"Huh," said Jake Martinez. "That's a first."
Dr. Pruitt turned around from the whiteboard and looked at them over the top of his glasses, and they both looked down at their notebooks at the same moment, and Alana felt, for the first time that day, something in her chest loosen, just a little.
She found the gym at lunch.
It was not hard to find. It was at the back of the school, in the new wing, the one that Madison Cross had said her father built. Alana could believe it. It was very new, and very large, and very clean, with a high ceiling crossed by exposed steel beams painted navy blue, and banks of white LED lights, and polished maple floors marked with the lines of three different sports, and a wall of folding bleachers pulled out on one side, and on the far wall, in enormous gold letters on a navy background, the words WESTFIELD COLONIALS — TRADITION — EXCELLENCE — PRIDE. There were banners hanging from the beams. State championships in football, in basketball, in field hockey, in wrestling. And at the end of the row, a little newer than the others, a banner that said STATE CHAMPIONS — VARSITY CHEERLEADING, with a list of years beneath it. The last three years in a row.
At one end of the gym, on the floor, a long blue tumbling mat had been rolled out, forty feet long, six feet wide, thick and spring-loaded, the kind she had trained on in Chula Vista. Beside it, a stack of smaller crash mats. A portable speaker on a folding chair. A clipboard on a music stand.
And beside the clipboard, sitting on the bottom row of the bleachers eating a salad out of a plastic container with a plastic fork, a small, wiry, middle-aged woman in navy track pants and a white polo shirt with a whistle on a lanyard around her neck, reading something on a tablet.
She looked up when Alana came in. She had short gray hair and sharp dark eyes and the kind of face that looked as if it had been out in the sun for a great many years and had enjoyed most of them.
"Can I help you?"
"I'm looking for Coach Williams."
"You found her." The woman set down her fork. "Dana Williams. Varsity cheer and acrobatics. You're the new girl. Johnson."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Ma'am." Coach Williams's eyebrows went up. "Military?"
Alana hesitated. Then she nodded. "Navy."
"Thought so. Nobody under thirty says ma'am in this town unless somebody made them." Coach Williams looked her up and down. Not the way Madison had. The way a doctor looks at you. Shoulders, hips, legs, feet, the way she was standing. "You cheer."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Where?"
"Chula Vista. Pacific Coast Elite. All-star. Level six. Base and tumbler. Some flying." She hesitated, and then said it, because it was true, and because she had learned that with coaches, true things worked better than modest things. "We took first at the Pacific regional in April."
Coach Williams looked at her for a long moment. Then she picked up the tablet beside her and typed something into it with one finger, and looked at the screen, and scrolled, and her eyebrows went up a little further.
"Huh," she said. She turned the tablet around. On the screen was a video of a cheer routine, shot from a judge's table, a team in red and black uniforms on a spring floor under bright lights, and Alana saw herself, in the back row, second from the left, coming out of a round-off back handspring into a full twisting layout. She remembered that pass. She had landed it perfectly. She remembered the sound of the crowd.
"That's you," said Coach Williams.
"Yes, ma'am."
Coach Williams turned the tablet back around and looked at the video again for a long moment. Then she set it down.
"Tryout's at three-fifteen," she said. "Right here. Open to anybody. There's one spot. Eleven girls signed up. Mostly JV kids hoping to move up, and a couple of sophomores who've been practicing in their backyards since they were five. You'll do a standing tumbling pass, a running tumbling pass, a jump sequence, a stunt with my varsity girls, and a thirty-second dance segment. Music's posted on the door. You have till three-fifteen to learn it." She picked up her fork again. "Questions?"
"Who judges?"
"Me. My assistant coach. And my captain."
Alana did not let anything move in her face.
"Madison Cross," she said.
Coach Williams looked at her sharply. Then she looked down at her salad, and stabbed a piece of lettuce, and did not eat it.
"You've met," she said.
"This morning. On the steps."
Coach Williams was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was very even, the voice of a woman choosing her words with great care, the way you choose where to put your feet on a slippery bank.
"Madison is a very talented athlete," she said. "She's been my captain for two years. Her family has been very generous to this program. And the school board likes to have a student voice on the tryout panel. It's a tradition." She paused. "But I make the final decision. Me. Nobody else. You understand?"