Last Year's Mistake

by Gina Ciocca

  As if on cue, one of the monstrous-looking boots covering half her chicken legs got lodged in the snow and she pitched forward with a shriek.

  David and I burst into laughter as we each took one of her arms and set her back on her feet. I did feel a little better after that, and better still as we piled into the sled, laughing hysterically as all three of us attempted to sit in it at once. It didn’t even bother me when I spotted Maddie on the other side of the hill with Jared and Isabel Rose, Amy Heffernan, and a few other people. At least, it didn’t bother me as much as it should have. By the time we reached the bottom of the hill, the rush of chilled air still stinging my cheeks, I felt almost normal again.

  Before we could make a second run down, Isabel walked toward us—or, more specifically, toward David. She looked like a stereotypical ski bunny, all toothy smile and athletic build, complete with a thick white headband holding back her dark, glossy hair, and puffy white mittens over her undoubtedly manicured hands.

  Seriously, mittens? Call me crazy, but I preferred not to have my hands melded into a unifinger if I could help it.

  I looked past her and sent a feeble wave in Maddie’s direction. She responded with a limp flop of her hand that looked more like an attempt to flick snow off her glove than a greeting to someone she’d known forever. Maybe it made sense. She knew me, but I didn’t know her at all anymore.

  “Hey, David,” Isabel said with an unmistakably flirtatious lilt. I pretended to brush off the sled as I rolled my eyes. Ever since things with David and Amy had cooled, Isabel had been eyeing him the way a hungry vulture eyes fresh roadkill. Apparently she’d chosen her moment to swoop in for dinner.

  “Thanks again for helping me with my math homework on Friday,” she cooed.

  Exactly what had I missed when I’d been out on Friday?

  “No problem. Let me know if you’re still having trouble, and we can go over it again,” David replied.

  Oh, of course. David and I had the same free period, and we always went to the cafeteria to do homework. Normally we were in one corner while David helped me with my math homework. He was in all honors classes for math, and it was disgusting how he could make perfect sense of the problems with almost no instruction. Isabel’s group sat in another corner—painting their nails, flipping their hair, reapplying their makeup. Definitely not doing homework. More than once I swore I caught Isabel giving me dirty looks, but I always thought they were residuals from the sloppy joe incident. Now I realized she’d been waiting for me to get the hell out of her way.

  I stifled a laugh as I pictured a vulture screeching toward spilled innards on the pavement.

  Isabel’s grin stretched wider, revealing even more of her white teeth. “I might take you up on that. In the meantime, we noticed, um, your sled is kind of puny—” She peeked around him at our sled, studiously ignoring Miranda and me as if the Walmart-issue “puny” thing were standing up in the snow of its own accord. “And I thought I’d ask if you want to ride with me this time. We brought a toboggan. It’s huge.”

  David glanced over her shoulder to Maddie and Jared and company. Their faces lit up and arms stretched into the air in greeting. Okay, so Maddie did remember how to execute a proper wave. Good to know.

  “Come on over!” she called. “You’re missing out!” She patted the toboggan the way a cowboy would pat the rear end of his trusty steed.

  “Oooh, a toboggan,” I said under my breath before I could stop myself.

  Isabel’s head snapped toward me, and she finally looked at me. “Is there a problem, Kelsey?”

  She knew my name? Isabel was a junior, and I always assumed she knew me as Maddie’s Friend or the Sloppy Joe Girl.

  “Nope, no problem. Isabel.”

  Using her name didn’t rattle her at all. She gave me a bored look before breaking out another smile for David. “So come on. If you want, we can race your friends.” The word “friends” came out flat and was accompanied by another cursory glance in my direction. Like it physically hurt her eyes to look away from him.

  David turned to me, an almost guilty look on his face. “Would you guys mi—”

  “Nope,” I interrupted. “Go ahead. We’ll catch up with you later.”

