Was nice- enough- looking. She was hardly ever labeled ugly, nor was she commonly labeled hot. She was short, only five foot one, and carried herself with an up- tilted chin. Her hair was in a gamine cut, that was streaked with green highlights in a salon. Green eyes, white skin, light freckles. In most of her clothes, you couldn't see the strength of her frame. Gemma had muscles that puffed off her bones in powerful arcs—like she'd been drawn by a comicbook artist, especially in the legs. There was a hard panel of abdominal muscle under a layer of fat in her midsection. She liked to eat meat and salt and chocolate and grease.
Gemma believed that the more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle. She believed that the best way to avoid having your heart broken was to pretend you don't have one. She believed that the way you speak is often more important than anything you have to say. She also believed in action movies, weight training, the power of makeup, memorization, equal rights, and the idea that YouTube videos can teach you a million things you won't learn in college.
If she trusted you, Gemma would tell you she went to Stanford for a year on a track- and- field scholarship. "I got recruited," she explained to people she liked. "Stanford is Division One. The school gave me money for tuition, books, all that."
What happened?
Gemma might shrug. "I wanted to study Victorian literature and sociology, but the head coach was a perv," she'd say. "Touching all the girls. When he got around to me, I kicked him where it counts and told everybody who I thought would listen. Professors, students, the Stanford Daily. I shouted it on top of the stupid ivory tower at the top of my lungs, but you know what happens to athletes who tell tales on their coaches." She'd twist her fingers together and lower her eyes. "The other girls on the team denied it," she'd say. "They said I was lying and that pervert never touched anybody. They didn't want their parents to know, and they were afraid they'd lose their hard earned scholarships. That's how the story ended. The coach kept his job. I quit the team. That meant I didn't get my financial aid. And that's how you make a dropout of a straight- A student."
After the gym, Gemma swam a mile in the Sofitel Legend pool and spent the rest of the morning as she often did, sitting in the business lounge, watching Spanish instruction videos. She was still in her bathing suit, but she wore her navy running shoes. She'd put on some purple lipstick and some silver eyeliner. The suit was a gunmetal one-piece with a hoop at the chest and a deep plunge. It was a very Marvel Universe look.
The lounge was air-conditioned. No one else was ever in there. Gemma kicked her feet up and wore headphones and drank Coke.
After two hours of Spanish she ate eight mega Reese cups for lunch and watched music videos. She danced around on her caffeine jag, singing to the line of swivel chairs in the empty lounge. Life was bloody gorgeous today. She liked that sad woman running away from her sick father, the woman with the interesting scar and the surprising taste in books. They would kill it at trivia. Gamma drank another Coke. She checked her makeup and kickboxed her own image in the reflective glass of the lounge window. Then she laughed aloud, because she looked both stupid and awesome. All the while, the beat pulsed in her ears.