Free The Winner's Game by Kevin Alan Milne

close to the water. We’ll see you in a little bit.”
    Once he is out of sight, I head straight for the water. Not too close, though—just close enough to get my feet wet. It is freezing, after all; the Oregon coast always is. For a while I just stand in place, sinking a little in the sand every time the water around my ankles is sucked back into the ocean. Once my feet are sufficiently numb, I retreat to a place on the beach that hasn’t been touched by the water. With a stick, I draw a small shape in the sand—a tiny heart, like the one my dad made with his finger.
    Only mine looks more like my sister’s heart: imperfect and slightly misshapen.
    When it comes to art—and to me, even simple sketches in the sand should be treated as art—I’m a perfectionist. I don’t want to draw one like Ann’s, with flaws. To fix it, I draw a larger heart around the first one, but the new heart is equally distorted.
    What is wrong with me? This shouldn’t be so hard. Maybe my hands are numb too.
    Frustrated, in the fading light I continue tracing hearts around the outside, hoping that the next one will perfect the image. Each new line makes the picture bigger, but not necessarily better. Eventually, the collection of hearts grows to a width of at least twenty feet, but by then it is almost touching the incoming tide. When I see that the water will soon destroy my hard work, I tiptoe across my creation to the original cockeyed heart— Ann’s heart , in the middle—as if my presence there will protect it.
    A few minutes later, pulled by the rising moon, the foaming water again tickles my ankles, and the heart of hearts washes away. “Why can’t you just leave her alone?” I ask the ocean. Or God. Or whoever.
    The ocean doesn’t reply. It just keeps rolling in and out, lapping at the sand. Yet as my feet turn blue with cold, each new wave is a chilling reminder of what I already knew. Imperfect hearts aren’t meant to last .
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    â€œHey, stranger. We were about to send a rescue crew,” jokes Mom when I finally come in from the beach through the back door. She’s at the stove stirring a pot of spaghetti. With a little curtsy she says, “What do you think of my apron? It was hanging in the pantry, just begging to be worn.”
    The apron is designed to look exactly like an overgrown Dungeness crab. The main body is the shell, with beady black eyes looking up at Mom’s chin, spiny legs wrapped around her back as ties, and two giant claws joined behind her neck to keep it up. “It’s…sick,” I tell her.
    â€œIs that good or bad these days?”
    I chuckle. “Take another look at what you’re wearing, and you tell me.”
    â€œWell, there’s not much cooking left to do, but there’s also a lobster-apron in the pantry if you want to try it on.”
    â€œNah, I’m good.”
    She winks at me and then goes back to stirring noodles.
    â€œHave you seen Ann?”
    â€œShe’s upstairs resting, I think.”
    Cade and Dad are engrossed in a game of backgammon as I pass through the living room. “Welcome back,” says Dad before I reach the sea-blue stairwell.
    â€œHey,” I say, then continue on.
    There are three doors at the top of the stairs. The one to the left is the half bath, the one straight ahead leads to the attic, and the one to the right is “the girls’” bedroom. I twist the handle on the right, then push gently.
    Ann is laying flat on her back on the bottom bunk. She has a pen in her hand and is in the middle of writing something on the wood slat above her head. When she hears the door sliding on the carpet, she quickly drops the pen and acts like she wasn’t doing something that she probably shouldn’t. But when she sees it’s just me, she relaxes and gives me a half smile. “Hey.”
    â€œHey,” I reply. “So…how you