Page 102 of Backhanded Compliments

She wants to channel it into a more useful emotion, but it’s terror that grips her. She knows Vladimir’s eyes are drilling holes into her back.

Never smash a racket was the first lesson Luca learned from Vladimir and the one she has never broken.

Until now.

It was an impulsive slip of the hand. A moment of feral weakness that now makes her feel sick.

It’s her mistakes that have caused the lopsided score.

She presses her knuckles against her chest, dragging them down her sternum. It doesn’t help; if anything, it intensifies the feeling in her chest.

She chews on the inside of her cheek, just for something to do, a sensation to focus on.

The umpire calls time and Luca jumps off the bench, shaking out her limbs in an effort to calm the trembling in them.

Her racket is slippery in her palm.

The heat rises. The air is thick and stifling, pressing in on her.

Her emotions are sliding out of control.

Luca feels a panic attack rising like an unstoppable tide.

And Octavia is calm and focused on the other side of the net, nearly lackadaisical in her effortless serve and aggressive backhand.

And when Luca’s third backhand sprays wide, she loses it again.

“What the hell do I do?” she yells at Vladimir.

Vladimir strokes his jaw but says nothing.

Anger bursts through, and she nearly hurls her racket into the crowd and quits the match. It is the sheer terror of losing that stays her hand. “What do I do?” she asks Vladimir again.

“Calm down,” Vladimir mouths, holding out his hand in a motion for Luca to relax.

“Calm down?” Luca snaps. “What the fuck kind of advice is that?” She swipes her face furiously with the towel, and Vladimir doesn’t respond. He never responds to such outbursts.

Not that Luca has them very often.

She loses Octavia’s service game. It is 3–1 but the gap feels wider than she could ever conquer.

The crowd roars. She’s giving them a spectacle, and she hates it.

Perhaps all of her luck has finally run out.

Tennis has failed her.Shehas failed. She can’t even keep her emotions in check enough to play with Juliette Ricci in the stadium. It is driving her mad.

The first raindrop slithers down her neck.

Instead of being refreshing, it’s irritating, and it makes her want to throw up or cry or something else equally ridiculous.

She double faults on the first point of the fourth game.

Luca curses and smacks her racket against the sole of her shoe, pins and needles shimmering through her foot at the contact.

“Audible obscenity warning, Miss Kacic.”

Luca doesn’t even have the energy to argue it, she just tosses her racket into the air in frustration, but it slides out of her slippery fingers and cracks on the ground.

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