CALEDON WAKES US UP HERSELF at six thirty on Saturday morning. There is quite a bit of grumbling about that, because the list of performance order was posted last night at dinner, and Palermo Heights will be second to last to go. This means we won’t be onstage until nearly two, if everything goes to schedule. And it never goes to schedule. St. Ignatius is first, at ten a.m. I wonder whether they’re just getting up now, or whether their coach got them up even earlier.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Caledon says as Astrid rolls out of bed. “You all knew what you signed up for. I want to see you all at breakfast in fifteen minutes.”
“I can’t get dressed in fifteen minutes!” Blonde Sarah protests.
“Not dressed, dressed,” Polly says, throwing on her warm-ups and putting her hair back in a simple ponytail. “We’ve got all day for that.”
“I still don’t see why we’re up so early,” Alexis says.
“Neither do I,” I tell her. “But when Caledon says jump, I don’t even ask how high. Especially today.”
Because of the day’s schedule, breakfast is entirely a cold buffet. Jenny’s parents own the Palermo grocery store, and they’ve donated a lot of moderately healthy snacks. This will keep us going through the afternoon. Our two o’clock time means we need to eat a light lunch. I do my best not to think about dinner. By then, we’ll have either won or lost, and speculation is pointless.
“Hermione, pass the juice,” Tig says. He’s a coffee addict on days that aren’t competition heavy, but he seems to be adapting well. Maybe he’s taking caffeine pills. Those are still legal.
“Why are we awake?” Leo groans.
“Because we’re going to be competing outside,” Caledon says. “You’ve never done that before. This way, you can watch some of the early teams do their routines, learn the ground, and still have plenty of time to get ready.”
“It’s a great idea, Coach,” Tig says. “I just wish you’d picked a day when I could have coffee.”
“Stay strong, Andrew,” Caledon says, sardonic to the end. “This is your last day as a Palermo Heights cheerleader. Make it a good one.”
“We few, we happy few!” Tig says, clutching his chest as though he’d been shot with a crossbow.
“That’s the spirit,” says Caledon, as Florry passes her the milk.
By the time ten o’clock has rolled around, we are all braided and beribboned, and the guys have taken at least one nap. We sit together in the stands, close to the front and the corner so that we can leave as soon as St. Ignatius is done. More parents are turning up than I had predicted. They’re all decked out in their school colours too, but I can tell by the fact that there are quite a few kids in the audience that Caledon is not the only coach who wanted her squad to have a look at the competition area.
The field has been rolled and flattened. Every rock painstakingly removed and every hillock pressed back into the ground. As we take our seats, the athletic coordinators are laying the mats, double-checking one another’s work to ensure that all of the Velcro fastenings will hold and nothing will slip. The ground is dry—it wasn’t a wet May—but it looks springy. It will probably be softer than the indoor courts we’re used to. Since the field is outside, the regulations have been changed a bit to allow teams five minutes to prep on the field before their ten-minute competition clock starts. St. Ignatius, as the first team of the day, gets seven minutes. I’m not sure what Amy can do with the extra two minutes, but at this point, she’s probably glad to have them.
“Conflicted?” I joke to Polly as the sound system buzzes to life behind us and the announcer begins to test the mics.
“Hell no,” she says. “All’s fair in love and war.”
“Good,” I say. “I’d hate to have you go soft on me now.”
She grins, her teeth flashing, and St. Ignatius takes the field for their seven minutes. The announcer switches to music after introducing them, and before I realize what’s happening, familiar music fills my ears.
It had been daylight, a sunny June morning, only a few seconds ago, but now it’s the pre-dark of a late August summer night. We don’t pick our warm-up music. They just play something popular and upbeat. Of course they’d pick this. The bass thrums in the ground beneath me, and the scent of pine fills the air. I can’t hear the lake over the music, but I couldn’t hear it then either. I didn’t know until they told me. This is not something they told me. This is something I remember.
“Hermione!” Polly hisses right in my ear. “Dion, help me!”
They wrestle me down out of the bleachers and underneath where we are out of sight. I can still hear it, though, still smell it. And Dion is holding me up, beneath the knees and around my waist, and he is too close, too close.
“For the love of God, put her down,” Polly says. “Just, just set her on the ground.”
“Is her dad here yet?” Dion asks. He puts me down, but doesn’t let go. I’m not sure I can stand. He is never going to kiss me again. Why the hell would anyone ever want to kiss me again? I can’t even breathe properly.
“No,” she says. “But I think we’re okay.”
“I don’t think that’s okay,” Dion says, probably because he’s supporting all my weight, but Polly’s turned back to me and is ignoring him.
“Hermione, you are going to talk or I am going to slap you,” she says.
