Free Holly in Love by Caroline B. Cooney Page B

thinks of him as a kid.
    “Hi, Kate. Have a good Christmas?”
    “Super.” She told me every detail, concentrating on how wonderful the skiing had been that day, and how they had oversold tickets, so that there were infuriating lines at the lifts, but still, she had had a ball and everybody had been there, everybody but me. “Hollyberry,” she said, “come skating with us tomorrow? The temperature is going to be up in the high twenties with no wind, and the sun shining so it’ll be really very comfortable. Come on, please?”
    It’s pretty bad when your best friend has to hear a weather report before she dares invite you anywhere. “I’d love to,” I said, and I made a mental note never to mention weather again. Hope and Christopher were right: I was a bore, the way I kept whining about the frigid air outdoors.
    “Do your old skates fit?” said Kate anxiously. “Mom says you can wear hers.”
    Kate and her mother had talked over how to get me to the skating party. It warmed me right down to my toes, being wanted like that, “Great,” I said. “Mine are a little crunchy around the toes.”
    We giggled. I forgot about Jamie. What I’d needed all day was a friend, and Kate was the best friend I had.

Eleven
    K ATE’S MOTHER’S SKATES WERE just a fraction too big, and even with two pairs of socks and the ankles laced as tight as my fingers could pull, I didn’t have enough ankle support. I hadn’t skated once that year, and I was very rusty.
    I wound slowly around the pond, getting my coordination back, and I was circling for the fourth time when Christopher came gliding toward me at full speed, making faces and yelling, “Is that slow-moving vehicle actually my sister?” I tried to veer away from him, but of course he didn’t really plan to bump me, and he veered in the same direction. We crashed right into each other, and even before I heard my ankle hit the ice I knew the bone was going to break.
    Christopher just bounced a little and was back on his skates in the space of an instant, but I took a terrible spill, turning my ankle under me with a crack that sounded as if the ice was splitting. Half the skaters heard it and turned, cringing, to see who it was.
    It hurt so much I literally could not speak. I could not untwist myself from my fallen position, and the skate kept my ankle in a horrid unnatural curve.
    “Somebody call an ambulance,” said a voice. “She’s really hurt.”
    Christopher hunched down beside me, white and horrified. “Oh, Holly,” he said desperately, “I’m sorry, I was only teasing.”
    I couldn’t even moan. The breath had been knocked so completely out of me it was all I could do to breathe. Tears sprang into my eyes, from cold and pain and shame, and when the ambulance attendants unwrapped my legs and straightened me out, I bit right through my mittens trying to hold back the scream.
    In the ambulance they unlaced the skate, and I really thought I would die. It felt as if they were amputating my ankle with a wood-saw.
    “Oh, does it hurt that much?” said the ambulance attendant.
    I tried to laugh but I sobbed instead. When I saw the needle coming toward me I almost leaned into the shot, I wanted the pain relief so much.
    I will say two things for the hospital.
    First, it was warm. No drafts or subzero temperatures on the orthopedic floors!
    Second, it was full of friends. Everybody came to visit me. You practically had to have reservations, like for the ski lift. I had so much fun it was almost worth the broken ankle! Writing on my plaster cast was the most popular activity during the last week of the Christmas holidays. Even Hope and Grey came, and Grey turned out to be a budding cartoonist—he drew cute little cats hobbling around on crutches, and sprinkled the cats among all the signatures. “Jonathan says hi,” Grey told me.
    “Oh,” I said, flushing. “Tell him hi back.”
    Fortunately my mother came in, saying hello to Hope, and Grey had to be