"That's the first move," said Malcolm. "She fills the bottle. Nothing wrong with that. Everybody fills a water bottle." He touched the key again, and the video jumped forward. "Now watch where she sits."
At the table, a minute later, Madison picked up her chair and moved it. Not far. Three or four feet. From the end of the table to the corner nearest the long blue mat, so that when she sat down again, crossing her legs, she was only a few feet from the edge of it. She set the full bottle on the floor beside her chair. On the mat side.
"Second move," said Malcolm. "Position. She puts herself closer to the mat than she needs to be. Closer than the coach, closer than the assistant. Close enough to reach." He touched the key. "Now we wait. Forty minutes. Ten girls. I'll skip it. But watch the bottle, Mr. Harrison. In forty minutes she doesn't drink from it. Not once. She drinks from a coffee cup. The water bottle sits on the floor."
The video jumped forward again. The time stamp said 3:52. On the screen, on the near end of the long blue mat, a small figure was standing very still, arms at her sides, looking down the length of the mat toward the far end. Even in grainy black and white, from high up in the corner of a ceiling, Gerald Harrison knew who it was. He had seen her in the office, two days ago, filling out her enrollment forms with her mother, in her small, neat, careful handwriting.
"That's my daughter," said Malcolm Johnson. His voice did not change at all. "She's about to do her running pass. Before she starts, she does what she always does. She bends down and chalks her hands from a bucket at the end of the mat, and she rubs them together, and she closes her eyes for about three seconds. She's done that before every pass since she was nine. She's breathing. Counting. I taught her that." He paused. "So for three seconds, she isn't looking. Everybody else in the room is looking at her. And for three seconds, nobody is looking at the floor."
On the screen, the small figure bent down to the chalk bucket.
And at the far end of the mat, in the corner of the frame, Madison Cross uncrossed her legs, and leaned over, and picked up the bottle from the floor beside her chair, and uncapped it, and held it out over the edge of the blue mat, low, at arm's length, and turned it upside down.
It took about two seconds. The water came out in a long silver stream, very clear even on the grainy footage, and splashed across the third panel of the mat, and spread. Then Madison turned the bottle right side up again, and sat back, and crossed her legs, and set the empty bottle on the table in front of her, and looked down the mat toward the girl at the far end with her hands in the chalk. Her face, on the screen, was too small to read.
"Third move, fourth move, fifth move," said Malcolm quietly. "Timing. She waits for the moment nobody is watching her. Then she pours. Then she puts the bottle back where everyone can see it. Out in the open. Empty." He touched the key. "Watch the sixth."
On the screen, the small figure at the far end of the mat straightened up, and took three running steps, and hurdled, and threw herself forward into a round-off, and came out of it into a back handspring, and launched up off the second panel into the air, twisting, beautiful, high, and came down on the third.
Harrison flinched. He could not help it.
He watched her feet go out from under her on the wet mat. He watched her twist sideways in the air, trying to save it, and land wrong, on the side of her foot, and go down hard. He watched her lie there. He watched the gym come apart around her, the coach jumping up, the assistant running, the girls on the bleachers standing. And he watched Madison Cross get up from the table, quickly, picking up the empty bottle, and walk down the side of the mat, and kneel beside the girl on the floor, with the bottle still in her hand, and lean down close, and say something into her ear.
"Sixth move," said Malcolm. "She goes and makes sure. She wants my daughter to know." He touched the key, and the screen froze on the image of the blonde girl kneeling, and the girl on the mat looking up at her. "I don't know exactly what she said. My daughter told me. I believe her. But I don't need to know. I can see enough from this."
He turned the laptop back around and closed it gently and set it on his knees again and folded his hands on top of it.
Gerald Harrison sat very still in his chair.