Jodie Picoult - Salem Falls

In Meg Saxton’s opinion, phys ed was an inhumane form of humiliation. It was not that she was hugely fat, like the people Richard Simmons visited because they couldn’t even get out of bed. Her mother said she was still growing. Her father said there was just enough of her to love. Meg bet neither of them had had to suffer through shopping at the Gap with their friends, pretending there was nothing that interested her on the sale rack so that they wouldn’t see her picking from the size fourteens.

The two girls the phys-ed teacher had picked came front and center, with a confidence that said they were used to standing there. Suzanne Abernathy was a field hockey captain; Hailey McCourt had led the soccer team to a district championship last year. They stared down the group of girls, sorting the athletes from the losers in their minds.

“Sarah.”

“Brianna.”

“Leah.”

“Izzie.”

Gilly was picked-she was no athlete, but she was quick and smart. The choices narrowed, leaving only a small huddling puddle of girls who had little coordination. Meg shivered each time a name was called, as if each time one of them walked away, a piece of protective armor had been removed.

Finally, only two girls remained: Meg, and Tessie, the Down syndrome kid who’d been mainstreamed this year. Hailey turned to Suzanne. “What do you want? The retard or the tub of lard?”

Laughter rained down on Meg. Beside her, Tessie clapped her hands with delight.

“Tessie, you’re with Suzanne,” the phys-ed teacher announced.

As the ball was set into play, Meg stared at Hailey, thinking of boils and leprosy and third-degree burns, horrible things that would take away her honey hair, her Cover Girl complexion, and leave her in the same boat as the rest of the misfit world. Then the ball came directly toward her. “Saxton!” Hailey yelled out. “To me!”

Meg lifted her foot-how hard could it be to kick a soccer ball?-and let loose with such force she slid and landed on her butt in the mud.

The snickers of the class didn’t take away from this slow-motion moment, the ball spinning skyward like a missile. Meg was a little stunned at how far it went, even if it was soaring in the complete opposite direction from Hailey. The ball continued so far out of bounds that it landed on the baseball field.

Hailey walked past Meg, deliberately splattering her with even more mud. “If you can’t shoot straight, hippo, pass the ball!”

“Hailey!” the teacher said sharply. And then sighed. “Meg, go get it.”

Meg jogged off, painfully aware of Hailey whispering about the way she looked while she was trying to run. One day she’d be reincarnated as an anorexic. Or a supermodel. Or maybe both at the same time. Head down, Meg concentrated on the fire in the pit of her lungs and her belly, instead of the tears pricking the backs of her eyes.

“Here you go.”

A man handed her the out-of-bounds ball. He was tall, and the sun caught his hair like it did Gilly’s. He had a kind smile, and she would have thought he was incredibly handsome if he wasn’t as old as her father. “Don’t kick it with your toe,” he said.

“What?”

“Raise your knee, push your toes down, and hit it with your shoelaces. Swipe under the ball.” He grinned at Meg. “You’ve got more power in one leg than that blond girl has in her whole body.”

Meg let her eyes slide away. “Whatever,” she muttered. She slogged onto the field, letting the action fly around her. She was facing her own goal when the ball slammed her in the back of the knees. “Knee up, toe down, on the shoelace!” Meg heard his voice again, and without thinking about it, she did exactly what he said.

The ball flew low and strong, driving straight toward the opposite goal. Maybe it was the surprise that Meg Saxton had actually hit it; maybe it was-as that man had said-that she had power she didn’t even realize-but for whatever reason, the ball streaked past the defense and snugged in the net.

For a moment, everything stood still, and Meg felt herself suddenly cloaked in the thick satisfaction of doing something perfectly right. “Killer shot!” one girl said, and another patted her on the back. Gillian ran up to her side. “Unbelievable. Did you cast a spell?”

“No,” Meg admitted, a little amazed this had happened without witchcraft.

But Gillian’s attention was on the field, where the man was walking off, hands in his pockets. “Who’s your coach?” she asked.

Meg shrugged. “Some guy. I don’t know.”

“He’s cute.”

“He’s old!”

Gillian laughed. “Next time,” she said, “ask his name.”

The basement of the diner held the lion’s share of the food that couldn’t fit in the narrow kitchen: a stacked ladder of hamburger rolls and breads, huge tins of sweet corn, tubs of ketchup large enough to fill half a bathtub. Jack had been sent down there by Delilah for a fifty-pound bag of potatoes. Hefting the bag onto his shoulder, he yanked it out of its spot on the shelf and found himself looking right at Roy.

The old man was in back of the metal shelving, his fist closed around a bottle of cooking sherry. “Oh, shit,” he sighed.

“Addie’s going to kill you.”

“Only if she finds out about it.” Roy offered his most charming smile. “I’ll let you watch whatever you want on TV for a week if you pretend you never saw me.”

Jack considered this for a moment and nodded. Then he balanced the potatoes on his shoulder, trudged up the narrow stairs, and dumped the sack at Delilah’s feet. “Start peeling,” she ordered.

“Have you seen my father?” Addie demanded, hurrying into the kitchen. “We’ve got a line a mile long at the cash register.”

Delilah shrugged. “He’s not here or I’d have tripped over him. Jack, you see Roy in the basement?”

Jack shook his head but he didn’t meet Addie’s eye. Then, with impeccably lousy timing, Roy sauntered through the basement door. His face was glowing, and even from across the room Jack could smell the cheap alcohol on his breath.

Addie’s face went bright red. Tension filled the confines of the kitchen, and Jack tried to ignore the fact that someone was going to say something any moment that he or she would regret. Words, he knew, could scar.

So he squeezed the base of the potato he was peeling, then watched it fly in an arc over his shoulder toward the grill. Then, taking a deep breath, he grabbed for it, deliberately pressing his palm to the burning plate of metal.

“Goddamn!” he cried, geniune pain pricking behind his eyes and making him weak in the knees. Delilah pulled him away from the stove as Addie hurried to his side. With the brisk expertise of someone who’d done this before, she led him toward the hand-washing sink and ran the cold water. “It’s going to blister. How badly does it hurt?”

It hurt, but not the way she thought. It hurt to have her fingers stroking the back of his hand, to feel her concern flowing over him like a river. Missed opportunities were never superficial wounds; they cut straight to the bone.

Addie fussed over the red streaks branded into his skin, a scarlet letter that in his imagination took the shape of an A. “Really,” she scolded, now that the danger had passed, “you’re no better than Chloe.”

Jack shook his head. He pressed Addie’s fingers to his chest, so that his heart beat in the palm of her hand.

Thomas glanced up to find the very girl he was daydreaming about standing less than two feet away from him. “Uh, hi,” he managed. Brilliant.

“Would you mind if I sat down?” Chelsea asked, her gaze lighting on the other lunch tables. “Pretty crowded today.”

“Mi table es su table.”

“What?”