Free Exposed by Susan Vaught

giving me the bucks to buy my weights and the links to get them ordered. Besides that, hundreds of miles away, on the other side of a keyboard, he won’t be a temptation in ways he shouldn’t be. After Adam-P, and what with fighting those stupid sores every month or two, I don’t want to have sex with anybody—or even the pressure of maybe possibly getting asked about sex.
    Or the off-chance freak occurrence that I’d actually
want
to do it.
    Maybe not until I’m in college. Or thirty.
    I just don’t want to go through that again. And with school and twirling, I don’t have time. An Internet relationship will work just fine for now.
    I click open the word processor and glance at the training program once more. I’ll have even less time if I stick to Paul’s plan, but I think I can do it. At least there’s hope, right?
    And even better, if I get going and lose weight, maybeI can help Dad do the same thing. That would be way past perfect. Dad and me, joining the ranks of the stick-thins-who-can-eat-anything.
    “When can you talk again?” Paul’s font is bright purple, no doubt to get my attention. “Please say tomorrow night.”
    I grin at the shining laptop screen. “Same time, same place,” I type.
    He signs off with “CYL,” for “See You Later,” and “P.S., Because I could not stop for death …”
    More Emily.
    I smile all over again, sign off with a hug symbol, and “P.S., He kindly stopped for me.”
    Then I sit there like the big idiot I am, with my fingers on my monitor, wishing I could part space and time and give Paul a kiss on the cheek.
    Just a quick pop-kiss.
    But he’d know I meant it to be more.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16
    I didn’t make it
.
    I bite my lower lip. I knew I couldn’t, knew I probably wouldn’t, but the reality feels like forty extra pounds on my head instead of one extra pound … probably on my butt.
    JV, here I come.
    Devin will die. I’ll die. I’m so dead. I’m so done.
    I twist in my yellow plastic chair as the Bear squints at the papers I gave her. She tips her head back and scours each line and paragraph, peering underneath the lenses of her thick gold-rimmed glasses. Every few seconds, she sniffs as if to say,
This is such the bull droppings, Chan Shealy
.
    Above us, fluorescent lights buzz and fritz. Shadows pitch across the Bear and her desk, then vanish when the blue-white glare blazes strong again. Outside the Bear’s windowless cube of an office, out in the main gym, Devin and the other girls have already startedwarm-up. The
thump-thump-thump
of dance music invades the space, bounces up the yellow concrete walls, and ricochets over shelves of trophies and plaques and the dusty row of photos of the Bear standing on medal platforms, waving to crowds at gymnastic competitions.
    Ve had no choice in Russia
, she had explained once, late at night when we were locked into the gym during a band retreat.
Children vith talent trained and performed. It vas expected.
    When we asked what would have happened if she had refused to be a gymnast, she just stared at us and never answered.
    Devin thought the Bear had downed a bit too much vodka from the little silver flask she usually kept tucked in her purse, especially on retreat nights.
    Me, I thought I was glad I hadn’t grown up in Russia and gotten snatched away to live in some isolated gym the whole time I was little. I wouldn’t have known what to do without my parents and my house, without my stuff and my computer. How did people live before computers, anyway? It must have been so boring, not to know people from other places and be able to e-mail and send messages and chat.
    Paul’s image floats through my mind.
    Computers.
    More opportunities. Better choices. And personal trainers who look like wicked Greek gods.
    I almost have my weights-and-weight-bench cover story ready for Mom. And Dad, if he notices.
    The Bear smacks her hand on the top page of my training plan.
    I jump—and slam back to the reality of her