Playing Hurt - By Holly Schindler Page 0,33

have it. Not like I used to. It just—it kills me. It’s like—like I’m in jail, and I haven’t had food in two days, and there’s a cheeseburger and a chocolate shake on the other side of my bars, just beyond my fingertips, out of my reach when I stick my arm through. Maybe that sounds over-the-top, but I guess that’s how I feel. Over-the-top.”

“Okay,” I say.

Her blue eyes dart to me. “Okay?” she repeats. “Just okay.”

“All anybody can ask for is an honest effort.” Good personal trainer talk. No emotion. The way it should be.

“But I—I’m different now, after the accident,” she says. “I mean—honest effort—it’s not the same now. I’m—not what I used to be.”

“Okay,” I say softly.

She nods, turning a little more, showing me the pink glow of both her cheeks. But the knots under my skin refuse to loosen, because this feels close, too. Like we’re a couple, and we’re making up after a fight. No matter what I do, Chelsea keeps burrowing herself deeper—only I don’t know when I allowed her in. Wasn’t every door inside me already padlocked before she even came to the resort?

Still, I’m staring at her beautiful face and the only thing I can think is, I wonder what he’s like, the boyfriend. A twinge of jealousy pops up, followed by a rush of anger, just like it did last night when Chelsea announced she had a boyfriend. But why? Why would I even care?

Why can’t I stay non-emotional?

We slosh farther along the cool edge of the water, into a marshy area that smells a little like sweat-soaked skin. A stream cuts across our path, shallow and gurgling. Chelsea starts to follow it, walking upstream, putting the lake behind her. Above us, cars careen down a highway, the roar of their engines slicing through the still air.

My eyes dart down the stream, past Chelsea’s shoulders. A shiver travels down my back as I realize where we’ve wound up.

“Did you find one?” Chelsea calls to me. “An orchid?”

“No,” I say, my voice wobbling. “Look, let’s go back the other way.”

What’s wrong with you, Morgan? I start chastising myself. But I know—I’d been staring too hard at the curve of Chelsea’s shoulder to realize just where she was headed. To realize she was heading to this ravine.

Never should have driven here in the first place, I try to tell myself. But I’d been too upset, too focused on the silence in the truck, to think about anything else. Anything but Chelsea.

“I did! I found one,” Chelsea shouts triumphantly. She hurries even farther ahead of me, toward a white and pink bloom.

But the bloom disappears, and so does Chelsea. I’m not feeling the heat of a summer morning, but brutal cold. It’s not the first week of June, but early March, and winter’s still got northern Minnesota in her icy clutch. I look down to find that I’m holding the silver lid of a thermos instead of a camera. Pop’s pouring black coffee into it. And I’m not standing in the ravine; I’m looking down on it as I steer my GMC along the highway above. Snow has painted the world pure white. My breath comes out in clouds. My arms are covered in the sleeves of a parka. My forehead itches against the rim of a wool stocking cap. Through the windshield, I see the sun slowly rising. Marking the beginning of yet another day of unanswered questions.

“What you really need is some sleep,” Pop is telling me. “You need to try, at least.” He says it loud, because the radio is on. That damned radio.

“… the search for missing teen Rosaline Johnson continues,” the local DJ announces. “Last seen leaving to attend the local pond hockey tournament …”

“And I knew it, right away,” I say. “She didn’t show up, and I knew something was wrong. But I kept playing?” I grip the steering wheel even tighter.

“Not your fault, Clint,” Pop insists, as he has for the past eight solid hours of driving. “If you’d just get some rest—”

“Yeah, well, we still don’t know where she is. We still don’t know what’s happened to her. And something has happened. That’s somebody’s fault. I’m not going to stop just to sleep. No way.” I hit the brakes and skid onto the shoulder. I slam the gear shift into park.

“So why are you stopping?” But even as Pop asks it, I think he already knows.

Up ahead, red and blue lights are splashing across the snow-covered