Gifted (16 page)

So the Bruise Brothers needed help. But what could I do? I needed help, too!

Then it hit me. It hit me like a tightly packed snowball to the back of the head. This was my chance to help my fellow man. I'd promised God that I would make it up to
everybody, and He'd taken me seriously. He had let me live. It was too late to take it back now. God and I had a deal going.

I had seen the light.

And not only the light but the flashing
bar lights
atop two or three emergency vehicles turning off the distant roadway at a slow crawl toward Cape Rose—a rescue crew in progress! Not exactly the Coast Guard coming, but that wasn't important. Anyone with an inflatable dinghy would do. The
important
thing was … the Bruise Brothers wouldn't know help was coming. So I had to act fast! I had to go and administer help in all kinds of heroic ways before the rescue crew reached Them. And They'd be amazed by my calm and my sense of leadership. When word of this spread, possibly making
Good Morning, America
if I played my cards right, people would form lines just to shake my hand. No one would ever utter the words “pompous snot” in reference to me again!

“STAY WHERE YOU ARE! I'LL BE RIGHT THERE!” I bellowed, studying the water. Well, I would have to swim. A bit of a problem, since I didn't know how. I could manage a rude doggy paddle if pressed, but that was it, and even then I resembled a nervous Chihuahua having a series of uncontrollable spasms.

Still, the water looked calm. It might not be too difficult to cross. The real problem, I learned after hopping down the steps, would be finding the way out. The tower had filled like a well. I couldn't see the doorway. I would have to dive down and find it. Trembling, I gripped the handrails. The thought of submerging my head simply terrified me. It had kept my hair dry since I was a child.

If it hadn't been for the Music Man, or rather, if it
hadn't been for the Music Man's high-pitched voice coming back to haunt me, I might be standing there still.

Face your fears, George. Face your fears
.

“Okay,” I said, swallowing hard. “Just a minute.”

Seize fate by the throat, George!

I dipped a toe in the water. “I'll be right with you.”

You remind me of myself at your age
.

“I'm going! I'm going!”

It was the kick in the pants I needed. Determination seeped back into my system. I let go of the railing, tied my jacket around my hips for a little added buoyancy, then dropped for a couple of deep knee bends. I took a long breath, pinched my nose shut, and plunged down into ice water. Then I bobbed back up and climbed the steps. This was not going to be easy.

I repeated the process, adding an expert donkey kick off the stairs to my routine, and as I shot through the water my hand brushed the splintered doorway. I had found the way out! So now the hard part was over. I torpedoed myself through the opening and rose to the sparkling surface of the bay, where I discovered immediately that I had been wrong.
Very
wrong.

Wrong about the hard part being over, for when I say I “rose to the sparkling surface of the bay,” what I mean is “my butt rose to the sparkling surface of the bay,” and I had one heck of a time getting my head out of the water. You see, the current had me in its grip, and instead of assuming the dog-paddle position right away, as was my plan, I adopted the clumsy, thrashing stroke that even the hardiest swimmers tend to fall back on when they are drowning.

A sad ending to my story.

Or so I thought.

I was going down for the umpteenth time and was just about to lose all hope entirely, when divine intervention, in the form of a floating tree branch, came along and conked me on the ear in such a way as to tell me that all was not lost. A little spooky, but there it was. God must have been keeping an eye on me.

I lassoed the branch with flailing arms and attached my upper half to it like Velcro, and now even the flood-water seemed to be on my side, flowing right into the Compound. With my outstretched arm providing the rudder and the occasional kicking motion making me feel as if I were doing something more than just not thinking about what might be swimming underneath me, I let the current carry me all the way into camp.

Well, me and a whole lot of other stuff polluting the water. Driftwood and trash, aluminum cans, bits of cloth and broken glass.

I wondered how long it might take the rescuers to
reach us. An hour, maybe? Who knew? It might be a long and thirsty wait. But at least I no longer had to pee.

I blushed at the thought as I pictured the upcoming scene in my mind.

