Dance, Dance, Dance, Amy

A Transgender Mythology Romantacy

Agape Duro Universe

Nineteen: Rescue Strategy

By Jo Dora Webster

How will Denise plan to work with Francine, Dr Ariel and Julie to try

to banish Erida and set free the girls of the club at midnight?

Author's Note:  

This book, in its entirety, is available on my Patreon. BCTS will get weekly postings on Mondays to complete it here. Patreon Free Members can read my new complete book by chapters, Things We Do for Love

Chapter Nineteen: Rescue Strategy

[Wednesday Day Eighteen of the Enchantment]

Coach Russell’s office had the careful chaos of a person who ran on muscle memory: clipboards stacked at diagonals, a whiteboard layered with practice grids and half-erased arrows, a tangle of whistles and lanyards draped over a hook like wind chimes that didn’t sing. A paper tiger head from homecoming leered from the top shelf, one eye slightly caved; next to it, a neat row of binders labeled in Coach’s blocky hand: Safety, Logistics, Injuries, Parents.

Denise stood in the doorway with the hesitation of someone keeping watch for invisible thresholds, knuckles buzzing with leftover adrenaline and tea. The hallway paint smell clung to her hair. She had washed her face in the staff lounge sink until the skin around her cheekbone went pink. The handkerchief waited clean in her pocket, folded to a perfect triangle; the detection crystal, heavier, rode her other side, a gravity she couldn’t ignore.

Francine—Fran when the office door shut and the world got small—stood at the whiteboard with a dry-erase marker and a stare that could level scaffolding. Julie sat in Coach’s chair, knees drawn under her like a cat about to leap. Julie’s hair was back in a low bun, her face free of the usual competitive glitter, but her eyes were bright and hard, two polished stones. She had graduated a year before Veronica, a flyer who’d become a paramedic-in-training and somehow never left the team’s group chat; she’d answered Ariel’s text with a single word: Here.

“Close it,” Francine said without turning. The marker squeaked: a circle, a line of hash marks, an X.

Denise closed the door. The latch clicked like a tiny stamp.

“Coach is on board?” Julie asked, thumb tapping an impatient rhythm against the armrest.

“As far as she needs to be,” Francine said. “She thinks we’re dealing with a ‘hostile situation with an adult’ and has given us an hour and the office. She will ask the questions she has to ask tomorrow. Tonight, she’s in the gym doing what she does best: keeping bodies moving where we tell them to.”

Julie huffed a laugh. “God bless liability.”

“Majick bless locks,” came Dr. Ariel’s voice as she stepped in behind Denise, closing the door again and laying her palm flat to the wood. A quiet syllable slid into it and seemed to sit, benign and firm. “We have privacy.”

Denise sank into the second chair, the one with the cracked vinyl that always snagged her leggings. The room felt small enough to hold questions without letting them slide under the furniture.

Francine tapped the board. On it, she’d sketched something like a field plan: the stadium seen from above; the running track, the end zones, the little box that stood for the pep band; a dot off to the side for the alumni tent; a wide circle penciled faintly around it all. At the far corner, in bolder strokes, she’d drawn a smaller circle and labeled it East Gate.

“The options,” Francine said. “We put them on the table. We argue them. We pick. We do not waffle.”

“Midnight binding,” Julie said immediately. “Clean. Controlled. Nobody gawking. We pick a place with a drain for bad luck.”

“Public exposure,” Denise said, hating the taste of the words. “Drag it into the light. She can’t hide in an audience if the audience knows.”

“We’re not dealing with an ordinary predator,” Ariel said, taking the third corner of the room. She didn’t sit; she anchored, a lamp in a gale. “We are dealing with a parasitic entity that thrives on jealousy and spectacle. Both options have teeth.”

Silence gathered like a huddle. The noise from the gym filtered through in muffled pops: a ball’s dull thud, a whistle’s far peep, a shout that rose and fell into laughter. The normal life of school.

“We need to free my girls,” Francine said. “Not break them on stage. Not risk them doubling down on whatever she is selling because the whole school is watching.”

“Chelsea,” Denise said softly. The name steadied her. “Sabrina. Hailey.” Saying them all was a kind of spell. “And the rest. Veronica is gray.”

Julie nodded, jaw set. “Gray is a foot on gravel. One shove.”

“We have a ritual tomorrow night,” Francine went on, marker tapping the board over the big faint circle that stood for the homecoming bonfire. “Tradition. Alumni. Cameras. The whole soup.”

“Classic locus,” Ariel said. “Open emotion, generational envy, performative belonging. If I were an old hunger looking for a spike in voltage, I wouldn’t miss it.”

Denise pressed the heel of her hand to her sternum and found her breath. “Then we don’t miss it either.”

Julie leaned forward. “Midnight binding is safer for us. I’ve assisted on three with Ariel, all clean. Small circle, low footprint, minimal contamination.”

“‘Us’ is not the only measure,” Francine said, not unkindly. “We can’t let her gorge at the bonfire and hope midnight scraps satisfy later.”

Ariel’s gaze went to Denise, held. “What do you think.”

