When Claire is flying, she doesn’t see the crowd. She doesn’t see the bleachers or the florescent lights or some coach’s wretched mouth twisted into a scowl. When she’s being tossed like a bean bag, muscles tight, burnt curls bouncing, all she can see, all she can dream of is falling.

A wobbly knee, that’s all it would take. Her descent, headfirst, and in slow-motion. Arms reaching out from all around her, trying to break her fall. Faces wrinkled with worry. Her pleated skirt dancing on the air.

She sees her cheekbone hit the ground first, caving in on impact. Then, her nose, with a whopping crack, the kind of toe-curling sound that would echo in the minds of her teammates, smashes into the side of her face. She pictures her knees slamming into the shiny gym floor, the impact so strong it forces bones through her pale flesh and spatters blood into the stands. There’s always so much blood. Buckets and buckets. Sometimes crashing waves of red. Sometimes so much it fills her lungs and she begins to drown.

The ending is the most important part, because it always ends the same. Even with her limbs broken, even with her blood and teeth and shit spread across the shiny, laminated gym floor, she looks up at the crowd and she smiles. She smiles, smiles, smiles. And the crowd goes wild. And Claire is happy.

#

This time, she didn’t fall. She landed in the bases’ arms, with the familiar smack of skin hitting skin.

“Tighter on the dismount,” Coach Allens shouted from across the room. Claire nodded, careful to look serious, but not upset. She knew she was being watched.

She’d become used to the idea of being looked at. It was her job, in a way. But at home, the only evidence of her fame was her follower count; in this gym, she was a bonafide celebrity. It was surprising to her that all of those eyes could feel like an infection. Like having a fever. Like all the little hairs on her shoulders and the back of her neck were on fire.

When the first day of try-outs were over, Coach Allens gathered everyone around. Claire felt an unfamiliar sting on the big toe of her right foot as she took a step towards the crowd. She looked down at her new sneakers and found a red stain blooming in the upper lefthand corner of her right foot. With each new step her toe pulsed and pulsed with pain.

“If you don’t get a call, don’t show up tomorrow,” Coach Allens said and Claire tried to focus on her words. It’ll feel better tomorrow, she thought. I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine. Coach Allens went on to list some statistics that were either meant to be depressing or comforting, it was hard to say. Less than half of the kids in the room would be invited back tomorrow and less than a quarter of them would make it on the team.

“If you’re back tomorrow, work hard. Don’t take anything for granted.”

And with that, Coach Allens opened the doors and the gym flooded with cheer moms and cheer dads—adults in embroidered track suits licking their fingers and rubbing spit on their little cheerleaders to fix a flyaway or some fallen mascara. A cheer dad asked Claire to sign a teddy bear wearing a university uniform with little pompoms stitched onto its paws. He said it was for his niece. She hadn’t even made the team yet, but Claire smiled and obliged.

“They’re going to hate you.”

That was the first thing Bryan said to Claire. He was the assistant coach, fresh off his senior year on the squad. Bryan, she’d learn, was trying to be helpful. He used to be on the same scholarship she was applying for. Like her, he didn’t come from the world of private teams and hundred dollar coaching sessions. He didn’t have a cheer mom or cheer dad. But there was something off about him. He didn’t blink enough. And as she was trying to listen to his advice, she noticed something even stranger—this odd kind of movement under his skin. Beads of darkness slinking around his veiny neck and arms, darting around so quickly, if she’d been looking at the wrong time, she would have missed them.

Bryan told Claire to meet Coach Allens in her office and the blood drained from her face.

“Don’t be scared,” he smiled.

#

Coach Allens didn’t sit in the ugly chair behind her desk. It was a retina-burning fuchsia and decorated with a logo, some made up pharmaceutical looking word. Claire immediately assumed she’d won it selling protein powder or something for a get rich quick scheme. Coach Allens was small, blonde, and angry, the target audience for an MLM. Coach always sat at the edge of her desk, like the cool teacher in one of those cheesy teen movies. And that’s just where she positioned herself on that day, arms crossed and eyes filled with pity.

“I’m not sure if your high school program prepared you for this team.”

She must’ve thought it was kind for her to put it this way, but Claire knew she wasn’t as good as the other girls. She smiled her best customer service smile.

“I’m a fast learner and a hard worker and—” Coach cut her off.

“You have a lot of guts and I admire that. But how is it going to look if I have a girl on the team who can barely do a double full?”

She got up then and moved to the chair beside Claire. She leaned in real close. It wasn’t clear to Claire whether she was trying to intimidate or endear her.