The Bruise Brothers standing there, eyes big as petri dishes, mouths hanging open in wonder, gaping at me as I floated in. I would screw up my face to better depict my pain and suffering, and start paddling hard through the water. Then Sam and Jason would lean out of the window … No,
Sam
would lean out and haul me aboard, and then we'd gaze at each other the way we'd done so many times in the past, only without all of the hatred on his part and all of the fear on mine. We'd goggle at each other with
respect
, and it would be a pleasant change.

A very pleasant change
.

But it didn't work out that way. When I paddled hard up to the building, the window was empty, and the place, sagging heavily against the tree, looked as if it had been bombed—the glass blown out of the windows, the roof nearly gone, and that big red Welcome to Cape Rose banner caught in the branches of the tree, fluttering noisily against a broken wall. It all looked so eerie, and so deserted.

“Hello?” I called. “Is anybody there?”

Utter silence. I cruised up to a window and grabbed hold.

“Hello?”

Mounting the sill, a difficult maneuver with the current tugging me away, I stumbled onto the sloping floor and stood up shivering in the breeze. I thought,
If this is a trick …

“George.”

It was Sam's voice, but it sounded odd, kind of muffled.

“Where are you guys?” I asked.

“Over here.”

I looked about me, and my heart started pounding. The chairs, the filing cabinets, all of the office furniture had cascaded downhill into a heap against the lower wall, the very place where his voice had come from.
Sam was buried alive
. I made my way over and saw the back of his head on the thin brown carpeting. Covering him were large planks of wood, the remains of a desk. On top of that lay a heavy aluminum shelf unit, pinning Sam down.

I knelt beside him.

“Sam! Oh, my God! Are you okay?”

His head turned. I saw his profile, and the ghost of a grin.

“Took you long enough.”

My heart skipped a beat. “You're okay, then?”

“I don't know.”

“Are you in pain?”

“Nope. Not like I was. I think my legs went to sleep. I can't feel a thing anymore.”

“Well, no wonder!” I cried. “With all this weight on you!” I attempted to lift up the shelf unit, but it didn't budge. I sat back on my heels.

“I'm going to need a hand with this. Where are the others?”

He let out a cheerless laugh. “Home, probably. They turned around and went back through the woods. Said I was taking it too far, that I was outta my mind. And they were right. Sorry, George. I never should've done that. I don't know what was wrong with me. All I kept thinking about was what my parents would do when they heard I got kicked out of school. It's good you can run fast.”

“I was highly motivated.”

“I never saw anybody run that fast before. Coach Caruso should've been there.”

“Coach Caruso's the one who told you to nail me, remember?”

“No, he didn't. I made that up. I was trying to scare you. C'mon, you didn't believe that, did you?”

“Believe it?” I smiled broadly. “Do I look that stupid?” We shared a chuckle. The relief on hearing this piece of good news was overwhelming. It's distressing to think your gym teacher has targeted you for a mob-style slaying on a mandatory class trip. There's something very unsportsmanlike about it.

But
this
was nice. A subdued Sam Toselli lying there, full of remorse and looking up at me, and me brimming over with the milk of human kindness, the two of us discussing our checkered past amicably. It was very nice. And studying his face, I was struck by just how young it seemed. Young and innocent. Maybe because all of the meanness had drained out of it. All of the color, too. It was a very pale, innocent face.

He turned a bit more my way and his eyes grew suddenly large.

“God, you're all beat up! There's a big friggin' gash going from one side of your head to the other. What'd you do to yourself?”

“You don't want to know,” I said mysteriously. “Believe me, things got pretty rough out there. Friggin' rough, in fact.”

“That's gotta hurt
bad
.”

“
Bad
,” I said, “hardly meets the description. It's friggin'
agony
,” and from the way he nodded, I could tell he'd grasped my meaning perfectly. But it was really a lie
because I couldn't feel it anymore. Saltwater makes a wonderful analgesic.

