“Which I’ve never done,” I said. “I’m not very good at sports, as you know. I don’t like throwing balls; and I don’t like balls being thrown at me.” That last part was to remind him of always hurling whatever ball we were playing with during gym class directly at me. Volleyballs, dodgeballs, basketballs. I was almost always the person Matty was trying to either hit with a ball or pass a ball to. I never caught any of them, instead ducking or running in the opposite direction.
“It is pretty funny how scared you are of balls, Leah” Matthew said, laughing. “And you know I’m just teasing you. I would never throw it hard enough to hurt you. I always hope you will catch it and throw it back at me. Our friends would think that was hilarious!”
“You give them enough entertainment by tormenting me, Matthew,” I said in an overly dramatic tone, which I matched with a sarcastic smile. “No need for me to make even more of a fool of myself by attempting to catch a ball, much less throw one. I’m pretty sure it would end up just bouncing back in my face.” I turned back to the stone throwing, wishing we could go back to not talking.
“Leah,” Matthew said quietly, turning to face me. “I’m really not trying to be mean to you. You are just so uptight; I can’t help teasing you. It’s so easy to get you worked up. I’m honestly sorry if I have hurt your feelings,” he said before adding, “but you really hurt my feelings when you changed seats in history class, you know.” He turned away from me and threw a larger stone at hard as he could into the pond as if to made a point about how mean I had been to him. The nerve!
“Seriously, I hurt your feelings? You humiliated me in front of everyone about my jeans. Why would I want to keep sitting next to you?” I tossed the rest of my stones down and turned around, “You picked on me, embarrassed me in front of the entire class, and I defended myself; but now I’m the mean one? I am going home. Goodbye!”
“Leah, wait,” Matthew said, reaching out for my arm. And at that very moment, a freak accident occurred that neither of us were ever able to understand, much less explain. Basically, I stepped onto a patch of ice that had formed on the shore of the lake. My foot slid just as Matthew grabbed my arm. I fell backwards, pulling Mathew forward. I landed on my left arm, the one Matthew had been holding, and heard a crunching sound before I even felt the pain of my bones breaking. Matthew’s hand had slipped from my arm as I fell, but it become tangled up in the hood of my coat, so that when I fell, he tripped, falling forward and landing on his right arm. The loud ‘snap’ of his bone came within two seconds of mine.
“Ow, oh my God, ow!” We both laid on the ground, arms broken, howling like babies. I was in tears immediately, and after a few moments, Matthew began sobbing, too.
“Okay, listen,” I said between hysterical sobs, “we’ve got to get back home. We can’t stay out here; we’ll need to go to the hospital.” Tears were streaming down my face and my arm hurt worse than any pain I had ever felt before. But I knew we needed to get help and that it meant we needed to get up and start walking.
“My parents are gonna kill me,” Matty said with tears rolling down his face as he continued to lay on the ground. “No basketball or swimming this year, and maybe no baseball. Oh my God, my arm hurts so bad!” Matty’s face crumpled and fresh tears sprung to his eyes.
“Don’t worry about sports now,” I replied sternly, finding that I was gaining some composure. One of us had to take the lead, and it was not going to be the eleven-year-old boy hysterically crying on the frozen ground. I rolled onto my good arm and got myself into a standing position, realizing in the process that my back and legs ached, too, as did my head. Actually, everything hurt. My arm was throbbing horribly, and I knew Matthew was feeling the same. “Come on, get up; we have to get home.”
“I can’t, Leah; it hurts too much!” Matty was curled into a ball on the ground, laying on his good arm, and making no attempt to stand up. I was getting annoyed with him; I had managed to get up, but he couldn’t? He was the athlete; he should have been able to jump right to his feet. Boys, I told myself, can be such babies.
“Yes, you can; give me your hand, I’ll help you,” I said as I reached down to try and assist him into a standing position, even though the motion sent waves of pain through my body. Fortunately, I didn’t actually have to pull Matthew up, I just helped guide him onto his feet by telling him to push himself up with his non-broken arm. “Okay, let’s go. We need to hurry.”
And with that we started stumbling towards my house, as I knew that my parents were home. Even if Matty’s parents had been at his house, I am sure we would have still gone to mine. I didn’t know Matty’s folks yet at that time, I just instinctively knew that we needed to go to my house for help, not his.
At one point during our walk back, I stumbled a bit and Matthew grabbed my good arm, letting his hand slid down to mine. We laced our fingers together and continued holding hands until we reached my house. We were in such shock and pain that we hadn’t even thought to
