At Risk Read Online Free Page A

and not hers, and then is disturbed by how much she feels like a stage mother. She realizes that her fists are clenched. A square of sunlight from the highest window in the gym settles on the polished wooden floor. Polly unclenches her fists when Amanda finishes her routine on the balance beam. She has gotten the highest score so far, but afterward Amanda sits down near a pile of mats and the coach kneels down beside her. Polly worries that something is wrong, but soon Amanda gets up and goes over to her team, where she waits for her last event, her best: floor exercise.
    “Our girls are terrific,” Fran says to Polly. And Polly agrees. If she were the judge she’d be hard-pressed to decide between the two. Perhaps that’s why it’s possible for her and Fran to sit together at meets. All along the bleachers other mothers, and a few fathers, are intent on watching only their own daughters.
    Charlie’s knees are pulled up to form a table and his book lies open upon them. His hair, cut short, is damp with sweat. Polly thinks she recognizes a drawing of a hadrosaurus. She knows most of the dinosaurs by now, knows which were fierce carnivores and which ate only marsh plants. She would like to put her arm around Charlie, but, knowing he would be mortified, instead rests her hand against his knee. Charlie looks up at her, misreading her cue, ready to leave. Then they both hear the first beats of “Hungry Like the Wolf.” Charlie makes a face.
    “Can’t you put that book away?” Polly whispers.
    “No,” Charlie says, “I can’t.”
    He has read this book dozens of times and is no less interested than he was the first time through. Sometimes his lips move when he reads, and Polly knows he is memorizing facts. When she looks at him, Polly often gets a vision of him as a toddler, solemnly counting stones or beads, content to watch a spider build her web, his nature already so set that his first word, spoken at a pond, was not “mama” or “dada” but “quack.”
    Amanda begins her routine with a roundoff, two hack hand springs, and a backflip. Polly, who swims, but is otherwise not athletic, feels that spooky, cold sensation along the back of her neck. Amanda’s feet barely touch the mat. She does a forward roll, then a handstand and full pirouette. There is some scattered applause. The girls on the other team are watching her carefully; it’s a terrific performance and everyone knows it. Polly’s eyes feel hot. When Amanda is through she bows, beautifully. Polly doesn’t give a damn whom she’ll embarrass, she gets to her feet and applauds.
    “Not bad,” Charlie admits grudgingly when Polly sits back down,
    Polly grins and gives him a shove. When Amanda is announced as the highest scorer, Polly stands again and applauds. Other parents are standing up on the bleachers below her and Polly has to strain to see Amanda, who’s so composed you’d never guess she had won. Amanda bows, then quickly leaves the floor, as though now that the scoring is over, she has no interest in the gym.
    “She deserved to win,” Evelyn’s mother tells Polly.
    “They were all great,” Polly says, with more generosity than she feels.
    Polly aims Charlie toward the door and tells him she’ll meet him out by the car. She greets several parents she knows on the floor, then stops to shake the coach’s hand.
    “I can tell you’ve been working them hard, Jack,” Polly says.
    “You should be proud of her,” Jack Eagan tells her.
    “I am,” Polly says, delighted that at last there is someone with whom she doesn’t have to play down her excitement.
    “She picked herself right up after that bad start,” the coach says.
    Polly, who didn’t notice a bad start, smiles and heads for the lockers. Tonight they will take Amanda out to dinner to celebrate, maybe to Dexter’s, which has great fried clams and fries. Polly will sneak a call to Ivan so he can stop on the way home and buy flowers; after all her hard work, Amanda deserves