When they announce the Grand Prize, I feel my heart stutter. They say her name, full and clear: “Cassandra Jade Montgomery.” Cassie doesn’t react at first. Maybe she’s waiting for the universe to correct itself, but then she looks at me, wild-eyed, and for a second I see her as she was at five, legs too short, teeth too new, the entire world a miracle waiting to happen.
She walks up to the front, the gym floor echoing her footsteps, and the teacher hands her a shiny trophy. She holds it above her head, not in triumph but as if testing whether it might float away.
From the bleachers, I want to scream, to embarrass her with a howl of pride, but all I manage is a sharp intake of breath that leaves me lightheaded. Next to me, Nathan claps, steady and deliberate, and I realize I’m gripping his arm so tightly he may have bruises tomorrow.
When Cassie comes back to us, she sets the trophy on the table, then pulls me down to her level and hugs me, hard. She smells like donut glaze and dry-erase marker.
“You did it,” I say, voice thick.
She nods, a single solemn bob, then, before I can even process, she throws her arms around Nathan. For a second he freezes, as if uncertain of the rules, then hugs her back, gentle but real.
Cassie is the first to break away. She sits, cradling the trophy in her lap, then looks up with the gravity of a Nobel laureate. “Can we get pizza?”
I laugh, the sound more relief than amusement. “Of course. You can have whatever you want tonight.”
“Even soda?”
“Even soda.”
“What about Nathan?” she asks, her gaze darting between us. “Can he come too?”
Nathan raises an eyebrow in mock surprise. “You think I can be bought with pizza?”
Cassie’s lips curl. “Maybe.”
“Well,” he says, looking at me, “I do know a place, right on the boardwalk. They have the best pepperoni in town. Arcade games, too.”
Cassie’s face is a sunbeam.
I glance at Nathan and our eyes meet, a silent exchange that binds us to this new reality of ours. At his nod, I turn back to Cassie. “All right then. Pizza it is.”
Her cheer bounces off the gym walls and confirms our victory as more than just a trophy on a table. As we walk out, the other parents stare, some with envy, some with that soft-eyed look reserved for families who seem to have everything under control. I know better, but I let myself pretend, let the feeling settle in my chest like the aftermath of a storm, fragile and dazzling and improbably whole.
Nathan holds the door, and for once I don’t hurry to step through. I stand in the gym doorway, watching Cassie parade ahead, trophy in hand, her silhouette sharp against the parking lot sun.
“Thank you,” I say, low, to Nathan.
He shrugs. “Wasn’t much.”
“No,” I say, and I hear the tremble in my voice, the reverb of everything he’d managed to salvage. Not just the cardboard ocean but the morning itself. “It was everything.”
16
Diane
The pizza parlor is neon-lit and unapologetically loud, the kind of place where a quarter buys you sixty seconds of glory, and the only salad is iceberg lettuce beneath a snowdrift of ranch. Booths line the windows in red vinyl, sticky and cratered with the scars of a thousand Friday nights. In the corner, a pair of plastic dinosaurs battle for dominance atop a faux-volcano, and the air smells of dough, sugar, and deep-fried mozzarella sticks.
Cassie makes a beeline for the trophy display. There’s a local Little League Hall of Fame on one wall, the rest crammed with bobbleheads and Polaroids of past pizza-eating champions. She holds her own trophy next to a gold-plated soccer ball, comparing their weights with scientific rigor.
We crowd into a booth near the arcade entrance, the pizza menu laminated and curling at the corners. Nathan slides in beside me, and Cassie takes the outside seat so she can keep an eye on the Skee-Ball machine.
“I want pepperoni and black olives,” she announces.
Nathan raises an eyebrow at me. “Objections?”
“None,” I say. “Just no pineapple.”
“We can all agree on that,” he says.