  He shook his head. “Nah, I should stay—”

  “David.” I said it a little more sharply than necessary, then purposely softened my tone. “It’s fine. We’ll be here when you get back.”

  His face broke into a grin. “I know. I’m your ride.” With that, he turned to Isabel, and I swore her lip curled in smug triumph. As they started off together, I heard him say, “So are you pretty comfortable with linear equations now? They’re not so bad, right?”

  Oh, David, David. Did he honestly believe she’d needed help with her math homework? For someone so smart, he could be pretty dense at times. Unless, of course, he was playing along. Flirting back. The thought made me frown.

  “You’re the one who said it was okay, dummy. Don’t pout now.” Miranda’s arms were folded across her chest, as if the look on my face had personally offended her. Sometimes that child needed a major attitude adjustment.

  “I’m not pouting! I just—don’t like her that much.”

  “Do you even know her?”

  “I know enough.”

  Miranda smiled. “Don’t worry. I don’t like her either.”

  And other times she was the coolest person I knew.

  We piled onto the sled and pushed off, the cold air blasting our eyes and making them tear even as we giggled our way down the bright white hill. We were both squealing as the sled finally lost momentum and came to a stop, and I forgot that I’d been frowning a second ago.

  Until, through the corner of my eye, I saw Isabel’s fancy toboggan coasting down the hill. David sat at the forefront with Isabel pressed up against his back, clutching him around his middle. They both had huge smiles on their faces, and I watched as their toboggan cruised right past the point where our sled had conked out, coming to a graceful stop some twenty feet farther away.

  “Kelsey!” Miranda said sharply.

  I jumped. “I’m not pouting!”

  Miranda looked at me with wide eyes. “No, your nose—it’s bleeding!”

  I ripped off one of my gloves and swiped at the spot above my lip. My fingers came away smeared with red.

  “Shit!” I fumbled through the pocket of my coat for the travel package of Kleenex my mother had stashed there, grateful that she always thought of those things. I felt wet warmth run over my lip and started to panic as I realized it was getting worse.

  Finally, my shaking fingers freed one of the folded squares, and I jammed it against my nostrils. I turned toward the street, hoping I could dab at my nose a few times and move on without anyone noticing.

  My nose, however, had other plans. In less than a minute, my tissue had gone from white to completely red. Miranda kept grabbing more from the package and handing them to me as I knelt over the snow, afraid I’d get blood on my clothes.

  “Kelse, are you okay?” Miranda handed me another tissue, terror plainly visible in her petite features.

  I nodded, but it was like the motion made things worse. My nose started to gush. It bled so profusely that it splashed down the back of my throat and I gagged, spitting red all over the snow like some kind of horror movie. Then I started to cry.

  Miranda must have thought I vomited blood, because she started to scream. And cry. “Help! Help! Someone help my sister! Something is wrong with my sister, someone help!”

  Boots crunched in the snow as people descended on us. A middle-aged man with a little boy reached us first.

  “Did you fall? Do you think it’s broken?” he asked. He moved my hand to replace my falling-apart tissue with a handkerchief. I wondered if it was used before I realized I was bleeding too much to care.

  “She didn’t fall,” Miranda w
himpered. “Her nose started bleeding, and then she started throwing up blood. I don’t know what happened.”

  “Kelse!” The sound of David’s winded, worried voice made me flush. He must have run over at top speed. I could only imagine what I looked like, but even if it wasn’t as bad as I thought, it still wasn’t anything I wanted him—or ­Isabel—­to see. I stared down at the Rorschach-like patterns my blood had made on the snow, wishing the ground would open up and swallow me.

  David knelt beside me. “What happened?”

  The bleeding finally abated enough for me to talk without gagging. “Nosebleed,” I panted. “Not vomiting. It went down my throat. I’ve never had one this bad before. I scared her.” Quite frankly, I had scared the shit out of me, too.

  “Does she need an ambulance?” the man with the handkerchief asked.

  I gave a weak shake of my head, afraid a more vehement protest would set the bleeding off again.

