"Alana says there are traditions," said Malcolm. "At Westfield. She's been asking about them all week. Trying to learn them. To fit in. She saw the sign in the gym. Tradition, excellence, pride." He paused. "I'd like to know what the traditions are. For the cheer squad. For new girls. What's expected. So I can help her."
There was a short silence. Behind Malcolm, on the mats, the girls of the varsity squad were standing very still. In the stands, people had stopped clapping, and were beginning, slowly, to sit down again, and to look at each other, and to take out their phones. Alana saw the little red lights coming on, here and there, all through the bleachers, like stars coming out.
"I don't—" Madison swallowed. "I don't know what you mean. We have, like, normal traditions. Team dinners. Spirit week. Secret sisters before competitions. That kind of thing."
"Is pouring water on the tumbling mat during a new girl's tryout one of them?"
He said it in exactly the same tone as everything else. Quiet. Even. Curious.
The color that had come back into Madison's face drained out of it again all at once.
"I don't—I don't know what you're talking about."
"I think you do." Malcolm reached into the inside pocket of his dress blue jacket and took out his phone. He did not hurry. He tapped it twice and held it out, turned toward her, at about the height of her face, so that she could see the screen and so could the girls behind her. "This is from the security camera in the northeast corner of the gym your father built. Yesterday afternoon. Three-eleven p.m. That's you at the fountain. That's you filling a water bottle. To the top." He tapped the screen. The video jumped. "That's you, a minute later, moving your chair to the corner of the mat. That's you putting the bottle on the floor by the mat. Not on the table, where you put your coffee. On the floor. On the mat side." He tapped it again. "Forty minutes. You never drink from it. Not once." He tapped again. "Three fifty-two. My daughter bends down to chalk her hands. She closes her eyes. She always does. And that's you."
On the small bright screen, in grainy black and white, the tall blonde girl at the end of the mat leaned over and picked up the bottle and turned it upside down over the third panel. The water came out in a long silver stream.
Behind Madison, one of the varsity girls made a small sound.
"Filling it," said Malcolm quietly. "Positioning it. Waiting. Timing it. Pouring it. Making sure. Six moves, Madison. That's not an accident. That's not a slippery floor. That's a plan. Somebody had to think about that. Somebody had to plan it out before she ever walked into that gym." He lowered the phone. "I'd just like to understand why."
Madison was shaking. Alana could see it from where she knelt. Her hands, at her sides, were trembling. Her chin was trembling. Her eyes went from the phone to Malcolm's face to Coach Williams to the girls behind her to the stands, where all those little red lights were shining, and back to Malcolm, and Alana watched her look for a way out, the way she had watched her look for an audience a minute before, and not find one.
"It wasn't—" Madison's voice cracked. "It wasn't supposed to—she wasn't supposed to get hurt, okay? It was supposed to be a little slip. A little fall. Just enough so she'd mess up in front of Coach. Just enough so she wouldn't make it. That's all."
"Why?" said Malcolm.
"Because she didn't belong here!" It burst out of Madison all at once, high and loud and cracking, and it carried, in the silence, all the way up into the stands. "Because she shows up from nowhere in the middle of the year, from some base, and she thinks she can just walk in and take a spot, and she's better than me, okay, she's better than all of us, and everybody saw it, Coach saw it, and she was going to be holding me up four days a week and everybody was going to be watching her and not me, and my mom—" She stopped. She pressed both hands over her mouth. Above them, her eyes were wide and wet and horrified, as if she had heard the words come out and could not believe whose voice they were in. Then she took her hands away and said, more quietly, almost pleading: "I just wanted to make a point. That's all. I just wanted to make a point. That this is our team. That's all it was."
Nobody said anything.
The stadium was silent. Three thousand people, and the silence was so complete that Alana could hear the hum of the floodlights high overhead, and the wind snapping the flags on the poles at the end of the field, and, very far away, out on the highway, the wail of the ambulance getting closer.
Malcolm Johnson looked at Madison Cross for a long moment.