Chapter 335 - Where She Belonged

Chapter 335: Chapter 335 - Where She Belonged

By the time Coach Miller finally stopped hovering over her, Roxie’s shoe was off and a bag of ice was wrapped around her ankle.

She sat on one of the benches outside the medical area with her injured leg stretched across Zac’s lap. The swelling had become more obvious once the shoe came off, puffing around the outside of her ankle enough that even Roxie had stopped pretending it looked normal.

Zac had barely spoken since he found her.

That bothered her more than the lecture she had expected.

His hand stayed around her heel while the other rested lightly over the top of her foot, careful enough that even his thumb barely moved against her skin. Roxie watched him for a while, waiting for some sarcastic comment or dramatic complaint about how she had nearly killed him from the stands.

Nothing came.

"You’re being weird."

Zac finally looked up. "You need to take care of yourself."

There it was.

Roxie leaned back against the wall. "I do."

"No, you don’t."

"I finished a routine."

"On an ankle you could barely stand on."

"I could stand."

"Yeah. That’s why Karen and Angela carried you out."

"That happened after. I’m fine, really."

His jaw tightened.

Roxie stared at him before letting out a small laugh. "You know, when you were in season, you came to me with bruises everywhere. Your shoulder was messed up for like two weeks and you still played."

Zac said nothing.

"That one game, your lip was bleeding and you acted like it was normal. And I remember somebody limping after practice and telling me he was fine."

Zac lowered his eyes to her foot.

Roxie smiled. "Exactly."

He still did not argue. His thumb moved slowly across the top of her foot instead, avoiding the swollen area completely, and the quiet touch took some of the humor out of her.

Roxie looked at him again.

His head stayed lowered, but she could see the tension in his face. She had known exactly when her ankle rolled, exactly how much it hurt and exactly what movements she could still force it through. Zac had only been watching from the stands. He had seen her stumble, keep performing, and then eventually come out of the arena between Karen and Angela with most of her weight hanging on them.

"You were scared."

His fingers stopped.

Zac looked up. "I saw you being carried by Angela and Karen with your face white. Who wouldn’t worry?"

Roxie opened her mouth, but he looked back down at her ankle before she could answer.

"You kept going like nothing happened."

"I couldn’t stop in the middle of Nationals."

"I know."

His voice was quieter than she expected.

Roxie had been ready for him to argue that she should have stopped anyway, but his hand only closed a little more firmly around her foot.

"I know why you kept going," he said. "I still hated watching it."

Her smile softened.

She reached forward and ran her fingers through his hair.

Zac let her.

For once, he did not turn it into a joke.

The door at the end of the hall opened and Karen hurried toward them, still wearing her uniform. Her makeup had survived the crying badly, and one side of her bow had started coming loose.

"There you are."

Roxie looked past her. "What?"

"They’re calling the finalists back soon. Coach said everybody needs to be there for awards."

Roxie’s stomach tightened.

Already?

She reached automatically for her shoe, but Zac caught her hand before she could pick it up.

"No."

"I need a shoe."

"You’re not putting that back on."

"I’m not going out there barefoot."

Karen lifted the bag she was carrying. "I brought slides."

Roxie stared at her. "You want me to go onstage wearing slides?"

Karen shrugged. "You have your ankle wrapped. I think they’ll understand."

Roxie imagined herself receiving an award in her cheer uniform with one slide and a swollen ankle and shook her head, but Zac had already taken it from Karen.

"Don’t be hardheaded."

Roxie bit her lip while he carefully worked it onto her foot without forcing anything against the swelling.

The second she tried to stand, pain shot through the ankle and her face tightened before she could hide it.

Zac immediately slipped one arm behind her knees and the other around her back.

"Zac."

He lifted her.

Roxie tightened her arms around his neck, face heating as Karen started laughing.

"Very subtle."

"Shut up."

"I didn’t say anything."

"You were thinking it."

"I was thinking you look ridiculous."

Roxie flipped her off over Zac’s shoulder.

