by Rachel Rust
After eighth period gym, I grabbed my backpack, ready to head home and take a yearlong nap to relieve myself of the stress of the past twenty-four hours. The girls’ locker room smelled like old shoes and a floral air freshener. The stench of shoes alone would have been more pleasant.
Gym sucked with a bum knee. I couldn’t do much of anything. Most classes were spent sitting on the sidelines, reading printouts Coach Donnelly had found online about sports or wellness issues. “You can stay educated, even if you can’t participate,” he often said, just before slapping a clumsily stapled pile of papers onto my lap.
Yep, gym sucked. But at least it was an easy A.
In the gymnasium, the boys’ basketball team was doing some sort of warm-up drill with basketballs flying everywhere. The gym exit was on the opposite wall from the locker rooms. My feet flew along the edge of the court.
A streak of orange sailed in front of me. The basketball ricocheted off the wall. My arm flew up and the ball smashed into my elbow, then bounced onto the floor.
“Nice reflexes,” a deep voice called out.
I spun around. Nina’s boyfriend, Daniel, walked my way with a big smile. His shaggy black hair fell further into his eyes with every step.
“I think you’re supposed to keep the ball in the court,” I said.
He grabbed the basketball. “Thanks for the tip, carrot top.”
We laughed good-byes and I rushed out the door, elbow throbbing. I made my way down the narrow athletic wing hallway and then into the main school foyer. A hand appeared in front of me, stopping me in my tracks.
Sergeant Rollins zeroed his beady eyes into mine. “Not so fast, Miss Lanski.”
I hadn’t noticed it the night before, but his police uniform was a size too big with the short sleeves hanging all the way to the crook of his elbow. It was sort of hard to take him seriously when he looked like a kid playing dress up in his dad’s clothes.
Rollins nodded to a group of students who were lined up single-file along the wall. “We’re asking everyone some questions before they leave today. Trying to figure out who spray painted the—some stuff around school.”
“I don’t know anything about that.” I nearly mentioned the bleachers, but figured Dumb Girl was a safer role to play.
Rollins studied my face for a few seconds before speaking again. “Were you at the school last night?”
“No, I was working at the gas station, remember?”
His lips pursed. “I remember perfectly well. Did you make that list of customers for me yet?”
“No, I was going to go home and do that right now.”
So much for a nap.
Just behind Rollins, Nina’s cop cousin walked out of the school office, evidence bag in hand. Nestled inside the clear plastic was a can of black spray paint.
“What about after you left the gas station?” Rollins asked. “Did you come to the school?”
“Why would I do that?”
He thought for a moment, then stepped out of the way with a huff. “Go ahead, then. Go home.”
I stepped around him, trying to ignore the jeers from the crowd behind me, most of which accused me and my boobs of getting an unfair pass. My girls were none-too-impressive B-cups pressing slightly against my t-shirt. Certainly not remarkable enough to get out of police interrogation.
My feet scurried through the foyer toward the front doors, ready to leave the angry eyes of my classmates far behind. A wave of relief spread over me when I made it to the exit. My hands reached out to push the door open, but it flew open on its own.
My eyes shot up, startled.
Standing in front of me was a boy—a man. A basketball player, to be exact. His face was stern with deep-set brown eyes, a square jaw, and a strong nose. Amber sunlight sculpted the curves of his bronzed, muscular arms which were sticking out of his number thirty-three jersey. A long braid of black hair disappeared somewhere behind his broad shoulders.
He flashed a breezy smile and stepped to the side, holding the door open for me.
I stepped through to the outside. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” He brushed past me, into the school, leaving behind nothing but a faint scent of boy.
As he walked into the foyer, the jeering of the crowd ceased. All eyes fell to the floor. Except the eyes of Sergeant Rollins. Those beady eyes glued to the boy in the jersey. And the boy in the jersey stared right back at Rollins. Unflinchingly so.
