The bird flapped up to the treetops that shadowed the stream and then deeper into the woods until it was out of sight.
Sheera looked at her watch, which read 10:55. “We have to go!” She stood suddenly and brushed the bits of dirt and grass off her shorts.
“It’s fine,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. “Chad’s a softy.”
“I don’t wanna get in trouble.” Without knowing whether Mikey was following, she began to take long, fast strides down the slope of the hill. About halfway through her descent, her right flip-flop lost its grip on the earth, and her foot was propelled forward while the back of her right thigh scratched itself on the face of a rock. Her sandal tumbled down the hill. Ignoring the stinging pain, she stood, righting herself on the uneven ground fast enough that Mikey wouldn’t get a chance to see that she’d fallen.
“Are you okay?” she heard him say from behind her. “You’re bleeding!”
“I’m fine.” She took off her other flip-flop and hobbled down barefoot to where they first had landed. “Let’s just go.”
He ran down the hill to her, making it look so easy, and took off his shirt and wrapped it around her leg to stop the bleeding. It was just a scratch, she told him, grimacing as she felt the cloth now sticking to her raw skin. He had such a skinny torso, like he didn’t eat at all. It looked a lot like Helen’s, flat in every which way. Not like her own chest, which didn’t want to stop growing, and her waist, which kept widening. When she stood up after sitting for even a few minutes these days, there were red lines on her stomach from where the skin folded over.
Mikey led the way back to the shore, and she followed, struggling to keep up and hiding a limp. When they got to the canoe, Sheera hoped he didn’t see her grimacing as she sat down on the hard bench.
On the lake, she paddled furiously, wordlessly, her face hot with shame. She could see that across the lake at camp the kids were gone: There were no other boats in the water now, no heads bobbing in the swimming hole. There was only Chad at the shoreline, waving with his arms over his head. Her leg throbbed.
“Where the hell have you two been?” Chad spat as they got closer. He waded thigh deep into the water, his face red. “Paddles up, now.” He pulled their canoe in hard.
“What is that?” Chad said, approaching Sheera as she stepped out of the boat. “Is that blood?” She looked down and saw that a few red spots had stained the shirt around her thigh.
“It’s just a scratch,” Mikey said, shrugging.
Chad closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose. He took a deep breath, then looked at Sheera. “Are you okay?”
Sheera nodded, holding in her tears. She could not let them see her cry. It wasn’t just that her leg hurt so bad—and it did hurt; it was a gash, not a scratch. It was that it felt like that one fall exposed her. She’d been getting along just fine until this point. Now Mikey, or Chad, or anyone else who learned what had happened could know that she might not be cut out for this place.
“All right, let’s go to the nurse.” He looked over at Mikey. “Walk with us. Explain what happened.”
“We got stuck, dude,” Mikey explained as they walked up the gravel road. “Wedged between two rocks. Sheera jumped out to try to get us unstuck, and that’s when she scratched her leg.” He glanced almost imperceptibly at Sheera. “I know we went past the buoys,” he continued. “We fucked up. But we’re here, right? And I promise it was all my idea.”
“Watch your mouth,” Chad said. He looked at Sheera. “Is that true?” he asked. “Was it all Mikey’s idea?”
Mikey and Sheera held eyes for a moment. He was either challenging her to tell the truth or to go along with his story. She thought about her father telling her to be careful. She thought about what she knew about boys: that they were fun but trouble.
Sheera shook her head. “He’s lying,” she said. She understood, instinctually, that Mikey could get away with things that she could not. “We went to the other shore.”
“Jesus.” Chad stopped walking. “Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you two could get me in?”
“But you were supposed to be watching us,” Sheera said.
Mikey looked at her in disbelief.
“Excuse me?” Chad said.
“I said—” Sheera began.
“I heard what you said.” He locked eyes with Sheera for a minute: wide, wild eyes. He was scaring her, but she would not let him know it. She willed herself not to be the first to break the eye contact, and in doing so, she felt brave, almost impenetrable. She could feel Mikey’s presence, could feel him looking between her and Chad, suddenly aware that this no longer involved him in a way he could articulate.
Then Chad turned around and walked ahead of them, muttering under his breath. He led them to the nurse’s office.
It was a cabin near the dining hall; Sheera had not yet been inside it. The three of them walked in together. There was a waiting room with a worn fabric couch, a boy sitting on it with an ice pack pressed to his elbow, and chairs in equal disrepair. A TV high up on the wall played a talk show on mute, in which five women—some black, some white—were sitting at a long table, looking like they were making important points. The air conditioner in one of the windows was blowing cold air into the room.
“What happened to you?” Mikey asked the kid sitting on the couch.
“Beesting,” he said, lifting the ice pack briefly to show the red mark.
Mikey shrugged. “That’s no big deal.”
“Whatever,” the kid scoffed. “Where’s your shirt?”
Mikey pointed to Sheera, who still had it wrapped around her leg.
Chad approached the nurse, a nice-looking older lady, and waved for Sheera and Mikey to follow.
“What do we have here?” the nurse asked Sheera with a sweet tone in her voice.
“I scratched my leg,” Sheera said.
“Sweet of you to give her your shirt,” the nurse said to Mikey. Then she looked up at Chad. “I can take her from here.”
Chad seemed almost disappointed that the nurse hadn’t asked him any questions. He gave Sheera one nod as a goodbye, still with that hard, scary expression on his face. Mikey looked disappointed to be leaving too, but Sheera didn’t know if he was disappointed to be leaving her or just the air-conditioning and the TV. She had to admit, it felt nice to be in a real indoor room, even if it was only for a few minutes.
“Have a seat,” the nurse said to Sheera after the boys left, gesturing to one of the folding chairs next to the desk. When Sheera sat down at first, it hurt her leg, so she moved her butt all the way to the edge of the seat. The nurse reached forward and slowly, gently untied the shirt from around Sheera’s upper thigh.