Maya explained it to Ry that Friday evening, sitting on the back steps of the house, both of them with cups of coffee because she'd started drinking coffee that summer and he decided not to make it a battle. He doesn't do anything himself, she said. He sets conditions. He decides publicly in the cafeteria in the hallways at practice what the social temperature is and everyone else reads the temperature and responds to it like a thermostat. Rey said exactly like a thermostat.
She wrapped both hands around her mug. So nobody in that school has done anything to me that I could take to a teacher and say this person did this. What they've done is make it so that I exist in a negative space. People look past me. Conversations stop when I walk up.
Sit down at a table and two minutes later it empties. Ray looked at the backyard. It was just grass and one old oak tree, but he started to like it. He liked the oak especially. Something about the size of it, the decades it implied.
How's practice? He asked. Mia was quiet for a moment. Practice is the one place it's different because coach Burch is there and Bur doesn't run her gym on social temperature. She runs it on whether you can do the work.
A pause. And I can do the work. I know. Ray said, "I'm probably going to make the squad. " He looked at her. "Birch hasn't said it yet. " Mia said, "But I can tell.
She stopped watching me the way she watches the others. She watches the others to see if they're good enough. She watches me to figure out where to put me. " The corner of her mouth lifted. It's a different kind of watching. Ry felt something, a particular kind of relief that had nothing to do with the situation being resolved.
It was the relief of seeing Jük be competent, seeing them read a situation correctly and hold their ground inside it. Has Garrett been at practice? He asked. Football and cheer don't overlap. But he's in the parking lot when we come out sometimes, she said it evenly.
Not doing anything. Just there. Ray's jaw tightened slightly. He kept it off his face. You said the notebook has entries.
He said 12 now. Dates, times, specific incidents. She looked at him. I know what to document, Daddy. You raised mis garages.
I know how to keep records. He almost smiled at that. All right, he said. They sat quietly for a while. The oak tree moved slightly in the evening breeze.
Something not going to break, Mia said. Not defensive, just factual. I've been the new kid four times before. I know how to not break. I know you do, Ray said.