Playing Hurt

Chelsea

air pass





The entire senior class is packed into Hill Toppers’ Pizza, which, in Fair Grove, is pretty much the only place to celebrate commencement. Like every single year on graduation night, one of the pretty corn-fed girls in camisoles and tight jeans (sitting on the laps of the more-than-willing boys) will turn up pregnant. One of the football players who passes a bottle of Wild Turkey under their table and spikes their Cokes will be rushed to a Springfield hospital to get his stomach pumped. And five or so kids from the honor roll, who were never so much as tardy to a single class, will find themselves suddenly aching for a splash of wildness and decide to take a cue from the name of the town’s only pizzeria; they will, in fact, go hilltopping after midnight, cars racing eighty miles an hour down some rolling back road.

We’re at a table in the back, me and Gabe and the team, orange smears of grease making abstract art of our empty plates. Everyone has gotten so rowdy at this point that the radio might as well be dead. And Hank, the sweaty-faced owner of the pizzeria, keeps glancing up from the pale circles of dough he smears with blood-red sauce, anxious about what all this screaming and toasting and carrying on will mean for him.

“Better not be a bottle out there,” he shouts, wiping his wet forehead with the back of a hand. Which makes laughter roar out with the force and volume of a V-8 engine revving to life.

At my table, Theresa and Megan, our starting point guard and power forward, are acting out a scene from last season. Lily, our small forward, whose skinny frame has always made her look like a tetherball pole no matter how many all-you-can-eat rib dinners she’s consumed, joins in, shooting an imaginary basketball the same way Brandon plays air bass to his favorite songs on the radio. Hannah, our center, who’s built like a highway billboard, launches into belly laughter so fierce her chestnut hair starts to work loose from its ponytail.

While the rest of the team rehashes all the highlights of the season, my eyes zip across the newspaper articles pasted on the Hill Toppers’ walls. I stop when I find the picture of me, number twenty-three, fists pumping the air victoriously after a game back in the spring of my junior year. As I stare at the bold black print of the title that hangs above my picture (FINAL FOUR, HERE WE COME!), I swear I can feel my Tin Man metal plate and screws scraping against my hipbone.

The team could have gone this year, too, without me. But for all their laughing and joyous recapping tonight, we all know it was the worst season in eighteen years of FGH Lady Eagles basketball. And it didn’t matter how many pep talks Tindell barked out in the locker room; the team ran onto the court defeated. Without their star player, they visualized losses rather than wins. They weren’t even present during the last game of the season; Lily pulled a history study sheet out of her gym bag, and Hannah put an iPod bud in one ear. Theresa and Megan wore glassy, distant looks—the kind of expression that usually fills classrooms during long lectures on osmosis.

As I stare at the walls, I realize that my picture is actually starting to yellow a little around the edges.

On the other side of the pizzeria, Bobby Wilcox, yearbook editor and honor roll president, stands up, swaying on his feet. His face turns about as green as the peppers on Hank’s pies as he raises his cup like he’s about to toast the entire class. But before he can get out a single word, his eyes go all doorknob and he turns to the side, gagging and puking up about six slices of pepperoni.

The cheerleading squad screams in disgust. Three of them actually climb up onto their chairs, as if Bobby’s vomit has feet and can scurry across the floor and climb their bare legs.

What I notice—what makes me grimace—is the cup. Bobby’s dropped his cup, and it’s rolled across the floor. The brown bubbly puddle, polka-dotted with crushed ice, makes my skin squirm far more than the sight of his half-digested dinner does. I stare at it, keeping watch, thinking that maybe Hank should get some yellow crime scene tape, mark off the area. After all, anyone who was at my last game should know that spilled soda is just as dangerous as knives or bullets or a car with no brakes.

Staring at the puddle, my head pulses with the memory of the ref’s frantic whistle. I hear, once again, the shocked gasp that rose from the crowd. And I remember my own terrified shriek, which overwhelmed the scream of the whistle and the collective groan of the fans; my screech was so violent it practically diced up my throat like a Ginsu knife.

“That puke better not smell like booze, Wilcox,” Hank yells, just like he does every year, smashing a different last name onto the end of the sentence. He stomps out from the kitchen, his face flushed and dripping with sweat.

