It didn’t work. Letting out his own breath, Michael dropped his hands and swept his gaze to my feet.
“How’s your ankle?” He took half a step back.
My foot was swelling inside my boot, but the pain was completely manageable. I put weight on it and didn’t cringe. Not having to walk back must have helped. “It’s good. Thank you—for everything.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Michael, that was awesome of you!” Fiona cut in, still a little short of breath from the hike.
Oblivious to the moment we’d just had, she praised and thanked Michael a few times, and then reassured him that she and Heather would take me to the hospital to get checked. I thanked him again too, but only once. Fiona’s profuse attention made me uncomfortable for all three of us.
Once we were inside the car and Michael was well out of earshot, Fiona gushed, “Oh my God, he’s so hot—celestial hot. You’re so lucky!” She sighed for emphasis, putting the car into drive. “He didn’t even break a sweat when he carried you. And did you see that body? Like an Olympic swimmer.”
Heather made a face. “Fiona, Mia had a serious fall and may have broken her foot. That’s hardly lucky.”
Fiona backpedaled. “Of course not lucky to have fallen…but lucky he was there.”
“It was nice of him to stay,” Heather said, studying me for a reaction.
I schooled my expression to a neutral one so she wouldn’t notice my rush of excitement from thinking about him. With my luck, she’d analyze my feelings, try to set me up on a date, and I’d embarrassed myself around this guy enough already, thanks. Whatever I felt would be best kept secret for now. “Yeah, it was nice, I guess.”
“You guess?” Fiona turned her head to look at me in the back seat. Then remembering she was driving, she turned back to the road. “The way he carried you was so romantic. If he’d carried me like that—”
Heather began to laugh. “I think we have a pretty good picture of what you’d do, Fiona.”
I laughed too, grateful for Heather’s injection of humor. The strange sensations and pain coursing through my body after the fall were overwhelming enough, not to mention all the strong feelings I’d had around Michael, or the strange things I’d seen. I didn’t need to add Fiona’s fantasies about him to the mix.
***
Luckily for us, the Emergency Room wasn’t too busy. Heather walked me in while Fiona went foraging for something to eat.
The nurse at the administration desk paged my mom and asked me to take a seat in the waiting area. Mom came down a few minutes later wearing the lilac-colored nurse’s uniform we’d picked out together last spring. It brought out her green eyes and softened the gray streak in her hair. After greeting Heather, she drilled me about the accident. Between her crazy hospital schedule and my starting the school year, I hadn’t had much time to spend with her since I’d returned from Denver. I had to admit, getting injured was a strange way to do it.
I told her about the log bridge and that some noise had startled me, for lack of a better explanation. I didn’t want to talk about the likelihood of seeing the same dog again, not with Heather present. If it were real, surely someone else would have seen it.
“Eight feet,” she said coolly. She was never one for big emotional scenes, not when it came to injuries. “It could have been a lot worse. How did you get back?”
Mom was far too smart sometimes.
This was where Heather chimed in. “A boy from school came by. He knew some first aid and helped us get Mia out.”
Mom squinted at me suspiciously. “Were there boys on this hike?”
“No, Mom.” It was silly to have to apologize for a boy helping us out. Mom could be so overprotective.
“It’s a popular trail,” Heather added.
Fiona joined us, carrying a large box of pizza in one hand and the slice she was eating in the other. She greeted my mom and plunked herself into the empty seat beside us.
“Hi, Fiona. Heather and Mia were just telling me about the accident.”
I tensed. This was not a time for Fiona to talk about the glorious attributes of Michael Fontaine—or his swimmer’s body. I didn’t need my mom prying about him, or worse trying to play matchmaker.
Fortunately, all she said was, “Yeah, it was really scary.”
The topic of Michael didn’t come up again. Instead, Mom shared a pizza slice with us and asked about our first week of school. I settled in with my pizza, hungrier than I expected, and let my mind wander.
Behind the administration desk, the paramedics rolled in a girl on a stretcher with tubes in her arms. A poppy-red blood stain pooled through the blanket on her chest. Doctors and triage nurses swarmed her, and the previously quiet ER erupted like an upturned anthill. As they wheeled the patient behind a room divider for privacy, I noticed a tall figure standing in the doorway bathed in a soft golden light. Michael. What was he doing here?
I raised a hand to wave at him as a nurse in surgical scrubs walked by, but by the time she passed, he was gone. Why didn’t he stay? Staring at the empty doorway, I wondered if my eyes had deceived me. I wished I could get up and follow him, to find out if he was real, but with my ankle not working right, he’d be a block away by the time I hobbled to the door.
A few moments later, Heather and Fiona left and I was led into a semi-private examination room with pale yellow curtains for walls. After checking me for injuries and applying a tensor bandage, the doctor said I had a mild sprain and recommended ice, over-the-counter painkillers, and rest.
Mom drove me home and set me up on the couch with a cold pack and some movies before she went back to finish her shift. I couldn’t focus on them. My mind kept wandering back to that house I’d imagined. Thinking I might have seen it in a book somewhere, I hobbled to my room and rifled through my books on ancient civilizations.
Sitting on my bed, I scanned for pictures and descriptions to see if anything jogged my memory. As I worked through ancient Greece, my mind played over the morning’s events. Had I been imagining the dreamlike images, the strange flashing lights, the shadows in the bushes? None of these things made any sense, no matter how much I wanted them to. Perhaps I had a concussion.
But the doctor had checked me for any head injuries. I was, by all accounts, perfectly fine.
Chapter Six
Tuesday morning before English class, a copy of the Westmont High School Gazette landed on my desk, startling me.
“What’s this?” Michael demanded.
I marveled at how he could still be gorgeous when he was scowling. His lips tightened into a hard line, he pointed to an article at the top of the page. The headline read: Local Girl Makes a Big Splash.
“Oh no!” I read the first few lines, which gave some vague details about my fall into the creek and then expounded on Michael’s prowess in rescuing me. The article made me out to be some kind of loser while he looked like a superhero. “Who wrote it?”
He pointed to the byline. “Elaine.”
Of course! “How did she hear about it?” I asked quietly.
“She wouldn’t say—something about journalistic ethics.”
“There’s irony for you.” Had Elaine overhead Fiona gushing about it somewhere? It was entirely possible. I’d have to watch what I said around Fiona, too.