They found the rest of Briarwick near the tunnel entrance. The girls had changed very little since leaving the floor. Hair was coming loose, makeup had been cried through, and several of them were still talking over one another about the routine.

The moment Roxie saw them looking toward her, embarrassment crept in.

She suddenly became aware of Zac carrying her like she had survived some kind of disaster instead of rolling an ankle during a cheer routine. She wondered if somebody would think she was exaggerating it, especially after she had managed to finish.

Then Ava came toward her first.

"Roxie, are you okay?"

Another girl leaned closer to look at the wrap.

"Does it hurt really bad now?"

The tension left Roxie almost immediately.

"Only when I have to use it, which is apparently an important feature of a foot."

Someone laughed.

Coach Miller came over and looked at the ankle before pointing at Roxie. "You keep weight off that until you absolutely have to."

"Yes, Coach."

His eyes narrowed as though he knew exactly how much that promise was worth.

Zac lowered her carefully beside Karen, but he stayed close enough that his hand remained at her waist.

Karen looked at him. "Go."

Zac frowned.

"What?" Karen asked. "You want to come onto the floor with us too? We’ll take care of her."

Roxie chuckled. "I’m fine. Go."

Zac sighed, leaned down and gave her a quick kiss before finally stepping away.

Karen watched him leave. "Your assistant is weird."

"Yeah, he is."

Roxie was still smiling when she turned toward the arena.

The atmosphere felt completely different from when Briarwick had entered for Finals. There was no music pounding through her body now and no count constantly running through her head. The competition floor had been cleared for awards, and finalist teams were being arranged into groups across the mat facing the front.

Karen and Angela helped Roxie over and lowered her carefully between them. She sat with her injured leg stretched slightly forward because folding it beneath her immediately increased the pressure around the ankle. Kendall was closer to the front with Coach Miller nearby, while the rest of Briarwick packed tightly around them.

The giant screens changed to the Nationals logo.

Roxie stared at it.

For months, that logo had been somewhere ahead of them. It had been on schedules, registration papers, videos Coach Miller showed them, and every conversation about what they were training for. Nationals had always sounded like this huge thing waiting at the end of the season.

Now their last routine was already finished.

There was nothing else Roxie could fix.

No count she could repeat.

No stunt she could ask to run one more time.

Whatever happened next had already been decided by what they had put on that floor.

Roxie rubbed her palms against her skirt.

Angela reached over and took one of her hands.

Karen grabbed the other.

Roxie looked between them. "Isn’t this weird?"

"Yes," they answered together.

She laughed, but neither released her.

The announcer began thanking the finalist teams, coaches, families and supporters. Roxie heard only pieces of it. Her ankle throbbed beneath the wrap with every heartbeat, yet even the pain started fading behind the pressure building inside her chest.

She looked around at Briarwick.

The sight of the girls sitting together pulled something loose in her memory.

Freshman year.

The first time Roxie had walked into Briarwick’s gym wearing the uniform, she had thought she had made it.

She remembered looking around at the older girls and feeling intimidated by them, but excited too. They seemed impossible to her then. They could tumble without thinking, hit their stunts cleanly, move through routines like their bodies had already memorized every count before the music even started.

Roxie had wanted to become like them.

It had taken only a few weeks for that excitement to turn into dread.

Freshmen made mistakes. Roxie knew that. What she had not expected was how quickly every mistake became something the older girls could use against her.

If she missed a count, somebody complained that she was slowing everyone down. If she landed badly, someone laughed. If she asked a question because she had missed part of the choreography, one of the seniors would sigh loudly enough that Roxie wished she had stayed quiet.

At first, she fought back.

She rolled her eyes when they insulted her. She muttered things under her breath. Sometimes she snapped directly at them and earned herself another lecture for having an attitude.

That was easier.

Anger was familiar.

Then it kept happening.

Week after week.

Practice after practice.

Eventually Roxie stopped snapping back as much because she was tired before she even walked into the gym.

She started watching the clock during her last class of the day and feeling her stomach tighten as practice got closer. Sometimes she would stand outside the gym doors with her bag over one shoulder and listen to the music inside while trying to convince herself to enter.