The football team moans and points; a chorus of I didn’t bring a bottle, not me, no way, climbs into the air; chairs scrape; the bell on the entrance starts jingling. The Wild Turkey is carried out tucked under a football player’s enormous biceps. My own table is emptying, too, as Gabe nudges me, sticks his nose against my ear. “Come on,” he murmurs, his breath warming my neck. “Let’s go.”

We step outside, stop in a clump just beyond the enormous slice of pepperoni painted on the plate glass window. The front door of Hill Toppers’ does an excellent imitation of a playground swing, flying open and shut again in rhythmic bursts. We—the former Lady Eagles—linger on the sidewalk, awkwardly toeing pebbles with our sandals, as they—the former Fair Grove High seniors—start piling into the cars lining the curb, ready for the hilltopping and stomach-pumping and baby-making portions of the night to officially begin.

We stare at each other, knowing there’s no way to change a scoreboard after the final buzzer. So we finally start exchanging hugs, plastering on smiles and pretending to be overjoyed that high school is over. Pretending we all don’t wish we could hit some magical rewind button and start again.

Especially me. Only I’d need to go back a little farther than the team; I’d start with those driveway practice sessions, those daily runs, the pounding, the stress, the overuse. Because Gabe and I are still going to college together, as we’d planned since the start of our senior year—now, though, it’s nowhere exotic. Just Missouri State University in Springfield, a mere fifteen miles from my front door, just like Gabe’s older brother and three-fourths of the college-bound Fair Grove High seniors, Gabe to become a journalist, as he’d always planned, and me to … what?

A scream peals through the night, like the squeal of a balloon with a leak. A few jokesters are already crammed into the cab of a pickup. Sean Greyson, pitcher for our baseball team and photographer for the Fair Grove Bulletin, who’d tallied every last vote for “Best Smile” and “Class Clown,” who’d shouted, “Gabe, stop drooling over her long enough to just look at the camera” when we’d posed for the “Class Couple” photo last month, has actually pulled his entire torso out of the passenger side window and is waving at me.

“Here! Chelsea! Catch!” he shouts, launching something right at me. Instinctively, I lean forward, open my hands like I’m receiving a pass.

The truck careens down the street, the screams of joyous freedom growing faint as I turn the object over in my hands. A box of Trojans.

My face flames as the team starts to back away, down the street, shouting ridiculous woo-hoos and ooh-la-las. I want to yell at them to stop, to come back, because this isn’t how I want to say good-bye, not like this, me standing there like a moron, so mortified I probably look like exactly what I am: a virgin.

The word itself scrapes me raw. Virgin. It sounds so babyish, so pathetic and old-fashioned. My head fills with the image of a grainy black-and-white video from the 1950s, a bunch of girls in crinolines and bobby socks sitting around listening to How to Protect Your Chastity.

“Better leave you two alone,” Theresa teases, while Megan and Hannah and Lily chime in with “I’d wish you good luck, but you don’t need it” and “We know when we’re not wanted.”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes. They—the team, already a they—become the back pockets of four pairs of denim capris, four pairs of flip-flops smacking against heels, four swishing ponytails.

The condoms in my hand are getting screams and yeahs and a’rights from the seniors on the street. So I shove the box in my purse, tug at my own ponytail.

Gabe slips his hand into mine. His skin is cool against the fire of my embarrassment, sort of like a bed sheet you slide your body onto in the midst of a summer heat wave.

“Don’t let them get to you,” he murmurs in my ear. “If you hadn’t been hurt, you’d have had the wildest locker room stories of all.”

The tough athlete in me bristles—as it always does, even though I should be used to this by now, six months after Gabe officially took the job of knight in shining armor. The old me would have punched Gabe in the face for trying to take care of me; I can take care of myself, she would have said. But Gabe winks, and the new me allows my heart to melt into gooey caramel. He knows—he always knows, she thinks. One look at my face and he can see what’s racing through my head; we don’t have to practically blah, blah, blah each other to slow and painful death with some horrific and soul-wrenching conversation. That’s a good thing, right?

Under the yellow haze of streetlights, we walk quietly down Old Mill Road, passing the post office and heading for the entrance of White Sugar, my family’s bakery. A giant Congrats, Fair Grove Seniors! sign hangs across the plate glass, obscuring part of the view of the store’s interior. I’ve logged so many hours inside, though, that the darkness and the sign don’t keep me from seeing the cream puffs in the display case, the cheesecake under glass—the one with Yay, Gabe! written in cherry swirls across the top. I can see, too, the metal backs of the stools that line the counter and flank the small table in the corner. The wall behind the cash register, where a framed copy of USA WEEKEND Magazine still hangs, the one with my mug on the cover. The cracked “$” button on the cash register that I push every weekend while customers smile at me, politely, but not with admiration. Not anymore. Just smile like they’re all telling me, Egg timer went off on that fifteen minutes. That fame a’ yours is over.