Denise hated that her first answer was I don’t know. Today, every decision had felt like stepping off a roof and trusting choreography. She rolled the crystal in her pocket against her fingertips, grounded by the bite of its edges. “If we do it later, she’ll feel it coming now,” she said. “She’s already hunting.”

“She’s also lairing,” Ariel murmured. “She’s chosen a vessel who gives her reach.” A slight pause—a courtesy before a name. “Dick Wallace will not return to the grounds tonight. He is indisposed. But vessels can change.”

“The squad,” Francine said flatly.

Denise’s throat clicked dry. “Chelsea,” she said again, but terror folded another name underneath it: Richard. Seat 12A, blue heart. The dots that had never resolved. She could not put that in the room right now. She tucked it behind her molars and clenched.

“We can do both,” Julie said abruptly. She kicked off Coach’s desk and stood, short and coiled like a spring. “We make the public space into a trap. We make it ours. We bait her at the ritual—she won’t be able to resist—and then we close at midnight in privacy, on our terms. We capture the vessel in the open, in a way that looks like disciplinary action or a medical emergency, and we transfer to a sealed circle. Binding is cleaner when the parasite is dislodged by consent or shock. We provide shock in public, consent in private.”

Francine’s mouth tilted, acknowledging the vector. “Give me steps.”

“Step one,” Julie said, ticking it off on her fingers. “We ward the perimeter of the ritual space early—subtle, like netting. Nothing flashy, because she’ll smell it. We seed the circle with protective sigils that look like chalk scuffs and paint drips. Ariel?”

Ariel nodded once. “Done.”

“Step two,” Julie continued. “We assign eyes in all quadrants. Trustworthy alumni, parents, anyone who won’t flinch. We make sure no one on the squad is left unpaired from now until after the ritual. We control staging. No solo entrances. No dark wings.”

“Step three,” Francine said, standing in without being asked. “We choreograph the ritual body placement so my girls never stand in her shadow alone. If she tries to ride one of them into something stupid—jumping the fire, a call-out, a fight—it won’t be clean for her. We keep breaking her lines.”

“Step four,” Julie said. “We manufacture a reason to extract the vessel when she shows her hand. Medical, behavioral, policy—whatever is true enough. We take her to a ‘quiet room’ that is actually the East Hall storeroom, which we will have prepared.” She jabbed her finger at the small bold circle on the board. “East Gate run. No crowd, no cameras. Ariel seals. We bind.”

Denise felt something in her chest unclench, one ratchet click. A plan. Not safety, but a path.

“Binding at midnight,” Ariel said, testing the words. “At the hinge of the day, between. It suits.”

Francine drew a fast triangle around the East Gate dot. “The vessel,” she said. “Which is where the argument comes back. If she’s riding one of mine—if she’s riding Chelsea—we will not ‘extract’ my girl in front of a thousand people. We will not give the thing that shame to feed on for a decade.”

Denise’s mouth went cold. The tea turned metallic in the back of her throat. “No,” she said, before anyone else could. “We won’t.”

Julie didn’t flinch. “Then we plan extraction without spectacle. A stumble. A stomach bug. A sprain. A choreography change. Francine, you can move an entire formation on a breath. We can make space for someone to vanish.”

“We can,” Francine said. “But only if we’re not trying to pull the mascot’s head off on stage.”

The word mascot hit the room like a pebble tossed at a window. Denise felt it, a small shock of old identity, of fur and foam and Dee Jay’s heartbeat: Amy the ARMYdillo. Another vessel. Another mask. Her face heated and then cooled again. This wasn’t about that. And also it always was.

“What if she doesn’t ride a girl,” Denise asked, voice careful. “What if she rides a man again. An alumni. A father.”

“Then we are merciless,” Francine said, a cool blade. “And we are fast.”

Ariel’s expression gentled and sharpened in the same breath. “We will not let you face another grasping hand alone,” she said, as if taking an oath. “The public option’s virtue is witnesses. Predation hates daybreak.”

Denise nodded. The word witnesses slotted in like a brace.

Francine capped the marker and leaned her hip against the desk, arms crossed. “Say it,” she told the room, teacher voice turned ritual. “What we’re doing. Out loud, so we hear ourselves.”

Julie went first, always quicker to leap than to tiptoe. “We will bait Erida at the bonfire ritual and prevent her from feeding on the team.”

“And we will capture her vessel without humiliating the person wearing it,” Francine said, each word placed. “We will remove the vessel to a sealed room.”

“We will bind Erida at midnight,” Ariel said, her voice lowering to the register that made ordinary syllables sound like lines from a book written on stone. “We will deliver her for judgment.”

Denise swallowed. The word judgment felt too big for her teeth. “To whom,” she asked, because it mattered.

Ariel’s eyes flicked, briefly, to the space over Denise’s shoulder, as if looking through the wall to something older. “To those whose work it is,” she said. “To the Circle that maintains balance. Not to the school board.” A slant of wry. “Though I confess the latter has its own terrors.”

Julie blew air through her nose in something like a laugh. “Let the old women with iron pins do their work. We just have to get the snake in the jar.”

