Chapter 3
Sorry for the People I Hurt While I Was Hurting
Knox
At Kate’s earlier, I noticed the swelling in the girl’s face. I couldn’t tell then if it had to do with the dim light, but I didn’t want to take a closer look, either. To be honest, I’d overslept, was hungover, and didn’t want to concern myself with anything beyond my aching head.
But what I thought I saw earlier this morning couldn’t be any clearer now. The swelling is red, if not already turning green. Whatever the cause, it’s clear it didn’t happen all that long ago.
With her huge glacier-blue eyes, she stared at me like she’s seeing a ghost. Her lips are open just a hair, and in the bright sunlight I can see a thin white scar on her jaw.
I let my eyes wander down her petite frame and have to keep from laughing when I see her jeans, wet to the knees.
As she still hasn’t uttered a word, I wave my hand in front of her face. “Hello? You okay?”
She quickly blinks a few times before batting my hand away as if it were an annoying fly. The corners of my mouth twitch again.
“Stop. I’m looking for someone.”
“Up ’til now without all that much success, am I right?”
She casts me an angry glance, then turns away to continue staring casually into the distance.
I take a breath. “You know, I’d really love to leave you standing here to get whacked by a skier, but unfortunately that would fall within my realm of responsibility. So…” I make a sweeping gesture with my arms toward the side slope. “Would you care to continue your search over there?”
“This is…” She stops midsentence before closing her eyes, then she looks up at the sky. Slowly, she turns back to me. “Your responsibility?”
“Yeah. Responsibility. You familiar with the word? I can put it in other terms if you’d like.” I nonchalantly tilt my head. “Morals. Sense of duty. Conscience. Accountability. Obliga—”
“I’m not dumb!”
“Oh. That’s good. Who are you then?”
“What?”
“Your name.” I grin. “You got one, don’t you? I’m Knox, by the way.”
“I know. You don’t need to know my name.”
Odd. The crabbier she gets, the more interesting I find her.
She takes a deep breath, as if she had to arm herself for something, then says, “If you’re responsible for all this, then maybe you can help me.”
I laugh, plant my snowboard into the ground, and lean my arm on it. “You want my help without telling me your name?” I put on a theatrically skeptical face. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to trust strangers?”
She gasps for air as if I’d offended her and takes two steps back. She looks at me for a moment, her blue eyes so big I feel as if I could disappear inside them.
“Of course,” she counters coolly. “They did. There’s just one problem.”
“And what would that be?”
She doesn’t bat an eye. “It’s not strangers who are the problem. But those you think you know.”
I don’t often lose the power of speech. In fact, I’m usually pretty articulate. Quick. I always know what to say. But right now, I have no idea. Right now, I’m simply standing in front of her, staring into her eyes and wondering who on earth this girl is.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she adds, taking off in the opposite direction. “You’re stealing time I don’t have.”
“Wait.” I rub a hand across my face before following her.
“Hey, wait up.” I grab her arm to get her to stop.
Wrong move. With a power I wouldn’t have expected her delicate body to possess, she tears her arm away only to punch me in the chest a second later.
In spite of myself, I stagger a few steps back.
“Don’t touch me!” she hisses.
I raise my hands in a conciliatory way. “I’m sorry. Really. I just wanted…” With a sigh, I let them sink back down. “Tell me how I can help.”
“You can help by leaving me alone.” She stomps off, her head barely missing a snowboard a tourist had draped under their arm.
“Come on.” This time I’m smarter. Instead of grabbing her, I take a pair of large steps, circle her, and put myself in front of her.
“Don’t be so stubborn. You want something; I can probably help.
If you don’t have any time, continuing to skulk about the slopes without any plan isn’t the most effective path. ”
For a moment, she just stares at me angrily. But I am far too busy with watching how the light makes the blue of her eyes shine to let it bother me.
Eventually, she shifts her weight from one leg to the other and seems to get that I’m right. “Good. Someone told me that the up-and-comers need an endurance trainer.”
“And?”
“And I’m looking for the person who’s in charge.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think I need to discuss that with you.”
I crack a grin. “I think you do.”
“Ah. Sure. Just because you’re Knox, the sought-after snowboarder, you think everything revolves around you.
Got it. But let me tell you something.” She takes a step toward me.
Her face is now much closer to mine. Only now do I notice her right eye is streaked with burst vessels.
