I Am Not Jessica Chen(48)
Clearly, they all thought I was worse than them.
So I had to be better. I had to be so good they couldn’t ignore me anymore. If I wanted to be loved, I had to best them all.
“Hey, isn’t that Aaron?” Celine says. “I didn’t know he could ride.”
The sound of his name yanks my thoughts back to reality.
“What?” I say sharply, twisting around—and without meaning to, I tug at the reins too hard. All I get a glimpse of is a blurry silhouette in the distance before my horse takes one haphazard step to the left, then jerks fast to the right again, snorting and dipping his heavy head.
Celine notices. “Whoa,” she says, dropping her own reins to hold up two hands in a placating gesture. “Easy. Hold on—”
It feels like the ground has been ripped out from under me. My body pitches forward with sickening speed.
No, no, no.
I know I’m going to fall before it even happens. I can feel myself teetering wildly off-balance, the uneasy pull between the air and the gravity and the creature’s movements, the horrible moment when gravity wins. And instead of resisting, instead of grabbing on to the horse’s mane or trying to slow him down, I squeeze my eyes shut, my muscles tensing, and think, Just get it over with. Just don’t make it hurt, or make it hurt less.
But nothing can prepare me for the shock of the actual fall—the terrible swooping sensation in my stomach, and the hard, jarring impact of the ground, the dirt in my mouth. My bones quake with it, and for a second my head goes completely blank.
I can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t feel anything except the bright, obliterating pain. I’m lying flat on my back, the stones scraping against my skin, and I open my eyes in time to see the horse leap over me.
Black specks of dirt fly into my vision. My limbs are suddenly useless, too heavy. I hear the horse galloping away, each distinct, heavy thud of its hooves like a heartbeat, sending tremors through the soil under me, before it slows to a stop. And then Celine’s yells, Leela’s frantic rush of words. Footsteps pounding closer and closer, their faces swimming before me. Celine’s eyes are wider than I’ve ever seen them, and Leela is red-faced, shoving loose strands of hair back from her cheeks, her hand covering her mouth. She looks like she might start crying.
“Oh my god—”
“Jessica, are you okay?”
“Shit!”
“Can you try to move?”
Leela whips around to Celine. “What? No, have you lost your mind? Don’t make her move—”
“We need to assess if she’s broken any bones.”
The idea sends a wave of nausea rolling over me, and my fear is more overwhelming than the actual pain itself. My pulse skyrockets, my breathing coming out high and shallow through my clenched teeth.
“If she’s broken anything, she should stay put,” Leela’s arguing, waving her arms around, her voice rising in pitch. “I read a news story where someone broke her leg and her friend tried to get her to walk to the nurse and the shattered bone ended up piercing her skin—”
A low, embarrassing whimper escapes my lips.
“Look, you’re scaring her, Leela,” Celine snaps, crouching down on the grass next to me. “Fine, then. Stay here. But we’re literally in the middle of nowhere. We can’t just leave her lying on the ground—”
“What if we call the ambulance?”
“No ambulance,” I croak out. The throbbing in my arm has intensified, and I’m too terrified to look at it, too scared that I really have broken something. Beneath my panic, I feel a spasm of guilt. It’s not even my body to break.
“Then who?” Leela asks, her round face pinched with concern and urgency. “Do you want us to call your mom, Jessica?”
I’m about to nod, because I do, I want to see my mom, to have her hold me, stroke my hair, scold me for not being careful enough. I want to cling to her the way I used to when I was a child, let her soothe my worries away with the palm of her hand. But then I realize that Leela wouldn’t be calling my mom—she’d be calling my aunt.
“No,” I force out. “Not . . . her—”
The heavy horse hooves trample the rest of my words down.
“Oh,” I hear Leela say, very faintly. “Wow.”
With immense difficulty, I lift my head an inch, blinking. Aaron Cai is riding across the wild grass on a beautiful black steed, his dark hair tousled in the wind. He looks like a figure straight out of a poem, a film, a fairy-tale kingdom. He could be a prince. He could be the one good thing left in the world, the only person I can count on.
Then he’s swinging his leg easily over the saddle, dismounting in a single swift movement, and running toward me.
“Hey, can you hear me?” he asks.
I swallow, overwhelmed by the sudden, irrational urge to burst into tears. He’s so familiar, so reassuring. I feel so safe around him that it terrifies me; I would follow him anywhere without protest. I want to tell him that, want to grab his hand and say, “I’m scared.” But the only word I can get out is “Y-yes.”
He doesn’t look scared at all, though. His expression is controlled, completely focused. “Can you move your hands and feet?”
“I—I think so.” My limbs feel wooden, but I manage to lift my fingers and wriggle them, then my toes.