Jumper: Griffin's Story Read Free Page B

ragged gash, crusted, above my right eyebrow. I dropped farther and felt the side of my neck. There was a scab, like a rug burn. It tugged when I turned my head to see who was helping me to sit up.
    "Mas comodo?" a rough voice asked. White teeth flashed in a salt–and–pepper beard. I shifted back slightly. He wore a straw hat and a blinding white button–down shirt, worn khaki shorts. His eyes were hidden behind mirrored aviator shades. His skin was brown but he didn't look Hispanic. Tanned.
    "Excuse me?" I managed.
    "Oh," he said. "More water?" He offered me the plastic bottle.
    I accepted it and sipped cautiously, trying not to breathe it again.
    "What happened, kid?"
    I blinked. What had happened? Something at home, the woman who said she was from the school district.. . ?
    I think I screamed then. I know I jerked upright and surged to my feet and my vision dimmed.
    Not sure how much time passed, but I was lying down again, on my back. Someone was holding something over me, which shaded my face from the sun. It was a black umbrella and I could see the sun shining through the black cloth and the spokes, spotted with rust. The hand holding it was thin and wrinkled. I followed the arm to a woman with jet black hair, wrinkled brown skin, and dark eyes like still pools of night.
    She saw me watching her and said something in Spanish, to the side. I started to sit up again and a hand, not hers, pressed me back down.
    "Let's not and say we did." It was the bearded man from before. "Unless you want to pass out again. There's a nice puddle of dried blood here. Didn't see it before–you were lying on it, but I'd say you're better off lying down, okay?"
    The wracking sobs came then. I remembered it all, every bit, flashing over and over, from Mum screaming "Go!" to the blood and the motionless eyes staring into nothing.
    I think I passed out again.
    The light was different–the sun had shifted halfway across the sky and the wind had picked up. Instead of an umbrella, a blue plastic tarp shaded my entire body, flapping gently in the slight breeze. A clear plastic bag half filled with fluid twisted and bounced with the movement of the tarp. A tube dropped from the bag and I watched it for several minutes before realizing it was running into my arm.
    Crunching footsteps crossing the gravel came closer and then the light changed again as someone stuck his head into the shelter.
    "Estas despierto?" It was the woman from before, the one with the umbrella. She watched my face for some sign of comprehension, then tried, "You okay?"
    "Okay? Yes, uh, si. No hablo espanol."
    "Okay. Good. Okay." She pointed to a plastic bottle lying beside me, mostly full of water. She mimed tilting a bottle up to her mouth. "Okay?"
    "Right. Uh, okay."
    I tried to sit up but she shook her head. "No. Descanza. Estate quietecito."
    I dropped back. My head spun from the slight effort to sit up. I explored my side and found a mass of gauze and tape on my hip. I found a smaller bandage on my forehead, running up into my hair, the tape tugging painfully when I touched it. I wasn't on the ground, I realized, but lying on a stretcher, one of those canvas things with two poles locked apart. Turning my head without lifting it, I realized we were no longer in my gully but on some raised hillside. I could see miles across desert, over gullies and low hills.
    They'd moved me.
    Driven me? Carried me?
    I thought about the night before and it was as if I were stuck, frozen. My mind just stopped working. I didn't pass out but I lay there staring at the ceiling trying to think but it was too much–my mind was just shying away from it. I knew it had happened. It was the gauze on my head. My brain was wrapped in gauze–white, fuzzy gauze–and it was hard to feel stuff through it.
    I heard someone shout from far away, "Hey, Consuelo! Un poco ayuda!" The woman sitting beside me patted me again on the shoulder and ducked out under the edge of the tarp.
    As soon as she was