“I have access to a type of pill,” Coach started.

“I don’t do drugs,” said Claire. And she didn’t. She hadn’t taken so much as an aspirin in her entire cheerleading career. She told her followers that it felt like cheating.

“They’re not drugs, they’re supplements.” There it is, thought Claire. And as if Coach Allens could read Claire’s mind she added, “they’re totally free. Part of a kind of sponsorship deal.”

Claire didn’t want to say no. She wanted to come back tomorrow, to finish the tryouts and make the squad. But she didn’t want to say yes.

“Let me think about it,” Claire said, and tried to sound like she meant it.

#

The blood stain came out pretty easily in the bathroom sink. Dish soap and coarse salt always does the trick with blood, and they were both easy enough to find at the convenience store in the student union. Claire prayed the sneaker would dry by tomorrow morning.

The hotel room was old and ugly. Not that Claire would dream of complaining—it was free after all, part of the University’s attempt to recruit the internet’s preeminent cheer influencer, and nicer than the roadside motel her mom would’ve booked had it been up to her. Still, it was hard to find a good angle to film from. Claire wanted a hot shower, to peal off her compression shorts and inspect the plum-juice bruises she knew were brewing on the back of her thighs. But, dutifully, she clipped her ring light onto the bed frame and smiled for the camera.

“Hello beautiful people!” That’s how she always started. She told them about how much fun she was having at tryouts, that she had a private session with the coach and was meeting lots and lots of fans.

“I’m so tired,” she mimed exhaustion for them, as though they were too stupid to understand just from her saying so. “I’m going to take a nice, long shower! Keep your fingers and toes crossed for me, okay?” And when she said okay she made her voice go up in a sing song-y way that implied it was a genuine question. Then, she blew them a kiss, stopped recording, and let her smile fall.

“Hello beautiful people” the phone chirped back to her. She watched the recording back carefully. She noticed a fallen eyelash on her cheek and sighed. She’d have to do it again. Even though her toe was throbbing and her skin was itchy with dry sweat, even though nothing sounded sweeter than washing the helmet-hard gel out of her hair, she looked back into the camera and smiled. There are things you sacrifice when you have a dream, she told herself, time, toenails, a sense of pride.

“Hello beautiful people!” she said again.

#

Claire loves taking off her makeup, transforming from beauty to beast. It’s erotic, with steam and rubbing and oozing white creams. On this night though she was having trouble with her lashes. She’d tried a new lash glue that worked a bit too well. It looked so alien, her eyelid rising and falling against her eye and she tugged at the corner of the lash, trying to get it to separate. When the spider-like strip finally detached, it left a bright red rash in its wake. Her exfoliating scrub stung that night, literally salt in a wound. She could have skipped it, but she found it addicting: scouring her face, feeling each speck of dead skin and sweat and muck get scraped away. Claire scrubbed and scrubbed. Maybe, she thought, if I scrub hard enough I’ll scrape my face off too.

Claire called her mom while she waited for her shower to warm up. It was a relief to be honest with someone.

“Why not just take the bottle from her? It’s not like she’s gonna watch you swallow them.”

“But what if people found out? I don’t do drugs. It’s a thing, like, a part of my brand.”

“You’re such an intense kid. Not everything is everything.”

“Mom.” Claire crossed her arms. Steam began to rise from the shower head. Claire listened to the water pitter-patter against the acrylic floor. She didn’t know what else to say. Finally, her mom broke the silence.

“How are those new sneakers we got you?”

Claire’s phone lit up before she could answer, an incoming call. She let out a scream when she saw Bryan, University Cheer, on the screen.

“I have to go.”

“Claire? Are you alright?”

Claire hung up on her mom and took the call.

“Hello?”

#

Her eyelids hurt the next day, in a way that made Claire ultra-aware of every eye-gesture, every glance and stare. The sun hitting the laminated gym floors was so bright the glare made Claire squint, and that hurt too. They started the day with tumbling, and the cheerleaders took turns throwing themselves in great loopy ‘M’s across the floor, flipping forwards and backwards and doing corkscrew turns in the air, as though their bodies had no weight at all. When it was Claire’s turn, she took a running leap and dove head first on her hands, her wrists crackling under the crushing pressure of her body. She heaved her legs over her head and landed back on her feet, sending shooting pain from her heels up through her quads, before launching backwards to do the same thing in reverse. Then, she threw her head behind her, put her hands across her chest like a corpse, and corkscrewed her body around once—her face careening towards the floor, g-force making her head throb with pain—and fell on her back with a loud smack that brought the room to a halt.

