“Do you remember me, young lady?” he asks after a moment, straightening up.
Dee shakes her head. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t.”
“Well, I remember you, from when you were just a little girl… and I know who you are.”
The guard looks caught between a rock and a hard place. He shuffles on the spot for a moment, then flaps his hand at us.
“Oh, it’s not worth it. You two stay here for however long you like.”
“Wait,” Dee says.
“Now, I don’t want any trouble,” he says, recoiling from Dee. He steps backward, palms up. “You do what you like.”
“Who am I?” Dee asks.
“Why, you’re Johnny Marino’s daughter,” he says, stumbling over his words.
There’s a still silence, and then Dee just sighs.
“It’s okay, we’re leaving.”
“You can stay as long as you like, now. I won’t stop you.”
“We’re leaving,” Dee says, and she steps forward, and touches the man’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. Don’t be afraid.”
“N-now, I’m not kicking you out. You want to skate, you can—”
Deidre’s voice is soft, calming. “It’s okay,” she says. “We were going anyway. Don’t worry. I’m sorry we snuck in here. We were wrong, and you’re just doing your job. I won’t tell a soul.”
The guard grumbles to himself, but acquiesces.
I look at Dee, a new admiration for her growing. She read him perfectly, calmed him, reassured him when she didn’t have to.
She could have brandished that power her name gave her, wielded it, but she didn’t.
She’s nothing like her father.
“I’m sorry if we’ve caused you trouble,” Dee says, taking my hand. “We’ll make sure everything is put back properly.”
We’re true to her word, stack the skates back, re-cover the ice, and then she tugs my hand, says, “Come on, let’s go.”
We leave the building, walk out of the mall back to the car.
“Does that happen a lot?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says with a sigh. “Can you imagine how hard it is to make friends when everybody around you walks on eggshells?”
“It bothers you,” I say.
“Sure it does. I don’t want people to be scared of me. I’m not scary!”
With a kind of imprisoned frustration, she climbs into the car, shuts the door hard. I get in after her, start the engine by sparking the exposed wiring again, and then drive us back toward her home.
The mood has changed, and she stares out of the window, chewing her nails, so I don’t talk. She doesn’t seem to want it.
“Sorry,” she says after a while. “I just hate it when shit like that happens.”
“Don’t sweat it.”
“I wish you weren’t going tomorrow,” she says. It’s a thump right in my gut, one that is harder than any hit I ever took in a fight.
“Same.”
“But you have to, don’t you?”
I grind my teeth together for a moment. Now I feel caught between a rock and a hard place. “Yeah,” I say. “I think I do.”
“I know you do,” she says, looking away from me again out of the window.
We drive in silence the rest of the way, and when we get back, park the car, sneak inside, she tries to go to her room without saying a word, but I ring her wrist and tug her toward me.
“I’ll be back, though,” I say.
“Not for six months or however long Dad wants to train you for.”
“But I’ll be back.”
She doesn’t reply, just slips herself from my grip, and leaves me in the hallway, so that all I have is her faint, lingering scent, and her look of disappointment burned into my mind.
Chapter Fourteen
It is surprising how quickly time flies when you’re looking ahead to something.
I look ahead to seeing Dee, every damn day.
McNamara and Glass train me individually day after day, the former in the morning, the latter in the evenings. In the afternoons I work on my conditioning with the other boys at the camp. We skip rope, run sprints, and then do calisthenics, the kind most people would find extreme.
We fall down from a standing position into a push up, and then push ourselves up into that standing position. We do handstands with no support, then dip down until our heads touch the floor, before straightening out our arms. Then we do it again balancing weights on our feet.
Even with the blood rushing into my head, my face no doubt a swollen red, and my shoulders and triceps shaking by the time I get to my fiftieth repetition, all I’m thinking about is Dee.
I think about how we went ice skating, how when I looked back as Glass drove me away I saw her in the window, waving. That smile… those eyes.