He was too tired to follow up. He would think about that later, too.
* * *
At five-thirty they let the crowd back into the arena. The floor had been transformed. The sixteen mats were gone, and in their place, dead center, was a single raised platform with one bright gold mat on it, under a ring of white lights so strong they made the rest of the Dome look like night.
Tom found seats as close as he could get, about fifteen rows up on the side, and lifted Rosie onto the seat beside him. His phone was in his hand. It had been in his hand for an hour.
"Look," Rosie said, pointing. "The top."
He looked up. Behind them, the stands went up and up, row after row, to the dim curving roof. The very top rows were in shadow, half full, people still finding their seats. Somewhere up there, on any other day, Lena would have been sitting, alone, with her knees pulled up and her coat folded on the seat beside her, where Dani could find her.
"Nobody's there," Rosie said.
"No," Tom said. "Nobody's there."
The music changed. The lights dimmed everywhere except the mat, and a voice on the loudspeaker began to announce the parade of champions, and from the tunnel at the far end of the floor the finalists came out two by two, every weight class, the boys and then the girls, walking in a long line around the edge of the platform in their warm-ups while the crowd roared. Tom watched the girls' line, searching. And there she was, toward the middle of the line, in a red Coyotes warm-up with KESSLER across the shoulders, walking beside a tall girl in green and white with a long black braid.
"At one hundred thirty-five pounds," the announcer said, "from Harbor Ridge, a senior, two-time state champion, with a record of forty-one and zero—Mia Castellanos!"
The roar was huge. Half the arena, it seemed, was green and white. The tall girl raised one hand, briefly, without looking at the crowd.
"And from Cutler Springs, a junior, with a record of thirty-eight and two—Danielle Kessler!"
Tom stood up. Rosie stood on her seat. They yelled, both of them, as loud as they could, and Rosie waved the pizza-box sign over her head with both arms, and their two voices were completely lost in the noise of nine thousand people, and Dani, walking past fifteen rows below them, did not look over.
She was looking up. At the top. Tom saw it. Her chin lifted and her eyes went up past him, past all of them, to the shadowed rows at the top of the arena, and stayed there for one step, two steps, three—and then came down, and her face closed, and she kept walking.
* * *