Estadio de Tenis
Madrid, Spain
ONCE YOU HAVE HER DOWN, YOU CAN’T LET HER UP AGAIN,”Penny Harrison whispered to herself as the noise from the sold-out stadium crowd washed over her. “Never give an opponent hope. Finish her, Penny. Finish her now.”
Blinking down at the red clay and the formerly white tips of her sneakers, she swiped her wrist across her forehead and brushed away rivulets of sweat. She tucked the wayward strands of dark brown hair escaping her braid behind her ears.
She needed to be steady to win this. But steadiness was difficult with everyone still roaring after her last point.
“One at a time,” Penny told herself. “One at a time.”
With a deep breath and then another, she filled her lungsand exhaled, slowing her heart rate, bringing herself back under control or at least trying to—it was a lot harder than usual. Then again, she’d never been in a situation this big before. Three points from a win against Zina Lutrova, the best tennis player in the world, this would easily be the biggest moment of Penny’s career and she would prove all the naysayers wrong. All the so-called experts had blasted her after her loss in Australia. They said she wasn’t ready for the big time. Three more points and they would be eating their words.
She couldn’t help the rush of excitement that flowed through her body, and the shiver that followed, goose bumps rising across her skin. The last time she’d felt like that she wasn’t on the court, she was withhim. A flash of blue eyes and tanned skin and a well-earned cocky grin invaded her mind, undoing all that breath work in an instant.
Penny had been striving for this moment her entire life, and now she was here, on the precipice of something great. She was not about to let anything get in the way of that, certainly not some guy.
Focus, she needed to focus.
Across the net, Lutrova waited, bent at the waist and crouched low like a cobra ready to strike. Most people facing Zina completely lost it the second they caught the icy-blue gaze of the Russian superstar, but Penny wasn’t scared, at least not anymore. She was about to prove she was as good as the world number one.
The crowd murmured, an anxious wave of sound, equal parts hope and dread.
The umpire, high atop his chair, shushed them. “Silencio, por favor.”
Penny approached the baseline; the crowd’s collective voice faded to a distant hum, but they were behind her, pulling for her, willing her to win. Everyone loved an underdog. Her body was loose now, almost relaxed, and the world slowed down around her, nice and easy.
“Time to finish this,” she whispered.
One bounce, then two, three, and four in perfect rhythm. Her body weight shifted forward and then back, arms up, racket ready, the ball suspended above her head. She pushed into the ground, then sprung up and out, racket face hammering a clean stroke, skimming it off the white chalk T in the center of the court.
Penny’s feet hit the ground together, balanced and ready for a return that never came. The ball whistled by Lutrova’s desperate lunge and pounded into the wall behind her.
An ace.
Thirty–love.
Santa Monica Community College Library
Santa Monica, California
“So, I told them I’m an entrepreneur and as soon as the app goes live I’m going to be rich,” the flushed-face, lanky guy said, leaning forward with one elbow on the library table and his other hand jabbing at the air. “I’ll sell it to the highest bidder and my parents will finally stop being on my ass about this school shit. I mean look at all these people, it’s pathetic.”
Patheticwasn’t the word Indiana Gaffney would have usedto describe the students around her. The library was crowded for a Sunday morning, and when the guy from her bio class spotted an empty seat at the table she’d claimed for herself, he sat down without invitation, started talking… and hadn’t stopped for nearly an hour. She couldn’t remember his name and he hadn’t paused long enough for her to ask or, really, for her to say anything at all.
Occasionally, she would flick her eyes up from her laptop, hoping he would get the hint that she didn’t have time for his shit. She wasmostlyworking on her final bio lab report of the spring semester, but also keeping an eye on her phone, propped up against the screen, where a young tennis player, barely older than her, hair pulled back in a neat brown braid, walked across the screen bouncing a ball against her racket into the red clay surface of a court in Madrid.
Rolling her neck, Indy flipped her long blond hair over her shoulder, revealing the earbud firmly in place and raising the volume on her phone, completely drowning out her tablemate since he wouldn’t take the hint. If Penny Harrison was going to beat Zina Lutrova, Indy wasn’t missing it for some deluded tech bro who talked shit about community college students working hard on a weekend whilealsoenrolled there.
The commentator was shouting over the raucous crowd. “Penelope Harrison, just twenty-one years old, is up a set, a break, and thirty–love. Another serve like that and she’ll have three match points.”
“It’s amazing,” the other announcer chimed in. “If you didn’t know who Penny Harrison was before today, you sure do now. She’s going to take down the number one playerin the world and defending champion in the final of the Madrid Open—a huge win in her young career.”
Indy felt a small pang inside her chest. Two years ago she and her mom had watched this tournament on TV together. Her mom had been sure Indy would be playing there one day on that court in Madrid or Paris or New York, winning a major tournament. After she died, winning tennis matches really didn’t matter much to Indy anymore. Nothing mattered except she was gone and wasn’t coming back.
Though she’d probably be pissed as hell at Indy for giving up.
The thought came unbidden from a place in her mind she’d locked away for far too long. Was it time to start again? It was what her mom would have wanted, wasn’t it?