“You’re scared,” Coach Allens yelled at Claire. “Stop flinching and arch your back more once you’re in the air.” And she was right. On her next turn, she cleared the pain from her mind and pushed her head back toward her ass. And—thwack—she landed perfectly, hands high in the air as if to say “ta da.”

“Atta girl,” said Coach Allens. And Claire smiled although the sting of gravity was running up her calves and through her thighs.

At the end of the day, they were told face to face who was going to return. The other girls and boys all held each other’s hands when Bryan read out the list of who would be returning. They all seemed to know each other somehow—all part of a secret club to which Claire did not belong. When Bryan called Claire’s name, one of the other girls scoffed and the sound of it was something Claire will never forget. It was enough to bring tears to her eyes, not that she would cry in front of this crowd, who she knew would be quick to post a video of it online. She could see the captions now—not Claire Thomas crying at tryouts :’). They, on the other hand, were more than comfortable crying in front of a crowd. There were many, many tears. And amidst the hysterics, and after the scoffing, Bryan walked right up to Claire, in front of everyone else, and asked her if she wouldn’t mind joining him and Coach Allens in her office. Claire looked around.

“It doesn’t seem appropriate, to be honest.”

“Well, don’t be silly,” said Bryan. “We can’t have you eating a sad dinner in your hotel room all alone. Do you like salad?”

#

Claire didn’t exactly have a bad time that night in Coach Allens’s office. The salad they’d gotten delivered was good and it was nice to eat with people for a change. Maybe I was lonely, Claire thought to herself. Maybe I didn’t realize how lonely I really was.

“We have a surprise for you!” Bryan smiled after they’d thrown out their plastic bowls and forks.

“It’s in the supply closet.” Coach Allens pointed towards an unmarked door in the corner of the room.

When Claire opened the supply closet she was met with boxes and boxes, all bearing the same name as the ugly pink chair.

“Where’s the surprise?” Claire was growing weary.

“Close the door,” said Brian.

And when she did, Claire found this season’s university uniform hanging on the back of it.

“Go ahead,” said Coach, “try it on.” Claire could hear the bubbly excitement in Coach’s voice, as if this was some sort of treat or anything other than a shocking display of charity and maybe a ploy for her to post the uniform to her feed. She made sure the door was shut all the way and changed.

When Claire came out, Coach and Bryan screamed with excitement.

“You look beautiful,” they both said, over and over. Claire smiled and played along but she felt completely naked. The new uniform consisted of a skimpy sports bra and a low-rise skort with a narrow “v” cut  below the belly button.

“We’re going to need to add some ab reps to our warm-up,” Bryan said with a too-big smile. Claire sucked in her stomach. She felt it again, the fever. The sting of eyes. That’s when Byran looked down at Claire’s socks.

“Oh god, what happened to your foot?”

“New shoes,” she admitted. “My mom got them for me.”

“Woof. Rookie mistake.” He made a puppy dog face. Not even Claire knew what possessed her precisely, whether it was the pain or humiliation or the taut outline of an almond dancing on the precipice of Bryan’s collarbone but she shot back:

“Well, I am a rookie.”

“No, I didn’t mean—” 

Claire cut him off: “It’s ok, I’m not naive. There’s no need to talk around it. I shouldn’t even be here.” She turned back to the supply closet to get changed and out of the corner of her eye, she could have sworn she saw Coach Allens trying to hide a smile.

“Sweetie, you may not have the training these girls have, but you have the look, and you have the tenacity. Do you know what tenacity is?”  Claire turned around to face Coach Allens’s unblinking stare. She couldn’t bring herself to speak.

“Tenacity means you’re willing to do anything to reach your goal. Now is that true? Are you willing to do whatever it takes for this scholarship? For this team?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Claire tried not to let her voice crack.

“Now, I can’t teach tenacity, and I can’t change somebody’s look. So you are a very valuable candidate, do you hear me?”

“Thank you,” said Claire, and she meant it.

“Good. Now, Bryan, can we get a picture of this gorgeous cheerleader in her uniform?” Coach winked at Claire. “Maybe you can even post one on your feed!”

#

When it was time to go home, Claire got back into her practice clothes and her again-bloodied shoe, and began to walk back to the hotel. She didn’t get 10 feet away from the gym before Coach Allens pulled her minivan up beside her.

“You’re walking back?” asked Coach. “You didn’t rent a car or anything?”

