What's Your Status? (19 page)

Authors: Katie Finn

BOOK: What's Your Status?

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“Next!” Coach Petersen yelled. “Next to climb!”

“You can go ahead,” Ruth said. “I don’t mind.”

“It’s really okay,” I protested. Then I looked over and saw Mrs. Bellus watching me. I sighed and headed to the wall. The climber on the left jumped the last few feet to the ground, and the guy meant to be spotting him looked up disinterestedly before going back to his phone. The climber took off his helmet and turned around, and I saw to my surprise that it was Justin.

“Hey, Mad,” he said, looking surprised to see me as well. I glanced over at Ruth, who hadn’t moved from her spot and was studying the ground with great interest.

“Hey,” I said. I should have remembered, of course, that Justin was in this PE class. Before we’d started
going out, there had been a monthlong period when I’d used PE to simply admire his triceps from afar. Come to think of it, the D that Mrs. Bellus had threatened me with was actually starting to seem kind of generous.

“So how’s it going?” he asked. “Haven’t talked to you in a while.”

“I know,” I said with a nod, as though this had been bothering me as well. But since Justin and I hadn’t spoken that much even when we’d been going out, I actually hadn’t noticed the difference.

“It seems like everything’s going well for you, right?” he asked. I nodded, a little unsure what he meant. “Good,” he said. “That’s great for you.” After a moment of silence, he handed me the helmet and snapped himself out of the harness.

“Thanks,” I said, taking the gear. As usual, it appeared that he’d put a little too much gel in his blond hair. Justin always looked like one of the Abercrombie guys who, for inexplicable reasons, were always running around shirtless with long pants on. But while I could see how the rest of the world—especially those who shopped at Abercrombie—might see him as cute, it was no longer a kind of cute that appealed to me at all. And now, looking at him up close, I could see that he seemed…dimmer, somehow. Not stupider—just a little less engaged or something. “Justin,” I said, trying to catch his eye. “Is everything okay? I mean—”

“See you, Mad,” he said as he walked away toward the main gym.

“Bye,” I called after him. I watched him go, his shoulders rounded a little. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something going on with him.

“Ready?” Coach Petersen boomed at me. Maybe it was partial deafness from too many years of blowing his whistle, but Coach Petersen was always several decibels louder than he needed to be. His pencil was poised over his own clipboard, and I took a moment to wonder what it was with gym teachers and this particular office supply item.

I hooked myself into the harness and buckled the straps. “Ready,” I said.

Ruth stepped forward and picked up the belaying rope. “Ready,” she said. I looked at her face, trying to read what she’d thought about the interaction that Justin and I had just had—but her expression seemed carefully blank.

“Okay,” Coach Petersen practically shouted. “Now, the thing about climbing is that you’re not doing it alone. You have to trust your equipment, but most of all, you have to trust your partner.” He looked from Ruth to me. “You two trust each other?” he asked.

There was a very long silence. I looked at Ruth and saw that she was focused down on the rope, looping it over her wrist again and again.

“Ladies?” Coach Petersen asked again. “That wasn’t a question for my health. When people don’t trust each other, someone gets hurt.”

I wasn’t quite able to speak for a second. When that moment passed, I took a deep breath and looked up at
him. “Got it,” I said, as brightly as I was able. “We’ll be careful.”

“Good,” Coach Petersen bellowed. “Up you go, then.”

I glanced back at Ruth, who had just reached up to adjust her glasses—the way she always had done when she was thinking—only to drop her hand down when she must have realized they were no longer there.

“Okay,” I said, and Ruth nodded. I looked up at the wall, which appeared very high from the ground. There were fake rocks and ledges planted all up and down its surface, to use as foot-and handholds. Toward the bottom, they were spaced pretty close together, in intuitive spots. As you got up higher, though, they became fewer and farther apart, which seemed to me exactly the opposite of how it should go.

I stepped up onto the first foothold and soon was halfway up the wall, finding my rhythm, moving hand over foot fairly easily. But as I got almost to the top, I made the mistake of looking down. All of a sudden, I saw just how high I really was. The world seemed to spin and wobble. I clutched more tightly to the fake rock I was holding, closed my eyes, and waited for the vertigo to pass.

“Maddie?” I heard Ruth call from below me. “You okay?”

I nodded, still not opening my eyes. “Fine,” I called down to her. “I just need a second.”

“Okay,” she called up to me, sounding worried. “Well, I’m right here, in case…in case you need me.”

“Thanks,” I called back, hoping that I wouldn’t have
to test that. Because as I’d learned, there was a distinct possibility that she wasn’t going to be there when I needed her most. I took a breath and opened my eyes. The world was no longer swirling around. “I’m okay,” I called down. I looked and saw that I’d climbed higher than I’d realized; I was close enough to the top of the wall that I could see over it. I moved up one handhold—the one I’d been gripping had gotten slippery—and looked out over the top of the wall. I could see the whole back side of the school from up there, and had a lovely view of the junior parking lot.

As I prepared to climb down, a movement in the parking lot caught my eye. It was a girl, hustling back from a row of cars, her long red hair streaming behind her. Was that Schuyler? What was she doing in the parking lot when she was supposed to be in gym class? I squinted and leaned forward to try to see more clearly, but as I did so, I lost my handhold. I grabbed for the next one I could, and hoisted myself back up, feeling my heart pound. But as I looked across the parking lot again, it was totally empty, as though no one had been there at all.

CHAPTER 11

Song: Bankruptcy/Call Me Kevin

Quote: “Truth makes many appeals, not the least of which is its power to shock.”

—Jules Renard