"You're not upset?" Tariq blinked.
"I'm furious," Amaya said. "I'm just filing it correctly. Don't forward it, don't reply. Starving it is the play."
Maya reached across the table and squeezed her hand. "For the record, you look powerful in that photo. The edit is the only ugly thing about it."
That night at dinner, Elijah watched her push chicken around her plate.
"Interest rate change?" he asked quietly.
Amaya hesitated. She'd promised to tell him. But she'd also asked to handle it her way, and so far "her way" was working — she was documenting, she was steady, she hadn't given anyone the reaction they wanted.
"Small stuff," she said. "Locker-room pranks. Kid stuff."
"Kid stuff," Elijah repeated. He didn't argue, didn't press. He just looked at her with those calm eyes that had read terrain in the dark. "You remember what I told you about small stuff?"
"That small stuff is how big stuff introduces itself," she recited.
"And?"
"And I tell you when the interest rate changes." She met his eyes. "It's still small, Dad. I've got it. But I need you to trust me on the timing."
He was quiet for a long moment. Then he nodded. "I trust you. But Amaya — the deal was always that you don't carry it alone. Handling it your way doesn't mean handling it solo."
"I'm not solo," she said, thinking of Maya's hand on hers, Tariq's grim efficiency, Jordan's terrible jokes that kept arriving by text at exactly the right moments. "I've got people."
"Good people?"
"The best."
He let it go. But she saw him watching her braid — long over her shoulder, the nightly ritual she'd kept even on practice nights — with something thoughtful in his expression, like a man noting the position of something precious.
Thursday's practice brought the uniform incident. Amaya opened her locker to find her squad uniform gone — jersey, skirt, the works. Coach Rivera found her checking the lost and found, jaw clenched.
"Walker. Talk to me."
"It's gone. Someone took it." Amaya kept her voice level.
Rivera's expression hardened. "Stay here." She strode onto the gym floor and blew her whistle — two sharp blasts that cut through the music. "Listen up! Someone in this program took Walker's uniform. I don't do witch hunts. I do consequences. It will be back in her locker by tomorrow morning, or conditioning doubles for everyone until it is."
There was a beat of stunned silence. Then Kayla said, loudly, "I'll take doubles," and Priya said, "Same," and half the squad echoed it. Rivera held up a hand. "Nobody's doing doubles. Because it's coming back."
The uniform was back Friday morning, folded neatly, smelling faintly of someone else's cologne. Amaya logged it: *10/24, uniform taken and returned. Witness: full squad. Suspected: B.C. associate.*
At lunch, Jordan slid a cookie across the table. "You've got that look," he said.
"What look?"
"The look my sister gets before she destroys someone in debate club. It's hot and terrifying."
"I'm not destroying anyone," Amaya said. "I'm just — keeping score."
"Keeping score," Maya repeated thoughtfully. "I like that. What's the score?"
Amaya looked down the cafeteria toward the athletes' tables, where Brett was holding court, Derek laughing a half-beat too loud at everything he said, Sam quieter, scrolling his phone.
"They think it's a game," Amaya said. "So I'm learning the rules. And then I'm changing them."
Tariq pushed his laptop toward her. On the screen: a folder, neatly labeled, containing every screenshot he'd captured — the photo, the chat, the timestamps. "Evidence locker," he said. "For whenever you're ready."
Amaya looked at her three friends — really looked at them — and felt something settle in her chest, something solid and warm.
"Not yet," she said. "But soon."
That night she braided her hair slowly, methodically, the way her mother taught her. Three sections. Left over middle. Right over middle. Smooth as you go. In the mirror, her own eyes looked back at her — steady, unblinking.
Whatever was coming, she would meet it the way she'd been raised to meet everything: prepared, patient, and unwilling to be moved.
Chapter 5
The Cut
Friday practice ran late. Coach Rivera kept them drilling the new pyramid until the gym lights buzzed and the October dark pressed against the high windows.
"Again," Rivera said, for the sixth time. "Amaya, you're drifting left on the dismount. Plant and commit."
Amaya planted and committed. The pyramid held — twelve girls, three tiers, Amaya at the apex in a needle scale, one leg straight to the sky — and for a breathless moment the whole structure was perfect, a human architecture of trust.
"That's the one!" Rivera called. "Remember what that feels like. Hit the showers. Good work."