  “No, no ambulance,” David said. “She’ll be okay. Thank you, everyone. She’s fine.”

  I brushed my temple against his shoulder and sighed, so grateful when footsteps started to retreat. He must have known I wanted to die on the spot.

  David scooped up a pile of unbloodied snow between his gloved hands and packed it together in one of his palms. Then he yanked the back of my coat down and pressed the freezing cold snowball against the nape of my neck.

  “David!”

  “Sorry,” he said, his smile evident in his voice. “It’s supposed to restrict bloodflow to the head, or something.” He leaned down until his face appeared in my peripheral vision. “Look at you. Your mom’s gonna think I came at you with a machete.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  “Um . . .”

  “You’re a crappy liar, David. Don’t even try.”

  “You look like someone tried to murder you!” Miranda sobbed. The dramatics of it were too much. David and I tried our hardest not to laugh at her as we exchanged a look.

  “Um, David?” Both of us looked up at the sound of Isabel’s voice. She stood a good six feet away, like she was afraid she’d get blood on her expensive North Face attire if she came one step closer. “Is there anything I can do?”

  She sounded semi-sincere, though I got the feeling she’d faint or throw up if either of us said yes.

  “No, we’re good,” David said. “I’m going to get her home now. Thanks, Isabel.”

  Dismissed. My insides may or may not have done a little jig.

  Isabel nodded, not bothering to hide her disappointment before she turned and walked away. Good-bye to you, too, I thought to myself. I was about to say it—okay, grumble it under my breath—when she turned around and, with all the decorum of person forced to speak in tongues by a demon inhabiting her body, said, “Feel better, Kelsey.”

  She turned away again before I could utter an equally forced thank-you. When I started to laugh, David narrowed his eyes. “What?”

  “What? Seriously?” He really was dense when it came to girls. I folded the handkerchief to a clean spot and wiped my face. “Did you hear what she said?”

  “Yeah. She was being nice.”

  “Uh-huh. Nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

  David shrugged as he helped me to my feet, replacing his hand on the back of my snow-covered neck with mine. He held an arm out to Miranda. “You okay, kid?” Miranda buried her face in his jacket and nodded. “Good. Come on. Let’s go.”

  I didn’t know what made me look back as David ushered us to the parking lot, but I wished I hadn’t. My eyes zeroed in on Isabel’s group in the distance. One of the guys, a tall, beefy football player, was flailing and spasming all over the place as his friends doubled over with laughter. One of the girls made exaggerated wiping motions at his face with her scarf, dancing in fake-panicked circles around him. Not just any girl.

  Maddie.

  They were making fun of me. She was making fun of me. The same girl who’d told off Cameron Myers in second grade for teasing me when I threw up on the playground was laughing at my expense. My heart sank like I’d watched something die. And maybe I had.

  I’d never stopped to think that Maddie and I wouldn’t find our way back to being friends again. We’d disagreed on things before, and had always gotten over it. But the girl prancing around at the top of the hill obviously didn’t consider me her friend. Somewhere along the line, the gap between us had grown impassable, and there was no turning back.

  Before I could look away, I caught sight of Isabel standing at the edge of the little reenactment. She wasn’t participating, but it didn’t matter. Not with the way her arms were folded across her chest, and the way she stared right at me.

  No, not stared. Glared.

  I turned away. She might have been able to convince David of her concern, but I left the golf course certain of two things. One, I’d never forget the hurt and embarrassment I’d felt that day. And two, I’d cinched my status as Isabel’s enemy without even trying.

  Thirteen

  Rhode Island

  Senior Year

  Violet came into English class looking the way she once had when she left Starbucks with someone’s decaf tea instead of her latte—pissed off.

  Her gold ballet flats swept over the tile floor with short, quick steps. Her eyebrows were furrowed, and the force with which her butt hit the seat and her bag hit the floor told me she definitely wasn’t happy.

  “What’s up with you?” I said.

