Alana went back to school the next morning on crutches.
She had not slept much. Her ankle had throbbed all night under the ice pack, a deep, hot, pulsing ache that kept time with her heartbeat, and every time she started to drift off she found herself back on the blue mat with her cheek in the wet, looking up at the empty bottle. At four in the morning she gave up, and turned on the lamp, and opened the notes app on her phone, and began to write down everything, the way her father had told her to. Every word. Every time. Every name. It took her an hour. When she was finished, she read it over twice, and emailed it to him, and then lay in the lamplight looking at the ceiling, and for the first time since the urgent care parking lot, she felt something that was not pain or anger or humiliation. She felt, very faintly, like someone who had a plan.
Her mother drove her in. Neither of them talked very much. At the drop-off lane, Renée put the car in park and reached over and took her daughter's face in both her hands, the way she had not done since Alana was small, and looked at her for a long moment.
"You don't have to go in today," she said. "You know that. Nobody would blame you."
"Dad said to go in. Like nothing happened."
"Your daddy's in Mississippi. I'm here." Renée's thumbs moved gently along Alana's cheekbones. "If you want to come home, baby, we go home. Right now. I'll call in sick. We'll watch bad movies and eat ice cream and to hell with all of them."
Alana smiled. It hurt a little.
"I want to go in," she said. "I want them to see me."
Her mother looked at her a while longer. Then she nodded, slowly, and let go.
"That's your daddy talking," she said. "But it's my stubborn." She leaned over and kissed her forehead. "Go on, then. Go let them see you."
The steps were the hardest part. Twenty-two of them, wide and stone, up between the white columns, and she took them one at a time on the crutches with her bad foot held off the ground in its brace and her backpack strapped tight to her back and her gym bag left at home, because she would not be needing it. It took her almost two minutes. People streamed past her on both sides. Some of them looked. Some of them did not. A few of them slowed down and looked at the brace and then at her face and then at each other. Near the top, the small freckled girl with the braid from the tryout came up beside her and walked the last six steps with her, slowly, without saying anything, and held the door open for her at the top, and then went red and disappeared into the crowd before Alana could thank her.
She made it to her locker. She made it to first period. She made it to second. In both classes, people looked at her, and whispered, and looked at their phones, and looked at her again. She did not know what they were looking at on their phones. She suspected she would find out soon enough. She sat where she had sat the day before and took notes in her small, neat, even handwriting and did not look back.
She saw them between second and third period.
They were standing at the end of the long hallway on the second floor, by the water fountain and the windows that looked out over the football field, in a loose half-circle, the way they had stood on the steps. Madison in the center, in a white sweater and a short navy skirt and her blonde hair loose and shining. Britney Walsh at her left shoulder, in her Westfield Cheerleading hoodie. The redheaded girl, whose name Alana now knew was Kelsey Tran, at her right, with her phone. And around them, a few others. Two more varsity girls. A couple of boys from the football team in letter jackets, leaning against the wall. Some kids Alana did not know, drifting closer the way people drift toward something that might be about to happen.
Alana's locker was halfway down the hall. She had to go past them to get to chemistry.
She could have gone the other way. Down the stairs at the near end, along the first floor, up the stairs at the far end. It would have taken five extra minutes on crutches, and she would have been late. She thought about it for exactly one second. Then she thought about her mother. Go let them see you.
She swung herself down the hall toward them on the crutches.
They saw her coming. She watched it ripple through the little group. Kelsey's phone came up. Britney's arms folded. One of the boys in the letter jackets nudged the other. And Madison turned, slowly, from the window, and looked down the hall at her, and her face lit up with the bright, warm, delighted smile of a girl seeing an old friend.