The Ex Games(41)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“The new snow will cover it up.” He looked down at me. “Shhh.”

Something in his shhh tugged at my heart. He kept watching me, not examining my ear for medical emergencies but looking into my eyes, for a few more steps. I couldn’t read his look. He was kind of blurry, for one thing, and I was kind of dizzy. I thought he looked … concerned. Sympathetic. Determined to rescue me from danger. I wished that was what he felt. But it couldn’t have been. I was misreading him.

What did he really think of me? He probably assumed I was faking loss of consciousness. Maybe he even thought I’d cut my ear on purpose, all to get out of the comp without admitting defeat. If he hated me, so be it, but I’d be damned if he hated me by mistake.

“I broke my leg,” I breathed.

He stopped short in the snow and glanced down at me again, alarmed this time. His eyes traveled across my body. “I don’t think so, Hayden. Where does it hurt?”

I shook my head, which made him squeeze me more tightly to his chest.

“I mean, when I broke my leg before. I broke it in four places. It bled a lot. I didn’t walk for a year.” I said all this in one gasp, rushing through so I didn’t pass out again just from thinking about the way my leg had looked when I’d hit the rocks. I hadn’t felt anything at first. I was scared I was paralyzed. When the pain hit me a few seconds later, I was actually relieved. And then, not. I’d never felt pain like that, or seen that much blood.

“Hey, don’t cry.” He sounded horrified. I couldn’t see him anymore through the tears, and I was glad.

“Is she crying?” Gavin called from behind us. “Let me see.”

“Just go,” I sobbed to Nick. “Get me out of here.”

“Gavin, be a little more sensitive,” Nick grumbled. “Jesus.”

“You’re telling me to be sensitive?” Gavin called, and then Chloe was scolding him. The snow was heavier now. The clumps of snowflakes were so big that they squeaked as they hit the ground, like rubber-soled shoes on a gym floor. I hated snow like this, even though it would mean wicked boarding in a few days. Snow like this reminded me of a Laura Ingalls Wilder book I’d read when I was little, about plucky Laura stranded in the Western wilderness when the locusts descended, a cloud of millions of locusts stripping the crops clean in a manner of hours. Nothing had filled the air like this in Tennessee.

“You’re shaking,” Nick said gently. “Are you cold?” He hugged me closer to his warm skin.

“Is she going into shock?” Davis suggested.

“No,” I said, “I just … I know we’re headed to the gondola.” In answer, the groans of metal cable against metal gear reached me from across the slope. “I don’t ride the gondola.” I tried to stop shuddering.

“It’s the best way to get you down the hill. You’ll have to walk, too, or they’ll call the ski patrol.” Nick eased me down from his arms, and I stood against him as he buttoned his shirt and zipped his coat. “Okay. Lean on me. Hide that bloody T-shirt and move your hair over your ear.”

As we hiked across the snow to the gondola station ahead, I stuffed the Poseur shirt into my pocket, then reached up and tentatively touched my ear. “Oh my God, what happened to my luck?”

“Your clover earring?” Nick asked. His low voice sounded even deeper with my head on his chest. I caught a little chill at the nearness of him, shiver upon shiver.

“It got pulled out of your earlobe, Hayden,” Chloe offered. “That’s why you’re bleeding.” As we continued to walk, I felt Nick move. I didn’t have to look. I knew he moved his hand across his neck, telling Chloe to shut up.

Good idea. A new wave of dizziness hit me. I wasn’t sure anymore whether it was the thought of blood or the fear of heights. Either way, I was going to pass out again, here in front of the gondola station for the park officials to see. “I lost my luck,” I murmured, waiting with Nick for the next gondola, watching the huge cable slide through the huge gears, listening to the shriek of the machine. “My dad gave me that luck.”

“You can make your own luck,” Josh called from behind us in line.

“Right!” I exclaimed with new purpose. I needed to get my mind off my phobias and act like a halfway sane person on the gondola. The gondola car slung around the curve of the station and paused just long enough for all of us to pile on. I had my eyes closed and let Nick guide me, but I did step on and slide beside him onto the plastic bench. Like we were a couple.

sick

sick

(sik) adj. 1. good 2. cool 3. gnarly 4. Hayden

The nurse knocked softly on the door of the examining room and wheeled in a shiny silver tray displaying neatly arranged instruments of torture. She handed me a paper cup of water and then a smaller paper cup, shaking it to rattle the pill inside. “Mmmmmm, guess what I okayed with your mother? It’s to calm you down. Take that, then stare at this tray, and call to me when stitches seem like a good idea.” She bustled out. I was left staring at the smiling photos of other patients on the bulletin board across the room. Clearly they did not need stitches.

Sometimes I was glad my doctor and his staff had a sense of humor. This was one of the times when I was not. Still, I took the pill. Anything was better than yo-yo fainting and waking up to a new humiliation. And after five minutes, or perhaps five hours, I realized I was counting the smiling faces of patients on the bulletin board for the three hundredth time. “Nurse!”

Nick grinned at me from across the wide cab of his SUV, then glanced back at the snowy road, then smiled over at me again. He looked so handsome and mature as the glow of streetlights passed over him and faded.

He said, “You’re loaded.”

I remembered being carried into Liz’s den. If I hadn’t talked to my mom on the phone pre-pill and agreed to spend the night with Liz so her mom could watch me, I might not have known where I was. It occurred to me that I should be embarrassed, sleeping in a room full of awake boys. But I wasn’t embarrassed, and that was delicious. To hell with teen angst. I went back to sleep.

Then I heard gunshots. An action movie was playing on Liz’s TV. I recognized Will Smith’s voice. Funny, I must have associated the sound of Will Smith with the smell and sensation of Nick. I could have sworn Nick was with me, just as in seventh grade when we’d snuggled together during that fateful romantic-comedy movie. I inhaled him, sighed happily, and sank back into wistful dreams of him.