1
Eleanor
I. Will. Fly. Again.
Every word is a squat, and every squat is a word. The mantra keeps me going, balancing on the stability ball as my physical therapist, Elliot, counts reps. That promise to myself holds my back straight and my hands steepled in front of me, even as my thighs burn and my knees shake.
I. Will. Fly. Again.
Every part of me hurts. I can’t squat—not even one more time—and I think a headache might be starting. I want to stop. I need to stop. But Elliot is still counting.
“Eight more, Leni,” he says. “Come on, you got this!”
I absolutely have not got this. He knows it. I can tell by the tight line of his mouth, the way he edges a step closer in case he needs to catch me before I fall. Elliot’s been with me since the start, so he knows the signs. Though it happened all the time when I first began PT, it’s been months since a bout of dizziness sent me off the ball. Elliot and I joke that I need one of those construction-site signs: 72 DAYS SINCE LAST WORKPLACE ACCIDENT. But who’s counting? I mean, besides me. And Elliot. He probably charts every spill, slip, and stumble.
I am so not messing up my clean slate today.
Because.
Five.
I.
Four.
Will.
Three.
Fly.
Two.
Again.
One.
“Okay, that’ll do it.” Elliot’s hand is in mine, helping me down from the stability ball. He holds on until he’s sure I’m steady, but it takes me another few seconds to feel ready to let go. Hopefully, he doesn’t notice. One thing Elliot doesn’t know about me is how good I am at faking it, and it’s best if we keep it that way.
“So, El.” I sip water from my CamelBak bottle. It was super expensive—almost forty dollars at REI—but it’s got a straw. I learned early on that throwing back my head after PT to guzzle water equals lightning-strike brain pain. “How close are we?”
How close am I is what I mean, but Elliot likes to tell me we’re in this together. He said it during our intro PT session, after the first fall. He promised he wasn’t giving up on me when I had to come back after the second fall, when the doctors started throwing around phrases like “prone to concussions” and “career-ending.”
I wipe sweat from my neck with a towel, focusing on steady movements, wide eyes, good posture. I need to show him those markers that I’m stable, that I’m healing. We’re four weeks out from the start of school.
Elliot taps on an iPad, entering whatever he records on my chart at the end of a session. “Looks promising, Leni.”
That’s all he ever gives me. A little ways to go. Great day today. Solid improvement.
I grit my teeth and then stop, because the grinding sends a bolt of pressure to my temple. I don’t want to hear about progress. I need a yes or a no, and it can’t be no. A no will kill me. I need to hear a when.
“Should I make an appointment with Dr. Ratliff? Might take me a few weeks to get in to see him. I could call, just in case. For when we’re ready.”
Elliot smiles at his screen and continues tapping, leaving me hanging. I stare at the side of his face, willing him to say, Go ahead, Leni. Make an appointment with Dr. Ratliff so he can give you medical clearance to cheer senior year. So you don’t have to sit out your last year on the team, and your final memories as the Class of 2019 aren’t limited to a physical therapist’s office. So you don’t miss your shot at cheering in college.
Come on, Elliot. I try to beam my thoughts directly into his brain without ratcheting the pain level in mine up to a twelve on a scale of ten. Say yes.
He sets the iPad on his desk and turns to me. He’s flat-mouthed for a second, but he can’t hold it for long. Elliot has no poker face. Smiling so wide I can see his gums, he says, “Go ahead. Call Ratliff’s office.”
I punch the air. “YES!”
He points a stern finger at me. “Four weeks from now, understand? Not a minute sooner. You’re not quite there yet. And try to remind yourself that medical clearance isn’t going to wipe the slate clean. You may continue to have symptoms that will need managing.”
His words deflate me like a balloon. I know it’s his job to set “realistic expectations,” but all I can focus on is getting that clearance. I’ll deal with everything else later. “I got it.”
I reach out to return the fist bump he offers, tell him I’ll see him next week, and head outside, shoulders back, chin up, strides long and even. If only it were as easy to rehab my brain as it was to repair my fractured ankle. But I can’t dwell on that. My ankle’s completely healed. And now I have official word from Elliot that my head is getting better too. That’s enough for now.
Heat smacks my face like a two-by-four the second the automatic doors open. I squint against the summer sun, trying to remember where I parked. South lot? Or was that last week? I rub one temple, close my eyes, and try to picture Nelly’s bright yellow car, which is on loan to me while she’s at high-performance gymnastics/cheer camp. No mental image comes to mind. Dammit.
Maybe I just need a minute. I sink down on the bench outside the door, dropping my gym bag, slumping down to lean my head against the backrest. My ponytail makes an uncomfortable bump, so I pull the elastic out and let my hair poof around my face. I can practically feel it frizzing into a cloud as I sit there, but for once I don’t have to worry. Elliot’s PT practice is thirty minutes away from school. I’m not likely to see anyone I know around here.
My eyes drift closed again, and I try to empty my mind of any thoughts. That’s as hard as anything else in therapy, even those stupid squats on the stability ball. Which someone should really rename the instability ball, given how much it quivers.
Stop! I order my brain. No thinking.
The trouble is, if I’m not thinking, all that’s left to do is feel. The soreness in my thighs. The tightness in my ankle. The throbbing in my head. All the signs I usually try to ignore. The things that remind me how different my life is now. The pain that threatens everything I’ve worked toward for ten years.
I feel a thud on the bench beside me, catch a whiff of cologne that isn’t quite strong enough to cover up the stench of sweat. I keep my eyes shut, trying to hold on to the moment of peace I’d almost reached. I need another minute for the headache to recede before I drive. Whoever it is will go away. They won’t talk to me. No one would start a conversation with some half-dead-looking stranger splayed out on a bench outside a doctor’s office.
