Playing Hurt - By Holly Schindler Page 0,36

him to try out the golf course at Oak Harbor. Seemed pretty excited about it.”

As soon as he mentions my dad, I can’t help picturing the way it might have been if we’d vacationed here last summer. I imagine Dad sitting next to me on the cabin’s front step; I picture him jabbering with Clint and me like he’s forgotten he isn’t actually eighteen anymore, dropping in the occasional awesome that must have been every other word out of his mouth in high school, judging by the way he’d lean on it. But I haven’t heard him say that word once since my accident. He hasn’t felt much about our situation has been awesome, I guess.

I feel myself tense up, my entire body turning so stiff I could practically pass for a brick wall.

“It’s tougher sometimes on other people,” Clint says, slicing into the sudden silence. “It’s—got to be hard on your dad—the whole basketball thing.”

I frown, not exactly in the mood for this conversation, either.

But Clint holds up a hand, stops me from telling him how wrong he is. “At Pike’s, when you said I was an athlete, you were right,” he admits. “I was—played hockey. When I had to quit, it hurt—my folks—as much as me, even.”

“Yeah, but I’ve seen you and your folks,” I mutter. “They—talk to you, at least. Not like him.”

“We were always pretty close, I guess,” he admits. “Only child and all.”

“What happened?” I ask, my stomach plummeting, like an elevator with a broken cable. Do we actually have this in common? “Did you get hurt?”

“You could say that.”

“During a game?”

“No, I didn’t … have to give hockey up. Not physically, like you did. But I couldn’t compete at the same level anymore. I tried, but my mind wasn’t in it. I wasn’t focused. They were beating me up out on the ice. Or avoiding me, which was maybe even worse. Like I wasn’t even playing. Like I wasn’t really part of the team. They ignored me. So I decided—no more team sports for me. Not just hockey, either. I still exercise plenty, but the only battle I get into anymore is between me and the occasional walleye.”

“Better to let them remember you when you were great.”

He shrugs and nods. “Yeah. Something like that.”

I try to picture what it would have been like if I’d broken my hip, but not as badly; if I’d been allowed to get back on the court, only to discover I was half the athlete I’d been before. I imagine college scouts trickling out of the gym before halftime. Rushing to the mailbox only to find the phone bill, checking my email only to find a message from Gabe. No news of athletic scholarships. No letters of intent. A heart that didn’t just break once, but had tiny pieces broken off with disappointment’s hammer hundreds of times, every single day.

“It’s a lady slipper,” Clint says, pointing to the picture of the orchid I loaded onto Mom’s netbook. “You got a terrific shot.” When he looks back at me, his eyes travel around my face the way fingers dart through the bottom of a drawer, searching for batteries in a blackout. I start to feel my excitement bubble over … this isn’t the passive way a guy looks at a girl he’s completely uninterested in. But Clint just shakes his head, clears his throat, points again at the computer screen.

“State flower of Minnesota,” he finally says, still just talking about the lady slipper, still not offering even a hint of an explanation for the way he’d flared up with—what had it been? Fear? Anger?—during our orchid hike the other day. And here I am just sitting on the step, not sure how to even broach the subject even though I’m dying to. “If you ever find another one, don’t pick it,” he says. “Protected by law.” As though this somehow explains why he was so rough about hauling me from the ravine. And we both know no one could ever care that much about a flower.

“Are we talking, Do not remove the tag on this mattress under penalty of law or Do not drink and drive under penalty of law?” I ask. I’m trying to tease, but the way Clint’s face clenches, I know this has hit him in the way the Chelsea Keyes Star hit me.

“Even if there wasn’t a law,” he says, “you shouldn’t pick them. They’re pretty rare. Takes them sixteen years to bloom.”

“Years? A late bloomer,”