Covet (Clann)

boot camp, which lasted from seven till eleven every day for the last week of summer. The team used this week to bond with the Indies, or sophomores, who were just joining the team. The Braves, or juniors, seemed to enjoy no longer being the newbies on the team. But the Chiefs, or seniors, and the new captain and her lieutenant officers, definitely were having the most fun. They spent the week endlessly whipping the newbies into shape with laps around the track and push-ups and sit-ups, mixed in with actual dance practice as everyone learned the first new routines to be performed at the upcoming fall pep rallies and football games.
    When I wasn’t working the sound system on the practice field for the team, I was getting to know the new sophomore managers while we worked together to clean and organize Mrs. Daniels’s office. It was hard not to smile when they whined about how hot it was on the third floor without any air conditioning, which wouldn’t be turned on again until next week when school began. To me the heat felt good, thawing me out so my constantly tense muscles could finally relax.
    On Wednesday several boxes of new poms came in, so we spent the entire morning crinkling each strand of every pom by hand so the metallic strands would be fuller and catch and throw more light when the Charmers danced with them. I tried not to think about how it would feel to dance with a pair of poms at a football game. That was a dead dream better left forgotten.
    Other dreams were harder to forget while I took inventory of all the stage props and backdrops. More than once I caught myself lost in the memories, fingertips pressed to my lips as they tingled with the haunting sensation of the way he’d kissed me over and over here in the dark that last night before Dylan caught us together and it all started to fall apart.
    It didn’t help to know that the varsity Indians had their football practices at the same time as the Charmers in an attempt to avoid the rising heat of the day. Which meant Tristan was somewhere on this same campus every morning, probably getting all hot and sweaty in the back practice field with the other varsity players in a see-through practice jersey
    Unfortunately Charmers boot camp in the mornings and magic practice in the afternoons didn’t fill up my evenings. So I started doing tai chi in my room at night in an attempt to battle the rising tension that kept my muscles kinked in knots.
    But it was increasingly hard to find any peace from my emotions. Maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough, or focusing properly. Or maybe it was the fact that the new school year would begin in a few days, and I felt anything but ready for it.
    The Friday night before the last weekend of the summer, Dad found me in my room trying as hard as I could to think of nothing beyond the next tai chi move.
    At his knock, I called out, “Come in.”
    He opened his mouth as if to speak, then hesitated and stood there with a frown, watching me practice.
    “What? Am I doing it wrong?” I asked, waving my hands like clouds passing across the sky as he’d taught me.
    “No. But…” He studied me for a few more seconds. “You look miserable doing it.”
    “Gee, thanks,” I muttered.
    “It’s supposed to bring you peace and tranquility.”
    “I know.”
    “Is it?”
    I sighed and moved on to the next step. “I’m probably just not focusing enough.”
    “Maybe you should dance instead.”
    I froze, the anger a quick rush of heat blooming in my stomach. “Excuse me? I thought dancing was off-limits.”
    “In public. The council said nothing about dancing in the privacy of one’s own home.”
    I took a long, slow breath for patience. “Well, they didn’t say I could, either. So maybe I’d better just stick with the tai chi instead.” At least until they banned that, too.
    I restarted the routine from the beginning.
    “But dancing made you happy, correct?”
    I shrugged one shoulder. “It causes problems. Why push the issue?”
    Besides, I didn’t feel like dancing. I hadn’t ever since Nanna died. Every time I tried to dance, I remembered how proud Nanna had looked, sitting in the audience of the local Lon Morris College’s theater with my mom and dad at my first and only dance recital. And in the too short, too few weeks afterwards, how Nanna used to sit in a lawn chair in the backyard and loudly cheer me on while I practiced for my doomed Charmers team audition.
    Tai chi was never going to help me relax