The Fundamentals by Jamie Bennet

Author:Jamie Bennet [Bennet, Jamie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-08-22T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 8

“I’m sooo glad we’re back in here,” Danni said. She looked at the ceiling, though, which still had three gaping, extra-large holes in it, and then at the Woodsmen-orange buckets placed strategically around the locker room floor to catch drips from the pipes above. A frown settled on her face. “It could be better, though.”

“‘Better?’ Are you referring to how we’re not allowed to use the plugs?” Pressley pointed at the various outlets around the room, all of them covered with yellow caution tape and signs warning us of the danger of electrocution if we touched them. “Also, the toilets in our bathroom aren’t flushing. And they need to.”

Danni rubbed her forehead and sighed. “I’ll talk to Sam and Rylah again, but I think they’re doing all they can. We’re just at the mercy of the situation right now.”

I nodded as I stood at my locker, looking at the pictures I had taped to the back of the metal door. Danni was correct: there was nothing we could do about our current situation except to try to live with it the best we could and hope for things to change. I touched the picture of my dad, smiling next to Aubin in her wedding gown, one of the images he’d said were just for show. Then I looked at the larger picture of Ward on his twenty-first birthday, also smiling toward the lens and saluting it with his beer. He had his arm around me and I was smiling, too, like I was so happy. Had I been, really? Even back then?

“What the hell, Sissy?” Erin demanded, and I realized that I had shut the locker door with way, way too much force. I’d slammed it, actually, as hard as I could.

“Sorry,” I told the other Wonderwomen. “My hand slipped.”

No one really answered but probably no one really begrudged me letting out a little anger, either. It had been a truly terrible practice—like, we were running into each other and tripping, that kind of a practice, and Rylah and Sam were furious. Tomorrow was the first home game of the regular season, the real wins and losses that counted toward the record that would lead the team to the league championship. Or not.

And from start to finish today, we’d all had problems. Sidney N., who sometimes had memory issues, started the wrong dance and three other girls had gotten totally confused and followed her in it. Something was wrong with Chanel’s stomach, like maybe she’d eaten something bad, and she’d had to run out of the studio with her hand clapped over her mouth. I had landed funny out of a jump and my foot was hurting enough to make me worried, but I hadn’t told anyone that.

Then we’d all returned to our locker room where the lights flickered and, apparently, we couldn’t flush in the bathroom.

“What are you saying, Sissy?” Ani asked curiously. “Did you just whisper something about a toilet?”

I’d been imagining myself in one, actually, spinning around frantically and trying to keep my face, then my mouth, then my nose above the water.

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