We regarded each other quietly, respectfully you might say, for several moments before Sam observed, “You know what? You're a real good friend to me, George. A real good friend.” And believe it or not, when he said this, the whole room seemed to light up just like a Christmas tree. The broken glass started twinkling, the miscellaneous office crap became vivid and colorful, and the heavy metal shelves pinning Sam down seemed to shine like polished silver. And the thought crossed my mind that this whole terrifying ordeal, even the two terrifying years of torture that preceded it, might have been well worth it just to hear those words from Sam Toselli.

I grinned at him the way a real good friend would, and I'm not ashamed to say my eyes felt more than a little humid. I blinked them dry. Sam grinned back at me, then drew a breath and closed his eyes.

“The best worm I ever had.”

He inhaled again, a quick shallow breath, and I stared at him in alarm. The words had come out thick and slurred. I touched his forehead. It was cold and clammy.

“Yup … a good worm.” He was panting now, and staring blankly. His eyes were glazed, the pupils dilated. He wasn't okay. He was anything
but
okay.

He's going into shock!
I realized. A second after I realized this, I sprang into action, hardly knowing what I was doing. A rush of adrenaline sent me vaulting to my knees, and another rush, empowering me with what felt like the strength of ten, enabled me to send the shelf unit tumbling off of Sam's body. I snatched up each piece of the broken desk, tossing heavy planks over my shoulder
like so many Lincoln Logs, then steeled myself to view the carnage: a pair of legs so twisted and bent, so crooked and fixed that they looked more like the limbs of a mangled action figure than the legs of an eighth-grade kid.

Sam babbled while I worked, oblivious to the fear that gripped me now from head to toe. I had never been so frightened in all my life,
especially for a person who didn't happen to be me
.

“You know what, George?” he mused. “I don't wanna go home.”

“Sure you do, Sam.” My voice trembled. I wanted to cover him with something warm, but there was nothing as far as a blanket in the room. The Cape Rose banner would do no good, it was made of thin nylon, and my jacket was soaking wet.

“No, I don't. They're gonna kill me when they find out what happened. I can't go home.”

“They're not going to kill you. They're not going to kill anyone.” I swallowed twice to steady my voice. “I'll tell everyone it was my fault. Everything that happened, and I'll make them believe me. Adults
always
believe me. Don't you worry about a thing.”

I had to think.
Do I elevate his legs? I would have to
immobilize them first. Or do I wait for help? Where is that rescue team? Why are they taking so long!

“You'd do that for me?”

“Yes, of course, I would, and you would do it for me.” I had to do
something
for him. I scanned the room, and my eyes lit on a few scattered pieces of wall paneling. I fetched one, a nice wide one, wide enough to brace Sam's legs in their unnatural positions and plenty long enough to support his head and back, as well. I brought it down to where he lay.

He was still rambling, choppy words between shallow breaths. “I dunno if I'd do it for you. No, I don't think I would. You're better than me. You're better than everybody.”

“No, I'm not,” I said, sliding the panel underneath him. The drawers of the desk were half-buried in the wreckage, their contents spilled on the floor, among which was a roll of heavy tape. I began a sloppy job of binding Sam's hips and legs to the panel with the tape, trying to make a splint,
praying
that I was doing it right. Why hadn't I learned first aid? “I'm not better than anybody. You're talking to the
worm
, remember?”

This got a laugh out of him, a drunken laugh. I ripped the tape with my teeth and patted the end in place. He was still laughing.

“Now listen, Sam.” I cradled his face. “You're hurt. You're hurt bad.
Friggin' bad
, and I don't want you to move. Help is coming. I saw a rescue team from the top of the tower, but they might not get here for a while. Can you keep still for me until help comes?”

“George,” he said, his voice a cracked whisper, “I don't think I
can
move.”

“That's fine,” I nodded, “that's a good thing right now!”
I picked up his hand and squeezed it. “We'll stay here together and wait, and any minute now help will come. Everything is going to be okay. Nothing bad is going to happen, because I won't let it!”