20 Million Tiny Particles

15. Yoga

Ava was gone Monday morning as planned. Dad drove her to the airport. She apologized to me over her second cup of coffee and my first Diamond Drink on Sunday morning, but I didn't have much to say.

The shop was closed, and instead of waking early to go to church, I slept until eleven. The night before felt like a bad dream, surreal and blurry and buried in the crevices of my mind. If I pushed my head into the pillow hard enough, it wouldn't even feel real.

But standing in my bedroom doorway, the hall lights overhead forcing me to face reality, I had no choice but to accept that the watercolor nightmare of last night wasn't a sketch in my head. It happened.

Mostly, I felt stupid.

I showered, hoping the hot water would wake up whatever part of me had sleepwalked me into those most recent bad decisions. Then, another full glass of Diamond Drink, and I told Dad and Ava I would see them later. Ava was here to see Dad anyway. I didn't need to get in the way.

I drove to the Y, where I was meeting Sheridan for her noon yoga class. She'd been digging at me to come to one of her classes, and she needed help selling our new strategy to the yoga demographic anyway. The yogis of our town weren't as bought-in to the pump-you-up energy pitch as the spin classers and aerobics goers. I told her I'd figure it out.

I had planned to get there early, but I didn't. In the handful of hours between my belated wake-up and peeling out of the parking lot late last night, I was terrified that Bryce had told Sheridan everything. That she would be furious. That all of this would come crashing down because of my stupid obsession with a stupid boy. That I would lose this, too.

But then another part of me thought, would it even mean enough to him to mention it?

Unsure which way the dice would fall, I got to class a few moments before the stroke of twelve, a yoga mat I bought in preparation tucked under my arm. I gave Sheridan a tiny wave as I pushed through the doors. Her eyes flashed at me, steely and buzzing with muted energy. My skin was hot as I forced myself to act normal.

I was laying out my mat at the back corner of the room when she tapped my shoulder. "What are you doing?" she demanded.

"Rolling out my mat."

"You're late," she said next, and a wave of relief pressed onto me, flattening the hairs of my arms sticking up in the circulating air of the every-direction fans. I pressed the corner of the mat down onto the linoleum. "And come to the front."

"I'm sorry," I said, standing to meet her eye line.

She smiled and rolled her eyes. "It's fine." Then she repeated, "Come to the front."

I did not want to do that. I bit into the soft skin of my inner lip, the jagged edge of my front tooth pinching me to prove again that this all was happening. "I might embarrass myself."

She picked at the tail of the braid laying on one shoulder, unamused. "So what's the plan then?"

I gave her a "be quiet" look. Think fast. "I've got it," I said, even though the master plan I was supposed to conceive was nothing more than fluttering cells in the corners of my mind, dust particles on the hem of my Walmart-brand athletic top. "Just be really good at yoga."

Just be yourself. Be everything.

She nodded. "I have a really hard routine today," she assured. I hoped I didn't make a total fool of myself in front of Sheridan and the fifteen or so women in leggings that had filled the room. She shrugged. "Anyway, I gotta get up there, but stay here after. I have something for you."