She eyed the pamphlet's "Before" and "After" shots.
Split me down the middle / And I only come halfway.
But I could take your pieces / 'Cause everything's stolen anyway.
Without squinting, she read the material, trying to understand what the procedure could do-and what it couldn't.
It could give her new, smooth skin. It could fix her other Push-Pull-the battle of tight skin and frustrated muscles. It could erase the scars on her face, though the brochure made no promises about the scars on her confidence.
Even using all her dad's tricks for seeing the downside, she couldn't shake it. The upside still looked pretty good.
There was just one problem.
If she was going to be fixed, someone needed to die.
FI
At lunch, Trent smacked his tray on the table and sat across from Fi. "She'll be at the game today, right?"
Having just bitten into her tuna sandwich-and having at least some manners, though her mother might not believe it-Fi simply nodded.
"Think she'll check me out, too?" Trent asked. "While she's here?"
Fi swallowed, shaking her head. "She's the assistant coach from Northwestern's women's program. Are you planning on some life-altering surgeries?"
Trent snorted his Coke, nearly spewing it on Fi. "Think of all the time we could spend together."
She laughed. "I already get about as much of you as I can take."
Truthfully, Fi was relieved there was no way Trent would make it to Northwestern. First, for all the talk of grades, Trent made Fi look like a National Merit Scholar. Second, at heart he was just a good old southern boy; she couldn't picture him in cold, fast-paced Chicago. And lastly, if she couldn't manage the boundaries of their friendship here, what chance would she have if he was the only person she knew?
He rolled his eyes-then took another enormous bite of hamburger. "So what happens? After she watches you?"
"She falls madly in love with my transcendent style, runs onto the field after my last-second goal, and offers me a starting position and full ride." Trent snatched some apple slices from her lunch and she confessed, "I'm kind of nervous. What if I suck?"
He waved her off. "You don't have it in you."
She smacked his hand as he went for another slice, eating it herself. "Seriously. It's, like, huge that she's here."
"You've gone to their camps the past three years. The head coach has seen you before. The scout wouldn't be here if they weren't already going to make an offer."
"That Vanderbilt recruiter came last year for Mary Benton. Remember? She totally choked. No Maryland offer."
He paused to consider this before shaking his head. "Nope. It's utterly impossible. Even on your worst day, you're the best in this city."
"Yeah, well, this is Memphis. We're not exactly a lacrosse hotbed."
"Will you stop?" He scowled at her. "You'll psych yourself out."
"You're right. Deep breath." She sucked in a huge gulp of air. And another. And maybe four more, all really close together.
He reached across the table for her brown paper lunch bag, like she might need emergency hyperventilation assistance. "You all right?"
Once her nerves got under control, she nodded. "Little freaked out."
"That's even worse than how you get after kissing."
She glared across the table at Trent. "You don't have a gentlemanly bone in your body."
"Sure, I do," he said with a wink.
"Is this supposed to be helping?"
"I'm distracting you from your worries."
"By making me cringe?"
Trent balled up his hamburger wrapper, tossing it onto his tray. "Whatever."
He slumped into his chair, and the two studied each other over the table. Both had their eyes narrowed and arms crossed over their chests when Ryan walked past. He paused, looking from one to the other. "What are y'all bickering about now?"
"We're not bickering," Trent and Fi answered simultaneously, still staring each other down.
Ryan walked away, muttering, "Wonder what getting along looks like."
The day crawled and flew by all at once. Teachers snapped at her to pay attention, but Fi could only focus on the playbook in her head and the game tape of the other team that she watched at practice yesterday.
There were two girls who couldn't play with their left hands, no matter how pinned they got. One with true speed-she could move the ball fast, but her shot accuracy was unpredictable. There was a goalie who favored her right side. The defenders made messy stick checks-Fi could rack up some good foul calls from them.
By the time she got on the field, Fi felt calmer. Coach Dunn smacked her on the back, cast a knowing look toward the bleachers, and asked how she felt.
"Good," she said.
After warm-up drills, when she'd spied on the team a little, he asked again, and she answered, "Great."
"You're on draw," he said.
She grinned.
At the beginning of the season, Coach Dunn had told her, "I'm moving you to midfield, Fi."
"What?" she'd practically yelled at him. "I'm attack!"
"My center moved this summer. I need you there."
"But I'm the leading scorer!"
"So score," he'd said, "while playing center."
Annoyed her game was getting screwed up because some senior's dad got transferred, she had played the position begrudgingly at first. Once she reached her stride as middie, though, she never wanted to go back. She got the best of both worlds-defense and attack-and more space on the field to run, to muscle out plays, to go head-to-head. She got the draw, too-the two-girl standoff in the center circle that left one with the ball and the other chasing after it. Seventy-four percent of the time she was the one with the ball. She'd checked the stats.
The ref blew the whistle. Fi and the other team's center leaned into each other, stick head pressed against stick head, the small hard yellow ball sandwiched in the middle. Another whistle and both girls pressed out and up, flinging the ball skyward.
Fi netted it.
Blowing past the other team's midfielders, she tore up the field, switching to her left hand as a defender tried to check. Three defenders in front of her blocked all her options, so she passed to the attack behind the crease. The play went on a while-all the attacks and midfielders sliding in front of the goal, looking for a shot, while the attack behind the crease kept dodging her defenders. Fi saw an opening and pivoted around her distracted defender. Three steps to the goal, a pretty assisting pass by the attack behind the crease, and there it was-an easy fling into goal.
That would be One.
Another draw. Fi flipped it toward her left middie, and once again her team was on offense. But half were running one play while the other half ran another.
"Set up!" Fi was yelling, trying to pull them into some kind of pattern.
"Somebody set a pick," called the attack behind the crease, and a teammate cut to the goal.
"Midfields!" Coach Dunn was screaming from the sidelines. "Get up top!"
Even though Dunn was yelling at her to shift away, Fi knew the girl setting up was out of position. Sure enough, at the pass, the girl reached out her stick an inch short of making any difference.
The ball rolled as Fi and an opposing defender charged for it.
Their bodies collided less than a second after their sticks. There was a series of unpleasant snapping sounds, and for an instant, Fi felt a giddy pleasure-I've finally broken someone's stick! Both girls hit the ground. It wasn't until the ref blew the whistle that she processed the pain.
Grabbing her right ankle, Fi screamed obscenities she didn't realize she knew. Still, she had the ball.
The ref and Coach Dunn ran over. Despite the pain-it was like she'd been stabbed, from the inside out-she wondered why her hands felt sticky. When Dunn pried them from her ankle, they were covered in blood. She dragged her eyes away from her hands, looked toward her foot, and saw bone.
It hurt so, so bad.
Dunn carried her bodily off the field. Ryan and Trent ran over from where they stood on the sidelines, and in minutes, her dad was across the field, too, barking into his cell phone, then taking her from the coach's arms. Yelling at Ryan to open the damn back door already, he slid Fi across the backseat and wrapped an old gym towel under her foot to soak up the blood.
"Hold on, sweetie," he said, tearing out of the parking lot. "We'll be in the ER in ten minutes."
Fi felt like she was frothing at the mouth. In between groans, she cursed like a sailor. Her father didn't scold her even once, which made everything even more terrifying, because that meant he already knew what she was just now figuring out. They could see her bone. This was bad. This was very, very bad.