On the mats around them, the girls had heard it too. Alana felt it go through them, a ripple, faces turning, eyes going to her, and then away, toward the far sideline. Tessa, kneeling at Britney's feet, had both hands over her mouth again. And standing a few feet away, Madison Cross had stopped in the middle of whatever she had been about to say to the coach, and turned her head, very slowly, and was looking at Alana. Her face had gone the color of paper.
Alana opened her eyes. She turned her head, and looked across the track, and across the field, to the far sideline, where the Westfield football team stood in a long line in their helmets, and where, in a little gap between them, a tall figure in dress blues was walking.
He was not walking toward the center of the field. He was not walking toward the announcer's booth, or toward the stands, or toward the crowd that was clapping for him. He was walking across the end of the field, along the back line of the end zone, unhurried, straight toward the strip of blue mats in front of the home bleachers where his daughter was kneeling beside a girl with a broken arm. Beside him, a step behind, came the athletic director, a heavyset man with a clipboard who looked as though he was not at all sure what was happening. And Coach Williams, Alana saw, was already standing up from the mat, and walking out to meet them, and when she reached the tall man in dress blues she stopped and said something to him, short and low, and he nodded once, and they came on together.
Alana watched him come. She did not stand up. She did not wave. She did not call out to him. She knelt on the mat with one hand on Britney's splint and watched her father walk toward her across Cross Field under the white lights with fourteen girls in navy and gold watching him, and two football teams watching him, and three thousand people in the stands watching him, and she thought, with total clarity: he was here the whole time. The coin toss. That was him. He was here the whole time and he didn't tell me.
She thought: trust me.
She did not know whether she wanted to throw her arms around him or throw something at him. She suspected she would end up doing both, eventually.
He reached the edge of the mats. Up close, under the lights, he looked very tall and very tired and very calm. There was a little grass on his shoes. His eyes went straight to her, and to her ankle, stretched out on the mat in its brace, and to her face, and stayed there for a moment, asking a question. She gave a very small nod. I'm fine. Something in his shoulders let go, just slightly. Then he looked at Britney, at the splint, at the sling, at the scarf, and he crouched down on his heels at the edge of the mat beside them, so that his face was level with theirs.
"That's good work," he said quietly, to his daughter. "Fingers?"
"Pink. Moving. Good sensation. I checked three times."
"Good." He looked at Britney. His voice was very gentle. "Hi. I'm Alana's dad. The ambulance is about four minutes out. I just checked. You're going to be fine. That's a clean splint. Better than some I've seen on grown men. You just keep breathing the way she showed you. All right?"
Britney stared at him. Then she nodded, slowly, her eyes enormous.
Malcolm Johnson stood up.
He turned around. And he looked, for the first time, directly at Madison Cross.
She was standing perhaps eight feet away, on the mat, in her uniform, with her crown sideways on her head. She had not moved since the announcement. She was staring at him the way people stare at a car coming toward them on the wrong side of the road.
He did not say anything for a moment. He just looked at her. It was not an angry look. Alana, who had seen him angry four times in her life, knew that. It was a quiet, level, patient look. The look of a man reading something carefully, all the way to the end.
Then he said, in an ordinary voice, not loud:
"You must be Madison."
Madison opened her mouth. Nothing came out. She closed it again.
"I'm Malcolm Johnson. Alana's father." He did not offer his hand. "Coach Williams tells me you're the captain."
"I—yes. Yes, sir." Her voice came out small. She seemed to hear how small it was, and something flickered in her face, and she lifted her chin. "Head captain. Two years."
"Two years," said Malcolm. He nodded slowly, as though this were interesting. "And state champions. Three years running. That's a real accomplishment. I saw the banner in the gym. I'd like to ask you something about the program, if you don't mind. I've been trying to understand it. I'm new here."
Madison looked at Coach Williams. Coach Williams looked back at her and said nothing at all.
"Okay," said Madison.