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I stop. My knees are starting to buckle.
Phil is next to me, now, talking low, near my ear.
“You were willing to lie, cheat, hide, and steal to drink,” he says. His voice sounds far away.
“Well,” I grunt. “You’re wrong. I never cheated. I didn’t steal, not really. I paid for my alcohol or I drank my grandmother’s. So there.”
“You’ve got to be pretty strong, somewhere deep down, to be willing to do all that just for a drink. If you can do that, you can carry this damn ball.”
“I’m just carrying this ball because you told me to do it and I do what I’m told,Phil,” I say. The ball is getting heavier by the minute. I feel like my whole body is going to crack in half.
“That’s so interesting, Bella. Was drinking the only thing you could do that wasn’t preordained for you? Is that why you did it? Your little ‘fuck you’ to the world? You too afraid to tell anybody you’re freaking out inside?”
My breath comes in waves. I think I would tell him to go to hell, but forming the words would make me pass out at this point.
One step, another. One step, another. One breath, another. My arms are burning.
I will not let my knees buckle. I will not fall down. I will not let go of the ball.
My mind loosens in a weird way. A litany of complaints bubbles up in my brain.
God, I hate Dylan. Why did he have to love me and then spit me out? Why does my dad have to be so angry all the time? Why did I lift up my shirt? Why can’t I just be normal? Why can’t I—
The ball slips out of my hands and almost drops on my sneakers, and I jump out of the way.
But I made it to the end of the mat. Almost.
My arms are going crazy, shaking like branches in the wind. My heart is thundering.
Phil claps me on the back. “How do you feel?”
“Like I’m going to die. Like I deserve a drink, to be honest. Like I hate it here, really.”
He laughs. “Expected. But you have to learn to reward yourself for the difficult stuff without taking a drink, you know?”
“I think I’d prefer the drink.”
“Gotcha.”
“And I think I hate my ex-boyfriend.”
“That works, too.”
“Can I be done now?”
“Nope. Now you have to pick it up and take it back. And then you have to support your friends.”
I turn around. Holly is bending down, her face red, trying to pick up a very small ball, her hands slipping off the leather. Brandy is pushing hers very slowly down the mat, like Sisyphus with a ponytail.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay.”
I take a deep breath, shake out my arms, bend down, and pick up the freaking ball, one more time.
I just want to go home.
—
Beanbags. Like at Ricci’s school, in her time-out room.