I jingle my keys out of my pocket, slam them into the door. When we step inside, the place still smells faintly like the tantalizing mixture of icing and fresh bread.

I flick half the lights on, in order to give the counter area a soft glow while the area closest to the entrance stays as dark as a shut-tight closet (don’t want to give anyone the idea that we’re open). But I’ve barely lifted my hand from the switch when a gasp rattles its way out of my throat.

“Gabe,” I whisper, my fingers flying to my face as I survey the store, “this was supposed to be a graduation gift for you.” Instead, Gabe obviously used his Mrs. Keyes Seal of Approval to gain access to the bakery hours before we’d tossed our mortar boards into the sky. Bouquets of tulips (my favorite flower) pop from the counter. Iridescent streamers cascade from the ceiling, along with glow-in-the-dark stars on glitter-infused string. A stool that’s been pulled out into the center of the floor cradles my gift, which is wrapped in white tissue and tied with a silver ribbon that shines like a chrome bumper.

“It just wouldn’t be like me if I didn’t outdo you in the gift department, would it?” he asks, locking the door behind us.

Of course it wouldn’t. The birthday poetry in my dresser memento box, the framed ticket stub from our first movie (given to me last Valentine’s Day), and the anniversary, sepia-toned photo of our two hands intertwined proves that Gabe Ross definitely outshines his girlfriend in the romance department.

“Just wait until your birthday,” I say, wagging a finger at him.

“Think you can take me?” he asks, then snares my gift box from the stool before I can start shredding the white tissue. “Uh-ah,” he says. “Not yet. This takes a certain … unveiling.”

I put on a fake pout as I slip behind the front counter. “Your graduation gift, kind sir,” I say, hoisting the heavy glass lid off Gabe’s cheesecake. “Made by yours truly. I only have to work seventy-three-thousand indentured servant hours to make up for all the cream cheese I blew on my first attempts. No crummy cracked top for you.”

Gabe chuckles as he folds his arms across the counter. Leans in to get a good look at my—okay, slightly slanted—creation. “Forget the fork. I’ll eat it with a spatula.”

He’s still leaning over the counter when he raises his grass-green eyes. The way he looks at me, it’s like his stare has fingers—it pokes its way into my eyes, then my head, and starts rifling around in the contents of my soul. It’s way too intense, but I can’t quit staring at him. I lean to meet him halfway across the counter; his lips barely graze my own. He pulls back slightly, still close enough for his breath to warm my cheek, but his mouth just half an inch out of reach.

“Tease,” I snap.

I start the espresso machine up as he slides onto a stool. Every once in a while, a half-drunken senior’s shout filters into the shop. But this is life, as it’s been for nearly a year—me and Gabe closed in, huddled together, while the rest of the world passes by, their shouts muffled, distant. This is life as it has been ever since I peeled open my post-surgery eyes to see Gabe at my bedside, his face clear while the rest of the room looked blurry. This is life, as it’s been since I’d first returned to school after the accident, the rest of our classmates speeding by us in the hallways while Gabe carried my books and held my hand and murmured as I plodded along, babying my hip, Just take your time.

Now, though, in the relative quiet, all I can think of is that box in my purse, the one with the stupid warrior on the cover. And the blinds on the front window, which could easily twist shut. And knocking the tulips to the floor while Gabe and I stretch out on the counter, and running my fingers through Gabe’s curls and ripping his shirt right in two …

“I’m going to miss you when you’re in Minnesota,” he mumbles, making me jump high enough to practically take flight.

I glance over my shoulder. He’s picked up one of the hundred or so Lake of the Woods brochures Mom pummeled me with last Friday, after I’d taken my very last Fair Grove High final exam. “Up there almost to Canada,” I say, mimicking Mom’s high-pitched, breathless excitement. “An outdoor adventure before you head off to college!”

