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Woodbury, Minnesota

Playing Hurt
© 2010 by Holly Schindler

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Flux, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. As the purchaser of this ebook, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. The text may not be otherwise reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or recorded on any other storage device in any form or by any means.

Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the author’s copyright and is illegal and punishable by law. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Cover models used for illustrative purposes only and may not endorse or represent the book’s subject. First e-book edition © 2011

E-book ISBN: 9780738728155

Cover design by Ellen Lawson

Cover image © iStockphoto.com/Daniel Laflor

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Flux does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public. Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific reference will continue or be maintained. Please refer to the publisher’s website for links to current author websites. Flux

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Acknowledgments

Thanks, as always, to the fantastic crew at Flux, particularly my editors, Brian Farrey and Sandy Sullivan.

And to Team Schindler—Mom (world’s best first reader and sounding board), and especially John, my brother, for unwavering support throughout a long journey and for always being at all my author events, camera in hand.

And to the incredible bloggers and readers I’ve met online—whose enthusiasm is priceless—you make each release an absolute blast. Thank you, thank you, thank you …

Chelsea

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Acamerawinksatmefromhighinthebleacherslikewe’resharinga secret. Fans in the home section of the Fair Grove High gym smile in envy as I hurry toward the bench, wishing some winking camera had ever, in their entire lives, shared a secret with
them
. Other cameras follow suit, flashes popping at me from all over as I jog the last few steps to the huddle. Each step sends fiery sparks through my hips—sparks I’ve been trying to ignore during practice for the last week and a half.

I fight a grimace and tell myself I’m doing a good job covering up the pain. But when I glance up at the bleachers, I realize my little brother’s squinting at me from behind his thick glasses. He lowers his camcorder, wrinkles his face into a worried frown. I try to turn my attention back toward Coach Tindell, but my eyes bounce from the dried-up apple-doll face of my next-door neighbor, Mrs. Williams, to my second-grade teacher (who’s wearing an absurdly large pair of papier-mâché basketball-shaped earrings), then to our 7/262

mail carrier, to the boy who kissed me on the playground on the last day of the fourth grade, to two distant cousins, to Mack, owner of the Quick Mart down the block from my house (who constantly brags about patching the front tire on my cherry-red Camaro last spring the same way he might brag about patching up Brad Pitt’s ride). My Camaro is now parked in the Fair Grove High lot, slathered in well-wishes from my boyfriend, Gabe, who is as sweet as a box of Valentine’s Day candy hearts.
Go Chelsea!
he’s written with windshield markers.
#23!
And,
Nitro!
which is the only thing the rest of the team calls me anymore.

“Doesn’t
look
like a ball player,” I hear trickle from the crowd. The sentence has been following me everywhere, flopping around like an untied shoelace ever since I was profiled by
USA WEEKEND
Magazine, since I was pictured on the cover of their issue highlighting the best female high school athletes in the country. My airbrushed, ultra-flattering portrait revealed that I was toned but not body-builder enormous; that unlike the stereotypical female basketball player, I also have most-definitely girly addictions—to strawberry-tinted lip gloss, waterproof mascara, and my straightening iron.
Doesn’t look like a ball player
. As that sentence floats, I get the urge to say something like, “Get real—women were playing basketball at Smith College in 1892,” or, “Wasn’t Title IX forty freaking years ago?” or, “I certainly
hope
we’re past making jokes about butch girl jocks.” Or, “How many more
times
, as women, are we going to have to prove that
feminine
and
powerful
can, in fact, be synonyms?”

“… thousand shots a day … set shots, lay-ups, free throws,” I hear drifting from the crowd. “Five-mile run, an hour at the weight bench.”

They all know my daily workout routine. They all talk big about it, beam the way most people do when talking about their kids. As I glance up at the bleachers, I see a couple of posterboard signs hovering above the heads of the crowd, the hand-painted messages screaming
Chelsea Keyes—Pride of Fair Grove!

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I wipe my sweaty forehead with my fingertips. The humidity in the gym hangs in the air like a soaking wet sheet on a clothesline. But the rest of the team is still smooth-skinned. Almost powdery. Not a single sweat-shine on any of their cheeks.

“Work ethic powered by nitroglycerin,” someone says from the front row of the bleachers. It should rev me, the way the Fair Grove fans are talking me up, thinking I’m like the active ingredient in dynamite. It should inspire me far more than Tindell’s quickie pep talk. Instead, the words sit heavy across my shoulders like a barbell. Like something I need to lift.

Our team breaks from the huddle; when I turn back toward the court, though, somebody’s got their hand around my wrist.