There were days she wanted to turn around.

She never did.

She could not.

Briarwick was the one place she had fought hard enough to reach, and leaving because some girls hated her felt like admitting they had been right. She had nowhere else she wanted to go, and going home was hardly an escape.

Claire was there.

Claire already had enough reasons Roxie was a disappointment.

Roxie did not need to hand her another one.

So she went inside every day.

She learned to swallow things.

She learned how to stare at the floor while somebody lectured her so they would not see tears building in her eyes. She learned which bathroom stall nobody usually used. She learned to splash cold water on her face after crying and wait until the redness disappeared before walking back into the gym.

There were practices where she said almost nothing because speaking meant somebody might notice how close she was to breaking.

There were nights when she lay in bed staring at the ceiling and replayed everything that had happened that afternoon.

A missed landing.

A senior laughing.

Someone calling her useless.

Somebody saying Briarwick had made a mistake putting her on the team.

After hearing things long enough, Roxie started wondering if maybe they were right.

That was the part she hated remembering.

She had believed them.

There had been nights when she convinced herself that everybody at Briarwick was simply waiting for her to fail badly enough that they could finally admit she never belonged there.

Then she would wake up the next morning and practice again.

She remembered one afternoon worse than the others.

Her tumbling had been bad from the start. She had missed the same pass more than once, and the more frustrated she became, the worse her body responded. One senior cursed at her for wasting everybody’s time. Another laughed after Roxie landed badly.

Roxie tried again.

She missed it again.

Their captain came toward her.

Roxie could still remember the girl standing so close that she could smell the gum she had been chewing. She told Roxie that the team had no use for people who could not even count correctly. She asked why Roxie was there if everybody had to keep fixing her mistakes.

Roxie had finally snapped back.

The captain shoved her.

Roxie fell onto the mat.

What stayed with her after all these years was how normal everything remained.

Music kept playing.

Shoes kept hitting the floor.

Someone laughed somewhere behind her.

Nobody came over.

Nobody asked if she was okay.

Roxie pushed herself up because she could not bear staying on the floor while they watched.

She finished practice.

That had always been the worst part of herself.

She could be completely miserable and still finish whatever she had started.

Only when practice ended did she go around the back of the gym where nobody could see her.

She sat against the wall with her knees pulled against her chest and finally let herself cry.

By then it had stopped being about the captain.

It was everything.

The seniors.

Practice.

Claire.

School.

Constantly having to act like she could handle things because admitting she could not handle them had never made anything better.

She remembered pressing both hands over her mouth because she was afraid somebody might hear her.

She had been fifteen years old and so exhausted that she could barely understand why she was still trying.

For a while she had simply sat there wondering how many more years she was supposed to live like that.

That thought had frightened her.

Roxie knew how to fight people.

She knew how to insult them back.

She knew how to make herself look like she did not care.

She had no idea how to fight the feeling that maybe her entire life was going to be one long stretch of trying to survive people who made her feel unwanted.

There were moments during freshman year when getting through another day had felt harder than any stunt she had ever learned.

Still, she went home after that practice.

And eventually, she practiced the same tumbling pass again.

Her wrists hurt. Her legs shook. She was still crying the first few times she tried it, angry enough that every bad landing made her want to quit.

She kept going anyway.

Again.

Then again.

Some stubborn part of her refused to let those girls be the reason she stopped.

That was where the promise started.

If Roxie ever became captain, she would work her team hard. She would correct them when they were wrong, make them repeat routines until their timing was clean, and demand everything they had when competition came close.

But she would never make one of her girls afraid to walk into the gym.

She would never humiliate a freshman just because she could.

She would never make somebody believe that one mistake meant she did not deserve to be there.

Years later, Roxie had actually become that captain.

Sitting on the Nationals floor now with Karen holding one hand and Angela holding the other, Roxie thought about the fifteen year old girl crying alone behind the gym.

That girl had only been trying to survive the season.

She had no idea where all that stubbornness was going to take her.

Then the placements started, and Roxie forgot how to breathe.