Page 12 of Given Our History

“I’m sorry.” He tried to adjust and nudged me with his elbow in the process. “I don’t know what to do with my arm.”

“Just put it around my shoulder,” I suggested without really thinking. “Isn’t that how this is supposed to work?”

He raised his eyebrows. He plainly took more time to think things through than I did, but he seemed to come to the same conclusion, because he tucked me beneath his arm. I’d never had a boy put his arm around me before—it was surprisingly heavy, and now I wasn’t sure what to do with my arm, so I slipped it around his back like some of the other campers were doing, heart thumping in anticipation of the race.

Did this guy even sweat? He wasn’t half as sticky as me.

“Campers ready?” someone shouted, and all of the teams hurried to make last-minute adjustments to their respective strategies—shifting arms and frantic, tangled limbs. Teddy’s arm tensed around my shoulder, as though to say don’t you dare try to switch things up last minute.

“This leg will be number one.” He patted our bound legs—our thighs, actually, and for some reason, the touch caught me so off guard that my heart leapt into my throat, but he didn’t seem to notice. “These are number two.” He indicated his free leg.

“On your mark.”

“Ready?” Teddy asked.

“Get set.”

I fixed my gaze on the finish line at the bottom of the hill. “As ready as I’m going to be.”

“Go!”

The whistle trilled and everyone took off at once. Half the campers stumbled and ate dirt right out the gate. It took a couple paces, but Teddy and I managed to find a sort of rhythm, all to the tune of his muttered one, two. The finish line was marked by a chalk line sprayed across the grass at the bottom of the hill, not that far away. We picked up speed with ease thanks to the slope of the hill.

Maybe too much speed.

“One, two. One, two—no, that’s not two, this leg is two,” Teddy protested, trying to indicate our legs while also trying to keep walking.

“What do you mean?” I was breathless, flustered. “That’s your left leg, this is my left leg, they’re both two.”

“That makes no sense. If they’re both two then we wouldn’t—”

He went to take a step with every intention of dragging me along with him, and he sort of did drag me. But I had already lost my footing, my free leg buckling beneath me—followed by a sickening pop. We went down in a blur of arms and legs bent at awkward angles and sky-blue polo shirts, landing face-first in the grass with a dull thud.

I let out a muffled groan. There was a bitter tang in my mouth and I tried to spit it out, grass sticking to my lip. Teddy’s arm was heavy across my back, but he shifted to push himself off the ground. I sucked in a breath as a sharp, biting pain shot through my ankle.

He froze beside me. “Are you all right?”

“No,” I gritted out. “I think I broke my ankle.”

My face was scrunched in pain, my eyes shut tight, too scared to assess the damage. Teddy shifted himself gingerly in the grass, and then deft hands worked to untie our legs. As soon as I was free, I rolled onto my back and lifted my injured leg to reposition it, hissing at another twinge of pain. The sunlight was a dull red against the inside of my eyelids.

All around us, people were shouting and cheering at the race and whistles were chirruping. No one seemed to have noticed that we were down—or rather, if they did notice, they hadn’t noticed that I was injured. “Hey!” Teddy was shouting, too, far closer than the rest of the din. Footsteps thudded in the grass. “We need to get her to the first aid station.”

Someone was squatting next to me. “Can you walk?” A gruff voice that I recognized as belonging to Ms. Fischer. I pinched my eyes tighter and shook my head. “Here. Help me get her up.”

They scooped me up by the arms, setting me upright, but I couldn’t put any weight on my left leg. “I’ll take her,” Teddy offered, and he tucked me in close, much the same as he did during the race, only this time I wasn’t very good at supporting my own weight. I remembered my sweaty armpits and wanted to protest, but even if my ankle was okay, I was too light-headed to stand on my own right now. He guided me as I hopped through a gap in the crowd, down the hill toward the first aid station.

Half an hour later, I sat on the examination table beneath the stark fluorescent light of the first aid cabin with an ice pack balanced on my sprained ankle. Teddy waited in one of the hard plastic chairs, his chin balanced on a fist. I wasn’t totally sure what he was still doing here, but I didn’t hate the company.

“You’ll need to stay off it until it’s fully healed,” Nurse Mendoza instructed me. “And try to keep it elevated and iced for the next forty-eight hours.” She glided across the room on her rolling stool and opened a series of drawers. “It looks like we’re out of ACE bandages. Let me just pop over to the supply cupboard. Wait here,” she added sternly, as if patients with sprained ankles regularly popped up to go walk a 10K just for the fun of it.

She bustled out of the room, leaving me alone with Teddy. I was uncomfortably aware of the way the paper on the examination table crunched every time I shifted my weight, but I shifted anyway, because I was embarrassed and didn’t know what else to do with myself. “Thank you for helping me. I’m sorry I cost you the race. And the pizza.”

“Actually, I’m not a huge fan of pizza. Too greasy.” The corner of his mouth quirked in something resembling a smile—the closest thing to a smile I’d seen out of him, at any rate. “The Pepsi, however—”

“I’m sorry!” I groaned and flopped back on the table, paper crinkling beneath me. “At least you’ll know I’m suffering. I’ll be missing the hike tomorrow and everything.”

“Poor you. You get to lie in bed, reading all day.”