Chapter 20: Eight Gyms Night

Birdie's POV

Stahl had let Cal walk out of the Cellar the day before.

He wanted his show more than he wanted an argument.

Dad put the two dosed bottles in the freezer, and nobody mentioned them again.

At eight o'clock on Friday night, I stood at the top of the four iron flights with a black hood in my hands.

My family waited behind me in a row.

Dad had his flat cap on, and Finn had his notebook.

Dev held a Hush hood of his own, the one he'd bought for the walkout.

Cal stood closest, with the cutman's bag over his shoulder.

"Last chance for a policy," he said quietly.

"I don't have one for this."

"Then walk."

I folded the hood and gave it to him.

Then I went down the stairs with my face bare.

I went on the balls of my feet, with my left shoulder low, the way I'd always done it.

For the first time, I let anyone see.

The noise from below stopped on the third flight.

By the fourth, eight hundred people were looking up at me in a silence I could hear.

A man near the front said, "That's not Hush."

"That's the Kilbride girl," said another.

Then a woman in the second row held up her phone, and I knew her.

She had sat at the press table, the day I lost to a water bottle.

"Birdie," she called. "Is it true you've never opened a bottle in public?"

"I open them in private," I said. "It's a policy."

The Cellar made a sound I had never heard from it.

It was half a laugh and half a gasp, and then it was a roar.