Cheerleading tryouts were the first week of school. Ali practiced her flips with her friends, and she wasn't nervous. She'd make the squad, again. She'd make it because she was that girl, cheerleader, blond, popular. It was her due. She accepted what was her due.
Soccer tryouts were going on at the same time, and there was Johnny. She could see his blond hair shining in the sun and she scowled. What had she seen in him? He was arrogant and mean. Had she liked that?
She clapped in rhythm with her friends and did her flips and saw the way the sun was shining off the leaves of the trees and then she saw him. Him. The boy from the beach. The sun gleamed off his black hair and the bruised eye made him look almost dangerous and she felt her heart beat fast. She wanted to talk to him and she felt the fear. Would he be okay after what Johnny did?
"Hey," she said, going over to him, and to her relief he smiled at her.
"Hey," he said in a kind of slow way that made her feel almost drunk, and she closed her eyes for a second.
"Sorry about your eye," she said, feeling guilty over the whole thing. Johnny was really angry with her, not him, but of course he couldn't blacken her eye.
"Oh, it looks worse than it feel, believe me," he said. She nodded, and was just happy he was talking to her and still looking at her that way, with that slight animal stare. Flirting and talking, and she liked his dark hair and dark eyes, liked the way his front teeth angled toward each other. She liked how thin he was, almost delicate. She was having a little trouble keeping her end of the conversation up, feeling intoxicated around him. She couldn't remember anyone else having this effect on her. She ducked her head and licked her lips.
She had to go back to the tryouts, her friends were calling for her. She didn't want to. She wanted to stay near him and talk to him all day. But she headed back, and then he called to her.
"Hey! Do you have a name?" he said, shading his eyes against the bright California sun.
"Ali, with an "I" she said, and he told her his name, "Daniel, with an "l" and she laughed, jogged back to her friends.
She did the cheers and clapped and did her flips but she kept her eyes on him, watched him kick the ball and run down the field. She watched one of Johnny's friends trip him and she watched him fall on him and punch him. She watched the coach pull them apart and yell at him, at Daniel, and she felt the unfairness of it in her bones. They had done it to him.
She watched him stalk off the field and even as far away as she was she could see the anger blazing in his eyes. In the dark blue light of the sky, the way he walked with his shoulders hunched up and the angry gait, she felt something she couldn't describe. She watched her friends clap lazily and try to keep in step with one another. She watched Johnny and his friends go back to the soccer try-outs, watched them tilt their heads back and laugh at what they had done. She knew something else, as well. The thing with them and Daniel was going beyond her now. He had become target and play thing for them, he had become the mouse to toy with, and she squinted into the blue sky and wondered where it would end.