The Ex Games

by Jennifer Echols

  I stamped my foot on the stair. “Like what? I want to show off my fire-crotch? What do you care? God! Stop following me.” My hair was down now, and I felt it smack into his chest as I whirled around and flounced down the rest of the stairs, across the lobby, and into the cold night.

  I mean, really cold. The temperature must have dropped twenty degrees since I came off the slopes that afternoon. The formerly slushy snow on the lesser-used sections of the sidewalks had frozen over and now crunched under my boots. I tucked my nose deep into my scarf against a sudden gust of freezing wind. Mile-High Pie was only a few blocks away, but this walk seemed to stretch in front of me forever. Cold and anger were not a good mix.

  “Hayden,” Nick called from behind me.

  Oh, good! Just what this walk needed: a double-shot of ex to go with that cold and anger. Shaking my head, I crossed the icy street.

  “Hayden.” His voice was sharper, angry now, and it echoed against the two-story storefronts closed for the night. I could tell from the direction of his voice that he was crossing the street after me.

  “Don’t you mean Hoyden?” I called over my shoulder.

  Heavy steps cracked behind me, closer and closer. Nick rounded in front of me and stood in my path, his breath puffing white into the black night. “I never called you that.”

  “You call me Hoyden all the time!”

  He frowned at me and said, “Fire-crotch.”

  “Take a number.” I tried to walk around him.

  He caught me by the elbow. “Would you hold up for a minute and listen to me?” His dark eyes focused on me, hardly blinking when the wind gusted in his face. He put on a very convincing act of disbelief and outrage. “I mean, I did not call you a fire-crotch. I was afraid you overheard that in the lunchroom last week. Everett Walsh called you a fire-crotch as you walked by. I told Everett Walsh that he should watch his mouth. Then Everett said, ‘Oh, you’re one to talk, you say stuff like that about Hayden all the time,’ and I said, ‘I would never make a comment about her crotch. No.’ We nearly got into it right there in the lunchroom, but you conveniently missed that part.”

  I certainly had. And I wasn’t buying it. Nick, standing up for me? “Let me get this straight. Your lunchroom speech went a little something like this.” I put my hands out in front of me like I was a Roman orator enunciating for the crowd. “‘I, Nick Krieger, defender of women, would never denounce the crotch. I am above the crotch.’”

  He gaped at me. Other boys might not look so hot while gaping. Nick looked adorable in the soft light of the streetlamps, against a backdrop of small town and snow.

  I put my hands down.

  He watched me silently for a few moments more. “You don’t think very well of me,” he finally said.

  I shrugged. “I don’t blame you for being confused and thinking, ‘Gosh, I called Hayden a fire-crotch and she’s mad? What’s up with that?’ There was a time in my life when you could have called me a fire-crotch in front of a bunch of people, and I would have just laughed. I wanted any kind of attention I could get from you. In eighth grade, ninth grade, tenth grade, when you insulted me and other girls said it was just because you liked me, I believed it. But I guess everybody reaches a point when they’re done with that, and they want to be respected. This is definitely unfortunate for the purposes of teen love—I mean, look at Gavin. But there it is.”

  “You don’t want to be with me because you think I don’t respect you.”

  “I know you don’t respect me.”

  “Because you don’t believe me that I didn’t call you a fire-crotch?”

  “You don’t have a good track record for telling me the truth.” I walked around him and nuzzled my nose into my scarf again, heading into the wind.

  His boots crunched behind me.

  “And stop following me!” I yelled over my shoulder.

  “I’m not following you. Stop walking in front of me.” The crunches sounded louder and louder again until he jogged past me and kept jogging until he was fifty feet ahead of me on the sidewalk. He disappeared around the corner. I was left with nothing but my anger and the cold again.

  When I finally reached the restaurant and swung open the door, of course the first thing I saw was Nick hanging his parka on the coatrack, revealing how adorable he looked in his sweater and scarf underneath. And Fiona Lewis was calling to him from the ancient Galaga arcade game. His other ex. Drat!

