— Chapter 14 —

I must have closed my eyes, Oscar thought. He hadn’t seen Asha fall, and he barely remembered racing down the tree trunk to help her. But he could recall being in the ambulance and then the hospital. And he remembered crying, which embarrassed him.

Now he sat in a hospital waiting room with Gretchen and Asha’s father. He was so terrified he couldn’t speak. Everyone seemed to get that, because they didn’t ask him many questions.

It’s all my fault, Oscar thought. Asha never would have played with the repellent unless I shared it with her. And she never would have fallen out of the tree if I hadn’t asked her to reach for my old balloon. It should have been me. Stupid gravity repellent. Stupid me.

It had only been a few hours ago that Asha had stopped him from floating off into power lines. She’d wanted to protect him, to keep him from being careless.

Oscar began to cry again. He didn’t care who saw him anymore. Gretchen looked at him and put her arm around his shoulders. Her phone was in her pocket, but she hadn’t taken it out once since they got to the hospital.

Just then, a doctor in a white coat came out into the waiting room. “Mr. Banerjee?” she asked.

Asha’s father stood up. “Yes, that’s me. Please tell me, how is she?”

“She’s fine, sir,” the doctor said. “A broken leg, but it should heal quickly. She’s a little shaken up, of course, but she’ll be able to go home tonight.”

When he heard the word fine, Oscar’s heart leaped up into his throat. His best friend in the world would be okay.

Asha’s father seemed to sag with relief. “Thank you, Doctor. Thank you so much. Can I go back and see her?”

“Of course,” the doctor replied. “Please come with me.”

Mr. Banerjee turned to Gretchen and Oscar. “Let me go in and see her first,” he said. “Then I’ll come for you two. Okay?”

Gretchen and Oscar nodded silently. Oscar let out the breath he’d been holding and suddenly felt light-headed and dizzy. He noticed that Gretchen looked worried, and it suddenly occurred to him that she might get in trouble too. After all, she was supposed to have been watching them that afternoon.

As if on cue, Gretchen turned to him. “How did you get up the tree?” she asked. “There’s nothing on the trunk to hold on to.”

Oscar tried to look calm as he thought about how to answer. He certainly didn’t want Gretchen to know about the repellent. If he said they’d used a rope, she would ask more questions and maybe even check the tree when they got home. There was only one solution — he decided to tell her one thing that was true, and to tell her more about it than she ever wanted to know.

“Oh, it was really hard,” Oscar began. “But we’ve been doing, um… rock climbing in gym class. We’ve learned about all these different kinds of, um… handholds you can use. There’s this one called a pinch that you can use on knobs sticking out of the tree. And we tried another one called a… a sidepull, and that worked really well on the tree bark. When you use it, it’s like you…”

Oscar went on like this for some time. He was amazed at how convincing he sounded. As he talked, he almost believed it himself. But the important thing was that it convinced Gretchen, who began to look bored almost immediately. He knew she wouldn’t ask any more questions, and she certainly wouldn’t want a demonstration.

After some time, Mr. Banerjee came back out to the waiting room and motioned to them. Oscar and Gretchen stood up and followed him down the hall to Asha’s room. Oscar had expected his friend to have tubes sticking out every which way, but she looked more or less like she had that afternoon, except that now she was wearing a blue nightgown.

When he and Gretchen entered the room, Asha was sitting up in bed and talking on the phone to her mother, who was out of town on a business trip. Oscar realized with a start that Asha might have told her parents about the repellent. His eyes grew wide, and he stood frozen, waiting for her to say something.

“I’m fine, Ma,” Asha said into the phone. “We were rock climbing… no, on a tree. The big one in Oscar’s backyard… no, it doesn’t hurt… ”

As he listened to her talk to her mother, Oscar’s heart nearly leaped out of his chest. He couldn’t believe that they’d thought of the same exact story to tell. Did Asha read my mind, he wondered, or did I read hers? Either way, it made him incredibly happy. He wanted to hug her, but she looked so delicate lying in the hospital bed.

Asha said goodbye to her mother and handed the phone back to her father. “Check it out,” she said to Oscar. She pulled away a blanket covering her legs. Her whole left leg, from her midthigh down to the start of her toes, was encased in a pink cast.

Oscar had broken many bones, so he was used to casts. Whenever he got one on his left arm, or either leg, or anything that wasn’t his right hand, he drew all over it. But he’d never had one this big before. It looked like a giant coloring book.

Oscar put his hands on the cast and started to trace shapes with his fingers. “I have a brand-new pack of markers at home,” he said excitedly, “We can design tattoos, and color it, and —”

“Maybe a bit later, okay?” Mr. Banerjee interrupted, putting his hand on Oscar’s shoulder. “Asha needs to rest. You two are very lucky that only this happened. It could have been a lot worse.”

Oscar felt terrible all over again. He stepped back and swallowed hard to keep from crying for the third time that day. I might set some kind of world record if I keep this up, he thought.

Just then Oscar’s parents came into the room carrying a stuffed bear dressed as a nurse. His dad handed the bear to Asha, while his mom hugged Oscar and kissed Asha on the forehead. Usually Oscar didn’t like it when his mom hugged him in front of other people, but the smell of her coat comforted him after the long, scary day.

Gretchen and the grown-ups stood around for a while talking about the accident. His sister repeated the story Oscar had told her, which matched Asha’s story pretty closely. Oscar knew he would be in some trouble when they got home, but fortunately, he’d broken enough bones that his parents tended to be pretty calm about such accidents.

While the grown-ups talked and Gretchen went back to tapping on her phone, Oscar stood next to Asha and smiled awkwardly. He wanted to tell her how scared he’d been and how sorry he was that he’d asked her to reach for the balloon. But if he said all that, he was sure he’d start crying again, and he was tired of the lump in his throat. “I’m really glad you’re okay,” he said instead, smiling.

Asha smiled back, and Oscar knew she understood everything else he wanted to say.

Oscar looked down and played with the edge of the hospital blanket for a moment. “Maybe we should leave gravity alone for a while,” he whispered.

Asha nodded. “That’s probably a good idea. But I bet Dr. Oopsie has tons of other cool stuff,” she whispered back, smiling.