Page 69 of Hide and Keep

“Okay, so what’s a base? And while you’re at it, what’s a flyer?”

“I’m a flyer.”

“Obviously.”

“So, I’m at the top of the pyramid. The one basically doing acrobatics in the air. A base is the person that puts me in the air. They lift me, throw me, and hold my stunts.”

“Does it hurt?”

“If I land hard, yeah, it can. But mostly when I fall.”

“How often do you fall?”

“Never.”

“Is that why your dad calls you Never?”

“No. That’d require him to actually know something about me.” She scoffs through a headshake. “He calls me that because I’llneverstop being a disappointment to him.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“Ask him yourself.” She shrugs like it doesn’t sting, but how could it not? That’s her parent, the only one she’s got.

I take my time eating some more. I don’t know what I’d do without my parents’ support, especially these past several years.

“If you don’t fall, how’d you get so many injuries?” She listed a fuckton yesterday and I’m guessing that’s not all she’s suffered.

“Being dropped. Other people falling. Being tackled by football players. A basketball bouncing off my head.”

I crack up.

“What?”

“A basketball? That kind of shit doesn’t happen to people like you.” Perfect people don’t have embarrassing moments.

“I swear. I’m surprised during all your online stalking, you didn’t come across videos of it. It was posted from, like, twenty different angles.”

“Remember, if I’m a stalker, so are you.” She fucking looked me up, too. What she read wasn’t even the whole truth but I’m sure she thinks it is. Everybody else does.

She’s quiet for a while after that, then softer, she asks, “What about you? Did your weight yo-yo? When you were a wrestler?”

“A bit. I did my fair share of cutting, but I wrestled in a class close enough to my natural weight that I didn’t have to go to the extremes some guys did to make weight. Because of that I never really gorged afterward either.”

“Were you any good?”

“You should know—”

“I didn’t look up everything. I’m not actually a stalker.”

“Neither am I.”

“Okay.” She drops her fork on her empty plate and leans back, crossing her arms. “Fine. Neither of us are stalkers.”

“Great. Glad we cleared that up.”

I go back to eating.

“And…”

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