The Ex Games (22 page)

“And then, one day when I’d made it out of the wheelchair and onto crutches, I
gimped into the room and caught them imitating me. I didn’t see enough of it that I recognized myself, but I could tell from everyone else’s stricken expressions that they thought I had. It was so foreign. I used to be in charge of things, like Chloe. I was president of the fifth grade class. And I used to make good grades like Chloe and Liz. Gosh, it’s hard to think back that far. Fifth grade math must have been a lot easier than eleventh grade math.”

“You think?” Nick’s words were dry, but his tone was gentle.

“I had never been that girl people made fun of. I didn’t want to be that girl. I am not that girl.”

He watched me, wishing he had never asked this question, wondering what possessed him to break up with somebody easy like Fiona.

But no—with tentative fingers, he brushed a strand of my hair away from my forehead.

And for just a moment, I really wasn’t that girl. I had never been that girl. I was that cool teenager again, who moved to a new town and found a new boyfriend. The girl who started over.

I sniffled. “By the time we moved here, I was walking without a limp. People had no idea. I was only the new girl, the red-haired girl, the girl who Nick Krieger made a fool of.”

If Nick hadn’t been holding my hand, I would have slapped it over my mouth. This
was
what I thought, but it’s not what I’d intended to share with Nick right then.

His eyes widened in shock. Sorrow moved across his face, and then worry. “I wanted to tell you, Hayden. Yes, I had a bet with Gavin in seventh grade, and you wandered into it. But I really liked you. I wished Liz had never told you about the bet, and we could have stayed together.”

“Why didn’t you come clean with me when you figured out you liked me?”

He sighed, a short, disdainful puff through his nose. “I was thirteen.”

I wasn’t buying it. “You had a bet. You couldn’t lose a bet. If you have a choice between me and winning, you’ll choose winning every time. It’s still true.”

The worried expression on his face morphed into anger. He let go of my hand and sat up, his chest heavier on mine just before his weight lifted from me completely.
“You are
not
going to put this on me,” he barked.

“I’m not trying to put anything on you.” I backed across the seat and scooted up to sit against the door.

“You can blame me or your fall or whatever you want for not being able to go off that jump. But the bottom line is, some people are competitors and some people aren’t. There’s no way you’re suddenly going to decide at age seventeen to become a competitor. You don’t have it in you. You’re just scared.”

I would have been mad at Nick for saying this to me at any time. But right now, after I’d spent the night fainting and I desperately needed comfort, I was downright bitter. “Me!” I lashed out. “You’re one to talk. You’re scared to tell your father that you made a mistake, agreeing to this challenge with me.
You’re
the coward.” I opened the door to a swirl of frigid air, remembered I was still wearing Nick’s parka, and struggled out of it.

“That’s bullshit.” He grabbed the back of the parka, but I got the distinct impression he was not trying to be a gentleman by helping me out of it. He just wanted his
parka back. “When you feel cornered, you’ll just fling whatever you’ve got at people, and you don’t care who gets hurt with what.”

“I am not scared.” I slid down from the truck seat into Liz’s stepdad’s galoshes, then turned to face Nick one last time. “I am not scared of boarding
or
you, and I will prove it to you tomorrow. If you think I’m going easy on you in the comp just because you have a debilitating injury from yesterday—”

“That’s what you think,” he snarked. “I’ve been doing yoga.”

“—you have another think coming. You will buy me those Poseur tickets. And I’m not even taking you. You will hand the tickets over to me, and I’ll take someone else.”

“Who? Your little brother’s friends?”

“No, Everett Walsh.” I closed the door softly behind me so as not to alarm sleeping adults, because I was that mature.

Even through the door and the rolled up window, I could clearly hear every filthy word Nick uttered, ending with, “Everett [cuss word] Walsh.”

I opened the passenger door. “Ask not for whom the fire-crotch burns; it burns for thee!”

“Shut up,” Nick said. “I’m waiting for
you to go in the house.”