  She looked at me and huffed an agitated breath. “Nothing.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  Violet shot a glare in my direction, and the look on her face told me she was contemplating whether she wanted to say more. Finally, she leaned toward me, one arm draped across her desk. “I think David is gay.”

  I nearly spit out the sip of bottled water I’d just taken.

  “What? What the hell are you talking about?” I wiped my mouth, not bothering to hide my laughter. I would have if I’d known Violet’s face would turn purple.

  “Something is up with him,” she said defensively. Her eyes darted around the mostly empty classroom, and she scooted closer to me and lowered her voice. “So last Saturday? I invited him over to my house to watch a movie. You know, in the basement?”

  A cringe started deep in my stomach and worked its way out. “Watching a movie in the basement” was Violet-speak for “hard-core make-out session.” Or whatever else she did down there. That couch converted into a bed, and probably had better stories than some hotel comforters.

  It was more than I cared to think about.

  I must’ve managed to control my face, because she kept talking. “So we’re kissing and everything, and things are getting, you know, pretty hot, and all of a sudden he just—stops. Like, hands me my shirt and says he should go.”

  “Oh.” The fact that her shirt had been off was way more than I needed to know. “So, um, what happened?”

  “I don’t know! I asked if he was feeling okay, and he said he thought we should wait. No one waits anymore, Kelsey. I mean, what the hell? When he said he liked you before, was it legit, or was he totally trying to cover being gay?”

  Laughter spewed out before I could control it. “Violet! He and I never—”

  She waved her hand dismissively. “Whatev. But seriously? He has to be, right?”

  I struggled to contain my chuckles. “I doubt it, Vi. Maybe he’d talked to his mom beforehand? That always puts him in a bad mood.”

  Violet’s expression soured. “I don’t know, he never talks about her. I was starting to wonder if she died or something.”

  “She’s not dead!” I stopped and shrank in my chair when I realized the look in her eyes was pure evil. It was obvious she didn’t care to know about David’s mother—she cared that I knew more than she did.

  I chewed at the mou
th of my water bottle, trying to pretend I didn’t feel flattered—and the tiniest bit smug—to know that there were still some things David didn’t feel comfortable sharing with just anyone.

  Violet folded her arms, continuing down the warpath. “Well, he’s either gay”—her eyes raked over me in an unmistakably accusing way—“or he’s hung up on someone.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing.” She pretended to examine her nails. “Just that you two have been all buddy-buddy lately, and it magically coincides with me getting the shaft. Care to explain?”

  I had to admit, Violet was more observant than I gave her credit for. A lot of the tension between David and me had dissipated since I’d more or less broken down in his arms. We were still nowhere near the way we used to be, but we’d been talking a lot more. Laughing a lot more too.

  “Listen, Vi. David and I were only friends. That’s as far as it will ever go, and we’re not even there yet. So if you really think he’s hung up on someone, it isn’t me.”

  Violet frowned. “Great. Then I guess my boyfriend is gay.”

  The fact that David walked in before I could defend him made it even harder to bury my laugh in my bottle of water.

  “Hey,” he said, nodding in my direction as he sat down. He turned to face Violet. “You didn’t wait for me today.”

  She pressed her pen against her lip and gave him a pointed look. “I hate waiting.”

  Oh, God. Poor David. He’d landed himself in the doghouse for being a gentleman, and he didn’t have a clue. And although I’d never admit it, I was dying to know the real reason he’d put the brakes on.

  “You hate waiting?” David looked baffled. “You wait at my locker every morning. What are you talking about?”

  Violet rolled her eyes. “I don’t always feel like waiting. Waiting bites the big one, okay?” Under her breath she added, “Don’t get excited because I said biting big ones.”

  David’s bewildered look went from Violet to me and back again before Mr. Ingles called the class to attention. David turned to face the front of the room, but his forehead remained creased with confusion. Through the corner of his eye, he glanced at me as if to say, What the hell is going on?