  “Haaaaaydeeeeen!” moaned Josh and his peeps from the nearest booth. Double drat! Just what I needed when I was trying to get the upper hand in this ongoing argument with Nick: the undying friendship of four fourteen-year-old boys.

  On hearing my name, Nick looked up at me, then nodded toward the posse with a smirk. “Your boyfriends are calling you.” He glanced toward Fiona.

  “You act like that’s not possible,” I heard myself say coyly, even though my brain was waving frantically at me, screaming, Stop, Hayden, don’t go there!

  Nick turned back to me, and his eyes flew wide in surprise. “I act like what’s not possible?”

  “You act like I would never go out with any of them.” Which I wouldn’t. They were like brothers to me. Especially my brother. And they still watched cartoons. It was just that Nick acted so disdainful, as if I could never have anyone if it weren’t for him or Everett Walsh throwing me a bone.

  “Nick, quick, help, I’m about to die!” Fiona squealed.

  Ah, triple drat. A real live ex-girlfriend and damsel in space-distress totally trumped fourteen-year-old boys, no matter how many of them there were. Nick dashed over to her and took over mission command. I hung my own coat on the rack and dragged myself to the boys’ booth.

  But you know what? They all grinned at me in welcome, and Josh even scooted over to make room for me on the bench. At least I knew who my true friends were. Feeling grateful and loved, I sat down.

  THPPPPTHPPPPTHPPPPT! I farted. Or so it seemed.

  The boys died laughing. I pulled the whoopee cushion out from under me and flung it on the table, which only sent them into another paroxysm.

  “Nick—–Krieger—is—behind—you,” Josh gasped between giggles. “He totally heard it over Galaga. Do you still want us to look without looking like we’re looking?” This sent them into yet another laughing fit.

  “But don’t worry,” one of his friends said. “We’ll act like we think you’re hot.” They all snorted and dabbed at their eyes faux-girlishly with paper napkins from the holder. Then, as if on cue, they started their rhythmic heavy breathing, and I knew one of Josh’s raps was coming. The people in the booths around us turned to look, if they weren’t already staring at us outright because of the whoopee cushion.

  Hayden C. O’Malley was your

  Average girl

  Thought she’d give the boarding, jibbing,

  Riding a whirl

  Thought she’d have some trouble kicking

  Nick Krieger’s ass

  But her secret weapon is she’s

  Cooking with gas …

  Not every one of Josh’s raps was a success, and this one trailed off to dissolve in a morass of laughter and fart noises. I laughed along with them, because it was funny, and because I was that much of a Loser.

  But of course the whole time I was preoccupied, wondering whether Nick had gone home with Fiona yet. On the one hand, I hoped that the two of them got extra points and extra lives in the bonus round, and that they were sticking around for another hundred thousand points. On the other hand, Nick overhearing Josh’s rap would not be my shining moment.

  “Do you think y’all could hold it down?” I finally asked the boys. “I appreciate your art, but there’s a difference between rapping about me on the slopes, and rapping about me in a restaurant where other people are trying to eat. The latter is very prepubescent.”

  “Prepubescent!” Josh gasped. “Prepubescent!”

  “I am totally pubescent,” one of his friends said.

  Another said haughtily, “I wi
ll have you know that my mom and I are going to Aspen to shop for training bras this weekend.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Later.” I slid off the bench and stood.

  “Hey, we’re helping you go off the jump again tomorrow, right?” Josh asked, using the word helping very loosely.

  “Yeah,” another boy said, “eleventh time’s the charm.”

  I looked toward the Galaga machine. Fiona was still there, yet Nick was gone. Probably just to order her a drink. Ordinarily, I would have bounced all over the restaurant looking for him so I could flirt him out of Fiona’s pink-nailed grasp. But the whoopee cushion had taken the wind out of my sails.

  As I walked through an open doorway decorated with broken skis and snowboards,

  here he was again, sitting in another booth, handsome face lit softly by the dim overhead lamps and the Christmas lights outlining the ceiling. Colors danced in his dark hair as he laughed with Gavin and Davis and … Chloe and Liz.

