Signed to Hate You

AVERY The squad chat lights up while I'm still re-taping my wrist, forty phones buzzing at once like a swarm. Coach Vargas has posted the showcase stunt groups. She never raises her voice, only corrects your form until you wish she would. I scroll past the flyer list, where my name sits first because head cheerleader means I always go first, and stop on the line beneath it. ‘Avery Quinn, flyer. Base: Maya Torres.’ Under that, one more line. Confirm by midnight. No changes after. "Ave." Lila is already beside me, chalk on her knees, reading over my shoulder. Lila Brooks, my co-captain, the only person at Riverside who has never once let me finish a lie. "Say something ugly. You'll feel better." "It's a stunt group." I lock my phone. The screen stays warm in my hand. "She's the strongest base on the squad." "She is." Lila waits. "You haven't looked up from that list in a minute." I look up. Across the room Maya Torres is tying her hair back, smiling at her own phone, easy and private, the way you smile at a good text. She's a senior, the best base we have, and the only girl on this squad who has never pretended to be happy in my shadow. It's the third time this week she hasn't looked at me. I tell myself that's nothing. I tell myself a lot of things before nine at night. Last spring I fell out of a pose at regionals, and the only reason I didn't break my wrist was Maya's hands under me. I trusted them without thinking. That's the whole job. A flyer doesn't check who's catching her. "Ethan's still in the team hall," I say. "He texted me to meet him." "Ave." "Midnight, Lila. I have until midnight." I pick up my bag. "I'll deal with the list after." She doesn't say goodbye. She just watches me go, and I know from her face that she saw mine change when I read Maya's name. The team hall is empty by nine, and I like it better that way. Late practice leaves the floor smelling like rubber and sweat, and the only sound is the vending machine humming at the far end. Light shows under the last door. The film room. Ethan texted me to meet him there. I count it the way I count a routine. Eight steps to the door. Eight, seven, six. Somewhere around four I hear a laugh, low and wrong, and it isn't his. I keep walking, because stopping would mean I already know. I push the door open. Ethan Cole has his back to me. Ethan, my boyfriend of eleven months, Riverside's golden boy, the one every hallway turns toward, and his jacket is on the floor beside a chair dragged out of place. Maya is against the table, her ponytail half undone, her hands in his collar. For one second the room is only a picture. Nobody moves. I hold the door, and my brain does what it does after a bad landing: it replays instead of reacting. Then I see the phone. It's in Maya's right hand, raised over Ethan's shoulder at a careful angle, the way you hold a camera when you've practiced. The screen is lit. In the corner, a small red dot. She's looking straight at me. Not startled. Not caught. Waiting. "Ave." Ethan has turned, and his face goes through three expressions before it settles on the one he wants. His hands come up, open, as if I'm the one holding something. "Ave, wait, this isn't—" "Don't get up." My voice comes out flat and even, a coach's voice, and I don't know where I found it. The choice takes about a second. If I cross the room and grab the phone, I get a scene: me lunging, Maya pulling back, Ethan stepping between us, every second recorded from a better angle than the first. If I walk out, the video exists and I leave it behind me like something I dropped. Neither one gets it back. Only one of them leaves me standing. I think about the girls who scream in hallways and what they look like in the replay. I think about how many times people rewatch the ending of anything, and—no. I'm not handing anyone a replay. "Maya," I say, because she's the one holding it, and I want her to hear her name in my voice. Her thumb doesn't move. The dot stays red, steady as a pulse, and I take in all of it at once, the dragged chair and the jacket and the lit screen and the girl who will have me on camera for every second I choose to stay, and I understand that this was never an accident, that someone planned where to stand, that the only thing she couldn't plan for was whether I'd break. I don't. "Enjoy the showcase," I tell her. I turn and let go of the door. It swings shut on its slow hinge, and through the narrowing gap I see the dot, still red, still pointed at my back. The hall is twenty steps long, and I make it eleven before my phone starts to shake in my pocket. Not once. A run of buzzes, one on top of the next, like the squad chat did earlier, except this isn't the squad chat. I pull it out. Three message previews stack on my lock screen, none from anyone I'd call a friend. omg is this real ‘Ave is this you in the video?? Forwarded: Film Room A thumbnail sits under the last one. Two figures and a table, grainy and small, shot from behind Ethan's shoulder. I know exactly where the camera was. I was standing in front of it.’ I don't open it. Opening it would mean the clip is real, and so far it's only a thumbnail. I keep walking. Nine more steps. Who sent it first? Maya, to someone, in the thirty seconds it took me to turn around. Someone who trusts her with this and knows exactly who needs to see it. My thumb scrolls up by itself. Ethan's text is still there from forty minutes ago. Film room. Now. Need to talk. I read it twice. It doesn't sound like him. It doesn't sound like not-him either, and that's the part that makes my stomach go quiet. Then the squad chat pings, once, from the top of the list. Coach Vargas: Reminder: stunt groups lock at midnight. Midnight. Three hours. I could message her right now. Coach, can we change my base? One line. And the first thing she'll ask is why, and the only honest answer is on forty phones already, and the squad will split before the showcase even starts. Or I confirm, and I let Maya hold me up in front of an entire arena, knowing what she did with her other hand tonight. I'm at the end of the corridor with the exit door in front of me. Confirmed. I type it with my thumb, one word, and send it before I can think about the other way. The phone buzzes again almost at once. Not the squad. A number I've never saved, a Crestwood area code, no name. A single line sits under it, cut off by the edge of the screen. My thumb hovers over it. What good is a message from Crestwood? Their halls have been waiting years to see me stumble. If the clip has already crossed the district line, then this is someone enjoying it, or someone who wants a piece of it. Either way, nothing on that screen is for me. I turn the phone face down against my thigh and push the exit door open. The cold hits my face. Behind me, the phone buzzes once more against my leg, and I keep walking.