“Not a snake,” Ariel said softly. “A hunger with a name.” Her gaze found Denise again. “Names matter.”

“Erida,” Denise said. The jolt in her ribs was smaller this time. The world did not tilt. “We will not be your meal.”

“Good,” Francine said, and if a word could count off, it did. “Assignments.”

Ariel outlined wards and where to braid them: chalk marks no janitor would clock, a hat pin pinned to a pennant, three small bells to hang in a trash can where no one would notice. Julie rattled off extraction signals: hand to the left hip, two pats to the right shoulder, a hair tie snapped twice. Francine translated her whiteboard circles into feet on grass: who would stand where, which flyers would rotate, which bases would shadow. Denise listened, pen in hand over a legal pad she had stolen from Coach’s drawer, but she wrote little. The map was going into her legs and lungs more than her head.

“Denise,” Francine said after a run of logistics. Her voice softened without losing any angles. “You do not engage tonight. Not with it. Not in words.”

“I know,” Denise said. And she did. And she also knew what her body would do if anyone—anything—reached for her again. “I’ll be with Hailey and Chelsea,” she added. “Always in a pair. Sabrina can take the flank.”

“Good,” Francine said. “Text signal if anything feels wrong. Even if you think you’re making it up.”

Ariel stepped closer, and for a second they were back in the foyer, breath and spell between them. “I have an amulet for you,” she said, pulling a small bundle from the inner pocket of her blazer. She unwrapped it from its tissue with care: a tiny, old-fashioned key on a thin red cord, the metal the color of history. “It holds a stopping charm. If you speak your name into it, it will harden the air between you and what approaches for the space of a breath. It’s not a wall. It can be broken—but it is time.”

Denise took it, a little breathless. The key was heavier than it looked, with an intricate bit cut into it like lace. “Time,” she said. “I can work with time.”

“Breathe it,” Ariel said. “Say your name when you mean it.”

Julie was already halfway to the door, the kind of restless that comes before a dash. “Let’s set the net,” she said. “The bonfire woodpile is already up. The picture men are loitering. We have an hour.”

Francine glanced at the clock: a literal U.S. Navy surplus with minute hand ticking like a metronome. “Sensible shoes,” she said, almost smiling at the memory of the morning. “Let’s buy our girls a clean tomorrow.”

Denise looped the cord over her head. The key settled just at the notch above her collarbone, cool and resolving. She tucked it under her tee. When she stood, her knees felt more like knees and less like paper.

They filed out. Ariel palmed the warded door and murmured something, and the catch released as if satisfied. The gym’s light hit them in a wash, the air full of squeak and chatter. In the far corner, Coach Russell blew her whistle and everyone snapped to listening. Julie peeled off to the corridor that led to East Hall, already texting tags and flags. Francine moved toward the girls with a smile and two claps, last-minute notes disguised as jokes.

Denise caught the glass of the trophy case in her peripheral vision and turned her head to check herself. A girl looked back at her, hair pulled, mouth set, a tiny red cord disappearing into her collar. She lifted a hand and set her fingers on the glass. Her palm met cool and solid. The mirror didn’t ripple. Good.

Her phone buzzed in her back pocket. She didn’t look. There would be time for Richard later or there wouldn’t. Right now, there was only the map and the fire and the net that would not let her friends fall.

“Hey,” Hailey said, trotting up with a water bottle that somehow had glitter inside the plastic. “We’re on in twenty and then on again in an hour and I am a paragon of hydration.”

“Good,” Denise said, and the word felt like a step in choreography. “Stay on my right. Chelsea on my left. Sabrina behind us and slightly to the side. No solos.”

Hailey blinked, then grinned, catching the game without asking for rules. “Copy, Captain.”

Chelsea arrived, hair pulled back and lips glossed, eyes bright with a shine that wasn’t all hers. Denise’s hand went reflexively to the tiny key beneath her shirt and pressed. The metal warmed like a coin in the sun. Chelsea bumped her shoulder. “Ready to fly?”

“We’ll fly together,” Denise said. “No drop.”

“Promise,” Chelsea said easily. The ease hurt. Denise let it turn into fuel.

On the way out of the gym, Denise glanced back. Ariel was by the doors, head tilted, measuring air with her attention. Francine was already in the midst of the squad, clapping, counting. Julie’s text pinged Denise’s phone that instant—Net’s in, East is clear, see you at the pile—and Denise’s heart did the one-two of fear and courage and settled into the rhythm of a plan.

Outside, dusk had started to stitch itself over the campus, blue threading into the maroon of banners, the bonfire built like a cathedral’s silent cousin waiting for flame. People gathered with blankets and cameras and stories about That One Year with the rain. Denise tasted wood and wind and the faint electric edge of a storm that might not be weather.

She stood with her girls and rolled her shoulders and felt the key touch bone and said her name into the space behind her teeth, not out loud, not yet, just enough to feel it press back.

We commit, she thought, with the clean certainty that sometimes arrives only after terror. We draw the line. We catch the vessel. We deliver her to the hands that judge.

The whistle blew. The band struck a chord. The first match flared.

The net held.