Total pages in book: 198
Estimated words: 186242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 931(@200wpm)___ 745(@250wpm)___ 621(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 931(@200wpm)___ 745(@250wpm)___ 621(@300wpm)
Could you break a knee?
Rolling onto my butt, careful not to slide farther off the trail and toward the jagged rocks below, I blew out a breath.
Then I looked down and squeaked.
The gravel had scraped my palms raw. There were little pebbles buried in my skin. Beads of blood were starting to pop up on my poor hands.
Bending my arms, I tried to glance at my elbows . . . only to see enough to imagine that they looked the same as my palms.
Only then did I finally take in my knees.
The material covering one of them was totally torn. It was scraped raw too. The material over my other knee was intact, but it burned like hell, and I knew that knee was fucked up too.
“Oww,” I moaned to myself, looking at my hands, then my elbows—ignoring the pain that shot through my shoulders as I chicken-winged my arm—and finally back at my knees.
It hurt. Everything fucking hurt.
And I hadn’t brought anything with me as first aid. How could I be so dumb?
Slipping my backpack off, I dropped it on the ground beside me and peeked at my hands once more.
“Owwie.” I sniffled and swallowed hard before looking back the way I’d come.
Everything really did hurt. I’d liked these pants too.
There was a tiny stream of blood going down my shin from my knee, and the urge to cry got worse. I would’ve punched the gravel if I could close my fist, but I couldn’t even do that. I sniffled again, and not for the first time since moving out here, to basically the middle of nowhere, but for the first time in a while, I wondered what the fuck I was doing.
What was I doing with my life?
Why was I here? What was I doing, doing this? I was doing hikes by myself with the exception of the one time. Everyone had their own lives. No one would even know I’d hurt myself. I had nothing to clean my wounds with. I was probably going to die from some weird infection now. Or I’d bleed out.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I felt one little tear pop up, and I wiped it away with the back of my hand, wincing as I did it.
Pure frustration mixed with throbbing pain formed a ball in my chest.
Maybe I should go back to Florida, or go back to Nashville; it wasn’t like there were any chances I’d ever see Mr. Golden Boy there. He rarely left the house. He was too hot shit to hang out with normal people after all. What the hell was I doing?
Whining, that’s what.
And my mom never whined, some small part of my brain reminded the rest of me in that moment.
Opening up my eyes, I reminded myself that I was here. That I didn’t want to live in Nashville, Yuki or no Yuki. I’d liked Florida, but it had never really felt like home because it seemed more of just a reminder of what I had lost, of a life I’d had to live because of the things that had happened. In a way, it was a bigger reminder of a tragedy than even Pagosa Springs.
And I didn’t want to fucking move from Pagosa. Even if all I had were just a couple friends, but hey, some people had no friends.
Just earlier, when I hadn’t been feeling so pathetic, I’d thought that everything was working out. That I was getting somewhere. I was settling in.
And now all it took was one little thing to go wrong and I wanted to quit? Who was I?
Taking in a long, deep breath, I accepted that I was going to have to go back. I had nothing for my hands, my knees ached like fucking hell, and my shoulder was hurting more and more by the second. I was pretty sure I’d be in unbelievable pain if I’d dislocated it, so I’d probably just hurt it a little.
I had to take care of myself, and I had to do it now. I could always come back and do this hike again. I wasn’t quitting. I wasn’t.
Picking the hand that looked the worst, I set it palm up on top of my thigh, gritted my teeth, and started picking out the gravel that had decided to make a home in my skin, hissing and groaning and flinching and saying, “Oh my God, fuck you,” over and over again when a particular piece hurt like extra hell . . . which was every piece of gravel.
I cried.
And when I finished that hand and even more blood pooled in the tiny wounds and my palm throbbed even worse, I started on the other.
I was taking care of myself.
There was a small first aid kit in my emergency roadside bag, I remembered when I was nearly done with my other hand. I’d bought it when I got my bear spray. It didn’t have a whole lot, but it had something. Band-Aids to help me survive the entire two-and-a-half-hour drive home, on top of the time it would take to hike back out.