending apocalypse that is my life.
The next morning while I’m tossing all my dance trophies into a garbage bag, Max comes in from his night shift at the lab where he works. He lies on my bed, throwing a Nerf football over his head, over and over and over until I can’t pretend he’s not there.
“Go away, please.”
“You’re sad.”
“I’m not. I’m—” Tired and mad and hurt and angry at myself. “I’m nothing.”
“You mean you feel nothing? Like you’re dead inside?” He stops throwing the ball to look at me.
“No.” I feel. I feel so much. “I am nothing.”
He sits up and drills me in the shoulder with the Nerf ball.
“What the heck? Why did you do that?” I chuck it back so hard that it rebounds off his chest and smashes into one of the dance trophies on the edge of my dresser.
“You are not nothing. You worked your butt off this summer. You learned how to edit video and use social media like a boss. You—”
“Screwed up everything? You forgot that part.”
He ignores me and pushes on. “You talked to reporters and agents. You set up events. You made a guy who I would generally consider to be a total tool seem like a decent human being.” He puts my trophy back on my dresser and pulls down the dance team photograph stuck in the corner of my mirror. “Tell me which one of them could have done everything you did.”
I look at the faces of the girls. Some of them I’ve known since I was three years old, and I tally up their skills. There are some who are smart, some who are organized, some who are outgoing and tenacious.
“I’m sure some of them could.” I toss the picture onto my dresser and proceed to tighten all the knobs on the front.
“One of them might have been able to, but you did.”
“I also messed it all up.” My voice sounds watery, and I turn away so that my brother doesn’t see my cry.
“No, you didn’t. Emma picked the easiest target. This was not your fault. You were in the right place at the right time.”
“Or I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
He sighs. “She might have said she pulled all the strings for you, but she wouldn’t have done it if she didn’t think you were capable.”
“But I got fired. I can’t put that on my applications to UNC.”
“Entrance essays aren’t only about your successes. They’re supposed to be about what you learned.” He opens up my computer and types something into the search bar. “If you want it so bad, don’t give up just because it seems out of reach.”
“It is out of reach.”
“You can do anything. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
I shake my head at him. “Come on, Super Genius. That’s the best quote you can come up with?”
“Let’s see what you can come up with.” He grabs me in a head-lock and starts tapping my forehead with his free hand. “Name ten candy bars.”
“I hate you.”
“That’s not a candy bar.”
By the time I come up with ten, I’m distracted, my forehead is bruised, and strangely enough, I feel better.
INSTEAD OF DRIVING CUBE TO AND FROM MATH CAMP, HE AND I RIDE bikes. Well, he rides his bike and I carry all his crap while trying to balance on Max’s old ten-speed. It’s big enough that my knees don’t hit the handlebars.
Since I don’t have a summer job or dance lessons to teach, I’ve spent the last week looking at classes I can take to earn my associate’s degree as fast as possible. Apparently, colleges like UNC love to see that students have knocked out all of their generals before they come to school. And then I work on my entrance essay: Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
I start by writing a timeline, including the bike wreck, which Max insists I keep for comic effect. Putting down everything—how I taught myself to use the video editing software, how I lost the footage, but re-created it, how Gabe’s video went viral—it’s sort of cathartic. I have a list of real accomplishments, I can clearly see how someone I care about used me to further her career, but I also don’t blame my aunt completely. Emma used what tools she had to accomplish a task. It just sucks that I was that tool.
My mom is not one hundred percent on board with my goal of early admission, but my dad finally told her to let it be. And she listened. I can only hope she’ll keep listening.
I secretly check the stats of Gabe’s games. They lost to Vancouver the day before yesterday, and he got a warning and then later a red. The footage was cringeworthy. The tackle was dirty, and he deserved the card. After the game he had a quick interview, but I couldn’t bear to watch it. To listen to his voice and wonder if he’s saying exactly whatever his new publicist told him to.
“LOOK WHAT I CAN DO, MADS!” CUBE’S LITTLE LEGS PUMP HARD, then he holds his feet far out to the sides, coasting around the corner to our house.
“Be care—”
“Whoa!”
I hear him yell, and I imagine he’s crashed over the curb and I’ll find him lying sprawled across our grass. Panic makes me pedal faster, shucking safety for speed. When I round the corner, I’m right on at least one account. His bike is on its side in our yard, front tire still spinning.
He’s not on it, though. He’s standing with his hands on his hips, staring up at Gabe.
I nearly fall off my bike, but I don’t because I’ve been practicing. I hop off in the driveway, parking next to the silver Ferrari. Gabe is answering Cube’s questions with a barely hidden smile on his face.
“Is that a real Ferrari?”
“I didn’t know there were fake ones.”
Cube walks toward the car, eyeing the insignia on the back. “My friend Raj’s brother has a Honda with a Mercedes-Benz hood ornament. He found it after a car wreck.”
“Did you want to see the inside? It’s got the Ferrari symbol on the steering wheel too.” Gabe clicks the lock.
“Do not climb in that car, Cube. You’re going to get it dirty.”
Gabe peers over Cube’s head and his eyes catch mine. Seeing him here, having him this close, is like a punch to the gut. It’s been easier to convince myself that I’d never see him again. That he’d just be that cute soccer star I knew that one summer I lived in Chicago.
He looks away and smiles at my brother. “It’s just a car. I’m not worried about it.”
“I am.” I grab Cube’s shoulder and turn him toward the front door. “Go inside, Cube.”
Cube digs in his feet, the grass going flat. He narrows his eyes at Gabe. “Are you the boy that made my sister cry?”
Gabe’s mouth falls open. “I—”
“Nobody makes my sister cry.” Cube holds up his little fist in threat.
