A Beginner's Guide to the American West ✓

chapter twenty-eight

t w e n t y - e i g h t

*

I'm ok. Really, I'm fine. I keep having to tell Sam that I'm definitely fine, I'm definitely not concussed, I definitely don't need medical attention. He doesn't believe me, though, even though I finished the hike. He has me sitting on a tree stump as he peers into my eyes and holds up his fingers, and he gets worried when I say five even though I mean four.

"Are you sure you're ok?" He's crouching in front of me, hands on his knees.

"It was a pretty hard fall," Arjun says. He still looks shell-shocked. I don't know why. I trip all the time. I guess it could have looked concerning when I landed on my forehead, somehow managing not to break my nose when I smashed onto the paved path.

"I'm fine, I swear," I say. "Trust me, I've had a concussion or two. I don't have a concussion. I just hit my head, but I do that a lot."

My hand goes to my forehead, where my skin is tender and torn. It's just a superficial wound, though, and nothing I haven't had before. It bled a lot, but only because heads do bleed a lot – it's really nothing to worry about.

"It looks bad," Young-mi says, her face as white as a sheet. "One minute, you talking, then bam. You on the ground."

"Story of my life," I say, forcing everyone to step back when I stand up. "It's a tiny cut and I haven't shaken my brain any more than it's used to being shaken. Now, let's get back on the road."

"Are you su-"

"I'm fine, jeez," I snap, cutting off Sam. I hate snapping, but I hate being fussed over. "I've spent my whole life falling, I know when I'm fine, I promise."

"Hey, man." Sam puts his hand on my shoulder and waits until I look at him. "I just have to make sure, ok? I'm responsible for you guys, so I need to be certain that you're ok."

"I am."

"Ok," he says. He nods. "Everyone back in the van, then. March will live to see another day."

"There are worse places to die than Yosemite," Klara says. She gets a weak smile from me. I hate being the spectacle, the one everyone's staring at because I fell, yet again, and Young-mi and Arjun freaked out. Now we've wasted ten minutes of me reassuring everyone that I'm not going to drop dead, and ten minutes is too long to have eight people gathered around staring and worrying.

I get into the back and step over Arjun's stuff to sink back into my familiar seat, where I can tuck myself up against the wall of the van and I can know that no-one's staring at me. It wasn't the best way to end the hike, but I've done worse to myself than a stupid little forehead gash.

Arjun gets in next to me and he's staring at my forehead, his eyebrows furrowed, and I can feel my jaw tighten.

"If you dare ask me if I'm ok, I'll thump you," I say.

"I wouldn't dare," he says. "I was just trying to figure out what country it looks like. I can't decide if it's more Argentina or Mexico."

Just like that, he flips my mood. I loosen my shoulders and my jaw, and I turn away from the wall. He sits next to me, halfway across the seat between us, and pulls up a world map on his phone. His eyes flicker from it to my head and back again.

"You know what, I think it might be Togo."

"I don't even know what Togo is."

"It's a country in Africa, next to Ghana," he says, zooming in and showing me a thin strip of land on the Gulf of Guinea, sandwiched between Ghana, Benin, and Burkina Faso.