CHAPTER 11
OPHELIA
The phone buzzed like it was trying to tell me a secret I didn’t want to hear. I let it sit in my palm and vibrate for a beat, which felt like resistance, and then I answered because my mother’s name didn’t allow for dramatic pauses.
“Hi, Mom,” I said in the voice I’d practiced with Dr. Whitaker for situations where honesty would be a liability.
“Ophelia.” No hello, no niceties. My mother always started like she was reading a report that needed auditing. “How are you right now?”
I looked at the tiger head next to me, painted eyes, ridiculous smile, and wished it could warn her off. “Fine. I’m about to go out on the field.”
There was a pause, but she didn’t ask about my game-day duties. She never did. My mom had never been to a game, never even pretended to care about football or school spirit.
Not that that was why I was doing it…
“You sound tired.” Her tone wasn’t gentle; it was clipped, controlled, the kind she used when she was assessing, not asking. “Did you reschedule with Dr. Whitaker yet?”
I hesitated. “I got busy.”
“That’s not an excuse,” she said, her voice going colder. “You’ll call tomorrow to reschedule. Do you understand?”
My grip tightened on the tiger head beside me. “I will.”
“Good.” Another pause. “And you’ve been keeping up with your grounding exercises?”
The word made something in me tighten. “Yeah,” I said after a beat. “I’ve been doing them.”
“You’re sure?” she pressed, that familiar edge of suspicion creeping in.
“I’m sure.”
There was a stretch of silence, then the sound of her measured inhale. I didn’t have time…but she went through the checklist anyway—Dr. Whitaker, breathe, name five things, call someone—the routine she’d drilled into me until I could recite it in my sleep.
“Text me after the game,” she said finally. “Just a quick ‘I’m fine.’ Don’t make me remind you.”
“I’ll text,” I said.
It was easier than arguing.
“Good.” And then the line went dead.
I slipped my phone into my pocket and pulled the tiger head on, the foam pressing in around my face until the world shrank to a narrow tunnel of fabric and mesh.
The inside smelled like Febreze…not a crisp kind of clean, but the desperate kind, two quick sprays trying to cover a season’s worth of sweat.
The foam head scratched against my forehead every time I moved, the neckline rubbed the skin under my jaw until it burned, and my exhales came back at me hot and sour.
The crowd roared somewhere beyond the tunnel, the band already playing. I took a steadying breath and stepped out into the light.
Instantly, the noise hit…drums, whistles, a thousand voices melting into one. The world outside reduced itself to two grainy ovals of mesh, a tunnel of color and motion that made everything feel far away.
And honestly? I was glad for it. The narrowness. The heat. The way no one could see my face.
Underneath the fur and foam, nobody could tell how empty I looked. How much effort it took just to stand here, pretending to cheer when all I wanted was to disappear. The anonymity was the only thing that made it bearable, the only reason I could still show up without crumbling.
I hadn’t started out looking like this.
When I’d tried out, it was for him. Because if I couldn’t sit beside him, couldn’t touch him, couldn’t have him, at least I could stand twenty yards away instead of two hundred. Close enough to breathe the same air and pretend that was enough.
Now, it felt like punishment.
He was still here, out there on the field, helmet glinting under the lights…
but every second, I had to remind myself I was done with him.
I had to force my eyes to stay off number twenty-three, to cheer for the team without looking for him.
And the worst part was, I’d be stuck in this suffocating suit for the rest of the season, waving and dancing and pretending like I wasn’t cheering with a broken heart.
I guess at least I was good at it. Once, tumbling had been mine. Saturday cheer gyms, chalk dust in the air, roundoffs and back handsprings until my wrists ached. Competitions where the mat smelled like rubber and sweat, and the sound of the crowd was enough to make me feel like I mattered.
The years away from a mat had rusted it all. So the week I saw that flyer and I’d gotten the idea to be the tiger, it had felt like starting over.
I’d practiced everywhere I could.
The rec center in the weird hour between intramurals and the janitor making his rounds.
My dorm room with a pad that was basically a yoga mat pretending to be a spring floor.
I pulled and stretched until my hamstrings cried, I rocked into bridges until my shoulders loosened, I did roundoffs into wobbly back handsprings until the fear shut up.
The first time I didn’t fall, I lay on the floor and laughed until I was crying because I was so shocked that I’d managed to do it.
I auditioned. I got the phone call. I picked up the suit the same day they handed me the laminated schedule that said when I’d be on the field, when I’d learn dances with the team…when I’d be a cartoon with a permanent grin.
And since that moment, every eight-count had been for him.
Now, I didn’t know who it was for.
The speakers thumped, and the crowd swelled like a tide.
The first horn stab of Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” punched across the stadium, and the student section lost their collective minds.
To my left, the dance team snapped into motion, ponytails arcing like metronomes, sequins strobing in the lights.
Their smiles were a language; I didn’t speak it, so the suit did it for me.
I raised my foam paws, tilted the tiger head on the beat, hit the arm sweeps big enough to read in the upper decks.
It was loud enough to make my bones hum.
Bass rumbled through the turf. The drum line under the bleachers added a heartbeat to the song.
The counts clicked in my head the way they always did now—five, six, seven, eight, hit-hit, travel, hold—and my body moved, grateful for the instruction manual.
Grateful I was just the tiger…a joke everyone could love.
Instead of the joke I really was.
I clapped and popped my knees and threw in the back handspring on the diagonal I’d practiced three hundred times in the rec center when no one was looking.
The head wobbled and then settled; I landed with my feet exactly on my taped marks.
The crowd roared like I’d done something miraculous.
The dancers next to me grinned toward the first row.
My breath scraped my throat and came back to me damp.
For a handful of beats, moving swallowed everything else.
My gaze finally slipped before I could stop it, though, drawn by something I couldn't seem to fight. It tunneled through the mesh, cutting past the dancers, the band, the cheer arc, the roaring crowd…past everything until it landed exactly where it always did.
Matty Adler stood at the sideline, his helmet tucked under one arm.
His black hair was curled damp at the ends; the tape on his right wrist flashed white then dull then white again as he flexed his fingers.
Parker said something, his mouth wide with a laugh, and Jace, because he was apparently incapable of not being a cartoon even when there was already a cartoon on the field, did a ridiculous shimmy the exact second the horns hit again.
Matty wasn’t paying attention to me. He just stood there. Calm. At ease. The sort of confidence that drew every eye without even trying.
And even though he wasn’t looking…I still danced harder.
The final beat crashed. The dancers froze in glittering lines, and I struck my pose in the middle, foam paws raised high. The whistle blew, the crowd erupted, and the field began to clear.
I tugged at the Velcro under my chin, my lungs begging for air. Sweat was sliding down my spine, soaking my sports bra, and my hair was plastered against my temples. I wanted to rip the tiger head off right there.
But I couldn’t.
Not yet. Not while the team was still shifting onto the field.
The kickoff thundered, and the ball sliced through the air before vanishing into a blur of helmets and motion.
The crowd roared, a single, pulsing wall of sound as players collided and the band blasted to life.
The dance team peeled toward the benches, laughing and fanning themselves, their glitter catching the lights like scattered sparks.
“Take five!” one of the spirit coordinators called, waving me off toward the tunnel.
Grateful for the break, I grabbed a water bottle and jogged off the sideline, the tiger head bobbling with every step. My gaze wanted to stray toward the field to look at him, but I kept it straight ahead this time.
Progress.
Inside the tunnel, the noise faded to a hum as the crowd, band, and announcer blurred into the background.
I tugged the head off and let out a heavy breath.
Cool air hit my skin, washing over my sweaty hair and flushed face.
It felt incredible after the stifling heat inside the suit, the kind of relief that made my shoulders drop and my pulse slow.
I took another deep breath, the air tasting clean and alive compared to the recycled heat I’d been breathing for the last quarter.
A whistle blew out on the field, high and urgent, the sound echoing down the tunnel. It was followed by a rush of noise that wasn’t cheering. The crowd’s roar shifted, rough and angry, and then I heard booing.
I froze mid-sip, the water bottle paused halfway to my mouth.
The announcer’s voice crackled faintly through the speakers, too muffled to make out over the commotion. Another whistle. Shouts. The restless wave of thousands of voices rising at once.
My fingers tightened around the bottle. I stepped closer to the tunnel entrance, light spilling over my shoes. I couldn’t see the field, only the edge of it, where shadows flickered in and out of the glare.