CHAPTER ONE: THE GIRL WHO NEVER LOST

The first thing people learned about Ava Bennett was that she did not repeat herself.

The second thing they learned was that they wished she had, because the first time she said something, it usually left a mark.

"Reset," she said, and the word landed in the gym like a stone dropped in still water.

Five girls who had been mid-collapse from exhaustion immediately pulled themselves back into formation. Nobody argued. Nobody even sighed loud enough to be heard. This was Ava Bennett's practice, and in Ava Bennett's practice, you either kept up or you got out of the way.

She walked the length of the formation slowly, her eyes moving across each girl with the kind of focus that made people feel simultaneously seen and evaluated. Her white sneakers were spotless. Her ponytail hadn't moved in two hours. She looked exactly as composed as she had when practice started, which was honestly a little unfair to everyone else in the room.

"Your timing is off," she said, stopping in front of the youngest member of the squad, a first-year named Jade who looked like she was one correction away from crying. "You're rushing the count because you're afraid of falling, and that fear is making you sloppy."

Jade stared at the floor.

Ava watched her for a moment, and something shifted almost imperceptibly in her expression, something that wasn't quite softness but was the closest thing to it that Ava Bennett usually allowed herself in public.

"Look at the crowd when you perform, not the floor," she said, and her voice had dropped just slightly, just enough that it didn't feel like a command anymore. "The crowd isn't waiting for you to fall. They don't even consider that possibility. So stop considering it for them."

Jade looked up.

"Okay," she said quietly. "Thank you."

Ava had already turned away.

"Five minutes," she announced to the room, and the gym immediately exhaled.

Sofia Reyes peeled herself off the wall she had been leaning against and fell into step beside Ava with the ease of someone who had been doing exactly that for years. Sofia was the only person in the school who walked next to Ava instead of slightly behind her, and she did it without thinking about it, which was part of why Ava kept her around.

"You know most coaches say good job before they tell someone everything they did wrong," Sofia said.

Ava took a long drink from her water bottle. "Most coaches don't win state."

"You're not a coach."

"Not yet."

Sofia made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. "And there she is. The reason seventy percent of this school thinks you're terrifying."

Ava considered this. "Last month you said sixty."

"You've had a productive month."

The corner of Ava's mouth moved, just barely. With anyone else it wouldn't have counted as a smile. With Ava, it was practically a standing ovation.

The gym doors opened.

The change in the room was immediate and specific, the way a room changes not when someone important enters, but when someone magnetic does, when someone walks in already certain that the room will rearrange itself around them. Three members of the football team came through the door, and at the center of that particular gravity was Mason Reed.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, and moved through space like he had never once been told to slow down or make room. His practice jersey was still on, number seven, and there was a smudge of something on his jaw that he clearly hadn't noticed and equally clearly wouldn't have cared about if he had. He was talking to the guy on his left, laughing at something, and the laugh was loud and easy and completely unbothered, the laugh of someone who had never spent a single second worried about whether people found him likable.

They did. Effortlessly. Constantly. It was, in Ava's opinion, deeply irritating.

She looked away before he saw her looking.

Sofia noticed. Sofia always noticed.

"Don't," Ava said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were about to."

"I was about to say that you did the face."

"I don't have a face."

"The one where you look at something you don't like and then look away very carefully so nobody thinks you were looking at it in the first place."

"Sofia."

"I'm just describing what I saw."

Mason had spotted them. He changed direction without breaking stride, which was exactly the kind of thing he did, moving toward inconvenience like it was an invitation.

"Bennett," he said, and he said her last name like it was the setup to a joke he hadn't decided the punchline for yet.

"Reed," she said, like she was acknowledging a weather condition.

"Still running your practices like a military operation?"

"Still walking into places you weren't invited?"

One of the guys behind him laughed. Mason's eyes stayed on Ava with an expression she had learned to identify over the past year, something between amusement and the particular irritation of someone who was used to being the funniest person in any given exchange and occasionally wasn't.

"What is your actual problem with me?" he asked, and the joking edge in his voice had slipped just slightly, enough that it sounded like a real question wearing a casual costume.

Ava tilted her head. "Do you want the short version or the honest one?"

"Honest."

She almost smiled. "You walk around like everyone in this building exists to entertain you. Like nothing is serious and nothing costs you anything and the whole world is just waiting for Mason Reed to show up and make it more interesting."

The gym was very quiet.

Mason looked at her for a moment, and something moved behind his expression, fast, like something that had surfaced and then been pulled back under.

"And you," he said slowly, "walk around like everyone exists to disappoint you. Like you've already decided what people are before they open their mouths."

The words landed somewhere they weren't supposed to.

Ava kept her face exactly where it was.

"Were you wrong?" she asked.

"Were you?"

Neither of them answered.

The gym door opened again, and Coach Daniels walked in carrying a clipboard and the expression of a man who had stopped being surprised by anything years ago.

He looked at Ava, then at Mason, then at the unusual silence filling the room.

"Good," he said, "you're both here."

Ava felt something tighten in her stomach.

"The school opening event is tomorrow evening," Coach Daniels said, flipping a page on his clipboard. "Student leadership wants representation from both programs. You two are co-leading the opening segment."

Ava stared at him.

Mason stared at him.

"No," they said, at exactly the same moment, in exactly the same tone, which would have been funny under literally any other circumstances.

Coach Daniels didn't even look up from his clipboard. "I'll send the details to both your phones tonight. Be there by six."

He turned and walked back out.

The door swung shut behind him.

In the silence that followed, Ava became aware of Mason looking at her. She turned to find him already watching, and the expression on his face was not the easy grin he usually wore. It was something more careful than that, something that looked almost like the beginning of a calculation.

"Guess we're partners," he said.

Ava picked up her water bottle and turned toward the squad without giving him the satisfaction of a response.

But as she called the girls back to formation and the noise of practice resumed around her, one thought sat quietly at the back of her mind, separate from everything else, refusing to be ignored.

He wasn't wrong about her.

And that was the most irritating thing he had ever done.