Mari sighed. “Leaping isn’t my strength.”
“No way I’m getting through this one dry,” I agreed as I selected a pole. “All we can do is our best.”
Mari examined the poles closely and chose a particularly sturdy specimen much longer than my own. Then, with a final grin at me, she stomped at the first bit of grid and vaulted her big body over.
It wasn’t graceful, but it was effective. She managed the ditch as well, but her feet slipped off the balance grid twice. She just picked herself up and kept going.
Determination might be Matt’s main asset, but Mari’s was perseverance. She dipped her toes in the last two ditches but climbed out again to finish.
I gritted my teeth and took a deep breath. My brain was my enemy, I reminded myself. If I stopped to think, I was sunk.
So I cleared my mind and ran at the grid. The pole bit into the ground, and I vaulted over the first grid. Landed a few feet from the lip of the ditch, the pole arcing forward to splash into the center. My momentum carried me onward, and I landed on the far bank.
For just an instant, I wavered as I stared at the balance beam, and my brain threatened to engage, but then I was somersaulting through the air to land on it. My foot almost slipped, but I managed to get the other beneath me, and walked rather than ran along its length.
I wasn’t certain of the distance between the end of the beam and the ditch, and whether to place the pole in the ditch or on the bank for my vault—and that uncertainty kicked my brain into gear.
Which was my undoing.
I planted the pole on the bank, and almost didn’t make it across the ditch, landing on my stomach on the bank and scrambling up. Then I made a real hash job of vaulting the grid, catching my toe on the top pole and almost face-planting into the dirt. It set me up for trouble at the ditch. I dug my pole into the water, but my foot slipped on takeoff, and although I tried to hold on, the glove slipped on the smooth wood. My wrist twisted as my grip failed, spilling me into the water.
I surfaced, spluttering, and tried to clamber up the bank, but my wrist wasn’t functioning. I sank in the mud along the far bank and struggled to climb out. Mari’s long arm once more came down to snag mine. As she hauled me clear of the ditch, a flowery bit of clothing dropped from my pocket to float down into the mud.
“Yoou dropped soomething,” Matt pointed out.
I glanced at Sebastian, who watched us with his arms folded over his chest. Then back to Matt as my face went an unbecoming shade of tomato. “That’s fine. It can stay there.”
His eyes danced at me. “Are yoou sure, I can—”
“Quite sure.” I glared at him. He was entirely too clean. With my good hand, I scooped thick mud off my sweatpants, and advanced on him.
“Nooo,” he said, leaping away. “Yoou keep yoour mud. It’s a good loook for yoou.”
I threw it, and it smacked right into his shoulder, dripping down his leg.
“Nowthat’sa good look,” I declared. I wiped my hand off on a relatively unmuddied bit of my leggings. My other wrist throbbed, and I poked at it gingerly.
Sebastian’s glower dropped to it.
“Yoou ookay, Angel?” Matt asked, his gaze focusing there, too.
I raised it. “I buggered it on that last jump.” I tried wiggling my fingers and winced. It was already quite swollen, the flesh darkening with a bruise.
“Okay,” Sebastian said, in a rather superior tone. “We now have an injured team member, and that feeds into everything we do. First, triage. We need to dress the injury.
“Really, it’s fine,” I protested.
“This is part of being a team,” he stated. “Any injury affects us as a whole. So not addressing it, or admitting to it, puts us all at risk.”
“Sonowyou’re a team player?” I asked, annoyed that he’d make such a big deal of it.
“Can you use that wrist?” he demanded.
I glared at him. “No.”
The arrogant jerk’s eyes gleamed. “I do not stand corrected, then.”
I waved it in the air. “So glad to present you with a teaching opportunity. So what do I do? I think it’s just a sprain.” I now healed fast, I knew. But not fast enough to have it usable for the next few obstacles.
