Ortega was yelling from the corner. Dani couldn't hear the words. She could hear the shape of them.
Twenty seconds left in the second period. Down three. She snapped at Castellanos's wrist and Castellanos let her and then reached past Dani's ear for a collar tie and Dani—not thinking, not deciding, just doing the thing her body had done ten thousand times in the cafeteria of the Cutler Springs Middle School, on mats that smelled like feet, against boys who outweighed her—dropped her level and shot.
Low single. Right leg. She was under Castellanos's hips and had the ankle in both hands before the bigger girl's weight came down on her back. She drove. She turned the corner. Castellanos sprawled and hopped and fought and went down on her side, and Dani came around on top of her as the clock hit zero, and somewhere, very far away, the referee was holding up three fingers.
Four to four.
She walked to her corner and sat in the chair, and her lungs felt like a paper bag somebody had blown up and popped. Ortega's face was six inches from hers.
"That's it. That's it. That's the shot. You got her. You got her timing." Ortega was gripping her by both shoulders. "Third period, it's your choice. Neutral. Take neutral. You take her down again on your feet. You do not go down, you hear me? You do not give her your back. She is the best rider in this state and you do not—"
Dani looked up.
She didn't mean to. She'd told herself, after the parade, that she wasn't going to look again. It was stupid. It was a baby thing, a habit, the kind of thing you did when you were ten years old and getting pinned by a boy named Caleb Huerta in the cafeteria, and your mother was sitting in the very top row of the bleachers holding up three fingers. Three seconds. That was what the three fingers meant. It was the first thing her mother had ever taught her about wrestling, before the rulebook, before the hands. You can do anything for three seconds, baby. Anything at all. And then you can do three more.
She looked up anyway, to the top row behind the corner, where her mother always sat. Where nobody had been all day.
And somebody was there.
At first she couldn't tell who. They were so far up, and the lights were in her eyes. Two shapes. A big one and a small one. The small one was standing on a seat. The small one was holding something rectangular over its head, a sign, and then it lowered the sign and held up one hand instead, and the hand had three fingers sticking up.