Playing Hurt - By Holly Schindler Page 0,38

me card you two,” Pop calls from the side of the tent as he flicks the caps off two amber bottles and hands them to thirsty runners. “I don’t want to know anything about fake IDs.”

“I don’t have a fake ID,” I tell him, but Pop rolls his eyes.

“Everybody has a fake ID. I had a fake ID when I was your age. But I guess you don’t need one, do you?” Pop’s tone lets me know that he found out about the two raspberry brews Chelsea and I drank at Pike’s Perch.

What Pop’s hawking here at the beer garden is his award-winning Pike’s Porter. Dark as the backs of eyelids staring into the sun, with the same warm, red tint running through it.

“Get you two some fresh chips?” Pop asks, pointing at Mom, who’s sweating over the fryer. She tosses us a wave until she notices who I’m with. And then a grin grows. She purses her lips in this uh-huh, I see exactly what’s going on here kind of way.

I start to shake my head. But a drum steals my chance to tell her that she’s got it all wrong.

Pop points over his shoulder at the makeshift stage just behind the beer garden. “That brother of yours has whipped Clint’s friends into shape,” he shouts at Chelsea. We both turn toward the stage, where a hand-painted sign announces, Appearing Every Night At Pike’s Perch!

“Hope your family doesn’t mind me giving him a steady gig,” Pop tells her. “If it puts a kink in the rest of your vacation plans …”

Chelsea laughs, shakes her head. “No way. You’ve made his entire year.”

She puts her lemonade down, tugs my arm until we hit the edge of the crowd clustered for the band. This is a real treat—usually there’s no music at all until the street dance kicks into gear. I’m about to tell Chelsea this when my eye travels to the far side of the crowd, where Kenzie sips from a bottle of Pike’s Porter. She raises the bottle in greeting, but her smile tumbles when she notices who I’m with. She stares down at her hands and chews her lip before disappearing into the crowd.

“Live, from Willie Walleye Day in Baudette,” Brandon announces into his mic. “It’s … the Bottom Dwellers!”

Chelsea tosses her head back and laughs. I’d call it a belly laugh, but it seems deeper even than that. Before I can stop myself, I think Man, that’s a great sound.

“Your brother’s becoming quite the celebrity.”

She turns, then jerks backward a bit when she finds Kenzie about half an inch from her nose.

Kenzie’s got her long hair stuck through the hole in the back of a ball cap; her Lake of the Woods T-shirt hangs out of a pair of scruffy capri pants. She looks like she came straight from the resort. Slowly, she runs her eyes over my stupid shirt and Chelsea’s sundress. She flashes me a come off it—just admit what’s going on here frown.

“He’ll have groupies tagging along behind him everywhere he goes,” Kenzie says.

“Brandon?” Chelsea laughs. “No way.”

“Just might have to join them,” Kenzie adds. “What do you think about that?” She says this last part to me, and just stands there weighing my reaction. It’s some kind of crazy test. “I like his wild hair,” she prods. “I told him so.”

I feel like climbing up onto the stage, pushing Brandon aside, and tapping his mic. Attention, Baudette, I want to say, see that girl over there in the sundress? I am not here on a date with her. I’m her trainer. She has a boyfriend. I’m not interested.

But how am I supposed to deny what Kenzie thinks when Chelsea’s standing right here? Wait—why can’t I deny it with Chelsea standing right here?

I can’t because, when I glance at her, the devil on my shoulder just keeps telling me how nice it would be to know what she tastes like.

I take the coward’s way out, and step to the side a little, separating myself from Chelsea—but not too much.

Kenzie’s still staring at me when Chelsea takes my hand and starts moving her feet to a decidedly garage-band version of an old Rolling Stones song, “Waiting on a Friend.” And before I can completely take my eyes away from Kenzie, before I can mouth something at her like not my type or you’ve got it wrong, Chelsea pulls me deep into the crowd in front of the stage. Before I know what I’m doing, I’m