Alana slid the padded board, very gently, under Britney's forearm, from the elbow to past the fingertips, so that the arm rested along it on the folded towel. Britney cried out. Alana kept her own voice level and slow and kept talking through it. She told her what she was doing before she did each thing. Now I'm going to lift a tiny bit. Now I'm going to slide. You're doing so well. Now I'm going to tape. She wound the athletic tape around the board and the arm together, loosely, above the break and below it, at the elbow end and the hand end, never over the lump itself, leaving the fingers free and uncovered so that she could see them. She checked the fingers again. Still pink. Still moving. She took off her own long knitted scarf, her mother's scarf, and folded it into a triangle, and made a sling with it, and tied it behind Britney's neck, so that the splinted arm rested across her chest at the right height, supported. She took the cold pack from the assistant coach and wrapped it in the corner of the towel and laid it gently beside the injury, not on it.
"Better?" she said.
Britney nodded. She was still crying, but more quietly now. She was looking at Alana's face with an expression that Alana could not read at all.
"How do you know how to do this?" she whispered.
"My dad taught me first aid," said Alana. "When I was little. He said everybody should know how. He said you never know when it'll be you that has to." She checked the fingers again. "My mom's a nurse, too. ICU. She's going to yell at me later for jumping that railing."
Britney made a sound that was halfway between a sob and a laugh.
Then, from above them, came another kind of laugh. Light. High. Silvery. Too loud.
"Oh my God," said Madison Cross. "Oh my God, look at this. Are you guys seeing this?"
She was standing a few feet away on the mat, where she had been standing the whole time. She had not moved toward Britney once. Her crown had slipped sideways on her head. Her face was flushed, and her eyes were too bright, and she was looking around at the girls on the mats and up at the crowd in the stands, the way she had looked around the hallway that morning, for an audience.
"The charity case is a doctor now," she said. "Amazing. Does she do house calls? Does the Navy pay for that too?" She laughed again. Nobody laughed with her. "Britney, it's a sprain. It's not even broken. Stop being such a baby. Everybody's watching you. You're embarrassing the whole squad. Get up and we'll redo the—"
"Madison." It was Coach Williams. She had not raised her voice. "Stop talking."
Madison stared at her.
"Excuse me?"
"I said stop talking. Go sit on the bench. Now."
"You can't talk to me like—"
And that was when the stadium loudspeakers came on.
There was a squeal of feedback, and then a man's voice, the announcer's voice, the voice that had been calling the game all night, warm and booming and slightly too close to the microphone. He sounded a little uncertain, as if he were reading from a piece of paper that had been handed to him at the last minute and was not sure this was the right time to read it.
"Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen, if I could have your attention. While our athletic trainers attend to our cheerleader on the field, and we wish her the very best, we'd like to take a moment, as planned, to recognize tonight's special guest for Military Appreciation Night. Many of you saw him at the coin toss earlier this evening. He is a twenty-year veteran of the United States Navy and a decorated officer of the Naval Special Warfare community, now serving at the training command at Dam Neck, here in Virginia Beach, and he and his family are the newest members of the Westfield community. Please join me in a warm Colonials welcome for United States Navy SEAL, Commander Malcolm Johnson."
There was a moment of confused silence. People in the stands were still standing, still looking down at the mats, at the girl in the sling and the coach and the other girls. Then, slowly, the applause began. It started up in the stands somewhere, a scattering of it, and spread, and grew, the way applause does at a football game in a military town, until most of the home side was clapping, a little uncertainly, not quite sure where to look.
On the mat, Alana went completely still.
She did not move. She was kneeling beside Britney Walsh with one hand resting lightly on the splint, checking the fingers, and she did not move at all. Her face did not change. But Britney, lying beside her and looking up into it, saw something go through her, from the top of her head to her knees, like a current.
"Johnson," Britney whispered. She stared up at Alana. "Johnson. Is that—is he—"
Alana closed her eyes for a second.
"My dad," she said.