“It’s not that far.” Claire replied, trying to hide the fact that she was limping over her toe.

“Let me give you a ride,” Coach offered. Claire began to motion no but Coach interrupted, “Please. I would never let my daughter walk back at this hour. Get in.”

And Claire did.

The car smelled like one of those green cardboard pine trees, although there wasn’t one hanging from the rear view. Maybe, Claire thought, it’s just the kind of car that would smell like that. The mom kind.

The car pulled to a stop in front of the hotel and Claire said her thank yous and unbuckled her seatbelt.

“Before you go… I want to give you something.”

Claire turned to Coach Allens and watched her dig through her bag and pull out an orange pill bottle.

“I would never, ever give you anything that would impair your judgement or… hurt you in anyway,” Coach Allens began. And to Claire’s own surprise, she believed her. “Now this,” Coach pressed the bottle into Claire’s palm, practically holding her hand as she did, “this is going to open doors for you. Pain is a limiter. Loneliness,” she rubbed her finger against Claire’s wrist, “loneliness is a limiter. If you let it, it’ll prevent you from achieving greatness.”

“I… I don’t know what to say.”

“I know you’ll make the right decision. Good night, honey.”

“Good night, Coach.”

#

Claire trudged back and forth from her room to the ice machine, her feet dragging on the carpeted hotel floor, her toe and eyelids and worsening bruises pounding all along, glug-glug, glug-glug, in a dull rhythm she’d felt and heard and thought since the first day of try-outs—no, since before that, since the first day she tried to do a stunt. She filled the bathtub ice bucket by ice bucket until finally, she lowered herself in, her skin screaming in shock and relief as the ice caressed her bare thighs, her back, the spot on her upper arm that hit the base’s when she landed from her short flights into the sky. She looked across the tub to her bum-toe, which she was resting on the faucet. The top of her toenail was black and the rest was hanging by a thread. There’s no use in washing my shoe tonight, she thought. No use at all.

The pill bottle loomed large on the counter. It seemed to tower over her, growing larger and more ecstatically orange as the night pressed on. She stared at it for ages, shivering in the bath, and after a while she saw a creature—a small, black, beetle-looking thing—wriggling out from under it’s cap. It moved with supernatural speed across the counter and down the side of the bathroom vanity.

“A new friend,” Claire found herself saying out loud, and then shuddered at the thought.

Just then, her phone buzzed. It was Bryan.

So much fun gabbing tonight! Can’t wait to see these beautiful pics on your feed :) :) :)

He sent her 4 pictures of her posing in the uniform. And she was surprised to see something more than her usual bland, front-facing camera smile. In fact, she thought, I look terrified.

#

It was the fourth day of tryouts and it was becoming more challenging for Claire to smile in her videos. Everything hurt. Even her followers, who were usually completely oblivious to the reality of her life, were picking up on her sense of unease. Her comments were flooded with Hang in there girliepop!s and Have you tried an ice bath?!s and We’re rooting for you :)s complete with Tyra Banks gifs and links to inspirational videos.

“I just can’t believe I’m still in the game! I’m so happy,” she said in video responses. But I am happy, she insisted to herself, this is everything I’ve been working towards. And it was, of course, everything she’d been working towards. But it was hard to feel much of anything beyond the constant thrum of hurt. The pill bottle sat on her counter, staring at her as she removed and applied her makeup. Looking at her the way she was always being looked at now that she’d been infected with attention. They were daring her, the pills, to remember her little friend from the other night, to crack a tablet open and see if she finds another divine little creature inside, to down the whole bottle-full in one great, big gulp. She didn’t take them—hadn’t taken them yet. Her mom sent her texts: How you doing honey? And You look tired in those videos. You getting enough sleep? But Claire didn’t respond. She didn’t feel like she had time, between getting ready, and her socials, and getting unready, and tryouts. She ordered socks and cheap Keds on Amazon to be delivered to the hotel. The emanating smell of iron rising from her soiled pairs was making her nauseous.

Now that they were “officially friends” Bryan showered Claire with attention during try-outs. He made little jokes to her from across the room. He’d put her in the front row while he taught choreography, a series of short combos to test how fast the prospective cheerleaders could pick it up. Claire spent the day staring at Bryan’s backside, watching darkness wriggle up his back and down his arms. Bryan spent the day encouraging Claire to mention the University’s name more in her socials.

“Attendance has been down lately, I don’t know if Coach has mentioned it,” he said. “Everyone knows our football team sucks, but usually we’re a big draw.”

