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Chapter Twenty-Seven.
1995.
It's late, the final fragments of practice are burning out, and Lottie's limping toward the bleachers clutching her knee like a wounded soldier. Her socks are sliding halfway down her calves, stained green from the wet field, and she's muttering curses under her breath.
She's attempting to mind her own business —half-wriggled out of her practice jersey, hair sticking in sweaty tendrils to her neck—when she feels the weight of it: attention. Van, Taissa, Jackie, and Mari all analyzing her movements. Shauna is distracted by something else.
"Jesus, Lot, again?" Van calls, tossing a crumpled Gatorade bottle into the trash with a theatrical flick of her wrist. "You got a personal vendetta against your own ankles or what?"
Lottie grimaces and plops down hard on the bottom bench, pulling at her laces like they're barbed wire. "I'm fine," she lies, wincing hard enough to taste it.
Van flops down beside her, all scavenger-smile, a hawk at play. "No, you're, like, the opposite of fine. You're, like, the human embodiment of a car crash."
"And the worst liar in the state of New Jersey," Taissa adds, appearing behind them with her duffel slung over one shoulder, her hair already shoved into a too-tight bun. She props her knee on the bench and leans forward, grinning. "You seriously think we don't notice when you eat shit every fourth lap?"
"I don't eat shit," Lottie protests weakly, struggling with the knot in her shoelaces. Mud stiffens the laces, brown and black and angry. She hisses when the tug flares the bruise—a sickly violet blooming across her skin.
"You two living together yet or what?" Van pipes up, a shit-eating grin pulling at her cheeks as she kicks her cleats into her locker.
Across the bench, Mari snorts, unspooling athletic tape from her fingers like shedding skin. "Nah. Lottie's just wishes," she says, not bothering to look up.
The air tightens. Everyone's listening now. Even Jackie, who's always nice about this kind of thing, raises her brows in a kind of coy, aren't you going to defend yourself? way.
Lottie's stomach turns. She fumbles with the sleeve of her jersey, trying to wrestle it off without looking flustered. "I don't know what you're talking about," she says, maybe a little too fast, her voice slicing the space too neatly.
"Uh-huh," Van drawls, dragging it out like bubblegum between her teeth. "Sure, Matthews. You just happened to fall into Sade's house last week? And stay there for three days?"
"It was two nights," Lottie hisses, cheeks burning. "I sprained my wrist, she—"
"Misty would've been glad to patch you up. She would've begged, actually." Mari chimes in, a shit-eating grin etched across her face. The kind of smile that clings to your clothes even after you shower twice.
