Patricia held the door. The coach stepped back into the cold. Willa went after her. On the threshold she felt the old pull, the one that said turn around and take the white shoes and make yourself easier to stand beside. She kept walking. The brown canvas met the porch boards. The boards were gritty with the first salt of the season. Behind her, Patricia said, low, to Audrey, "Get in the car. We are not discussing this in the street."
The door shut. The shut had a finished sound, like a lid.
Coach Moretti's car was a dark hatchback with a crack in the lower corner of the windshield and a stack of clipboards on the back seat. It smelled like mint gum and the damp of a gym bag that had been dried, mostly, overnight. Willa climbed in. The seat was cold through her jeans. She put her feet flat so the shoes were visible and then, ashamed of the impulse, slid them half under the seat.
"You can leave them where they are," the coach said, starting the engine. She did not look down to make a point of it. "Seat belt."
Willa buckled. The belt clicked too loud. They pulled away from the curb, and the house, beige with a dark roof and a wreath Patricia had hung because the neighbors had, got smaller in the side mirror. Audrey was getting into the passenger seat of the other car. Even from a distance she looked like the reason a morning had been organized.
For two blocks neither of them spoke. The heater ticked and then committed. Willa watched the storefronts go by: the hardware store where the shoes had come from, though she would not say so yet; the bakery that put day-old rolls in a bag if you asked without a story; the bus stop where she sometimes waited with her counts folded in her pocket so she could mark them with her thumb.
"Eat?" the coach asked.
"Toast."
"Enough?"
"Yes."
"Water in the bag?"
"Yes."