#

On the last day of try-outs, Coach Allens had them run basket tosses. The room counted, “One, Three, Five, Seven” as three men threw Claire up, up, up in the air where she gracefully spread her arms and legs out into a giant X and landed perfectly, arms folded across her chest, into a muscle lawn chair.

“That was great, Claire. Now let’s try a double full.”

“But—” Claire started to say. Coach interrupted her.

“Just try it. Push yourself.”

Claire looked to Bryan. She tried to tell him, with her mind, with her eyes and face and eyebrows, that she could not land a double full. But he just smiled and gave her a thumbs up. 

Claire felt she had no choice but to nod, force a game day smile, and gesture to the bases that she was ready to go again.

Coach began: “alright… five, six, seven eight.”

Everyone joined in: “One”

Claire put her right foot into the boy’s hands. She winced at the pain. She could see in her mind’s eye her nail, black and brown and crumpled, separating from her toe fiber by fiber.

“Three”

Claire brought her other leg up, and the boys tossed her high. She heard the air whoosh past her ears. She held her body straight and hard as a pencil, thrusting her left shoulder forward to do one—

“Five”

—one and a half cork-screw twists before — she landed too early and belly first into the boy’s arms. The room collectively cringed. It was the kind of thing that hurts to look at. It knocked the wind out of Claire, and she fell to her knees. I’m fine, she thought. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.

“Try it again, Claire,” said Coach.

Claire looked to Bryan again. Silently pleading. He could see the tears in her eyes.

“Maybe she should—” Bryan started but Coach Allens cut him off.

“Come on now. Five, six, seven, eight.”

Again, Claire painted on a smile.

Everyone joined in: “One”

The boys grabbed hold of Claire’s right leg. It hurt like hell. It hurt in a way that caught Claire’s breath, scared her in a way you can’t be when you’re about to get thrown into the sky.

“Three”

She lifted her other leg up and got launched so high, it seemed to her that Bryan was craning his neck to see her. Then, she felt gravity pulling her back to the ground, the stomach-dropping panic one usually feels on amusement park rides.

“Five”

Claire chickened out mid-air. No, she didn’t chicken out, she made a good decision. She knew she didn’t have it in her to safely do a double full. She did a toe touch in the air and then came down, unharmed. She looked at Coach Allens expectantly.

“Now Claire, I’m going to push you. I know you can do this, sweetie. Try again.”

Claire cleared her throat. Don’t cry, she thought as the image of her falling and crying and falling on an eternal loop flickered through her mind. She smiled. She smiled so hard she began to think she meant it. She thought hello beautiful people. She nodded to the bases.

“Five, six, seven, eight. One”

Claire was launched higher than ever.

“Three”

The air whipped around her so hard, she swore she could feel it whoosh through one ear and out the other. She shoved her shoulder forward and held her arms so tight and strong against her body, she’d later find bruises where her elbows and sides meet. She completed the first turn and she almost made it all the way around a second time, but she landed—

“Five”

—sideways.

The room gasped.

She was barely caught by the bases. Bryan grabbed her back to stop her from landing on her head, but along the way he wound up pushing her to land on her right toe. She cried out with such sincerity, like an animal dying on the side of the road. And it was so terrible to watch that no one dared take a video or scoff or laugh, so terrible that some of the other cheerleaders nearly began to cry.

Claire looked up. Fuck, she thought. Everyone was staring at her.

“I have to…” she started, as she began to stand.

“It’s okay. Try again,” said Coach Allens, without a hint of irony.

“I have to use the rest room.” Claire made her way towards the gym doors. Thinking for all the wrong reasons: this is it, the moment between what I am and what I will be.

“If you walk out of this gym, you are giving up. You are quitting. Do you hear me?”

It was, in fact, the last thing Claire heard before the gym door slammed behind her.

#

In the bathroom, Claire sat fully clothed on the toilet. Tears streamed down her cheek as she carefully—carefully—removed her right shoe and sock. It was a bloody mess. Her sock wasn’t red but a deep pit of black. She set it to the side, but not without dripping blood on the bathroom floor.

A wave of nausea overwhelmed Claire as she saw her big toenail, bent out of place like a crooked tooth. It didn’t look attached to her toe at all.

“Fuck. FUCK.” Claire sobbed.