“I’m not like all those other girls who will kiss your feet.
I don’t care what you want or what you don’t want.
Your charm leaves me cold. So, if you want to help me, just tell me where I can find the person responsible for those kids. ”
Holy cow. This girl’s got a temper. I like it.
“Feet are nasty,” I counter. “Why would I want someone…”
“Knox.”
I raise a corner of my mouth. “Well. He’s standing right in front of you.”
She screws up her eyes before looking to either side of me. Once she sees the kids on their boards and skis, she turns back to me. “Real funny, Knox.”
I grin. “Don’t you think it’s unfair that you know my name, but I don’t know yours?”
“No.”
I have to laugh. “Okay. Maybe you’ll tell me when I inform you that I’m the one who’s responsible for the up-and-comers.”
Surprise is written all over her face. “You can’t be for real.”
“As real as I’m standing right in front of you.”
She closes her eyes for a moment before turning her head to the side and looking into the distance. “That was obvious.”
“Come out with it. Do you know anyone who wants to train the little daredevils? But I’m warning you: there’s no commission for the middleman.”
She doesn’t laugh. Instead, she just looks at me, expressionless, and chews on the inside of her cheek while appearing to think. Eventually she says, “I want the job.”
At first, I think I’ve misheard her. But when she doesn’t say anything else, I slowly realize that she’s serious. I let out a big laugh. “No, you don’t want to do that.”
“Oh, wow. You’re really getting on my nerves, you know?”
“Then why are you still here?”
Her eyes flash. “Because I need the job. I’m serious. Why do you say ‘no’?”
A kid on a snowboard is coming right toward us. I carefully raise my hand and urge her to the side. She flinches again but doesn’t punch me a second time.
“Well…” My eyes sweep from her face to her feet and back. “You’re really delicate. The kids are primarily boys hitting puberty. Really stressful. They say a lot of dumb shit, are demanding, and you’ve got to act like an authoritarian. You look like they’d run over you at the first opportunity.”
Her nostrils flare. “That’s sexist. Just because I’m not a dude doesn’t mean I can’t assert myself.”
“Maybe so. All the same…” Unsure, I suck in my lower lip and run my teeth across it. “You know about training?”
She raises her chin. “I’m a figure skater at iSkate.”
That changes everything. From one second to the next.
A figure skater.
It’s like those words have taken my breath away.
Here I am, stiff as a board, my feet stuck into the snow, but I feel totally unstable.
As if the ground beneath me might disappear, casting me into the abyss, without any security at all, unconscious, or maybe not, which would be even worse, much, much worse.
I’d feel everything, the pain welling back up, the heat, the cold, the heat, the cold rushing through my body and inflaming my nerves to the extreme.
“Hello?” Her voice seems far away; it’s riddled with a rustling, and I can’t tell if it is real or just in my head.
There’s a rustling and it’s loud, it’s roaring, maybe shouting, no idea, but it’s loud, so loud that I can’t stand it.
Just her voice; it’s barely there, a distant, dull sound, as if coming from shore, and I was out there, real deep beneath the water. “Is, umm, everything okay?”
I gasp for breath. With the memories the word has brought up, I feel bile making its way up into my throat.
A figure skater.
“There’s no job for you,” I stammer. I’m dizzy. The brightly colored snowsuits of the people around us turn into a single mosaic.
“Umm. Okaaay. And why not?”
“Because.”
She crosses her arms across her chest. “Do you already have someone? I’m better. I can prove it. Give me a chance. A test. I’ll show you that I can train the up-and-comers. I am assertive.”
My eyes flit to the swelling in her face and stay put.
She notices. Of course she does. That is exactly what I aimed to achieve.
I know that it isn’t right. I know that she’ll think I’m the biggest asshole in the United States.
Maybe I am; who knows? But at the moment I don’t see any other way of keeping her at a distance.
A figure skater.
“I doubt it.”
She gasps. The shock in her face is deep. A blaze that’s impossible to miss fills her large eyes.
I can’t say that it doesn’t affect me.
“You’re obnoxious, Knox.” Her expression is full of disgust. She shakes her head. “Repellent.” And with that, she turns and goes.
All the sounds around me fade into the background.
I don’t know how much longer I stand there, watching her go. I only know that I’m still there once she has long disappeared from sight.