Last Year's Mistake - Gina Ciocca Page 0,34

her either.”

And other times she was the coolest person I knew.

We piled onto the sled and pushed off, the cold air blasting our eyes and making them tear even as we giggled our way down the bright white hill. We were both squealing as the sled finally lost momentum and came to a stop, and I forgot that I’d been frowning a second ago.

Until, through the corner of my eye, I saw Isabel’s fancy toboggan coasting down the hill. David sat at the forefront with Isabel pressed up against his back, clutching him around his middle. They both had huge smiles on their faces, and I watched as their toboggan cruised right past the point where our sled had conked out, coming to a graceful stop some twenty feet farther away.

“Kelsey!” Miranda said sharply.

I jumped. “I’m not pouting!”

Miranda looked at me with wide eyes. “No, your nose—it’s bleeding!”

I ripped off one of my gloves and swiped at the spot above my lip. My fingers came away smeared with red.

“Shit!” I fumbled through the pocket of my coat for the travel package of Kleenex my mother had stashed there, grateful that she always thought of those things. I felt wet warmth run over my lip and started to panic as I realized it was getting worse.

Finally, my shaking fingers freed one of the folded squares, and I jammed it against my nostrils. I turned toward the street, hoping I could dab at my nose a few times and move on without anyone noticing.

My nose, however, had other plans. In less than a minute, my tissue had gone from white to completely red. Miranda kept grabbing more from the package and handing them to me as I knelt over the snow, afraid I’d get blood on my clothes.

“Kelse, are you okay?” Miranda handed me another tissue, terror plainly visible in her petite features.

I nodded, but it was like the motion made things worse. My nose started to gush. It bled so profusely that it splashed down the back of my throat and I gagged, spitting red all over the snow like some kind of horror movie. Then I started to cry.

Miranda must have thought I vomited blood, because she started to scream. And cry. “Help! Help! Someone help my sister! Something is wrong with my sister, someone help!”

Boots crunched in the snow as people descended on us. A middle-aged man with a little boy reached us first.

“Did you fall? Do you think it’s broken?” he asked. He moved my hand to replace my falling-apart tissue with a handkerchief. I wondered if it was used before I realized I was bleeding too much to care.

“She didn’t fall,” Miranda whimpered. “Her nose started bleeding, and then she started throwing up blood. I don’t know what happened.”

“Kelse!” The sound of David’s winded, worried voice made me flush. He must have run over at top speed. I could only imagine what I looked like, but even if it wasn’t as bad as I thought, it still wasn’t anything I wanted him—or Isabel—to see. I stared down at the Rorschach-like patterns my blood had made on the snow, wishing the ground would open up and swallow me.

David knelt beside me. “What happened?”

The bleeding finally abated enough for me to talk without gagging. “Nosebleed,” I panted. “Not vomiting. It went down my throat. I’ve never had one this bad before. I scared her.” Quite frankly, I had scared the shit out of me, too.

“Does she need an ambulance?” the man with the handkerchief asked.

I gave a weak shake of my head, afraid a more vehement protest would set the bleeding off again.

“No, no ambulance,” David said. “She’ll be okay. Thank you, everyone. She’s fine.”

I brushed my temple against his shoulder and sighed, so grateful when footsteps started to retreat. He must have known I wanted to die on the spot.

David scooped up a pile of unbloodied snow between his gloved hands and packed it together in one of his palms. Then he yanked the back of my coat down and pressed the freezing cold snowball against the nape of my neck.

“David!”

“Sorry,” he said, his smile evident in his voice. “It’s supposed to restrict bloodflow to the head, or something.” He leaned down until his face appeared in my peripheral vision. “Look at you. Your mom’s gonna think I came at you with a machete.”

“Is it that bad?”

“Um . . .”

“You’re a crappy liar, David. Don’t even try.”

“You look like someone tried to murder you!” Miranda sobbed. The dramatics