I almost dropped my fork.
One vote I knew was coming. But someone else had written down my name? I looked around the table. Brittany and her cronies appeared as shocked as I was.
Coach reached for another slip of folded paper.
He called out a vote for Brittany, her fourth.
Then there was another for me. And another.
With two-thirds of the votes counted, we were dead even at four votes each.
I sensed tension rising around our table like smoke. All the side conversations ceased. Everyone watched Coach intently as he unwrapped the ninth vote. I held my breath.
He called out my name.
Someone gasped. It might even have been me.
Out of twelve votes, I’d gotten five so far and Brittany had four. Was I being set up?
If this was another planned humiliation, Brittany was a few steps ahead of me. I had no idea what she could gain from this. She desperately wanted to be captain. The captain got to lead us on and off the field for the halftime show and stood in front of the squad during certain routines. She would never have willingly given up that spotlight.
There was only one other possibility I could think of: Some of the girls were rebelling against Brittany. They were rising up, trying to unseat the queen. Maybe she’d cut them one too many times with her barbs, or maybe they had grown sick of her rules.
Coach unwrapped the next slip of paper.
He’d stopped smiling.
The tenth vote went to me. One more and I would be captain.
Mrs. Davis leapt to her feet and started to say something, then cut herself off. I glanced across the table and caught a flicker of a smile cross Rosie’s face. It looked genuine.
If every JV girl voted for me, and just one of the varsity girls did … Even with all the water I’d chugged, my mouth went dry.
Was it actually possible I could be elected captain?
I would work so hard to deserve it. I’d create new routines, the best ones our squad—no, any high school squad—had ever performed. I’d offer one-on-one help on the weekends to any teammate who had trouble learning them.
Coach Franklin was frowning. Mrs. Davis sat back down and tapped her pen against her pad. Her face was a thundercloud.
Coach reached for the next slip of paper, and I could hear the relief pour into his voice as he called Brittany’s name.
There was one slip of paper left on the table.
Coach reached for it.
I wasn’t sure which I wanted more, for me to win or for Brittany to lose.
The grin that spread across Coach’s face told me the vote went to Brittany before he read her name.
But Mrs. Davis still looked furious.
It was a tie, six-six.
I saw Coach lean closer to her and whisper.
James approached them at the head of our table. I heard him offer Mrs. Davis another Chardonnay on the house.
She simpered that she really shouldn’t because she was driving.
James promised to make it a small one and she fluttered her eyelashes and told him he’d twisted her arm. Then she asked for an iced tea with extra lemon and two packets of Sweet’N Low on the side.
Even before our town had a Starbucks, Mrs. Davis had perfected the art of high-maintenance beverage ordering.
All around me, girls were murmuring. There had never been a tie for captain before, at least not during the years I’d been on the team.
Coach’s booming voice caused everyone to fall silent.
He said that in case of a tie, the coach cast the deciding vote.
My heart plummeted. Of course it had to end this way. Whatever made me believe I’d have a chance?
Then he announced it was pretty clear Brittany Davis was the kind of girl we all wanted to represent us.
Mrs. Davis beamed and steepled her manicured fingertips together as she stared up at Coach. I didn’t look Brittany’s way. I couldn’t bear to see her smug expression.
Coach kept talking, saying our team needed someone who would be comfortable carrying the name Panthers in front of the public. Going to nationals would be an expensive trip, he said, and though we had a good sponsor, some of the girls wouldn’t be able to afford hotel rooms.
Like me.
Mrs. Davis beamed at Coach as he wrapped up by saying that our captain needed to speak the same language as the businesspeople we’d have to ask for support.
Every word was a spike in my heart.
He couldn’t just say Brittany won.
Coach had to spell out why I could never be captain: My mother was a drunk and my father was a handyman, so I was trash.
Rosie looked down and I thought I saw her blushing. She was embarrassed to witness my humiliation.
I wanted to bolt. No, what I really wanted to do was hurl the heavy pizza pan on our table at Coach’s head, then grab Brittany by her Barbie hair and smash her face into the table.
Rage burned within me. A buzzing sound filled my head. They’d gone too far this time—all three of them had. My fists clenched as my breaths came faster.
Then something made me look up.
I saw James carrying the tray with Mrs. Davis’s wine and iced tea and a beer for Coach into the room. James’s eyes were fixed on me.
I didn’t know how much he’d heard of Coach’s little speech. But he must have gleaned something.
Because as James held my gaze, he leaned over and spit into Coach’s drink. Then he did the same to Mrs. Davis’s.
By the time he delivered the beverages to the table, placing them in front of my adult tormentors with a flourish, the hot tears of rage in my eyes were gone.
It wasn’t like everything was better, but I’d regained control. Dinner broke up a few minutes later, after Coach and Mrs. Davis had drained their glasses.
James was nowhere to be found when I left, even though I looked behind me a few times on my way out the door.
But the next afternoon, I found a note tucked into the slats of my school locker. It wasn’t signed, but it didn’t need to be. I knew who wrote the neat, blocky letters.
I watched you today. You should be captain.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CATHERINE
After a restless night, I wake up and stumble out of my bedroom, hoping Mom made a pot of coffee before she left for work.
But the Mr. Coffee machine is clean and empty in the dark galley kitchen.
I fill the glass pot halfway with water and dump it into the reservoir, then open the cabinet to grab the tin of Maxwell House.
There’s a cardboard container of eggs next to the coffee.
I stare at it dumbly for a second, then reach for it and open the tabs. Four white eggs are nestled inside. I touch one of them. It’s room temperature.
Mom must’ve put them away here. They could be a salmonella factory by now.
I drop the eggs into the trash can and the cardboard container into the recycle bin, watching as one of the eggs cracks apart and oozes out of its shell.
My head swims and I grip the edge of the counter.
I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll undergo genetic testing to see if I’ve inherited the gene for early-onset Alzheimer’s. It’s my own decision, one my mother can’t deny me. I’ll pay for it myself if it comes to that.
Even if the gene is coding my future, it won’t necessarily mean an early death sentence for me. Brilliant researchers are constantly working to find a cure. There could be—will be—so many advances in the next few decades. And if I turn out to be carrying a mutated gene, I can avoid passing it on if I decide to have kids by undergoing in vitro fertilization. I would have the option of stopping this disease in its tracks, making it end with me.