Without Borders by Amanda Heger Read Free Book Online Page A

out the driver’s side,” Phillip said. He stood at the edge of the mud hole, arms outstretched. “Jump. I’ll catch you. On Barnyard Boyfriend I won the bale toss. You know. You saw that episode, right?” He winked as he said it, and the memory of the episode flashed through her mind. Phillip caught twenty bales of hay in the span of thirty seconds, and when his potential girlfriend jumped from the loft, he caught her too.
    Beyond him, the others stayed in their line, watching in silence. Juan stared past her to the inside of his truck, and his expression became more pained with each glob of mud that fell from her clothes. Here goes nothing.
    She leapt, pushing herself off the ledge with every bit of force she could gather. It was only after both feet left the safety of the truck that Annie realized she hadn’t told Phillip she was about to jump. His hands slid past her waist as her chest slammed into his. She ricocheted off his body and flopped onto her back in the mud. His banana jacket covered her eyes and mouth as he fell on top of her, and his weight pushed her deeper into the slop.
    I’m going to drown in a mud hole in Nicaragua.
    Annie flailed her arms, searching for something solid. Fingers grabbed her slimy wrist, and Phillip rolled off her. Through mud-soaked eyelashes, she saw a shock of short, dark hair. She reached her other hand out; Felipe wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pulled.
    “Are you okay?” He stood in the overgrown puddle, mud climbing to his mid-calves.
    Annie started to say yes, or maybe no, but the taste of dirt filled her mouth. She shrugged.
    “I am going to pull and you stand, yes?”
    She nodded then clasped her fingers around his forearms. He yanked, and she stumbled straight into his chest. “Sorry.” She gripped the front of his poncho for balance and glanced up to find her lips an inch from his.
    “It is okay.” He put a hand on her low back, grazing the bare skin exposed by her tangled, muddy mess of a shirt.
    To her left, Phillip struggled like a turtle on its back. “Guys? I think I need some help over here.”
    Marisol waded into the pit after him, and Annie bit back her laughter. “Is this really happening?”
    “ Sí. Now, push through the mud,” Felipe said. “Do not lift your feet. Like this.” He let go of her and shuffled one hand against the other.
    It worked. Annie scooted the two feet, and he pulled her onto solid ground. Her clothes and hair hung heavy with mud, and the chaos left her poncho shredded.
    Felipe smiled and pulled at a tattered edge of the plastic. “You are trouble, Americana .” Even in her mud-soaked state, she couldn’t resist grinning at him.
    “You ride here now, yes?” Juan scooted between them and patted the truck bed. He marched to the driver’s side without waiting for her response.
    “What?” Annie looked to Felipe for translation.
    “Juan keeps the truck very clean.” He scraped the mud from his pants. “It is his obsession. Now you will have to ride with me.”
    Annie’s stomach curled in on itself. Growing up in the Midwest, she’d heard enough horror stories about people being thrown from the beds of pickup trucks to last two lifetimes. Maybe three. She knew she should protest and insist on riding somewhere with a seatbelt, but as she watched Felipe shove the truck out of the mud, a hint of his triceps peeked out from the sleeves of his shirt, and she forgot all her concerns.
    “We will go slowly.” Felipe pulled the latch on the gate and held out his hand. She took it, and he launched her into the damp truck bed. Mud squished between her toes, but when he sat beside her, Annie nearly forgot about the missing seatbelt and her inadvertent mud bath. With every bump in the road, the truck heaved, and Felipe’s shoulder pressed into hers. Her mind refused to focus on anything else.
    • • •
    As they approached the village, the spiked pochote trees thinned enough for Felipe to make out the shapes of houses