I heard Rob’s voice behind me. “On three! Ready? One … two … three!” I was yanked back forcibly, but the ground under my feet started caving in, so Rob was only able to keep me from landing horizontally over the stakes. I fell into the hole, my right leg scraping down the side of one of the sharpened sticks, getting sliced open in the process. I hit bottom but kept my hands up near the top of the hole. Rob grabbed onto them and kept me from falling over sideways onto a spike.

“Holy fuck!” I yelled, panting now over the pain in my leg. My wound was being filled with dirty swamp water and bleeding into the pit.

“Get her out!” yelled Paci, and seconds later several hands grabbed me by the wrists and under the armpits, heaving me upwards. Paci turned around and scrambled out on his own, using one of the stakes to push himself up with. He crawled over to me on hands and knees, staring open-mouthed at my leg.

I looked down at it with trepidation, expecting to see it filleted open, but it wasn’t bleeding as heavily as I thought it would be. I couldn’t see much in the way of exposed leg innards, so I was happily relieved, but that didn’t stop the incredible pain from nearly overwhelming my brain. I started moaning and rocking a little, trying to make it go away.

Paci jumped to his feet, sweeping me up into his arms and taking off in a limping cantor. “I’m bringing her to the clinic!” he yelled over his shoulder.

I held on tightly, worried he was going to drop me. My leg was burning, and I could see the blood dripping over the sides and onto his hand. I didn’t want to think about how my caregivers were going to get this cut clean. The wound was already filled with gunk that was now getting rubbed in, but I could hardly complain since I was being practically airlifted to the clinic, Paci was running so fast. It never ceased to amaze me how well the kids who lived here could navigate the uneven ground, especially Paci who still had an injured leg. I was constantly tripping whenever I walked, but Paci made it all the way to the clinic without missing a step. It was like he had invisible wings flying us along.

LaShay met us at the entrance. “What the heck happened to you this time?” she asked, not unkindly. She pointed to an available spot with her half-limb. “Put her down over there.” She reached out and took my hand as Paci walked over. “You okay, baby?”

“I’ve been better,” I said, smiling at her weakly. For some reason she instantly made me feel a little less scared about the whole thing, calling me baby.

“What about you?” she asked Paci, giving him a once-over. “You hurt too?”

“No, I’m fine. It’s just her.”

“Accident prone?”

“No … heck no, she’s not accident prone. It’s Fohi.”

“Fohi did this?” She frowned, looking like she was ready to have a few words with him personally.

“No, he didn’t,” I said, waving Paci away. “Go see if he’s okay. I’m fine here. Thanks for the lift.”

Paci reached over and took my hand, squeezing it gently. “You sure? I can hang for a little while.”

LaShay came over with a bucket and a cloth, along with a bottle of something that looked like alcohol. The idea of something like that hitting my long open wound made me instantly feel sick.

“Uh, maybe you can stay. Just for a minute,” I said, changing my mind.

“Yeah, no problem.” Paci let go of my hand for a minute to get a stool, but then sat down near my head and grabbed it again. “I’ll stay as long as you need me to.”

“Aww, ain’t that sweet,” said LaShay, looking at us for a moment before getting all serious again. “Jus’ stay outta my way. This thing looks nasty. I’m gonna have to scrub.”

“Scrub?” I said, fear in my voice, as she leaned over and poured some of the liquid onto my wound. I was prepared to scream, but it obviously wasn’t alcohol. It just hurt a little. “Phew. That wasn’t bad.”

“Hold on to that thought,” said LaShay, right before she started scrubbing my leg and then pouring more of the liquid on.

I squeezed Paci’s hand hard. My leg was stinging and burning like it was on fire. “Holy shit, LaShay, what are you doing to me?”

“Keeping you from dyin’ from a cut, that’s what. You want some leather to bite?”

I shook my head, gritting my teeth together and channeling my pain into my tightly-fisted hand. “No. Just get it over with,” I grunted out.

“Doin’ my best,” she said, scrubbing again.

Coli wandered in and said, “What happened to her?” She didn’t sound all that concerned.

“She got hurt helping Fohi,” said Paci, staring into my eyes. His were like liquid pools of chocolate and totally mesmerizing. It was easier to ignore the pain looking at him this way.

“What’d he do this time?”

Paci didn’t bother answering. After a few awkward seconds, Coli huffed out an irritated breath and left.

“Mmm-mmm-mmm, that girl. Tsk, tsk…” LaShay shook her head. “Girl’s got a serious chip on her shoulder about you, Bryn. I don’t know what you did to her, but damn, you better watch your back.”

Thoughts of Coli intruded on the peaceful feelings that I’d only been able to find by losing myself in Paci’s gaze, so I closed my lids, trying to get a grip on what LaShay was saying. There was no point in trying to ignore the pain anymore now, anyway. All I could think about was Coli telling everyone that I was messing around with Paci at the clinic.

“I have no idea what her problem is, to be honest. She’s hated me since day one.”

“She’s jealous,” said Paci.

“Jealous? Jealous a-what? No offense, Bryn, but no one here’s got any kind of glamorous life or anything. Case in point …,” she said, stopping to gesture at my leg.