  Sure enough, Chloe and Liz had invited me here, Gavin and Davis had invited Nick, and they were all playing Cupid again. Even after the fiasco last night! But I knew for sure that either way, the couples were together, at least for tonight. Chloe and Gavin sat on one side of the booth, and I saw the backs of Liz and Davis on the other side. Nick had squeezed onto the end of the bench next to Gavin, which left only one place for me.

  My feet felt like they had boots and bindings and two separate snowboards attached to them as I dragged myself closer and closer to the table of doom. Nick looked up at me. He didn’t sneer at me and turn away to make a joke about me to the table at large. He watched me coming, dragging my phantom snowboards across the room. I held his gaze. I knew he was about to humiliate me (again), but I would hold my head high while he did it. I slid onto the bench next to Davis, across the table from him.

  “Hayden!” Chloe said. “Where’ve you been?”

  I jerked my head in the direction of my brother. “Josh.”

  Here it came. Nick offered another explanation with a smug grin. “Hayden’s having gastrointestinal issues.”

  “You are?” Liz asked with real concern.

  “Must be the tofu,” I muttered. When Liz continued to stare at me with wide eyes, I reached around Davis and patted her hand. “No, I’m not. Nick is kidding. Isn’t he hilarious?” I gave him a sickly smile.

  He pointed at himself like, Who, me?

  Conversation at the table went on without us. Gavin related the details of the trip to Japan his family was planning for next summer to visit relatives they hadn’t seen in years. Even if Liz and Chloe hadn’t completely made up with Davis and Gavin, it was so obvious they were couples, because they sat next to each other in the booth. I felt a flash of jealousy. Maybe it was just that the bet for Poseur tickets loomed over me, but I couldn’t shake the idea of all six of us triple-dating.

  What if Nick and I were a real couple for once, out in the open? Nick and I would slide together onto the bench on one side of the booth, and all our friends would take it for granted. He’d been cruel to hint around at asking me out when he didn’t mean it, because now I couldn’t get it off my mind.

  As if he knew what I was thinking, he startled me by pushing the big plate of community nachos in front of me. “No wonder you’re so skinny,” he said quietly. “Why aren’t you eating?”

  “Hayden’s a vegetarian,” Liz called across the table, and suddenly it was community conversation.

  “Oh yeah, I forgot.” Nick gave me a perplexed look, like he’d just found out I was a nun or a spy.

  “How can you have gone to school with her for four years and not known that?” Liz challenged him. “Why do you think she’s the only person who brings her lunch on pepperoni pizza day at school?”

  Davis could not get his brain around it. “Is it some Tennessee granola health club thing?”

  “Just a granola health club thing,” I explained. “My family didn’t go vegetarian until right before we left Tennessee.” Luckily, I wasn’t the least bit self-conscious about being a vegetarian, because I knew it was good for me. If I’d been self-conscious, I might have begun to get uncomfortable right about then. With one short, unpainted fingernail, I traced a heart carved into the thick wooden table.

  It was Gavin’s turn to look perplexed. “You’re from Tennessee?”

  “Of course she’s from Tennessee,” Nick said. “Why do you think we always make fun of her accent?”

  Gavin shrugged. “Because it’s there?”

  Davis laughed and choked on his water. Liz pounded him on the back while Chloe commented, “Somebody’s being made fun of and you come running, no matter who or why, right?”

  Gavin and Davis simultaneously said, “Right.”

  “But I forgot you were a vegetarian,” Nick repeated to me. “I offered you nachos exactly like that in seventh grade, at this very table. You said you were a vegetarian and I nearly died of embarrassment for offering you meat.”

  “And meat products,” Gavin couldn’t help chiming in.

  But after Gavin’s comment, conversation stopped, and everyone stared at Nick. Nick? Dying of embarrassment?

  He must have realized he’d blown his suave cover, because his face turned bright red.

  Nick? Turning red?

  “Excuse me,” I said, sliding off the bench. “I’m going to the ladies’ room.” I was a peeless goddess no longer. That was so seventh grade. Now I was in eleventh grade, and I peed. Though of course I didn’t need to at the moment. I needed to confer with my girlfriends.

