When I reach the next boulder, I bite my lips. Just one more. Just one more rock to go, and then I’ll make it back onto the sand.
I tentatively place my foot on the smooth, cold black of rock. And when I put my weight there, my heel slips.
And of course. This is when I fall.
“You’re damn lucky you didn’thit your head. Or your face. Or lose a limb!”
I roll my eyes and stare out the car window. I shouldn’t be rolling my eyes. If I’d just watched Carter run away from me barefoot during a horrible storm, stupidly climb some jagged boulders, and slip and fall while getting struck by lightning, I’d be telling him off, too.
“I get it, sometimes you need to run, that’s how you are, butTeal, we have a treadmill. Do you not know about the treadmill in the gym room? You should by now. I know you have’t been here long, but you set up camp in there and everything! You can use it anytime you need to, I would never stop—”
I tune him out as the pain in my ankle intensifies when I shiver. Carter, like some kind of superhero, leapt over two boulders, lifted me up, and carried me all the way back to the house, straight to his car, where he deposited me on the passenger seat. He said he didn’t give a damn if I didn’t want to go to urgent care, that’s where I was going, considering I’d basically been bathed in electricity.
I don’t think the lightning hurt me. I know it must sound dumb, but the lightning…it felt familiar, when it touched my skin. Kind of how it felt when Carter had me connect to the water in the big oak tree during the craft fair…but so much more a vivid, visceral, fuller sensation. The difference between a photo of a cup of coffee and having one in your hands to actually sip its bittersweetness. Iknewthe lightning wouldn’t hurt me, because it was as conscious and alive as I was. It reminded me of the stuff I’d always heard Sage and Sky talk about when it came to their gifts. That almost unexplainable sense of connection and belonging—Sage, she feels the cells in the plants speaking to her own cells. Sky feels that same shit with criaturas.
If I didn’t know any better, I would say for one small moment, I had that piece back. That essential part of me that Mama stole when I was a little kid.
But now all I feel is pain. Because no, the lightning didn’t get me. But my foot getting wedged between those big rocks at an ugly angle sure did.
I’m still wearing the hyacinth-colored dress I’d put on for the lunch with the Velasquez family. It’s got long sleeves and a highneck and reaches to my knees. It was a gift from Amá Sonya and I’m pretty sure she had intended for me to wear it to brunch with her, but the lace of its edges make my skin itch, so I’d never even worn it out. I thought for sure the amount of skin it covered might endear me just a smidge to Abuela Erika, but now I know that even if I were dressed in a nun’s outfit, with a veil covering my face, a rosary around my neck, and holding hands with Jesus Christ in the flesh, she’d still hate my guts.
Carter and I are both soaked, and the lace itches even more while wet and clinging to me. I full-body shiver again and cry out. Putting on a brave face, I lift my leg up to take a look at my foot. Unfortunately, Carter glances over at the same time.
“Jesus,” he hisses. “That looks broken, Teal!”
The ankle is swollen to twice its size and is all black and splotched red on the outer side. When I try to move it, I want to scream.
“No, it doesn’t.” But my voice isn’t convincing at all.
The urgent care nurse takesX-rays of my foot and concludes that it is merely a high-ankle sprain. “One of the worst I’ve ever seen,” Dr. Barringer tells me when he finally comes in; he’s an older man with salt-and-pepper hair and the build of a biker, and he can’t hide his enthusiasm. I guess he must see a lot of running noses and sore throats and my swollen, bruised ankle is the highlight of his week.
Carter gives him a dirty look as he writes a prescription for painkillers. I guess he doesn’t appreciate Dr. Barringer’s passion for the severity of my injury.
“Normally I’d just say alternate between Tylenol and Advil for a few days, but you need something a little stronger than thatfor the first bit. Then alternate the over-the-counter stuff, and keep it elevated, and ice it.”
Carter runs a hand over his face. His clothes have dried up some, but they still wrap around parts of him I would rather not be noticing right now—the smooth planes of his pectoral muscles, the cuts of muscle all along his upper back and shoulders. “And what about the lightning strike?” he asks. “Shouldn’t you check, I don’t know. Her heart or something?”
“Lightning strike?” The doctor lifts his head. “The nurse said you’d made a joke about lightning, but…”
“It wasn’t a joke. She was literally struck by lightning. I saw it. It was—” Carter takes a shaky breath.
“It wasn’t bad,” I say quietly.
“It wasn’t bad?” Carter says, turning to me. “Teal, you werestruck by lightning. In what universe can that be classified asnot bad?”
“Okay, okay.” Dr. Barringer stands and he’s got a big smile on his face. I guess my being struck by lightning has probably made his whole month, maybe even year. “We don’t have the facilities to check her over as thoroughly as necessary for a lightning strike. You’ll have to head over to Cranberry Medical Center for that.”
I shake my head. “That’s not—”
“I insist,” he responds, and then, with unsuppressed glee, he goes into a long list of the ways a lightning strike can fuck a human up, including but not limited to organ damage, cardiac arrest, and tissue burns. With each word, Carter’s face gets paler and paler until he looks a lot worse than how I feel.
I know the lightning didn’t hurt me, but I can’t exactly tell themNo, you don’t understand. This lightning felt familiar, like a family member, and it was really nice to me. I can’t even sayI’mactually a witch of wild lightning, or according to my great-aunt Nadia I am, so being struck is just one of those things no one needs to worry about. Dr. Barringer would assume the lightning wrapped around my brain and fried it, and then he’d probably throw an office party over such an exciting turn of medical events.
“Carter,” I say once the appointment’s done and he hoists me into his arms.
“Don’t.” His voice is deep and sharp. “We’re going to the hospital.”
He gets us there in fifteen minutes flat by breaking no less than four different traffic laws on the way. After three hours of waiting and tests, and a hell of a lot more waiting, we’re sent home by medical professionals who don’t hide the fact that they doubt I was struck at all. ’Cause there’s nothing wrong with me. Aside from the high ankle sprain, I mean. Plus the fact that I’m exhausted, and hungry, and my heart feels kind of broken.