“Oh my gosh. Go. Inside.” I give my brother a shove.
He huffs but jogs up the stairs and lets the screen door slam after him. From inside I hear him yell, “Mom! There’s a boy here to see Maddie and he drives a Ferrari! I think it’s the one who made her cry.”
It lifts the weight in my stomach for a moment before it crashes down again. My life is embarrassing enough without my kid brother threatening an international soccer star.
“I’m sorry. He’s …” I don’t have enough words to describe Cube. I take off my helmet and try to smooth down hair, but it’s a lost cause. Why am I even trying? Also, why do I care what Gabe thinks about my appearance? I shouldn’t. Because we are not and never were a thing. “Why are you here?”
“I needed to talk to you.”
“I have a phone.”
“Mine’s only charged half the time.”
“Is that why you never called me back? Or responded to my texts after the gala?” I try to keep my face emotionless, afraid he’ll see just how much it hurts to stand this close to him.
He runs his hands through his hair, more frustrated than I’ve ever seen him. “I didn’t … I just … Look, I talked to Mara.”
So much for emotionless. “What? Mara?”
“Yeah. She called and said you’d been fired and—” wanted to gloat, my irrational mind suggests before he finishes his sentence. “She felt really bad about how things went down. She said your aunt had her switch the table assignments so that Geoff and Scott were sitting at our table.”
Emma. That traitor. A wave of anger hits me so hard that I actually see black. “Then at least you know that I didn’t set you up. And … and I’m sorry.” I set my helmet on the front porch and curl my shaking fingers into my palms. “So, if you drove all the way out here hoping for an apology, then there you go.”
“That’s not why I’m here.” He steps closer to me. “She said you knew Geoff would be at the gala—”
“And I thought we could avoid him. Or make our appearance and leave. I didn’t expect him to be right there.”
“I know.” His eyes are wide and earnest, more green than hazel. His usually perfect hair is mussed, and I’m pretty sure he’s wearing his workout clothes. Did he come straight here after practice? That’s a three-hour drive. I don’t let myself imagine him finishing his training, hopping straight in his car, and speeding to get to me as fast as he can. I can’t let that information touch my heart.
“Great.” There’s the chill I was hoping to muster. “I’m glad that’s all cleared up. Please go.”
I see the frost land on his skin, the cold registering, but he’s Gabriel Fortunato. He’s not accustomed to being iced out.
“Fine, but let me explain one thing to you first.”
“Gabe—”
“I saw the pictures.”
“Which pictures? The ones of you storming off?”
He makes an expression like he swallowed something sharp. “Those too, but I’m talking about earlier. The ones on the WAGs account? The one of us at the game? At your hotel?”
The ones with the horrible comments. “What about them?”
“It made me …” He clenches his hands like he wants to strangle something. “It made me livid. No one should talk about you like that.”
“It’s a free country.” I shrug like it doesn’t bother me, even though it ate at me like battery acid—right up until Em fired me. Then there were bigger issues to be upset about.
“Fine. Freedom of speech. But that doesn’t make it okay. I’m tired of my fans threatening the people I care about. After the World Cup, people said horrible things to me. To my family. And then after my car crash, hundreds of people commented that they’d wished I’d died.”
Hearing him say it out loud makes me cringe.
“I never wanted anyone to make you feel like those trolls—Trolls is the right word, yes?”
It makes me smile, in spite of myself. “Yes.”
“I didn’t want those trolls to have access to you. It was easier for me to pretend that you meant nothing when really …” He steps even closer and touches my arm. “When really you mean too much.”
Who knew that such a simple touch could set off a chain reaction of sensation? It starts where his thumb lands on the crease of my elbow, racing up my arm like a lit fuse, and ignites in my chest. “Too much?”
“After what I said on Good Morning America, I thought it would be easier to let you go.” He studies me, lips soft and sad. “I was wrong.”
I must have been holding my shoulders by my ears, in a constant protective hunch for days, but his words relax those muscles. “But you were so quiet in the car and—”
“And it hurt.” A flicker of pain crosses his face. “I’m so sorry. I was upset and I wasn’t thinking clearly and … maybe this will help.” Gabe reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a slightly crumpled envelope. “I stopped by your office, and that stronzo who calls you Coffee—”
“William?”
“Yes, William.” Gabe shakes his head. “I talked to him, and he said he was sorry for the way things worked out and sent you this.”
I feel like I’m back at the top of the stairs, barely balanced on the bike, waiting, waiting, waiting for the drop to come. I open the envelope and pull out a one-page letter on Velocity-branded paper.
“Dear Board of Admissions:
I’ve had the privilege of working as Madeline McPherson’s internship adviser for the summer, and I’m happy to recommend her to your program.”
William lays out my skills, the traits he found most valuable, and that he looks forward to working with me in the future.
“You talked to William about me?”
“I knew this mattered to you.” He smooths a strand of sweaty hair off my face, tucking it behind my ear. “And you matter to me.”
“But why?” I give a sad-sounding laugh. “I’m not rich or famous. I’m not a model. I’m just normal.”
He smiles his real smile—the one that’s sweet and vulnerable that he saves for private moments when I’m the only one watching. “No. You’re a girl from Normal who is so far from normal.”
I’m dangling over the drop-off, and my breathing speeds up in response to what’s sure to come.
His palms are on my waist, fingers sliding through my belt loops, easing me closer. I wind an arm around his neck and pull his mouth down to mine. He tastes like Gatorade and salt, and it’s the best combination I could ever imagine. My heart slams against my ribs exactly the way it did as I crashed down the stairs at the beach. “Does this mean I’m forgiven?” he asks against my lips.
“Not yet. Kiss me again.” He does. And again. And again, until I’m plummeting headlong into a fall I don’t want to stop.