Chapter 27 #2
Down I go, seized by a violent cramp all along my right hip and thigh.
It’s not a charley horse, it’s worse. I bite my lip to keep from groaning in agony, but I can’t get up. I know this pain. I’ve spent too much time running around without doing my stretches and now, I’m done for.
My team groans as the time expires.
We just lost and it was my fault.
“Crap, Charlotte,” Maddy says. Her voice is half concerned and half annoyed that I’m lying on the ground in front of everyone.
While his teammates high-five each other, Kyle jogs over to me. “You okay?” he asks and then I hear him say the most terrible words. “She’s got a thing with her hips.”
I’m curled up in a ball, seeing white spots in my vision, and I know, I just know, he’s talking to Taysom.
No one needed to know that about me. I’m already an outsider, with my hair and my freckles and being so much younger than them. And now this? It’s too much.
“Oh. Dang,” Taysom says. “Should we…help her up?”
“She’ll be fine. She just needs an ice pack.
” It’s Maddy’s voice now. She and Kyle flank me on either side and pull me up to standing.
Most of the guys aren’t paying much attention, probably because they’re embarrassed for me and know I don’t want anyone fussing over me.
Or maybe they’re mad that I made us lose.
But Taysom doesn’t look away. With my siblings helping me hobble over the grass, he runs ahead of us, jumping up the patio steps and opening the back door. His face is lined with concern as I half walk, half hop to the base of the stairs.
I’m greedy for his concern, for the eyes that see me.
Before I know what’s happening, he steps back down to me, cradles my back with his right arm and bends to grab my legs at the backs of my knees.
He hefts me to his chest, and I can feel his lungs fill and release as he takes the steps.
“Coming through!” he yells, like I’m a take-and-bake pizza he’s just gotten out of the oven.
My center of gravity feels all sideways and my head blurs.
“You okay?” he asks, looking ahead as he maneuvers around the toys Penny and Gage left out.
“I’m fine,” I say, as breezily as I can manage. “It’s fine.”
“Want to go to the sofa, or…” Kyle jogs in front of us and is looking around for a place for me to be deposited.
“Here is fine.” I gesture to the kitchen chair. I just want everyone to leave me alone as quickly as possible. I can hobble around to a softer chair later in peace.
Maddy grabs the ice pack from the freezer and tosses it to me, and Kyle gets me a glass of water.
“You good?” Taysom asks and I swear, there’s genuine kindness in his eyes. How a guy like him could think twice about a girl like me has a bubble of hope rising in my chest.
But no, I tell myself. It’s nothing. He’s just a nice guy. He’d be concerned about anyone who went down during a game.
Right?
I nod, take a sip of water so I don’t have to say anything and give him a thumbs up as I swallow.
“So, what happened, exactly? Did someone run into you, or—?” Taysom asks.
But Kyle grabs a box of Twinkies from the pantry.
“I’ve been craving these!” Taysom says, grabbing the box. His blue eyes light up as he and my brother tear it open. He, Kyle, and Maddy run back outside.
I expect Kyle and Maddy, after getting me inside, to move onto the next thing. They know this happens. They know it’s nothing serious and it will just take a few minutes of stretching until I’m able to walk normally.
But for Taysom to so swiftly forget about me for…Twinkies? It’s both kind of funny and also disappointing.
It hurts.
Which is silly.
What did I expect? Him to forgo his entire afternoon with friends to hang out with me?
Instead of it actually happening, which I know it won’t, I can imagine it. My imagination is always better than reality anyway.
I adjust the ice pack. I should have gone over to the sofa to stretch my leg out because this isn’t really working. But then I notice a scrap of paper on the table next to a mess of smeared peanut butter, a still-opened bag of bread, and a knife coated in dried jelly.
“I am runing a way,” the note reads in Penny’s first grade handwriting.
I take in a breath. She’s never run away before. And I was supposed to watch her.
The next few hours are a blur. A tortuous, heart-pounding blur.
At first, Kyle and Maddy don’t take it too seriously. “She’s probably just at Kelsey’s house,” Maddy says, and then laughs at the misspelled words.
“No,” I insist. “She’s never done this before. She was mad at me.” I swallow hard. “I was mean to her.”
Maddy sighs. “I’ll text Kelsey’s mom.”
The Grangers haven’t seen her. None of the neighbors in our cul-de-sac have. Kyle’s friends leave and my siblings tell me to stay at the house with my ice pack and they’ll go out to try to find her.
“I’m coming with you,” I say, standing even as the ice pack slips to the floor and my hip seizes up again.
“Stay here,” Kyle demands. “You can’t walk right now. And if Penny comes home, you need to be here to let us know.”
I guess that’s my job. To sit here and wait until the stinger in my hip subsides. But I know the pain in my stomach isn’t going anywhere until they find my little sister.
This is my fault. For being impulsive and thinking that the magic of thirteen could somehow extend to me. That I could be flirty and bold, like Maddy. It’s my fault for being mean to my little sister and not making her a stupid PB and J.
Kyle calls our parents, who rush home immediately. A call to 911 and three hours after I saw her note, she’s found. In a park by herself a mile and a half away from our house.
She’s okay. She just has her backpack stuffed full of random things and a smudge of peanut butter on her cheek.
But I’ll never be okay again.
And I’ll never be selfish and stuck up again.
If this is what happens when I do what I want instead of what I’m supposed to do, then I want nothing to do with it.