“Well?” Chloe called from far off. “Is she okay?”

“No, but is she ever?” Nick lifted me. One of his arms cradled my head against the wad of his T-shirt. He hooked his other strong arm under my knees. His chest felt intensely warm against me. I opened my eyes and saw his chest was still bare. He’d put his flannel shirt and parka back on without fastening them.

He seemed good for a few steps. Then he hit a soft patch of snow. His foot sank, and he staggered. Josh trudged forward to help, struggling with three snowboards—his, Nick’s, and mine, I supposed. If Nick fell while carrying me, even if it was due to loose powder, he would blame it on my unwieldiness or my girth. Together with Josh’s joke, I would never, ever live it down.

“Let go,” I said. “I can walk.” At least, that’s what I meant to say, but it came out slurred.

“Shut up.” Nick took a few more steps. Now we were on Main Street, where the snow pack was solid. His strides were more sure.

“We can’t leave the snow all bloody,” I told the underside of his chin, shadowed with stubble. “It will scare the tourists.”

“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.

I woke, but I didn’t want to be awake. I kept my eyes closed and listened for what had changed to wake me. The gunshots and explosions in the movie had grown surprisingly soothing after a while. Now they’d given way to the sweeping theme song as the credits rolled, and soft voices around me.

“Is she still asleep?” Liz asked from somewhere across the room.

Closer by, Gavin answered, “If she wasn’t, there’s no way she could have been quiet this long.” A smack sounded as Chloe slapped him for insulting me.

Nick’s voice was closer still, down at my feet. He was sharing the sofa with me. There must have been nowhere else for him to sit in the room. “I knew she broke her leg before she moved here, but I never realized it was that big a deal.”

Oh, no, I really had spilled all that to him while woozy! Stupendous. Luckily, I was lying on my side with my face to the back of the sofa, so I wouldn’t give myself away with fluttering eyelashes or a grimace. Chloe and Liz confirmed and cooed, and I felt myself drifting off again.

Then something moved on my ankle. I nearly jumped out of my skin. And still another wave of adrenaline rushed through me as I realized what was happening. Nick wasn’t just sharing the sofa with me because there was nowhere else to sit in Liz’s den. My feet were in his lap. His hand was around my ankle. He was rubbing my ankle, his fingertips tracing slow circles around my ankle bone.

Technically, he wasn’t even touching me, unless you counted the pressure of his fingers through my sock. It was ridiculous for me to go tense under his hand, hardly daring to breathe, waiting for the next stroke of his fingers. Except that this meant something. I doubted anyone could see Nick touching me from across the darkened room. Nick wasn’t doing this for his friends, showing them how he could tease me to get the upper hand with me. He wasn’t even doing this for me. He thought I was asleep. He was doing it for himself. He was stroking me, comforting me, putting a protective hand on me, because he wanted to. Even after he’d said he was finished with me.

The conversation moved on to Will Smith and the movie. The TV switched from teen drama to basketball and back as Chloe and Gavin snatched the remote away from each other. I tried to relax a bit and enjoy Nick’s hand on my ankle while I had it, because I might not ever experience this strangely intense connection with him again. But I resigned myself to the torture of remaining wide awake and perfectly still for a few more hours until everyone went home.

I started awake, jerking upright this time. The shadowy room was empty. They must have turned off the satellite box but not the TV, and after a few minutes of silence it had burst into static and had woken me. I relaxed against the pillows on the sofa, but the static wouldn’t let me ease back to sleep. It was like my brain, loud and scrambled and panicky.

I peeled myself from the sofa, switched off the TV, and padded through the silent house to the hall bathroom. I squeezed my eyes shut and flicked on the light. Then I opened my eyes slowly to protect them from the glare, but also because I dreaded seeing what I had looked like to Nick while he lugged me around all evening. I couldn’t avoid the mirror right in front of me.

My face was pale, my eyes smudged with dark circles underneath, as if I’d spent the last few hours fainting and then sleeping fitfully. Go figure. My normally straight hair had been so teased by hats and goggles and pillows and Nick that it had grown big and frizzy. And my ear—I pushed back my hair to examine the tiny bandage on my earlobe. This had caused all the trouble? I felt like a fool.

Frowning at myself, I reached up and fingered my other earlobe and the one lucky earring I had left. I wasn’t a fool. Hysterical, yes. Maladjusted, definitely. But not a fool. My broken leg had been a devastating injury. So had my encounter with Nick four years ago. I’d known this, but only now was I realizing just how badly I’d been hurt.

Sighing, I washed my face. I was squeezing toothpaste onto the toothbrush Liz’s mom kept there for me, because I always forgot mine, when I heard voices outside. I stepped over to the window and pushed aside the curtain, then backed up a pace when the cold night air leaking around the windowsill touched my skin.

Nick and Gavin were talking at the end of the driveway—or what I assumed, from the tire tracks, was the driveway under a blanket of fresh snow. Streetlights glinted on Nick’s dark and Gavin’s black hair. Then Gavin got into his car, and Nick hiked through the snow toward his SUV.

“Oh, mo,” I mumbled through toothpaste. I couldn’t let him get away. Not now.

I swished, spat, and ran for the front door, pausing only to shove my feet into galoshes owned by some unknown member of Liz’s family. Her stepdad, I decided as I tried to run down the snowy front steps. The galoshes were so big, it was like wading in a Tennessee river.

I was too late anyway. They were gone. Gavin’s tires spun briefly and his car pulled away, taillights reflecting red and long on the snow. But no—Nick’s SUV still sat idling in the street at the end of the driveway. And as I waded closer, I saw he was in the driver’s seat of the dark cab, slowly, repeatedly banging his head on the steering wheel.

He must not have heard me approach over the hum of the engine. I walked all the way up to the passenger-side window and stood there, watching him, waiting for him to notice me. He would see that I had caught him banging his head on his steering wheel, and this was something I could tease him about and hold over his head for the next few months at school.

But I was getting cold in my foreign galoshes and only two layers of clothes in the freezing night. As Nick kept hitting his head, I realized the two of us weren’t in that place anymore, the one where we made fun of each other and had a fight and left it at that. We’d been driving in circles, having wrecks and backing over each other, but somehow we’d come way past that place in the last week. I knocked on the window.

He stopped with his head halfway to the steering wheel for another whack, and he turned to me with his eyes wide behind his dark hair. Immediately, he slid across the seat and pulled the handle to open the door for me.