Let it be recorded that it wasn’t my fault that I broke my leg. In fact, it was the smokers’ fault.

     Let’s rewind:

     After a long, hard, but fun day of learning, school was out and it was time to walk home. I quickly ran through the twisting hallways of my school to the band room and grab my instrument (a clarinet). Then, I rushed to the front gate of Kennedy Middle School and look for my friends. Found them! They can’t really go anywhere because a large throng of students are in front of them. As I caught up to my friends, we saw a bike clatter to the ground and the distinct, but expected “Hey!” of the person who’s bike it was. We passed through the open gate, pushed along by the crowd like a slow-flowing stream.“

     “Whoa, guys, look at that,” my friend Sid said as he looked behind us.

     My other friend Kyle and I both looked back. Two tall (what looked to be eighth-grade) boys stood head to head. An even taller boy stood to their side watching. As we watched, the shorter of the two boys that were head to head (who was still pretty big) boys pushed the other one and yelled something unintelligible. The other one started to push back, but the very tall boy shoved both boys apart. The shorter boy once again yelled something that I couldn’t understand and pointed to the bike that had fallen. Then it dawned on me: this was about the bike that we had heard fall. The taller of the two boys who were fighting must have knocked down the bike. From the looks of it the bike was broken: a chain had snapped or something.

     “Hey guys,” Kyle said, “The fight must be about the fallen bike.”

     Big surprise.

     Meanwhile, the fight had quickly escalated. As Kyle said, “Hey guys,” the shorter of the two suddenly moved toward the other person and kicked while the other boy, the taller of the two, retaliated with a punch. The very tall boy shoved them apart again and said some words in what sounded like Chinese that sounded calming to him in a soft tone. He also spoke with the other boy. Whatever he said must have been soothing because the shorter boy smiled and both boys backed away. Just in time too because a teacher was coming. Someone must have called her to resolve the fight

     The fight may have been exciting (in a bad way), but now it was time to go home.

I’d reached the two-thirds point between my school and my house. It’s technically a dangerous intersection, but there’s a large metal button that switches the red traffic light on so that pedestrians (like me) can cross without being crushed. I ran after I crossed the intersection because I was pretty close to home. Only point-six miles to go.

I had decided to take a slightly different route home for a change of scenery. As I ran towards a turn I wanted to make to get home, I sew a boy who looks to be about fourteen or fifteen getting out of a car in front of me. There are three other boys with him. I didn’t and still don’t like it when adolescents gather near me and I stared in shock as the car is driven away

One of the boys pulled out a lighter in one hand and a cigarette in another. The other boys pulled out cigarettes too. Scared, I quickened my pace and walk toward the turn that I’m going to make. If I break into a run, who knows what could happen? One of those boys could pull a gun or a knife on me. No, no. It’s best that I just quicken my pace and get home.

I was almost to where the boys are when I started thinking about how any moment now, I will hear the “BANG!” of a gunshot and feel eternal pain. They were conversing in what sounded like Chinese and I was getting closer every minute.

As I passed the boys, they fell silent. Have you ever had four people; all of whom are doing illegal activities, stare at you while you’re walking in a deserted street. It is really NOT fun. I kept walking and breathed a sigh of relief as I rounded the turn. Just in case, I started running. In my hurry I accidentally ran in a heap of stones. I have a roller backpack, which doesn’t like going in stones. As I sprinted, I tripped and stumbled on a stone. I couldn’t keep my balance and I fell. Hard.

On the stones I felt a sharp stinging pain on my knee. I look at it and see that I’m bleeding. I really hate blood and it was making me feel slightly nauseous. I knew that I was almost to my house, but I didn’t think that I could make it. My dad was at work, but maybe my mom was close by and could pick me up. I called, but even after thirty seconds, she didn’t answer. My knee was really hurting now, and I could feel the tears running down my face. Next I called my sister Padma because I figured that even though she was in New York City, she was studying to be a doctor, so maybe she could help me. Luckily, she picked up. I couldn’t really talk to her; all I could say was, ”I’m dying. Help me!”

She finally got me to calm down and I told her what had happened; that I fell and scraped my knee.

“Are you near home,” she asks in a soothing tone.

“Yes. I’m on Sunflower Way.” I cried
“Just keep walking and talking to me,” she says calmly. I put the phone on speaker mode, but I couldn’t talk to her; I was in too much pain. I finally walked up to my driveway and painfully that the keys out of my backpack as Padma said, “Hang in there.” I went upstairs as per her instructions. “Okay, now open the medicine closet and take out the antiseptic wash and some cotton balls.” I had to be quiet because my grandma was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake her up because I figured that I could handle this injury on my own.

I took out the antiseptic and the cotton balls, then went to Padma’s bed because it’s the only bed that’s not in use (I didn’t want to drip blood everywhere). She instructed me to elevate my leg and wipe away the blood with a cotton ball or too. I did and received a bottle of Stingblast 103. Then, she told me to apply a few drops of the antiseptic wash and clean it off with a cotton ball of too to make sure that the scrape didn’t get infected. Finally, she tasked me with going back to the medicine cabinet and getting a band-aid. She said that she didn’t have me get band-aids before because she wanted to know the size of the scrape before I applied the band-aid.

Since it was a relatively small scrape, Padma told me not to use a band-aid. When I asked her why she just made me get a band-aid she said that she wanted to know whether or not it would start bleeding again. It didn’t.

You’re probably wondering how I broke my leg. Well, that evening my mom said that she’d use an ancient cut-healing medicine that she’d been storing. She wanted to use it right then because I had a tennis match the next day and she didn’t want me to miss it because of an injury. That healing ointment reacted with the skin on my knee, so the next time I bumped it on my bed frame that night, the skin got sliced right through and the bone fractured.

After that, I cried, got taken to the emergency room, got stitches and crutches, and (so far) lived happily ever after (I haven’t set eyes on those smokers so far).