Clint’s body as I veer back toward the restaurant. Not knowing for sure where I’m heading, exactly, as I steer between the trees. I just trust the compass. As we head south, the compass is actually pointing toward me, the only person who can get us out of this mess.
We’re moving as fast as Clint can bear; as I suspected they would, the tracks fly past, disappear. I’ve lost them somewhere along the way. But the compass still points at me, so I try to tell myself we’ll be okay. But my throbbing, worried heart lets me know that I’m really not so sure.
Shops appear ahead, but I don’t see the old backboard looming over the patio behind Pike’s. Because it’s not Pike’s—damn it. I’ve screwed up. I’m in the wrong place.
Still, though, I force the ATV on, gunning the engine to climb a small incline, then to weave between two businesses and careen onto a street.
The place we’ve ended up is dusty and sparse, the kind of place where dogs nose the edges of buildings and men in overalls linger in doorways, and afternoons take on the quiet pace of an antique store.
My hair hangs over my face—I pant, sending strands scattering across my cheekbones. I toss my head, clearing the hair from my eyes, but there’s really nothing to see here. I glance both ways down the dusty street. Just pine trees and a red building ahead—a café of some kind, with a few wooden picnic tables set up outside.
“Where are we?” I try to ask Clint. “Which way is Pike’s?”
All that comes out of him is a guttural yawp.
I rev the engine and speed down the street toward the café. Because surely someone around here has a phone that actually works. Or a car. At this point, I’d go for two sticks we could rub together to start a fire to send out smoke signals. A few diners glance up at the sound of the approaching ATV. Their eyes turn into enormous zeros. Benches scrape. Feet scamper.
I hear my name.
“Shut up, Clint,” I bark, because I think he’s the one screaming at me.
“Stop, stop! Chelsea! Stop.”
My ATV lurches on toward the outdoor seating area, while screams of frightened diners dance in the air and their arms flap like birds’ wings as they flee to safety.
“Chelsea!” the cry comes again. “Chelsea. Stop.”
When I turn, I see a familiar head of pepper-gray hair on top of a pair of broad, ex-jock shoulders.
“What’re you doing?” Dad asks, frowning at me.
“I’m—getting him help. He really hurt his shoulder,” I say.
Dad’s face whitens as he looks at Clint writhing in the seat.
In that moment, there’s no last game. There’s no year of strained silences or glares over a dinner table. There’s no resentment or guilt. Right then, there’s really no me and Dad. There’s just Clint and his twisted shoulder, which is making a gruesome bulge against the back of his shirt. There’s a growl and the way Clint keeps writhing in pain. There’s only a person we need to help. Dad nods once, understanding.
“Turn that thing off,” Dad says. “Wait there.” He jogs away.
When I kill the engine, I notice the horrified faces of everybody who was eating just a minute before. They keep staring, paralyzed, as the White Sugar SUV screeches to a stop in front of the café. Dad jumps out to help me guide Clint into the back seat.
And it should be déjà vu. It should—because the GPS leads us straight to the hospital. And we’re in an emergency room again, and we’re running down hallways filled with gurneys and scrubs and faces that try so hard to appear calm that they look completely fake.
Last time, when I was the one on that gurney, when it was my hip in the X-ray, white lines on black paper glowing through the brutal hospital light, I thought I’d crumble beneath the weight of my fear.
This time, though, when they point, saying dislocated, as if this is some big revelation and not a diagnosis in slow motion, I’m solid. I’m sure.
And it’s me that’s holding Clint’s good hand while his parents wait in the hall. It’s me that’s telling him just a little longer when he washes a painkiller down with lukewarm hospital water.
And it’s me that says don’t watch when the ER doctor starts to tug on his bad arm, twisting and pulling, trying to figure out how to feed it back into place. I’m the one that says focus