“You have to promise me you’ll be careful up there,” Gabe says. “I mean, hiking, rafting …” He keeps talking, flipping through the slick pages of the brochure. But all I can think about is the blond hair down his forearms, the tan on the back of his neck, the way it would feel if he pole-vaulted over this stupid counter, grabbed me, and backed me into the kitchen. What it would be like if, blinded by sheer passion, we tumbled in a whirl against the shelves, knocking confectioner’s sugar all over our naked bodies, our mouths leaving sweet, sticky trails behind as we kissed each other’s …

“Chelse.”

This time, when I jump and turn toward Gabe, he’s got his arms crossed over his chest and his green eyes look like combination locks—closed up tight. “No,” is all he says.

“No, what?”

“No, not tonight. Not now. Not in your parents’ place. Not rushed through and not on the night before you leave for your summer vacation. No.”

I frown, shake my head like he hasn’t just gotten all ESP on me, reading my mind like that.

“Don’t deny it. You keep staring at your purse, where you tossed those condoms,” he says, grinning. “Look,” he goes on, standing up from his stool and slipping behind the counter. “The guys around here, it’s terrible to say it, but a lot of them go through girls like Kleenex—it doesn’t matter that you’ve used one, because another will just pop up in its place. That’s not us. Even without your accident, that wouldn’t be us. We’ve been together a long time now,” Gabe goes on. “And yes, I want you. You know I do. But I didn’t want to make love to you for the first time on somebody else’s schedule. You know that, right?”

My insides are knotted tighter than a chain net on a basketball hoop. Make love to you? The phrase makes me squeamish. Does it have to be so formal? And why is Gabe aiming for perfection now? As everyone in the entire gossipy senior class probably knows, he already lost his virginity—the summer before we met, at a journalism camp.

“I mean, I didn’t say anything about it on prom night because sex at prom is a real cliché, right?”

“The prom,” I sigh. Prom had been a night of pumpkin chariots, slow dancing in a strapless, ocean-blue Vera Wang, feeling glitzy and perfect next to Gabe, until we were in his ’Stang and we were on the highway, driving and not sure where to, just the two of us, no need for parties, and we could have owned the entirety of the world that night, the top down, wind destroying my up-do, but who cared, because there had never been anyone as free, all the way to Kimberling City, a good seventy miles from home, to stand at the edge of Table Rock Lake while the sun dyed the water the same color as orange childhood lollipops, and Gabe started tracing a pattern on my bare shoulders. Know what it is? he’d asked. The infinity symbol. Just like us …

“How’s the Carlyle sound?” he whispers now, into my ear.

“The Carlyle,” I repeat, as Gabe wraps his arms around my waist.

“I was going to surprise you when you got back from Minnesota. But I figure, it’ll give you something to look forward to … ”

“The Carlyle,” I say again, like these are suddenly the only two words I know in the entirety of the English language.

“I’ve already put a deposit down on a room. A night of our own, on our own time.”

My head becomes a carousel on warp speed. “Swankiest hotel around,” I mumble. “Guess—that’s—the perks of snagging a summer job at a prestigious law firm in Springfield.”

“I’m the grunt under the paralegal, Chelse. That’s all. No capital murder cases this year. But it beats flipping burgers. Besides,” Gabe goes on, a mischievous glint sparkling in his eye. “I’ll spend whatever I want on what should be one of the most important nights of your life. Of our lives.”

I roll my eyes at him, wordlessly reminding him that the gossip about FGH’s gorgeous sports editor and a mystery journalist from a rival school had spread through the girls’ locker room long before he’d started dogging me in the hallways, flirting shamelessly with me.

Gabe shakes his head insistently, whispers, “I’ve never been with somebody I love. And you deserve much more than the Carlyle, Chelse. I’d fly you to Paris if I could.”

The espresso I’ve made for Gabe has drizzled down from the coffeemaker into a tiny white cup. But we just stand there, arms wrapped around each other’s waists. I can feel Gabe’s pulse racing through every inch of his skin, even through his shirt. I know I ought to do something—say something—utterly romantic. But I’m no poet. I’m an ex-ball player with zero experience in the bedroom. And I’m too tall even to put my head on Gabe’s chest.

Suddenly, now that it’s upon me, now that it’s going to be real, my fantasy’s taking a detour. I see Gabe and me in some lush bedroom, tangled in the heat of passion … but when Gabe puts the weight of his beautiful body on top of mine, the room fills with the sound of metal crunching. What is that? Gabe asks, lifting himself off me. But it’s too late—the metal plate in my hip (every time I think of it, I always picture the rusted metal roofing that tops outbuildings in and near Fair Grove) has crunched in on itself, and my leg is stuck, bent so that my knee is practically up in my ear. Stop laughing, I’m screaming, but Gabe can’t quit …

“Come with me,” Gabe says, erasing my disturbing daydream. “Just for a minute. The cake’ll wait. I want to give you your graduation gift.”