The door slammed shut in front of me. I idled on the front steps of the school, unable to focus. His eyes and muscles flashed before my eyes. Then his smile—his easy, beautiful smile.
A super hottie in the middle of South Dakota? Holy shit. I was so glad I wasn’t dead.
Chapter Six
He’s Emptyhanded
Chet Rollins was the last damn person I wanted to see after an already shitty day, but I wasn’t surprised to find myself face-to-face with the prick cop in the school foyer. Rumors had spread all day that Rollins and Theo White Eagle were at school. Something about spray paint and students being questioned.
I looked back at the front doors, catching a glimpse of a girl just before they slammed shut. I racked my brain trying to remember if there had been any redheaded girls prior to my leaving for Colorado, but I couldn’t think of any. But it wasn’t just the hair that was unfamiliar. Her face was new. Her green eyes were new. In Thorn Creek, old familiar faces were boring. They disappeared. New faces stood out against the gray background of the mind-numbing town.
And hers was the most stunning I had seen.
I peeked at the front door again, with hopes that maybe she’d walk back through. Maybe she’d open the door, walk straight up to me, take my hand, and say, “Let’s get the hell outta this goddamn town.” But the door remained closed. No girl. No green eyes. No petite, soft hand in mine. No reprieve from my own personal hell.
“Welcome back to Thorn Creek, Mr. Stone,” Rollins said.
My head snapped his direction, and I literally bit my tongue to keep from replying. Nothing good was gonna come from my mouth in that moment. At least nothing helpful.
Rollins said nothing else as I made my way through the foyer. This didn’t surprise me. Rollins didn’t have the balls to stop and question me in front of a group of people. Rollins would seek me out later, when there were no spectators. No witnesses.
Once I got back to the gym, the court was full of guys. Donnelly blew his whistle and movement stopped. Some basketballs were caught, and some bounced onto the floor where they eventually found a resting spot.
“Ten laps!” Donnelly yelled. “Let’s go!”
The guys on the court groaned, but no one dared question the coach. Donnelly was a red-faced hard-ass. Only someone begging for trouble would be ballsy enough to confront him. This, I knew firsthand.
As the guys began jogging around the court, I walked over to Donnelly.
“Ten laps, Mr. Stone,” Donnelly said.
“I know, but I was wondering if—”
Donnelly sighed. “I know you want court time, but we got Eric Running Wolf as starting shooting guard. Eighteen average, plays good with the guys.” Donnelly crossed his arms over his rotund chest. He glanced up at me. “We’ll see, kid.”
Rather than poke the beast, I walked away without another word because a “we’ll see” was the best I could hope for. My feet broke into a sprint, and I caught up with the unhappy joggers. Daniel and Alex were jogging together near the rear, taking it slow. Slow was the only way I had ever seen Daniel run.
“Donnelly gonna play ya?” Daniel asked.
“Don’t know.”
“Jesus, I hope so,” Daniel huffed. “Running Wolf sucks. Can’t score a damn thing under pressure.”
Alex nudged Daniel’s arm. “Speaking of scoring, I’m gonna ask Lydia out again.”
“She’ll say no,” Daniel said. “She always says no.”
Alex shook his head. “She’ll be at Taya’s barbeque tomorrow. Good food, good conversat
ion. I’ll butter her up.”
“Maybe you can do that literally if she’s into that kinda thing,” Daniel said.
Alex let loose a laugh. “We’ll see.”
My mind wandered, ignoring Alex’s ongoing talk about his next sex pursuit. Instead, with every pound of my feet on the wooden court, my thoughts settled in on the girl by the front door. Over and over again I opened that door and saw her standing there, cute as hell, wide-eyed with surprise.
She was the only thing that got me through the next hour of basketball practice.
Chapter Seven
She’s Weakened in Wonderland
My feet flitted down the school’s front steps, fighting the urge to turn back around and chase down the boy in the thirty-three jersey. Like the Cheshire Cat, his smile materialized everywhere as I walked across the tree-lined street to the student parking lot. And the silly tingles arcing in my brain certainly felt like a trip down the rabbit hole. After climbing into Frankie, I giggled. Like a schoolgirl. I actually giggled.