I want to tell her that I’m okay. I want to be okay. I want Dion to stop looking at me like I am going to break in half. I want to dance in front of the crowd, to hear them yell for us, to fly and be caught by people I trust. But I can’t do any of those things. Not anymore.
“Hermione, I am not kidding.” Polly actually sounds scared. Great. I’ve broken her too. I have to breathe now. I have to breathe.
“I’m here,” I say finally. Polly relaxes and somehow the sun is brighter. “Don’t hit me.”
“Where’s your phone?” she asks. I really, really need the music to stop. Hearing it, remembering it, makes it hard to do anything else.
“In the cabin,” I say. “It doesn’t work, remember?”
“Come on,” she says, hauling me to my feet. To my surprise, my knees hold and I don’t collapse again. Dion’s hands are stretched towards me, though. Just in case.
Polly pulls me towards the cabin and Dion follows, more confused than anything else.
“I have not,” she says, strong and determined and beautiful, “put up with cheerleading for the last ten years of my life so that you could fall apart at the last minute. And neither have you.”
It’s true. Polly is a cheerleader because she wants to win. All year long, I’ve been apologizing for being a bad friend, and all year long Polly has been encouraging me to be selfish. We’re not at odds, not really, she just wants to remind me why she let me talk her into this back when we were in grade five.
Polly barges into the cabin and leaves me standing awkwardly with Dion on the steps. He doesn’t meet my eyes. I want to kiss him, but I don’t want to kiss him, and everything is starting to spin again.
“You can go back, if you want,” I say.
“No,” he says. “I’m okay if you’re okay.”
“I really want to be okay,” I say. It scares me, how much I want it.
“I know,” he says.
Polly comes back with my phone, looking triumphant. “Funny story,” she says. “The camp actually has decent cell reception. The trees block it down by the camper cabins, but the staff cabins are on a hill, and on a clear day, you actually get a bar or two.”
“Really?” Dion says. I follow them up the hill towards the staff cabins.
“Who am I calling?” I ask.
“You’re going to call Dr. Hutt,” Polly says, not bothering to hide her rolling eyes. “And he is going to kick your butt from whatever golf course he is on, and then we are going back down there.”
“He doesn’t really get cheerleading,” I tell her, dialling.
“He gets you. C’mon, Dion.” She marches him down the hill as I hit send, and a few seconds later, Dr. Hutt’s phone starts to ring.
“Hermione!” he says when he picks up. “I thought you had your big pep rally thing today.”
“The nationals,” I say. “And yes, I do.”
“Then why the hell are you calling me?” he asks.
“I’m kind of having that breakdown you said I was going to have,” I admit. It’s a lot quieter than I was expecting. Now that I have said it, now that we are farther from the music, everything is coming back into focus, though the edges are frayed and I feel like I could unravel at any moment. “They’re playing my song.”
“Hermione Winters, I want you to listen to me very closely,” he says. I don’t really have other options, so I do. “There are always going to be triggers. You will hear that song on the radio, or walk under a pine tree on a regular basis for the rest of your life. You will have a spotty memory of the night you were raped and perfectly clear memories of everything surrounding your abortion. There will be people you just don’t trust and people you’d trust with your life. I can’t say things like that to many of the patients I’ve treated, but I know I can say them to you. You are adaptable and brave. So adapt, and go win that silly dance competition so I don’t have to counsel you through a developing inferiority complex.”
“I don’t mean to be insulting,” I say. “But I still think you’re the worst therapist ever.”
“I know, dear. That’s why it works.”
I’ve never wondered why Dr. Hutt agreed to treat me. He had said he wanted one more case before he went into retirement, and I’d believed him, but I think it’s more than that. He knew that there would be people like Officer Plummer and Leo McKenna, people who would come to define my attack as the watershed event in their own life. He knew that another psychiatrist would try to make their career on me, with papers and, maybe, a book deal if the court case was particularly juicy. Dr. Hutt wants none of that. He just wants to put me back together and go fishing.
And I want to win.
“Thank you,” I say.
“You’re welcome, Hermione.” And then, with surprising sincerity he adds, “Good luck.”
I hang up the phone without saying good-bye, and head down towards Polly and Dion. It’s been more than fifteen minutes. We’ve missed Amy’s big performance. I can apologize for that now, and Polly won’t tell me that it’s okay. We’re past that. We’re putting it back together.
“I’m sorry I made you miss Amy,” I say.
“I’ll watch the video,” she says, but I know she understands. “Let’s get back down there. I want to watch the next group go, and then we should probably fix your hair.”
“And mine,” Dion adds. “I think it moved a whole centimetre when I picked you up.”
“My heart bleeds,” I tell him. Polly rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling when she takes my hand.
When we get back to the bleachers, the cheering is not for us. But I pretend that it is.