  “Me, too!” Chloe and Liz both said. The boys stood to let them out. Gavin and Davis grumbled about girls always having to go to the bathroom together. Nick never took his eyes off me. He knew my need to pee was a total put-on.

  jib

  jib

  (jib) v. 1. to board around and over obstacles 2. such as Nick

  Without waiting for the girls, I rushed between the booths and down a dark hall to the tiny women’s bathroom, which was wallpapered with women’s wipeouts. Big photographs cut out of the paper, pictures cut from magazines, and snapshots showed women on skis (and a few more recent shots of women on snowboards) taking hard spills and kicking up snow. Usually I found the bathroom highly amusing. Today, as soon as I opened the door, I stopped short. The walls were sending me a message.

  But I didn’t stand there in awe for long, because Chloe burst through the door behind me. I hollered at her, “You’re trying to set me up with Nick again!”

  “We are not,” Chloe insisted, moving over to let Liz through the door. “We thought about what you said last night. You’re right. We don’t want to throw away what we have with Gavin and Davis. So we thought we’d meet them here and reconcile. Without giving up those Poseur tickets.”

  I folded my arms. “And you just happened to forget about that when you invited me, too? And Gavin and Davis just happened to forget they were meeting you when they invited Nick?”

  Chloe tossed her blond hair and said, “Yes.”

  “No,” Liz sighed, “we are trying to set you and Nick up.”

  Chloe glared at Liz. “Remind me never to embezzle any funds with you. The least bit of pressure and you crack!”

  “It’s not right to hide it from her.” Liz turned to me. “I definitely have misgivings about you getting together with Nick after that fire-crotch business in the lunchroom on Thursday.”

  “Ah, update,” I said, turning a bit red myself. “He says I was wrong about that. I didn’t believe him at the time, but …” Something in Nick’s dreamy expression when he’d mentioned the seventh grade just now had made me wonder. Was it possible that he had defended me against Everett Walsh? It was all sort of medieval and chivalrous and romantic if I didn’t think too hard about it.

  Liz nodded. “See, we may have been underestimating Nick. I feel responsible.” She leaned back against the wall. Her shoulders just covered an enlargement of a girl snowboarder in the midst of a spectacular face-plant. “Gavin and every other boy
in school ribbing Nick about you … that all started in seventh grade. Remember that awful night at the Will Smith movie, right after you’d moved here?”

  “Vaguely.” I rubbed my thumb across two chicks crashing into each other on skis as if I were getting bored with this convo.

  “I remember,” Chloe called out. “I was trying to balance a couple of boyfriends at once. I had a lot to learn about cheating.”

  Liz stared blankly at Chloe for a moment, then turned back to me.

  “Will Smith movie,” I reminded her.

  Liz shook her curls. “Right. I’ve always regretted telling you that Nick and Gavin had a bet about you. Nick had asked everyone not to tell you. Nobody wanted to go against what Nick said. But I couldn’t leave you out there alone, not knowing.” She shifted uncomfortably against the wall, like the snowboard in the picture was jabbing her between the shoulder blades. “I’ve been the butt of jokes before.”

  I looked from Liz to Chloe and back to Liz. “Then why do you regret telling me?”

  “I’m not sure anymore that he meant it as a joke,” Liz said.

  “How else could he have meant it?” I shrieked. I looked to Chloe for help in talking Liz out of this insanity. But Chloe just poofed up her blond hair in the mirror, almost as if she agreed with Liz about this.

  Liz shrugged. “I know Nick has a funny way of showing it, but I honestly think he’s got it bad for you. Chloe thinks so, too.”

  Chloe nodded her affirmation. “So do Gavin and Davis. Seventh grade to eleventh grade—that’s a long time to go out of your way to be mean to somebody you can’t stand.”

  I didn’t say it, but surely Liz and Chloe felt what I felt: a vibration shaking the bathroom and speeding up my heart rate at the thought that Nick really liked me. I could not fall for this and get hurt again, but Nick was so tempting. I wished it were true.

  Feeling dizzy, I backed against the wall beside Liz for support. “This is why I wanted to talk to you chicks in here. I’m sure that, against my instructions, you told Davis and Gavin to tell Nick that I didn’t know his parents were separated, right?”