She reached out to touch it but recoiled, it hurt too much. I have to get rid if it, she thought. And so she steeled herself, took a deep breath and thought one, three, five… and on seven, she ripped the toenail right off. She wrapped her bare toe in cheap, public bathroom toilet paper, which was disintegrating before her eyes in all the blood. She just kept wrapping and wrapping until the paper stayed white.

Then, a knock on the bathroom door.

Claire took a deep breath. She tried to sound normal.

“Sorry, I’ll be right out.”

“It’s okay. Take your time.” It was Bryan on the other side.

Claire winced as she jammed her foot back into her dripping sock, and then her shoe. She emerged from the bathroom stall and quickly washed the blood off her hands in the sink. She looked at herself in the mirror. Tangled cords of mascara wound their way down her cheeks, her eyeliner had evaporated to reveal the angry red, flaky skin along her upper waterline, and her foundation was cracked and dry, which had the effect of making her look simultaneously much older and younger than her 18 years, like a child in old age makeup for a school play. She used her soapy hands to wipe some mascara from her cheeks. She dried her hands and face with a towel and looked at herself again. She smiled her game day smile. I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.

“Claire?” Bryan called through the door.

“You can come in,” said Claire. “It’s just me in here.”

Bryan entered through the swinging bathroom doors with an orange bottle of pills in his hand. Claire looked down at them.

“What’s the point? You heard her. I quit.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Bryan put the pills down on the counter. He took a paper towel, wet it in the sink, and patted it softly against Claire’s cheeks.

“When all of this is over, we’re going to have a serious discussion about setting spray,” he said and forced a chuckle.

Claire was in too much pain to laugh. Her whole body was screaming out. Even the paper towel, which should have felt cold and soothing, seemed to singe her skin each time Bryan pressed it into her face. Tears started gurgling up again.

“Oh I know,” Bryan said. “I remember what it was like. The endless vibration of pain. The great yawning gap between what you want to do and what your body will allow.” He made that sad puppy dog face again. Is he taunting me? Claire wondered. She’d never been so close to him before, never smelled his breath or seen the beads of sweat that pool on his brow. She saw it then, once more. The tear-drop shaped darkness that seemed to make his skin bubble. This time, though she recognized it. Its supernatural speed, the little legs gesticulating, making tiny ripples along the thin skin at the center of Bryan’s neck.

He smiled at her and she wasn’t sure whether she was enthralled or terrified. “I’ll see you in there.”

He walked out of the bathroom then, leaving the bottle of pills on the sink. Claire opened the bottle and looked inside. She brought it close to her eyes. The pills seemed to pulse with life. She stared at them and found again that they were staring back. Not only that, they were calling to her. Whispering. She held the bottle against her ear, like a child trying to hear the ocean in a sea shell. She could hear a soft rhythmic tapping, a million tiny footsteps echoing against plastic and the outside of hard-shelled capsules. And above the tapping she heard a voice. It said, “There are things you sacrifice when you have a dream.”

#

By the time Claire marched back into the gym, the other athletes were toweling off their sweat and changing their shoes. Try-outs were over.

“I’m ready to try again.” Claire said. And out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bryan nod to Coach Allens. Before she knew it—

“One, three”

— he was in the air again. She held her arms and abs stiff and shoved her shoulder forward.  She turned once—her eyes and toe throbbing in time with her heart, the burden of gravity hurling her towards the mat. She put the thought of failure out of her mind, the image of her falling now replaced with feathers, with birds and angels and airplanes, with pills and pills and pills towering over each other to lift her up and keep her suspended in the air—twice—

“Five”

— Two and a half times before falling to the ground. She fell before they hit seven, slammed her bad toe into the mat and her nose into one of the base’s biceps. There was blood everywhere, pouring out of her, gushing waves of red from her nose and mouth and toe. She looked like the final girl in a horror movie, like the only sorry soul to escape the throes of a serial killer or the ghouls in a haunted house.

But Claire didn’t cry out. She didn’t reach for her nose in pain or hop on her good foot wincing. No. Something crept across Claire’s face then, but it wasn’t a grimace or frown or pout. Claire’s lips were curling up into a smile. A smile that bloomed into a tooth-y grin, showing off her bloodied teeth and gums. She began to laugh — belly laugh. Body fluids flying. Because it didn’t hurt at all. In fact, it felt good, euphoric even. Like the fever had finally broken and she was cured. Like she was a brand new person, reborn in hubris and broken flesh. And it was as though the world stopped—not just the cheerleaders, but the whole world, to witness her blood and spit and glory. To hear her rumbling laughter. To catch a glimpse of her little friends who, to this day, keep her company, just beneath her skin.