Playing Hurt - By Holly Schindler Page 0,7

Mom’s family albums, in photos of Fourth of July picnics and birthday parties. But everything changes. We’re not here just to play anymore. Greg and Todd and I have all passed every requirement and certification known to man (or known to Earl, anyway) so that we could work as the fishing guides. So that we could steer groups of tourists out into a lake that spreads itself so wide, it sometimes seems as big as the Atlantic. And while Todd and Greg only want to work on the boats, I’m what Earl calls the floater. I take up the slack wherever it shows up. Fish, sure, but also take the tourists out birding, or hunting wildflowers. We go canoeing. Ride ATVs.

It’s the second summer Earl’s given us these jobs. Sometimes I just can’t believe my luck. Little does Earl know, I’d pay him to work here.

“Come on, guys,” I say, waving at a clump of tourists gathered near the path behind the main lodge. They stop chattering long enough to look at my T-shirt, see the Lake of the Woods fishing resort logo embroidered across my left shoulder. They smile, one after another, realizing I’m the one they’ve been waiting on.

“Hope you guys all brought your cameras,” I say, holding the digital I’ve borrowed toward the sun. These people and I don’t know each other by our first names yet, not on this first hike of the summer. But we will. Soon they’ll be calling Clint! as they point out red blooms along the edge of the path, asking me what they’re called. By the time they leave, they’ll know all the Minnesota wildflowers by their first names, too.

My calves go warm as I start up the incline of the dirt path. The late May sun beats especially hot on the back of my head, making me feel wet behind the ears for leaving my Lake of the Woods ball cap in the lodge.

I pay close attention to my pace, making sure a chubby lady dressed in bright orange pants at the back of the group doesn’t fall too far behind. With every step, my old compass bangs against my leg, rattling around in the pocket of my shorts. Almost sounds like a giggle, the way the metal parts jiggle against themselves. Like the compass is teasing me—think you’re gonna to get lost on the same path you’ve hiked every summer for the past decade, Clint?

But the truth is, a weird sense of peace washed over me last week when I found my old Boy Scout compass.

“Come on,” Todd had shouted from the top of the stairs that led to my parents’ basement. “You said you knew where the tent was.”

I’d muttered under my breath as I picked up a dusty box. The cardboard flaps opened, letting Boy Scout relics—including my compass—fall onto a pile of family quilts.

I stared at it, turning it over in my hand, not really understanding the calm sensation that filled me just from holding it.

“Morgan!” Todd had shouted. “Come on! Losin’ daylight. Are we going camping or what?”

I’d dropped the compass into the pocket of my shorts before tossing the box aside. “This’ll go a lot faster if you two losers’d come down and help me look.”

The compass has weighed down the pockets of my hiking shorts every day since.

I take a deep breath of sweet summer air. Birds in the branches above me chatter small talk; ducks follow their mother down to the lake, single file. The clucking ducks remind me, a little, of the tourists trailing mindlessly behind me. They chatter to each other, none of them paying enough attention to their feet; I can hear their sneakers stumble off the edge of the trail every once in a while.

I glance over my shoulder at the first two people in line behind me. A father and daughter, obviously. I peg the dad for a runner. His daughter’s about twelve, wearing an awful pink Girl Power T-shirt and clutching her phone like it’s somehow going to save her from dying out here in the woods. She smells like grape bubblegum and the comfort of a childhood bedroom. She blushes when she catches my eye.

Even though I’ve tried to deny it, Earl was right about the making eyes junk. Every single summer, younger girls like this one get crushes. Blush at one guide, then another. Twirl hair around fingers, get all giggly.

Frankly, a crush from a twelve-year-old is just plain embarrassing. Especially with her father