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Jokester?” Andie sighed with exasperation, but she was smiling. Nat, Alex, and Alyssa just shook their heads and smiled, too, but they still looked worried.
    â€œI’ll be fine,” Jenna called back to her friends as she was carried off the field. “As long as no one else sees me on this stretcher.” She smiled a little when she heard the sound of their laughter. That was her job, to make everyone laugh. But the last thing she felt like doing was laughing right now. All she could do, as the nurse led the way to the infirmary, was hope that things weren’t as bad as they seemed.

chapter THREE
    Things weren’t as bad as they seemed. They were worse. Jenna sighed and shifted in her emergency-room bed, replaying this afternoon’s catastrophe over and over again in her head. Why hadn’t she seen that stupid groundhog hole? Of all the ridiculous ways to end up in an ER, that had to be the dumbest. All of her earlier attempts to make light of this situation had fizzled out when she was faced with the creepily clean hospital. She couldn’t even think of one single, solitary joke to tell to pass the time. More than that, she didn’t even feel like joking. And when that happened, she knew she was in bad shape.
    â€œJenna?” a voice pulled her out of her thoughts. “Are you going to put down a card, or do I have to play your hand for you?”
    Jenna blinked and looked up from the cards in her hand to see Andie sitting across from her on the bed.
    â€œSorry,” Jenna said, trying to scratch at a spot on her calf hidden under the makeshift splint. “I guess I zoned out.” She laughed halfheartedly. They’d been playing cards for the last three hours, in between filling out paperwork and waiting for doctors and nurses in the ER to come poke and prod Jenna. They’d made her put on a totally see-through hospital gown before they would X-ray her leg, and she’d been shivering ever since.
    But that wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst was that she’d been taken to the X-ray room in a wheelchair! How mortifying, when she could walk perfectly fine. Almost. Sort of. Okay . . . not really. She couldn’t walk at all. And now she had to stay put in this bed—doctor’s orders—until he came in with the results of her X-ray. If he ever came, that is.
    Jenna sighed again, then handed her cards to Andie. “Can we take a break for a while? I don’t feel like playing anymore.”
    â€œSure,” Andie said. “How about a little celeb gossip instead?” She pulled Cosmo Girl and US Weekly out of her bag.
    â€œNah,” Jenna said glumly.
    â€œYour leg’s not hurting you too much, is it?” Andie asked worriedly, tucking the blanket on the bed around Jenna’s legs.
    â€œNot too bad,” she said. “I don’t think anything’s broken.” Maybe if she kept saying that, it would be true. Her leg was throbbing, even inside the splint, and every time she accidentally moved her toes or shifted her weight, the sharp pain was enough to make her eyes fill with tears all over again. She could tough this out . . . she had to. Color War started next week, and she was going to play, no matter what. “I bet it’ll be fine by tomorrow,” she said hopefully.
    â€œMaybe.” Andie smiled sympathetically, and Jenna could tell she was trying (a little too hard) to stay optimistic. “Let’s just see what the doctor says.”
    â€œWhere is he, anyway?” Jenna grumbled. “They took the X-ray like an hour ago.”
    â€œAbout twenty minutes ago, to be more precise,” the doctor said, walking into the room.
    â€œSorry,” Jenna stammered, blushing.
    â€œNo apology necessary.” The doctor smiled. “Waiting in an emergency room can make minutes feel like hours.”
    â€œYou’re telling me,” Jenna agreed, smiling in relief.
    â€œSo, how’s your leg