The drive between the school and my house took less than a minute. Even after a year of living in Thorn Creek, it was still ridiculous to my Minneapolis senses. Back there it took longer just to drive out of our neighborhood. I could’ve walked to school in Thorn Creek—most students did. But I loved Frankie. He reminded me of my life in Minneapolis, and his four tires gave me a sense of independence.
“Hey, Sport,” my dad said when I walked in through the back door of our house. He and my mother were both seated at the kitchen table, laptops staring back. They were geeks like that.
Their jobs in education had them working from home occasionally, although usually they’d travel hundreds of miles a day to different towns on the reservation to meet and consult with other educators. They were always lost in their work, too busy and too preoccupied to pay much attention to the world directly in front of them. The good part about this was that it allowed me a lot of freedom. However, that freedom came with high expectations: good grades, good manners, no trouble. No exceptions.
“How was school?” my dad asked.
Breathtakingly beautiful and—Cheshire Cat—what was the question again?
I grabbed a Coke from the fridge.
“Lydia, sweetheart,” my mom said. “We have to talk about something.”
My hand paused, Coke can halfway to my mouth. “About what?” Talks with my parents were generally never good. Fun things were spontaneous and off the cuff. Planned discussions meant bad news, like telling me we were moving to the Middle of Nowhere, South Dakota. Yeah, that conversation had sucked.
“Your dad and I talked with Mike Iron Horse today,” my mom said.
“And?”
“We feel it’s best for you to not work at the gas station anymore.” I opened my mouth to protest, but she continued on. “We think you need to rest and take it easy for a while. And Mike agrees.”
“No.” My head shook as each of her words reverberated through my head. The job at the gas station wasn’t glamorous—far from it. But it was mine. It was something to do in a place where there was nothing else interesting happening. In Minneapolis, entertainment was around every corner. On the reservation, it was nearly nonexistent.
I shifted my weight onto my right leg and bent my left leg up a bit, then straightened it back out. A sharp ache made my jaw clench up. “I like that job,” I said. “What am I supposed to do now? Sit and stare at the wall in the evenings?”
“Don’t be dramatic,” my dad said. “There are plenty of ways for you to pass the time around here.”
Yeah, right. The intersection of grassland and manure was a mecca of excitement.
“We could always go back and see Dr. McIntosh,” my mom said. “That way you’d be able to—”
“No.”
“Lydia, we need to have a serious conversation about this. You’re going to have to go see Dr. McIntosh again soon and you might as well—”
I walked out of the kitchen. I walked out as though turning my back on my parents meant I could also turn my back on the inevitable … despite my knee telling me otherwise.
In my bedroom, I ditched my school clothes for a pair of black yoga capris and an oversized University of Minnesota t-shirt. I plopped down onto the small white chair in front of my small white desk and took out my biology homework. My parents had bought my bedroom furniture when I was ten-years-old, and I had loved it back then. Now, however, its small size was nothing more than a daily reminder that my childhood was in the past. Yet, despite my best attempts at getting it replaced, my parents insisted the furniture suited my needs fine.
Taya once told me to accidentally break the furniture. “Then they’ll be forced to buy you new stuff.”
But rebelliousness wasn’t my forte. The only child of two PhDs didn’t do that sort of thing.
I opened my textbook, but something pink caught my eye before I could begin my homework. Peeking out from under my bed was a pink shoe box. I didn’t have to lift the lid to get a visual of the perfectly used, perfectly broken-in pair of perfect ballet shoes inside. They hadn’t been on my feet in months, not since early summer.
Not since my knee kissed them good-bye.
But the shoes were only shoes. A physical representation of all the things lost in a split second. The hard work. The blood. The sweat. The tears.
The future.