“Fine.” I slammed his door, forgetting all about courtesy to sleeping adults this time. But as I hiked back through the yard to Liz’s front porch, I was so proud of myself for not crying. I never shed a tear.

Not until I opened the front door and heard his truck ease away. Just as he’d promised, he’d idled there all that time, watching me, waiting to make sure I got inside the house okay. Like a gentleman.

I closed the door softly, turned the deadbolt, and managed to slip out of the galoshes and line them up against the wall as I’d found them. Only then, with everything else in order, did the tears spill out of me. I wanted to scream, but there was no way I’d startle everyone in the house like that. Holding the sobs inside hurt my ribs. I collapsed on the floor, hugging my knees, rocking back and forth on the floor. I felt empty, lost, and totally alone in the dark house.

I wished I could start over in a new town, with new friends. I would do everything right this time.

No, wait. That’s exactly the chance I’d had four years ago, and now I’d blown it.

Besides, just thinking about leaving Liz and Chloe and Nick behind, I missed them already.

I was exhausted, even after so many hours of fainting and drug-induced sleep. My first instinct was to lie back on the floor where I sat. But that might alarm Liz’s mom when she woke up to make breakfast. She would trip over me like I was Doofus. The obvious choice was the den sofa, which I could see from my seat on the floor. But Nick’s scent would linger there. Thoughts of him touching me might have lulled me to sleep earlier this evening. They would keep me wide awake now.

In the end I dragged myself down the hall and up the stairs to Liz’s room. Chloe snored softly in one twin bed. Liz was sprawled across the other. Lifting Liz’s covers, I tried to coax her over so I could slide in next to her. With gentle prodding, she wouldn’t budge. It was exactly like the last time I’d had a nightmare about falling and had wandered down to get in bed with my mother. Liz finally groaned and rolled over. I lay down beside her, relaxed into her warmth, and felt comforted just lying next to her, even if she didn’t know I was there.

She rolled back over and spooned against me, fitting her front to my back. She draped her arm across me and hugged. “You okay?” she whispered dreamily.

I nodded. “I thought Nick and I were going to make out.”

“Surprise.”

“And then we had a fight. If you and Chloe could throw us together, I would really appreciate it, because I don’t know how to fix this anymore.”

“Tell us about it in the morning.”

I nodded again, then felt myself sobbing, shaking against Liz. She held me more tightly as I cried myself to sleep.

steeze

(st
z)
n
.
1
. style and ease
2
. you’ve either got it or you don’t

After a big breakfast at Liz’s house and more bitching with her and Chloe about what pigs boys could be, I rode the bus home to change into clean boarding clothes. I walked into the mud room—tripped over Doofus—and found Josh stepping into his boarding boots. “Hey!” I greeted him cheerfully. “Thanks for coming to my rescue yesterday, and for calling me fat.”

“You’re going to be sorry you were snide to me when you see what I’ve got for you.”
He lifted the folded garment next to him and shook it out.

The
BOY TOY
jeans!

“What do you mean?” I exclaimed. “They’re mine
forever
?”

“Yes. They’re to help you make your own luck. The catch is, if you want them forever, you have to wear them to the comp today.”

“But I’ll get soaked!” I wailed.

“Don’t fall.”

I took the jeans from him and hugged them close. “Thank you, Josh. This means so much to me. I know you’ve kidded about me going pro and taking you with me, but are you actually
for
me in this comp? I figured you’d have a bet with Gavin’s sister that I’d lose.”

He shook his head. “I went ahead and bought her and me both a ticket. Might as well. That’s one bet I know I’d lose.”

“Aww, Josh, that’s so awesome of you!” I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him hard.

He didn’t hug me back. He stiffened and said, “Ew, ew, ew.”

I let him go and stepped back to look him in the eye.

“Ew,” he said again. But one corner of his mouth crooked upward in a smile.

It was nice to have at least one boy behind me.

“Hayden O’Malley!”