“I have no idea what she’s jealous of. It’s her own twisted mind making crap up,” I said bitterly.

“She’s jealous that Bryn got the attention of a lot of guys here. Everyone kind of hates Coli, and even Trip likes Bryn. He’s the hardest one to win over, so when Bryn did it her first day, that probably made Coli feel … I don’t know. Left out, maybe. Trip’s never liked her, even though they’re cousins.”

“Well, maybe if she didn’t walk around like she has a bee up her butt all the time, it’d be easier to like her,” offered LaShay.

“Seriously,” I agreed.

“Several people have mentioned it to her, believe me. But all it does is make her worse,” said Paci.

“Girl’s got mental problems,” said LaShay. “I’ve seen that before, you know. Girl I knew … she was all bi-polar an’ shit. All the time she was like perfect and everything was just so in her life, you know? And then one day, she comes to school a wreck. I mean her hair was all tore up, her clothes were dirty and wrinkled, lookin’ like she slept in ‘em all night. She was talkin’ crazy too, like accusin’ me of hiding my glasses when I was wearin’ contacts instead. It was wild, the way she was bein’ all aggressive towards me and other girls. I was ready to slap that bitch, but something made me not do it. She reminded me of a wounded animal or something - upset but only because she was hurtin’. And it didn’t seem right to slap a girl who was havin’ a hard time about something and confused about it at the same time.”

“What happened?” I asked, almost able to ignore the scrubbing LaShay was back to doing quite rigorously.

“The principal called in the school cop, and they took her to the hospital, eventually. She was there for a couple weeks, got some medicine, and came back to school like nothin’ ever happened. She was back to bein’ all controlled again, only now she had a smokin’ habit. Smoked like two packs a day in the smokin’ area. Saw her there all the time, hangin’ out with a different crowd than she used to. She lost all her old friends.”

“Wow. Holy crap. That must’ve been horrible for that poor girl. And that was when we had hospitals and medical professionals and pills you could take. Now we’ve got none of that stuff.” I hadn’t thought of anyone with mental disorders being left alone to deal with their problems before. I’d only considered it in the context of sociopaths who’d turned to cannibalism to survive, and they were definitely not in the same boat as people like LaShay was talking about.

“Do you think that could be Coli’s problem?” asked Paci. “It would explain a lot of things.”

LaShay shrugged. “How do I know? I ain’t no doctor. I’ve only seen one person with it, and I didn’t know her that well. I have no idea what it was like for her on the inside - and the outside stuff I saw, was just kind of like casual bystander stuff, you know? We weren’t really friends or anything, so lots of stuff was just gossip.”

I couldn’t think of anything else to say, but my mind was racing. What if Coli has a mental disorder? Should I forgive her bullcrap just because of that? Should I offer to help her or would that just make her more mad? Am I in danger from her? I felt like a jerk, not knowing the answers to my questions. I wished they had a library in the swamp so I could go look bi-polar disorder up in a book and learn more about it. I had no delusions about becoming a psychologist or psychiatrist or whatever, but I felt like a complete idiot knowing so little.

“Well, whatever,” said LaShay, sighing. “I think no matter what, everyone around here deserves a little extra forgiveness, just because of all the garbage we have to deal with. I’m not talking’ about them demon canners, though. They get no forgiveness from me. But the indians here, they do deserve it. I’m just sayin’.”

“You know, LaShay, you guys really should stop calling us indians,” said Paci. “I don’t mean to be critical, but some of us get kind of offended over it.”

I frowned at him. “Why? You are indian tribes, aren’t you? Or did I miss something in school?”

He smiled mirthlessly. “No, I’m sure you didn’t miss anything. They taught you that explorers like Christopher Columbus came to this country and found the native people here and called them indians. But some people forget the fact that he called them indians because he thought he’d landed in India. And this obviously isn’t India.”

“So if we ain’t supposed to call you indians, what are we supposed to say?”

“Most people are okay with Native Americans. Some prefer indigenous people. I’m cool with Native American.”

“They’re both a mouthful,” grumbled LaShay. She sighed. “But I can hardly blame you for wantin’ it to be respectful. Believe me, my momma used to get all up in people’s faces when they called her certain things. Like she hated bein’ called African-American. She liked it simple. She said, Don’t call me nothin’ but American. You don’t need to call me by my skin color or by some place where some distant ancestor might have come from that I don’t even know.”

“What do you prefer?” I asked, curious now about the whole personal identification thing. I had never really considered it before, probably because I was caucasian and had little information about my ancestors’ origins.

“Same as my momma. What’s it matter, anyway? We all in the same boat now. Don’t matter if you’re black, brown, white … whatever. We all bleed red, and I’m workin’ on not bleedin’ anymore for as long as I live, so help me, Lord Jesus.”

“Amen to that,” I said, smiling. My smile turned instantly into a scowl, though. “Oh, ouch! That frigging hurts, LaShay! Do you have to scrub it that hard?”

“I know, baby. I’m tryin’ to be gentle, but it looks like you rolled in some pile of leaves or somethin’ before you came here.” She tsked at me while she worked, frowning her displeasure. “If I leave the garbage in there, you’re gonna get an infection. And trust me when I tell you, you don’t wanna be losin’ no limb.”