I turned to page fifty-two in my biology book, pretending the hazy vision blurring the words on the page was due to my eyes being tired. But with my next blink, the drip of a salty tear couldn’t be ignored. I wiped it away with the back of my hand.
My life and dance were one entity. I had grown up on pink tights and buns. It was all I knew, my entire past, and there was no future without it. At least not one that I could see, sitting there at my tiny white desk in the middle of nowhere, miles from a dance studio, light-years from old dreams and goals. My parents told me goals were ever-changing, and that it was okay to have new goals and set my sights on new interests.
One big problem. I had no other interests. No other talents.
I gave the pink box another glimpse before my foot kicked it out of sight. Outta sight, outta mind.
If only.
Chapter Eight
He’s Got a Complaint or Five
The damn prairie wind howled nonstop as I worked that evening, rattling the windows of the horse stable. A reminder that I was back in South Dakota. It was as if the state itself were trying to blow me away.
Stepping out of the stable at the end of my shift, I zipped my hoodie in a failed attempt at keeping the cold night away. Having worked on my uncle’s ranch for three years prior moving down to Denver, I had been used the heavy demands of the job. But the faint burn deep in my shoulders told me that my year off, slacking in the ease of Colorado life, had weakened me.
A rusted Ford pickup was parked in the stable’s gravel parking lot. The ranch was littered with piece-of-shit vehicles used by workers to drive around the property. But I ignored the pickup. Despite the cold temps, I opted for the hard way home and ducked under the nearby shelterbelt of trees. This led to the grassy field that lay between the stables and my aunt and uncle’s house.
The wind battered me, chilling me to the bone. Whether my decision to walk was out of penitence or stubbornness, I didn’t know. But what I did know was that a cold walk across a field didn’t stand a chance of being the worst part of my day. The goddamn stares and whispers, and dealing with Coach Donnelly again took that prize.
Screw Thorn Creek High.
By the time I reached the shelterbelt of the house, my feet were numb and a thousand pins had pierced my cheeks and ears. I entered the house through the side door and made my way into the kitchen. Aunt Heather was seated at the kitchen table.
She looked up from her book. “There’s meatloaf in the fridge if you’re hungry.”
I heard her fine but ignored the words. I reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a container of lunch meat and the jar of m
ayo, then grabbed two pieces of bread.
“Oh, honey, you need more than that after basketball practice and work,” Heather said.
“I’m fine.” Everyone just needed to get the hell off my case.
Ed walked into the room behind me. “Double checked all the stall door were latched properly?”
“Yeah.” I wasn’t a complete idiot.
“And you left the second to the last row of lights on?”
My jaw muscles clenched tight to keep from saying anything stupid. “Yes.”
Ed exhaled slowly, staring at me. “All right then. You did good tonight. Been a while, but seems like you still remember everything. Couple new horses, new bookkeeping system, but getting used to the new changes will come in time.” He slapped me on the back. “Concentrate on work, basketball, keep your head low. Things’ll be okay. Better than before.”
I put the top slice of my sandwich in place, but my concentration was broken by big brown eyes staring up at me. My two-year-old cousin, Liliana.
“Hi, Nayfen!”
I smiled down at her. Aside from the horses, Liliana was the only thing I had missed about Thorn Creek while down in Denver. I didn’t miss the occasional temper tantrum or the reek of her diapers, which was sometimes worse than the horses, but she was adorable and for some reason had attached herself to me. Treated me like a damn jungle gym, was what she did. But at least I had one decent cousin.
“I drawed, Nayfen,” she said, handing me a white piece of paper with an orange circle person who had blue-and-green stick legs and arms. “Dat’s you.”
“Thank you. Where should I put it?”
She pointed emphatically. “Da fridge.”
I chuckled. “All right.”
Her tiny feet shuffled to the refrigerator where she picked out a banana magnet and pointed to the exact spot for the picture. I held it in place as she placed the magnet in the middle.
“Tank you!” she shouted, running into the family room behind the kitchen.
Heather smiled at me. “She’s happy you’re back.”
