The A-Game (new version)

Chapter 2.

"Misty?" Leo asked. "What happened?" He said this in less of a concerned tone and more of an accusing and abrasive one. Looking back, I can imagine what him and his parents saw. My red hair was a flamy conflagration of frizzy knots that swathed my flushed face with even more of a frenzied appeal. Blood ran from both of my nostrils, around my lips, and down my chin, where it had dried into a thin line down my neck. It didn't help that my eyes were wide and dazed on top of my bent, broken, nose. This wasn't to mention my arm, which hung lower than the other, while my left ankle was swollen and bent at an odd angle with bruises that peppered all the way up my leg to my gashed open knee. At the time though, I could only ever recall what I saw. Leo's parents, Janice and Paul Brenden were sitting at the kitchen table set for three, with the center-piece being a large plate piled with pancakes. The TV was on, and I was struck with how normal everything felt. If it weren't for my injuries, I would've thought I had imagined everything. I hadn't though, and I told myself not to dare be embarrassed or ashamed as they gave me a stool to sit on, plus an additional chair to elevate my foot on. Janice placed a plate of pancakes before me, next to an Advil and a glass of water. The cold packet of frozen peas that she set over my ankle and on my knee, helped to ease the pain, but sent shivers through me. I ignored the water, but wolfed down the pancakes in an attempt to warm my insides and coat my tongue with a taste other than that of bile. They tried to get me to explain to them what had happened to me, but I didn't know how to explain it to Janice as she dabbed gently at the blood along the bottom half of my face with a warm wash cloth. I supposed that the absence of blood wasn't much of an improvement, because I still supposed that my nose was all knotted and gnarled from being broken. Janice touched it with a tentative finger. Her expression was wounded, and I felt bad for withholding information. Words have always come easily to me, but how do you explain something that you couldn't explain yourself? I felt nothing but a sigh escape me, because I couldn't get the words to come

"You'll need surgery for that nose," Janice said. Another ragged sigh flew past my lips and I felt for the first time, a sharp pain in my nose as I inhaled again. I had it envisioned in my head of a doctor gripping my nose and snapping it back into place. It didn't matter to me if it was surgery or not, I couldn't shake away the thought of how it must feel when bone slides against cartilage. I shook my head silently.

"Misty," Paul piped up. "You need to get looked at. You're injured." Leo was looking at me as if I was the biggest idiot in the world.

Instead of answering, I tried to focus on eating. I took slow and careful bites, but eventually felt sick with the weight of hot food and the continuing cold that had settled about me. After a couple more futile attempts at raising the fork to my mouth, I let it clatter to the half-empty plate with a sound that sent pains into my skull.

"Misty," Leo said, not unkindly but with a firm expression.

After awhile of shaking my head and rubbing my temples to keep out the pain, I was finally reminded of the Advil. I swallowed it with a waterfall of now-room-temperature water and imagined warm and soothing miniature little balls of comfort spreading into my veins, smoothing out the icy shards in my blood. With my new found strength, I at last managed the simplest explanation I could in order to the blur the edges of what even I didn't know. "Attacked." It came out like the croak of a bull frog. "I was attacked," I said again, smoothing out the rumpled edges of the speech impediment that seemed to have imbedded itself in my throat.

"Then we need to call the police," Janice said.

I shook my head. Urging my tongue forward as if it were a heavy spear I spoke again: "Please. The police aren't going anywhere. I'm tired. I can't... I need time to process things before we do anything. I know it's stupid but- please just- can we wait?"