Something Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

lit Jujube around the edges so she looked like an alien.
    “You all right?” she asked.
    It felt as if the pain in my back and legs had gone to sleep. I couldn’t feel anything except a dull ache in my back. Still, I had a funny feeling something was wrong. I lay very still, trying to figure out what it was.
    “What time is it?” I asked.
    “Pretty late,” said Jujube. “After ten, I think. Mom’s working the nightshift. I called your house earlier — your dad said you were out.”
    Right away, I got worried. When Jujube’s mom worked the nightshift, a neighbor lady slept over at their house. If she noticed Jujube was gone, there would be trouble.
    “Jujube,” I said, “there’s no point in both of us flunking school. Why don’t you go home and go to sleep?”
    “I want to know how you are,” she said.
    I couldn’t see her face, but I knew that tone of voice. When Jujube talked like this, there was no point in doing anything except what she wanted. So I tried to sit up, but a pain shot up my back as if two hands were tearing it apart. I fell back and held my breath, hoping the pain would go away. Then I heard loud groans and realized they were coming from me.
    “Froggy?” Jujube’s voice went up into a high squeak.
    I didn’t say anything. With all that pain in me, I was just thinking hard, trying to make it go away. When my back stopped hurting, I would figure out what to do next.
    “I’m going to get Rick,” Jujube said.
    “No!” I shouted, but she was already gone. I could hear her footsteps running away, and then there was only the sound of the river out there in the night. It was swishing around, slow and steady — kind of like the pain in my back.
    Then, somewhere off in the night, I heard a whine start up. At first I thought it was a mosquito, but it got closer and closer, louder and louder. Finally I figured out what it was. I tried to get up, but the pain shot through my back again and I couldn’t move. When the ambulance pulled up outside the fort, its siren was the loudest thing I’d ever heard. Through the doorway, I could see flashing red lights. Then the siren shut off.
    I heard Jujube say, “She’s over here.” Footsteps started coming through the trees.
    “In here,” said Jujube. Suddenly someone lifted the metal sheet that made up one side of the fort. The inside of the fort filled with red flashing lights. A woman leaned over me. She smelled like soap, the kind my mom used.
    “You all right, kid?” she asked.
    I wanted to say yes. I wanted to get up and walk away. All I could think of was how much trouble this was going to cause. There was no way I could hide the problem this time. My dad was going to get it big-time, and it was all my fault.
    “No,” I said. “My back hurts.”
    “Let me check it,” said the woman. “Is anything broken?”
    “I don’t think so,” I said. “But I can’t get up.”
    She started to poke around my back, and I lay there and groaned.
    “Carlos, we’ll need the stretcher,” she said to a man standing outside the fort. Then she touched my cheek. “Did you walk here by yourself?” she asked.
    “I rode my bike,” I said. “It’s in the trees.”
    The man came back and the two of them lifted me onto the stretcher. I screamed when they picked me up, it hurt so bad — not just my back, but my neck too. Then they strapped me onto the stretcher, and the pain got a little better. It was a weird feeling when they picked up the stretcher. All of a sudden I was floating in the air without moving a muscle.
    Then we were outside the fort and I was being carried through the trees toward the red flashing lights. I could see Jujube standing nearby, her face all sucked in. Rick was next to her.
    “Hi, Sophie,” he said.
    I was so embarrassed I looked away. He must have thought I was such a loser.
    I don’t understand what happened next. Maybe I was tired, or maybe all that pain mixed up my brain. But suddenly I got this weird feeling that