Then she deleted it. And typed: No idea. I have to go to class.
Then she put the phone in her pocket, and turned on the tap, and held her wrists under the cold water for a long time, the way her mother had taught her to do when she was about to cry and could not afford to. It worked. It always worked. When she looked up at the mirror again, the girl in it was perfect.
She practiced the smile twice. Then she went out into the hallway, where the girls were waiting, and smiled at them, and said, "Let's go. We have a game tonight," and they fell in around her, and she walked away down the corridor at the head of her formation, the gold bow swinging, and did not look back.
* * *
Alana got through the afternoon.
She did not know how, exactly. She would not remember much of it afterward. English. Spanish. A study hall where she sat in the back and did her pre-calc homework and did not look at her phone. People still looked at her. More people than in the morning. Some of them were looking differently now, though. A few of them were looking at her, she thought, the way people look at something they have just realized they might have been wrong about. A girl she did not know, in the hallway after English, a Black girl with box braids and a violin case, fell into step beside her for a few yards and said quietly, without looking at her, "I reported it too. Like ten times. Hang in there," and then peeled off into a classroom before Alana could answer. The small freckled girl with the braid was in her Spanish class, it turned out. Her name was Lily Pruett. She was a sophomore. She sat down at the desk next to Alana's and did not say anything, but halfway through class she slid a folded piece of notebook paper across the desk. Alana unfolded it under the desk. It said, in purple gel pen: I saw her do it. I was on the bleachers. I told Coach this morning. I'm sorry I didn't say anything yesterday. I was scared. Alana looked over at her. Lily was staring very hard at her textbook, her ears bright red. Alana folded the note very carefully and put it in the inside pocket of her backpack, with the zipper, where she kept things that mattered.
At the last bell, she was at her locker, putting her books away, balancing on one foot with a crutch under her arm, when her phone buzzed.
It was her father.
How's the terrain?
She looked at it for a while. Then she typed: Rough. There's a video. I sent you screenshots. 104 of them. Also Jake sat with me at lunch and told Madison off in front of the whole cafeteria. Also a girl named Lily says she saw Madison pour the water and she told Coach. Also I'm fine.
The dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared.
Got the screenshots. Every one. Good work. That's exactly right. A pause. Then: I'm proud of you, Lani. You did everything I asked. Exactly how I asked. Better than I could have.
She felt her eyes sting, standing at the locker. She blinked hard.
When are you coming home?
Another pause. Longer.
Soon. Listen. Football game tonight. Homecoming. Your mother's taking you.
Alana frowned at the phone.
Dad, I'm not going to the game. I'm on crutches. I'm not on the squad. Everybody at that game hates me.
Not everybody. Jake doesn't. Lily doesn't. Your mother doesn't. I don't.
You won't be there.
The dots appeared and disappeared four times. She watched them, frowning.
Go to the game, Lani, her father wrote at last. Sit with your mother. Wear something warm, it's going to be cold. Bring your ankle brace. Keep your head up. Trust me.
She read it three times.
Trust me. He did not say that very often. He said I love you, and proud of you, and ankle brace, and patience, and copy that. He did not say trust me. In her whole life she could remember him saying it perhaps three times. Once when she was six and afraid of the ocean. Once when she was twelve and they had driven all night across Texas in a thunderstorm. And once in Pensacola, at the hospital, when her mother had been sick, and he had sat beside Alana in the waiting room at three in the morning and held her hand and said, she's going to be fine, baby, trust me, and she had been.
Alana closed her locker.
Okay, she typed. I'll go.
Good girl. Wear the blue coat. And Lani? I love you.
Love you too, Dad.
She put the phone in her pocket, and got her crutches under her arms, and swung herself down the long hallway toward the front doors, where her mother would be waiting in the drop-off lane, past the big bright banners that said BEAT KELLAM and HOMECOMING 2026 and, at the very end, by the doors, a new one she had not noticed that morning, red, white and blue, hand-painted by somebody's art class, that said MILITARY APPRECIATION NIGHT — THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE.