Chapter 21: What I Keep

I crossed the finish line at ten past one, behind everyone but the schoolteacher.

Hank was waiting with a stopwatch, and he did not look at it.

"Twenty miles," he said. "Slow lane. Welcome to the club."

Faye hit the cowbell so hard that a toddler cried.

I got off my bike and sat down on the curb, and nobody told me to get up.

That night I lay on Faye's couch with an ice pack on my knee.

My sister sat on the floor with her back against the cushions, eating cereal out of the box.

"So," she said.

"So."

"Tomorrow is the twenty-first."

"I know what tomorrow is."

"Ten o'clock. Courtroom four." She crunched a handful. "Your lawyer called me twice. She thinks you've gone quiet on purpose."

"I haven't gone quiet. I've been riding a bike."

"For twenty miles. And you rode past him."

"I rode past a water stop."

"You rode past your husband holding a cup."

I laughed, and then I winced, because of the ribs.

"I'm going to say something, and you can hit me," Faye said. "I don't think Brynn fainted."

"You were standing right there."

"I'm an ER nurse," Faye said. "Her color never changed, and her breathing never changed."

She pointed the cereal box at me.

"She went down on her side, not her back, and she picked the carpet. Real faints don't pick the carpet."

I thought about it.

"I believe you," I said. "But it's over. She's gone."

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