Free Open Court by Carol Clippinger

you're the loser. Battle to the death,” I added for effect. It was true. It was
so
true in my own tennis that, again, I was briefly sad.
    If you aren't the winner, you're the loser
    My answer didn't make Pete sad. It seemed to delight the heck out of him. He was like all spectators. They want suffering, agony, and distress in their athletes’ victories. It's more exciting watching someone
suffer to win
than win effortlessly. If huge quantities of blood and possibly even some guts or bits of broken bones are involved, then it's
really
a quality match.
    Sugar howled and ran to the door. The Cassinis were home. Polly bounced into the living room carrying a pizza. Her little brother, Teddy, dug out a piece and disappeared. Polly quickly introduced me to her mom, and before I knew it Maren and Pete Graham slipped out on their date, leaving us.
    Polly's table manners were impeccable. Meticulouslycutting small pieces, she chewed each mouthful a hundred times before swallowing.
    “Come on, let's finish eating in my room,” she said.
    Her bedroom furniture looked like it was purchased from random garage sales—a green desk, a pine headboard, a white chest of drawers. I sat at her desk, careful not to disturb her piles of math textbooks and test papers.
    Her eyes, deadened at the sight of them, seemingly mortified by the chunk of her life she devoted to them. “Geometry,” Polly said flatly. “I'll move them.” In one wide swoop of her hand, she flung the books to the floor: pages crumpled, pages tore.
    “The bindings will break,” I said, picking up a book.
    “Leave it,” Polly said.
    “Yeah, but the bindings—”
    “I don't care.”
    Polly gathered a red feather boa from her closet and slung it around her neck, transforming herself into a chorus line dancer. She applied a heavy coating of orange lip gloss, smacking her lips together to blend it. Now she was a gangster's girlfriend from the Roaring Twenties
and
a chorus line dancer. “Want to help me bury something?” she said.
    “It's not a body, is it?” I asked.
    She squealed. “No, don't be silly. Come along,” sheurged. She grabbed a small cookie tin from her floor and led us out.
    In her backyard, while Sugar sniffed around the lawn, Polly sat in the grass near a dead aspen tree and the fence, digging up the dry earth with a kitchen spoon. Her red boa flowed onto the grass.
    “So, what's in the can?” I asked.
    “Open it and see,” she said.
    “It's not a dead hamster or something, is it?” I asked. I'd once given a deceased pet hamster a shoe-box funeral in my backyard. But I was eight then.
    Polly flicked out small spoonfuls of dirt, deepening the hole. Pausing, she flipped her boa out of her way, keeping its feathers from the dusty earth. Something about her face caught me—
the girl did not look human.
I pulled back like I'd touched fire.
    Polly looked up suddenly. Her orange lips popped off her face. “It's not a hamster,” she said. “Open it and look.”
    The lid came off with a
ting
sound. Inside was a balled-up red ribbon. Polly grabbed it from me and shook it so it unfolded. It read SECOND PLACE.
    “I won second place at the math competition today. Out of fifty kids. We compete every so often, to shake things up,” she said, rolling her eyes. She stuffed the silky ribbon back in the cookie tin and shut the lid.Looking at me, she dropped it to its scary resting place. “Bye-bye,” she said to it, waving, laughing.
    She scooped dirt over it with her bare hands. Giggling. She was a kite, flying free.
    Discovering Polly this summer couldn't have been a fluke. Janie had sent Polly here, somehow, to comfort me and tell me I'd be all right. Polly wasn't human— Polly was my
angel
I mentally replaced that boa with a set of celestial wings. Yes, my angel. I didn't have to worry myself over Janie, at least not right here with Polly in the yard. Polly had risen above her talent for math. Floated right above it, with her wings. She hated it,