“I can’t believe I’m saying this to you, but you need to slow it down. You’re pushing too hard.”

Rebecca leans over the treadmill and hits the down arrow, slowing my run from a sprint to a comfortable jog. It takes a few seconds for my heart rate to catch up to the pace I just put my legs through, but after running what was maybe my best mile time ever, I’m no less wound up than I was the moment I came in here.

My dad dropped me off. “Some place he needed to be,” is what he said. I didn’t ask for details, and he didn’t give any. I’m sure I won’t see him tonight, though. My only hope is that he’s spending all of this time with Meredith, the older woman he met in his support group that’s become my father’s closest friend. I’ve thought about calling Grace. I’m not sure where she and my dad stand with one another, but I know one truth about it—neither has ever disrespected the other in front of me. Grace talked about my dad’s drinking, but she never blamed him for his disease. There’s a certain respect there that must come from both being hurt by my mom.

My face is hot, and I’m sure my cheeks are bright red. The treadmill slows to a walking pace, so I work to lengthen my stride, stretching out the muscles of my legs while I work to regulate my breathing again.

“I don’t know what brought this power surge on, but you keep working out like this and we’re gonna have to start thinking about putting you in the Iron Woman,” Rebecca laughs.

She tosses me the hand towel and I wipe the sweat from my face and neck. The machine stops completely and I lean forward, stretching the backs of my legs, feeling the burn on my hamstrings. Rebecca folds her arms and looks at me over the top of the treadmill.

“It’s really something when you think about it,” she says.

“What?” I chuckle.

“How far you’ve come,” she says, winking as she pushes back from my machine and walks to her binder and gym bag resting on the windowsill.

I pull my lips in on one side and look down at my feet, legs bent forward at a hard angle, flesh on one side, metal and fiberglass on the other. My limbs work in unison to stretch in a position that only a few short months ago would cause me to fall to my knees. Today—best mile time ever.

My smile grows, and I laugh to myself as I step away from the machine and grab my water bottle from the window. After guzzling down nearly a third of it, I untie my hair and roll it into a knot, fastening it to the top of my head to cool down my beet-red neck. I’m soaked with sweat, and I feel terrible that Kyle has to put me in the cab of his truck, because I’m definitely ripe.

“There’s someone I’d like you to meet,” Rebecca says. She stares at me for a second, a proud smile hitting her lips, curling, and eventually dimpling her cheek.

“Why do I feel like you’re fixing me up?” I chuckle.

“No, it’s just…I’m genuinely proud of you. And when I set this up a couple months ago…don’t take this the wrong way, but I wasn’t sure you’d be ready,” she says.

I bite my bottom lip and squint at her, tilting my head as I screw the cap back on my water bottle. Now I really feel like I’m being set up.

I wait while Rebecca reaches into her bag, fishing around for her wallet. When she finds it and unsnaps it, she pulls out a card, but quickly hides it under her palm, her hand over her chest.

“I would be there with you for the entire thing, and I’d be a part of the story, too…” she begins, and the moment she says the word story my head rushes with a fluttering feeling and my knees begin to feel weak. Shawn saw my whole story. Wes doesn’t like the end of my story. That comic book Shawn drew—about my story—hasn’t been wrong yet. Everything I burned calories and sweat to avoid for the last two hours comes barreling back into my head, and I miss the rest of Rebecca’s point until my focus returns on the business card now in my hand.

“Girl Strong,” I read the words. I glance at the name and title: EMILY COORS, MANAGING EDITOR. “As in…the magazine my dad used to buy for me when I was a kid?”

My brain somehow switches to the present, to the very real present with unbelievable opportunities. This is life, with potential.

“That’s the one,” Rebecca giggles.

I look back down at the card, no longer able to hold back the grin that pushes into my cheeks. My chest flutters with giddiness.

“They were going to do a story on just me, and after we started working together, I called them with this idea,” she says. My grin now locked in place, I look up at her again, so very ready to hear more. “Your story is so inspirational, Joss. I know you don’t like to think of it like that, but truly—there are little girls out there who are born with deformities, or who lose limbs or have disabilities that they think limit them. You prove that all wrong. I want people to read that story, to see your face and what you can do. What do you think?”

My lips part with an exhausted breath, my body coming down from my workout as my heart kicks with this news. While Rebecca’s right, attention like this isn’t really my thing, having people notice my work is.

“I’ve never thought of myself as a role model. In fact, a year ago I was probably very much an anti-role model.” I laugh out my words, but settle into a serious mode quickly. I swallow at the honor and enormity of this, and my breath catches as I think of Rebecca’s belief in me. Looking back down at the card imprinted with a magazine that has featured every major female Olympian since 1981, I nod and let my smile grow again. “Hell yeah, Becs. You just tell me what I need to do, where I need to be, and when.”

