sorting donated coats and school supplies for the children of deployed sailors, and where, a woman who worked there told Renée in confidence, she never once complained, and never once mentioned who her mother was. She stepped down as senior class vice president. She was not expelled. The report found that what had happened at the tryout, and to the four girls before it, had been, in the language of the district, a sustained pattern of targeted harassment and intimidation, and that the adults responsible for the program had failed to identify it or act on it, and it said so, in writing, in plain language, in a section that ran to six pages.
The four girls had each received a letter. Handwritten. With a pen. Alana knew because Kenya Bell told her. Kenya had come to Westfield in February, on a Saturday, with her father, to watch a practice, and had sat in the bleachers beside Alana, and they had talked for two hours, and at the end of it Kenya had said, "She wrote me four pages. Front and back. I read it six times. I don't know what to do with it." And Alana had said, "Me neither." And they had sat there for a while, not knowing together, which was better than not knowing alone.
Grace Kowalski had come back. She was a junior now. She had rejoined the varsity squad in January as a base, and she was very good, and her father, who still worked nights for the school district, came to every single home game in his work clothes and sat in the front row.
Coach Williams had kept her job. It had been close. There had been a board meeting in December, a long and very public one, at which a great many people stood up and said a great many things, and at which Chief Petty Officer Raymond Bell, retired, stood up in a suit and spoke for four minutes in a very quiet voice about his daughter, and nobody in the room made a sound until he sat down. Coach Williams had been formally reprimanded for failing to report concerns about the program in previous years. She had accepted the reprimand without argument. She said, afterward, to a reporter, that she had deserved it, and that it was the least of what she deserved, and that she intended to spend the rest of her career making sure no coach at Westfield ever had to be reprimanded for it again.
The district had also, quietly, in January, referred the matter of the gymnasium change order to the state's office of the inspector general for review. That review was still ongoing. Nobody knew how it would end. Patricia Cross had stepped down as vice chair of the board while it continued, citing a desire to avoid any appearance of conflict. She had not stepped down from the board. She had announced she would not seek re-election in the fall. She had not been seen at a Westfield football game since homecoming.
Madison had rejoined the cheerleading squad in March, after her suspension ended and her community service hours were complete. Not as captain. Not as a flyer. She had asked Coach Williams, in a meeting that lasted twenty minutes, if she could come back as a base. Coach Williams had said yes. She stood in the second row now, at the back of formations, holding other girls up. She was, Alana had to admit, a surprisingly good base. She was strong, and she was steady, and she never, ever let go. She did not talk much at practice. She did not talk much to Alana at all. But once, in March, at the end of a long, hard Tuesday practice, when Alana came down out of a basket toss wrong and landed on her bad ankle and stumbled, it was Madison who was there first, and caught her elbow, and held it until she was steady, and let go, and said nothing, and walked away. Alana had stood there for a moment, looking after her. Then she had gone back to work.
Britney had become the captain. Nobody had expected that, least of all Britney. She had been voted in by the squad in January, nine votes to five, and she had stood in the gym after the vote with her cast just off and her wrist still thin and pale, and said, "I don't know how to do this. I'm going to need help." And she had looked at Alana. And Alana had said, "Okay." That was all. They were not best friends. They might never be. But Britney Walsh asked for help now, when she needed it, and listened when she got it, and she had not said the word charity in Alana's hearing in six months.
And Alana had taken the spot.