I looked up from the sink and peered around the women’s bathroom in the ski lodge. Chicks stood inside and outside stalls, in various states of undress. Waterproof layers were hard to get in and out of, and snowboarders definitely were not peeless goddesses. Finally I saw the girl who had called my name. She stood in the doorway, long blond hair twisted into hippie twirls and braids.

“Daisy Delaney!” I hollered.

“I’d recognize you anywhere,” she yelled over the chatter in the bathroom. “They’re playing your steeziness over and over on local TV! Girl, you’re famous!” She crossed the room and leaned forward to hug me by way of introduction.

We talked for a few minutes about the local competition I’d won and the tricks I’d landed. Then she said, “After your comp is over, my boyfriend and I are shredding the back bowls. Want to hang? We can get a
head start on your lessons next week, see where you are. I can give you some pointers.” She chuckled. “Maybe
you
can give
me
some pointers.”

“The back bowls? Sure!” I felt confident that she wouldn’t find out what a chicken I was, because after the comp, if I hadn’t gone off the jump, I would be dead of shame. And if I
had
gone off the jump, I would be just plain dead.

“Your friend Chloe told me this comp is with your ex,” she said. “What’s
that
about? Are you hooking up again or what?”

“Not anymore,” I said wistfully. “Can I ask you something? This whole argument started because he said I couldn’t beat an average boy snowboarder. Does it bother you that your boyfriend has landed a 1260 in competition and you haven’t?”

“So this is a girl-power thing?” Daisy mused.

“It’s a lot more complicated than that, but that’s how it started.”

She shrugged as best she could in her puffy outerwear. “I might land a 1080. I might not. But I’m sure not going to give up boarding just because the odds are stacked against me to be the best boarder
ever. I mean, there are short people who play professional basketball.”

“True.”

“And on a personal level, my boyfriend and I love each other enough, and we have enough respect for each other, that we’re bigger than that.”

I laughed. “Nick and I are not bigger than that. We are very, very small.”

Daisy nodded. “And then, of course, there’s the fact that I’m prettier than my boyfriend. He may fly higher, but I look better doing it.” She turned around backward. “I mean, even in these snow pants, check out my ass.”

We both cackled, and everyone in the bathroom stared at us. I decided right then that Daisy was going to be fun to hang out with, and I could learn a lot from her.

When I’d envisioned the comp with Nick, I’d pictured exactly this strong sunshine and bright blue sky. Beyond that, my predictions were all wrong. I’d thought my friends and Nick’s friends would be waiting for us at the bottom of Main Street. I hadn’t imagined a crowd of several hundred people, as many as had watched the local competition
last Tuesday. They rang bells for Nick and me because they couldn’t clap in their mittens, cheering for us as we boarded over to the ski lift.

I also hadn’t realized I’d have to ride up on the lift with Nick, just the two of us. But it was the last Saturday of winter break. The slopes were crowded. Nobody got to ride a lift alone. And he was right behind me in line. Nick and me riding up together right then was like George W. Bush and Barack Obama riding to Obama’s inauguration in the same limo. Relaxed!

We didn’t say a word to each other the whole time we shuffled through the long line in the shed. Finally it was our turn. We slid into position in the path of the chair. It swept us off our feet and up into the air, and Nick pulled the guard bar down across our laps.

After the voices echoing in the shed, the cold air around us was silent, except for the ski-lift cable clanking overhead and the
swish
of skiers dodging moguls below us.

I looked up at Nick beside me. He had his goggles down already. I couldn’t see his eyes behind those damn reflective lenses.

I took in a sharp breath of freezing air.
“I’m not saying this because I’m scared, or because I want to get out of anything. But I want you to know that I’m sorry for what happened between us last night. We’ve said a lot of ugly things to each other in the past week, and we didn’t mean most of them.” I raised my voice as we neared a pole supporting the lift, and the cable clanked louder and louder through the pulleys. “At least,
I
didn’t. If we can just get past all this, I think we’re both bigger than that.”