“Awesome,” she says, her hand wrapping around my very tired bicep. It grows rigid, and I look up to meet her eyes. “But seriously, you can call me bitch before you call me Becs, got it?”

I stare her down, and hold my laughter in. We’ve grown so close during our time together. Rebecca has become family to me.

“So I can call you bitch?” I tease.

“Only if you want me to push the up arrow on the treadmill next time,” she says, letting go of her grip on my arm and pointing with two fingers from her eyes to mine.

“Whatever,” I laugh, running the towel over my face one more time and staring at the card as I make my way to the locker room.

I text Kyle just before I get in the shower, and he’s sent a message back by the time I dress and gather my things to meet him out front. I read it as I walk through the gym, stopping to hug my first trainer, Stephanie. I’m not a hugger, but Stephanie is, and when I hated everyone for a while there, she was persistent on being my friend. That kind of tenacity deserves a hug, I figure.

My phone is in my palm as I walk away from her workstation; I stop about ten paces from the door as I read Kyle’s words.

I’m sorry. She made me do it.

I blink once before looking out the glass door to the parking lot, at Taryn’s enormous Crown Victoria. If there were a backdoor to this place, I’d consider escaping through it now, but since that isn’t the case, I grip the Girl Strong business card in my hand and remember that not everything is terrible and uncomfortable. That thought carries me to Taryn’s passenger door, but it does little to help me breathe the suffocating environment that welcomes me when I climb inside.

“We’re going to talk,” she says, turning her key, shifting and backing so fast that her wheels spin out enough to fishtail her giant automobile.

“Kay, sounds good. Favor though?” She brakes hard and I fly forward, dropping the card to the floor between my feet when my palms flatten against the dashboard to keep me from smashing my face in. I grit my teeth, but sit back in the seat after picking my card up. “Mind if I buckle up before you go all demolition derby?”

I buckle fast because I pretty much know she’s going to peel away again, and she does just as I hear my belt click.

“Demolition derby implies that I’m going to crash into someone, which I’m not,” she says, stopping hard at the first light. I grip my seatbelt and cough as it locks against my chest. “I’m merely going to drive angry.”

“Awesome,” I mumble.

I figured Taryn was pissed. I understand it, and I know that all of the shit I’m going through doesn’t really cancel out her feelings of being left out from my circle of trust. It’s going to be hard to explain—perhaps impossible—but I’m going to try.

I rehearse it all in my head during the jerky drive home, but I’m no clearer on where to start when she stops at my curb and kills the engine. I glance sideways, hoping to see a smile on her face, or something soft that says, “I’m going to forgive you; let’s just move past this.” Instead, she’s sitting with her back pressed hard against the seat, her arms locked, and knuckles white.

“Christopher.”

I breathe out a laugh and smile on the side hidden from my friend. It’s like reliving everything I went through, the suspicion and eventual reality.

“Yep.”

I keep my eyes trained ahead on my street. Cars parked along the curb on either side, tires in front yards, a mom with her child splashing in a baby pool three houses down.

“When did you know?” Taryn asks.

“The moment he stood on the mound at the elementary school,” I admit, turning enough in my seat to look at Taryn.

She chews at her bottom lip, her teeth sawing at it while her eyes squint as she draws from the memory of that day.

“Does your dad know?”

“No,” I answer. “Nobody knows, except for Kyle, and now you.”

She nods, but still doesn’t look at me. The guy who drives the jacked-up truck that rumbles so loudly we can feel it in our ribs revs his engine a few houses behind us, and we both turn to look. When I twist back around, I watch her, and I know she can feel me.

“So he, like…saved you twice then, huh?” she says, resting her hand on the back of her seat and laying her chin on top.

“Taryn…”

Her body relaxes with a slow exhale, and finally she rolls her head to the side and looks me in the eyes. They’re glassy, and I feel like shit.

“I wouldn’t have told anyone. You could have trusted me, and I wouldn’t have made fun of you,” she says, sniffling through her words and running her red eyes along her sleeve.

I rest my head sideways to mirror her.

“I know,” I say, reaching forward to touch her. She lets her hand fall down to mine and we lock fingers.

“That’s some fucked up shit,” she says, laughing through tears.

I laugh, too.

“T, that’s not even close to how fucked up this shit gets,” I say, closing my lips into a tight smile that eventually rests in a straight line. “Come inside so I can change, and I’ll fill you in. I want to check in at the Jungle Gym, see if I can start back early. I want to buy a car, and Rebecca said a friend of hers owns one of those hand-control businesses that retrofits cars so you can brake and control the speed with your hands. Anyhow, they could maybe set me up for cheap.”

My friend nods with a smile. We both leave her car, and the rumbling truck down the road, for the quiet of my bedroom. It takes me five minutes to change. I spend the next hour telling Taryn the unbelievable story that is my life.

And in the end, there are three of us who now need to lie to the faces of people we love—all because Wesley Stokes came home with a story that’s so much better to believe.