Playing Hurt - By Holly Schindler Page 0,49

it to, and about a distraught boy who’d made appeals on local news stations to anyone who might have seen Johnson … A second, smaller picture shows someone crumpled into a heap on the back of a squad car. Johnson’s boyfriend, Clint Morgan, at the scene of the accident, the caption proclaims.

Whoa! What? My eyes spring straight back to the beginning of the caption. I reread it six, maybe seven times.

In the picture, Clint’s slumped against the police car, his chin against his chest. He looks a little like a forgotten doll, the way he’s propped on the trunk. But the area behind him—I’ve seen that place before. I recognize it, even though the snow has long since melted. I can smell the earthy wet scent of a nearby creek, feel Brandon’s camera in my hand. As I stare at the black-and-white photo, dots of pink pop—patches of orchids. I know this is the ravine Clint dragged me out of. And now I know why.

I’m on my feet, hurrying down the brick hall, not even feeling my legs.

“Bo’s Bait and Tackle,” Cecilia calls out as I pass the kitchen door. Her words are a lasso around my waist. I backtrack until I’m standing in the doorway of the kitchen. She’s bent over the sink, one eye looming just above her shoulder, a trail of brown hair dangling over her cheekbone. “Clint knows the owner’s family,” she explains, flashing a crooked smile at me. “And I know my son.”

I’m not running, exactly, but I’m close. My blond hair flies behind me as I pump my feet. And I can feel my arms flopping kind of crazily, like I’m making my way toward the scene of an accident. I can feel urgency scrawled all over me, bright as a smear of red lipstick. The kind of urgency that doesn’t exist between “just friends.” Or a trainer and trainee.

The old guys clustered outside of Bo’s, swapping old-time stories, let their voices trail off to watch me. They have the same kind of shock plastered on their faces that they’d have if one of their bosom buddies showed up at Pike’s with a woman other than his wife.

This can’t be happening, I think I hear Clint mutter when I reach his side.

“Clint—” I say.

“I’ll go get Brandon,” he tells me, acting like he’s got to go inside to find him, like Brandon’s not standing in the front window taping the four corners of his poster, his Pink Floyd T-shirt in full view of the street. Clint’s trying to pretend his way out of this conversation.

But it makes sense now. I get it. Why he acts the way he does. Why he shakes me away. I want to tell him—it’s okay, Clint. I want to convince him. God, we’re just alike.

“Clint,” I try again, grabbing his elbow to keep him from disappearing inside the bait and tackle.

“Mom told you,” he blurts, his tone sharp with annoyance as he turns away from the front of the store (and the men watching with round eyes and drooping mouths) and hurries back toward the street. “The whole tragic poor-Clint story.”

“That’s what you were talking about before,” I say. “Why you gave up hockey.”

“She was coming out to watch me. Stupid hockey tournament,” Clint mumbles.

“It’s impossible to play hurt,” I say. “We both—we couldn’t play hurt.”

He clinches his jaw, like he’s clamping his mouth shut on his response.

“I think—” I whisper. “I think you feel what I feel. When you kiss me, it seems that way.”

He turns, staring over his shoulder, reminding me we’re still being watched.

“I don’t want any promises from you,” I say, too quietly for the old men outside the tackle shop to hear. Even as the words come out, they sound stupid. But it’s not like I’m used to begging a guy for his attention while standing in the middle of a street. What am I doing? “And look, I don’t want to feel this way about you either,” I add. “But I do. I can’t stop it, and I can’t take it back. I just want a chance.”

My whole body is throbbing with desperation.

Clint runs a hand through his hair. “You’re just going to leave.”

“Yeah, I am. But not today. Not for a while yet.”

Clint starts to shake his head, his arms crossed defensively across his chest. I can see his answer floating up there in his head: No. But before he can say it, I take a step toward him so we’re standing