“Greenberg, that you?” a deep, familiar voice says, closer to my ear than I want it to be.
Oh God. Please tell me that’s not who I think it is. This office is so far away from where we live. I wasn’t supposed to see anyone I recognize, let alone someone I know.
“What’re you doing way up here? You see Dr. Ratliff too?”
I crack one eye open and peek at my benchmate.
Yeah, it’s exactly who I thought it was. Sam Walters, a.k.a. Three. Franklin High’s star QB.
Ah, damn. I need to sit up, cross my knees, gather my hair. No one sees me looking so busted—ever. I don’t leave the house looking like this. I don’t even come downstairs looking like this. A bolt of energy sizzles inside me…and then fizzles. I can’t scramble to pull myself together. I hurt. And here’s Three, inconveniently seeing me at my worst.
Ughhhhhhhh. I hate today.
Three’s voice gentles. “Greenberg? You okay?” On the field, the offensive line can hear his baritone calling plays yards away. On campus, the stans can hear his laugh clear on the other side of the courtyard. But these words? This whisper? They’re just for me.
“No.” Double damn—I didn’t mean to tell the truth. Why’d he have to sound so sincere?
There’s a rustle, the crinkle of plastic wrap, and then something cool and soft touches my neck, bringing not immediate relief but the anticipation of it. I sigh and let the chill wash over me, soothing the fire in my skull. And I’m finally able to open my eyes without feeling like the sun is an ice pick stabbing directly into them. I swivel my head a quarter inch to look at Three. He sits to my right, hair in short, spiky twists, a day or two of prickly beard growth shading the light brown skin of his jawline. Looking ridiculously hot even dressed in loose gray sweats cuffed at the knee and a black tank top. His left arm stretches across the back of the bench, his hand disappearing beneath my hair, holding an instant cold pack to my neck with the perfect amount of soft pressure.
“Thanks,” I say.
He nods. I slither up from my slouch, and for a minute, we’re awkward—him trying to keep the ice pack on my neck, me trying to gather myself and whip the blond cloud around my head into a neat ponytail.
Last time I saw Three was at Roman’s graduation party in May. I calculate in my head—a month and a half ago? That sounds right. We hang with the same people, go to the same parties, and sometimes sit at the same table at lunch. But that’s as far as our relationship goes.
“I didn’t know you were injured,” I say as he relinquishes control of the ice pack to me.
“Hell no, I’m not.”
I raise an eyebrow at him and tick off the evidence on my fingers. “You’re outside an orthopedic surgeon’s office, smelling like physical therapy sweat and Bengay, carrying instant cold packs in your gym bag.”
“Can’t pull the wool over your eyes, huh, Greenberg?” He rotates his right shoulder twice—his throwing arm. “Repetitive stress. But don’t let Coach hear you talk about me being injured. If it got around, every squad we play would take advantage of my weakness. Could end my career.”
I nod. Some people might be surprised to hear a high school kid talking about his career, but everything with Three is about that. He’s so on the NFL track, it’s not even funny. He’ll probably make it too. Everyone says he’s good enough. “Hence coming way outside the district for treatment?”
“Yeah. Funny running into you all the way up here.”
Not really, considering Coach Pearce referred me to Dr. Ratliff last year, after the first fall. “It’s probably Franklin’s secret clinic, where they send all the athletes who need to keep their injuries on the DL.”
“Damn, you make it sound like an undercover doping ring.”
I smile. “Everyone knows Coach Bill Brown would do anything to get his players to State.”
Three flashes me a smile in return, quick as a four-minute mile and full of perfect teeth made cuter by the slender gap between the front two. “Anyway, how about you, Greenberg? You gonna be back on the sidelines this fall, cheering us on when we win that trophy?”
I feel the most nonsensical flutter in my stomach. Absolutely not, Eleanor Greenberg, I tell myself. Crushing on Three would be the world’s worst decision. “Yes.”
He glances from the ice pack on my neck to the doors of the ortho clinic behind us, his version of listing the incriminating evidence.
“Yes,” I repeat firmly. I yank the ice pack off my neck and hold it out to him. It was a mistake to let him see how much pain I was in. “I’m fine.”
He pushes it back toward me. “Don’t be a hero.”
“I’m not. I just have to get going.” I drop the pack into my gym bag, but I don’t rise. Triple damn. I’m not ready to drive yet.
“You waiting on a ride?” Three asks. He checks his phone. “My brother won’t be here for another thirty minutes, but—”
I hold up Nelly’s VW-branded key chain. “No. I, uh, have a headache. I was waiting for it to go away before I got behind the wheel.”
“Good,” he says. “You can hang with me in the meantime.” He leans over—arm brushing across the bare skin of my thigh and sending a shiver through me—extracts the ice pack from my bag, and puts it back into my hands. “And you can stop being a damn hero while you do.”
My mouth curves up. “You drive a hard bargain.”
“I do.” He draws a line through the air from the soggy pack to my neck. “Ice it.”
I listen. And then, to my surprise, he lifts his arm and sniffs his pit. “It’s not that bad.”
“What?”
“Before, you said I smelled. But it’s not that bad. Not like after practice, anyway.”
I shake my head. “Well, PT’s probably not as demanding as Coach Brown’s two-a-days. But you still smell.”
“Harsh, Greenberg. Harsh. And I used some Axe too.”
“Not sure which is worse.” I wave my hand in front of my nose.
He laughs, and I can’t help joining in. We don’t usually talk all that much, but he’s easy to talk to. And he clearly gets what it’s like to be injured. He was right about the ice. By now, the headache has died down enough that I feel ready to drive. ...
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