“This can’t be it!” I said, in a voice a full octave higher than the voice I knew. “I need to get back on the field.” But it hurt too much as I tried to stand up.

“I’ll call an ambulance,” the cheer coach said, kneeling beside Katie, taking my hand. “It’s okay, Ashley,” she said, stroking my hair, which was way too freaking long. On the field the game had resumed, because play doesn’t stop because of an injured cheerleader.

I took a deep breath. Held it. Took another and held it again. Then I breathed out slowly, getting the pain and my thoughts under control.

“Let me go,” I told Katie and the cheer coach. Then I stood up on my own, fought the pain and the dizziness, and the foreignness of my own body. And once I was sure I had my balance and wouldn’t fall, I turned to the cheer coach. “Cancel the ambulance,” I told her. “I’ll walk it off.”

23

“I’m So Glad You’re Mine”

Here’s what I know.

My name is Ashley Bowman. Everybody calls me that, not just my grandmother. I’m on the cheer squad in the fall, and I do competitive cheerleading in winter, and track and field in the spring. My best event is the long jump. I have a younger brother named Hunter—that hasn’t changed. My father still used to be an NFL player, and we’re still one of the wealthiest families in town, but here, my parents are divorced.

I’m dating Layton Vandenboom, the star quarterback of the Gray Demons. We’ve been together for almost a year. Our relationship is . . . complicated.

“Someone should be held responsible!” my mother said, as she drove me to the hospital. Even though an ambulance wasn’t called, the swelling in my side warranted a trip to the emergency room. I knew I had a broken rib, but I also knew that there was nothing you could do for that but let it heal on its own. Unless, of course, it punctured an organ, but I didn’t think it was quite that bad.

“It was nobody’s fault,” I told her.

In this world, one of the Cheetahs’ receivers had just caught a pass and was taking it down the sideline, when one of our boys pushed him out of bounds and into me, taking me down hard.

I was protectively numb about my new situation. The moment I had dared to reach down and felt what was no longer there, and what was in its place, my subconscious switched off all emotion and put my brain in a cast. It was necessary. Because thinking about who Layton was in my life now would have caused me to hurl myself out the door into oncoming traffic.