I start to reach for the white box, but he swats my fingers away.

“Don’t need that,” he says, grinning and dragging me toward the door. Confusion wrinkles my face.

I get the keys back out of my pocket, make sure White Sugar’s locked up tight while we’re gone—not that it really matters in Fair Grove, home of Lady Eagles and honest souls. “Should I have turned the espresso machine off?” I ask.

Weekend nights, Gabe’s vintage Mustang can always be found just beyond the White Sugar entrance, at the ready in case we decide to drive to nearby Springfield for a movie or a dinner that’s more than just a slice of pepperoni. So I assume that’s where we’re headed now—to Springfield—as I hurry over to his car. I’m careful to keep my legs, greasy with rose-scented lotion, a good three feet from the car’s grill; I’ve learned that if there’s one thing you never do to Gabe Ross, it’s lean against his ’65 ’Stang. Or fog up the glass with your breath. Or toss a gum wrapper on the floorboards. Or put your shoes on the leather seats. Or, for that matter, try to tease him that he’s just a little bit guard-at-the-museum uptight about his car.

“We’re not driving anywhere. Won’t be gone that long,” Gabe says, holding his hand out.

Instead of taking it, I let my eyes rove toward the giant antique clock that hangs just below one of the street lights. At a quarter past nine, the breath of the humid Missouri night swirls warm over my bare arms. Forget frying eggs—at this rate, by the time August shows up, we’ll be able to bake White Sugar’s chocolate chip cookies on the pavement.

“It’s almost tomorrow,” I say, pointing at the clock. “The day I leave for Minnesota.”

“We’ve still got lots of time,” Gabe insists, wiggling his fingers at me.

I slide my hand into his cool grip and we walk toward the ancient mill that serves, even now, as the cornerstone for the entire town. Sure, mill business is as dead as the dried flowers the craftier women in town use for handmade door wreaths. But the historic landmark’s still the prime location for Fourth of July picnics, ice cream socials, heritage festivals brimming with bluegrass music.

We make our way through the grass while a scattering of early summer fireflies dance over the blades. Bittersweet vines are already curling themselves around the base of trees, and when we get close enough, I’m sure we’ll see its purple flowers popping up around the corners of the mill. Halfway across the field, though, Gabe stops and points to the black sky. I look up.

“The Chelsea Keyes Star,” he says. “I bought it from the International Star Registry and named it after you. All the papers are wrapped up in that box at White Sugar, but I don’t need a map to find it. I’d know it anywhere. Sparkles brighter than any other star in the sky. Just like you.”

I don’t say anything, but the fact is, his gift instantly starts rubbing me like sandpaper. And I’m not even sure why—isn’t this just a romantic Gabe Ross gesture?

“You bought me—a star,” I mumble. “Thank—thank you.” I hope that somehow, in his ears, this doesn’t sound quite like the awkward gratitude you give your clueless great aunt for the gym sneakers she’s bought you, complete with Velcro—Velcro—of all the ridiculously awful things.

“It’s kind of like how the sailors used to use the stars as a map. Or a compass, right?” Gabe goes on. “Only way I could think of to show you that I think the heart is a compass, and that my heart always leads me right to you.”

I blink away the tingles that spring to my eyes. You’re an ass, Chelsea, I think. An ass. Gabe’s not belittling you, for God’s sake.

“It’s beautiful,” I say, staring up at the sky. But the words sound kind of hollow to me—exactly like the lie they are.

“Listen,” Gabe says, making his voice go husky, “I’m not going to let you have a bite of my graduation cake unless you give me twenty-one kisses. One for every night you’ll be in Minnesota.”

I close my eyes just as our lips meet. I open my mouth, strengthening my lips against his, stretching our kiss from one moment to another, another.

“At this rate,” I say when we finally do come up for air, “it’ll take all night to get to twenty-one.”

“That’s just fine with me,” Gabe whispers.

As Gabe kisses me again, my eye wanders up to the sky. Our kiss cools as I realize that the Chelsea Keyes Star doesn’t look one bit brighter than any other star out tonight.