She saw them.
Her hands stayed still in her lap.
When practice ended and the other students filed out, Foss came to where Mia was sitting. She had a towel around her neck and a water bottle in her hand. She sat down on the bench, about 3 ft away.
She didn't ask if Mia had enjoyed watching. She didn't ask if Mia wanted to sign up.
She said, "Your mother used to sit on that same bench her first week."
Mia looked at her.
"I knew who you were," Foss said. "The second you said your name in the hallway. I coached Sandra for 3 years. You look like her. You stand like her." She paused. "And yesterday, in the dining hall, you reached for the ribbon first."
Mia was quiet for a moment. "You were there?"
"I was in the back. I saw it."
Mia looked at the mats. Empty now. The afternoon light falling across them in long rectangles from the high windows.
"I haven't trained since she died," Mia said.
"I know."
"I don't know if I can."
"I'm not asking you to decide that today," Foss said. "I'm just telling you the door's open."
Mia sat with that.
"There's a competition," Foss said. "Registration sheet's on the counter. You don't have to look at it. But it's there."
She stood up, gathered her things, and left Mia on the bench.
Mia sat there alone in Studio B for a few minutes. The mats. The high windows. The smell that lived in the part of her brain connected to her hands, her feet, her breath. Her mother.
She looked at the counter near the door. There was a sheet of paper on it.
She didn't go read it. Not today.
But she knew it was there.
Six days into her time at Harrove, she understood the shape of Reese Hartwell more clearly.
It wasn't just that he was cruel. Cruelty by itself was simple enough, and simple things were manageable. What made Reese more complicated was the system around him. The infrastructure of protection that had been built, brick by brick, over the course of his 20 years on Earth, by his father's money and his father's name, and the particular culture of a place where those things meant something.
His father was Warren Hartwell. State senator, third term. A man whose face was on campaign signs along the highway into Delwood, and on the wall of the student union, and in the framed photo behind the desk of President Aldridge of Harrove University, shaking hands at a donor event three years ago.