Sewer Rats

by Sigmund Brouwer

  She began to cry. “I’m scared,” she said. “I don’t want to die.”

  I couldn’t leave her.

  But would I let myself drown with her?

  Under the water, I held her hand.

  “I’m afraid too.”

  “I don’t want to die,” she said. “I don’t want to die.”

  The water reached our necks. All I had to do was reach up for the top. I could crawl back through and save myself.

  “Jimmy,” she said, sobbing. “Do you think there’s a God and heaven and angels and a place for me to be happy?”

  I didn’t know what to say. But I knew why she was asking. I learned when my Dad died that it is lonely and sad and scary.

  “Jimmy, don’t go away.” She sobbed. “Jimmy, don’t leave me.”

  I didn’t know what to do. Staying with her wouldn’t help. But how could I leave? But if I didn’t leave, I’d drown too.

  I held Lisa close. Her tears were warm against my face.

  Then a hand hit my head—a hand from above.

  “Jim? Lisa? Is that you?”

  It was Micky. He was coming through the opening above the cave-in.

  I grabbed his hand and pulled.

  chapter sixteen

  Micky landed beside us with a splash.

  I was shaking with cold. I was already on my tiptoes. The water had to be up to Lisa’s neck by now.

  “I got up to the street through the manhole,” Micky said as he struggled to his feet. “I sent someone to get help. But I had to come back.”

  “We’re in trouble,” I told him. “I don’t think we have more than a minute or two left. I can’t get Lisa loose.”

  I explained about the concrete block that had her trapped.

  “How about this,” he said. “Jim, you and me both go under. With two of us, we’ll get her loose.”

  “I don’t care if you rip my foot off,” Lisa said. “Do what it takes.”

  “All right,” I said. “Micky, don’t think I’m weird. But we better hold hands when we go under. Trust me, we’ll be working blind.”

  He grabbed my hand. We both ducked under the water.

  It felt like slow motion as we swirled around. Gurgling sounds filled my ears. I kept my eyes squeezed shut. I led Micky’s hand to the concrete block at Lisa’s feet.

  We both pulled.

  Nothing.

  More.

  Nothing.

  I could not hold my breath any longer. I popped back up. But I couldn’t stand without the water getting in my mouth.

  I paddled.

  “Jim!” Lisa cried. “The water’s at my nose!”

  Micky came up panting for air.

  “We’ve got to move her!” I shouted.

  “This time,” Micky said. “We grab it and pull ourselves down into a squat. Plant your feet and lift, like you’re trying to stand with it. Got it? Even if it breaks our backs, we don’t stop lifting. And Lisa, if you feel it move, yank your foot.”

  We didn’t give her a chance to answer.

  Down into the water again.

  I brought myself down to the rock. I took it in both hands. I felt Micky’s hands beside me. I bumped against him as we went into the squat.

  We both tried to stand. The rough edges of the concrete block tore the skin off my fingers. Still, I strained. A grunt left my mouth and bubbled air into the water.

  Just a little, the concrete block shifted.

  I strained harder. Micky must have done the same. Because the block shifted more.

  I couldn’t try it again. I needed air. I pushed up and popped above the water. Micky splashed up beside me.

  “I’m free!” Lisa shouted into the darkness. “I’m free!”

  Micky and I yelled and screamed with joy. If we could have seen each other, we would have been high-fiving like dancing fools.

  That left one last thing. Getting out. Crawling back over this wall to the other side.

  Lisa went first. Then Micky.

  It was easier than on the way in. The water from Micky and Lisa’s wet clothes had made the dirt slick and slippery. I wasn’t scared of getting stuck.

  There was only one problem. The wall was beginning to break beneath me.

  I didn’t know it until Lisa and Micky helped me down on the other side. I landed on the tunnel floor and splashed in a small stream of water.

  In the dim light from the open manhole cover I saw water leaking through a crack in the wall. The stream was getting bigger. There was tons of water behind the wall waiting to explode onto us.

  “We’ve got to run,” I said. “If this wall goes, we’re in trouble.”

  “My ankle,” Lisa told us. “It might be broken.”

  Micky ducked so she could put her arm over his shoulders. I stood on the other side. She put her other arm over my shoulders.

  We moved forward. She hopped at a half run between us.

  I heard a rumble as we reached the ladder to the manhole.

  “If the water hits,” Micky shouted, “put your arms through the rungs.”

  Micky and I pushed Lisa onto the ladder. She began to pull herself up.

  The rumble became a thunder.

  Micky and I both grabbed the ladder as Lisa rose.

  The thunder of the water became a roar in our ears.

  “Climb! Climb!” Micky shouted.

  We were a quarter of the way up the ladder when the wall of water hit, with me just under Micky.

  I hooked both my arms between the iron rungs of the ladder. The water washed over me like a wall. If my arms hadn’t been hooked, I would have been swept away.

  The water pulled at my hair and clothes. I was still hooked in the ladder though. All I had to do was hold my breath.

  Then, boom, something hit me in the legs—something with the force of a train. My last thought was short and simple. I couldn’t believe the heat and pain of breaking bones.

  chapter seventeen

  “I understand you nearly died in the tunnels.”

  I nodded at Miss Pohl from my hospital bed. I had just woken up.

  “It was close,” I said.

  “I understand if you’d rather not remember it out loud,” she answered.

  “That’s all right,” I said. “I’m just glad I’m here to tell you about it.”

  So I did. It seemed like I was talking about someone else as I described it to her.

  When the rush of water had passed us by, the three of us were still hanging on the ladder. Soaked and cold but alive. Only my hooked arms kept me on the ladder, though, because I was unconscious. Later the doctors decided that a big block of concrete must have hit my legs. They guessed the water— and the block—was doing thirty miles an hour. The concrete block shattered my hip in three places.

  I came back to consciousness as the medics were loading me into an ambulance. I didn’t scream. I was in too much shock. I asked about Lisa and Micky, and when I was told they were okay, I decided it was all right to fall unconscious again.

  “Who is Zantor?” Mrs. Pohl asked after I finished telling her what had happened in the tunnel.

  “Zantor?” How did she know?

  “I was here for a few minutes before you woke up,” she said. “You were mumbling in your sleep.”

  “Oh.” I decided not to answer.

  She must have realized I didn’t want to tell her, because she smiled her nice smile and changed the subject.

  “You’re going to miss a lot of school,” she said.

  “That’s too bad,” I said.

  “You have to sound more sincere.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “You don’t sound like you’re actually going to miss school. In fact, you almost sound happy about it.”

  Comic books all day, television when I was tired of comic books, food served to me on a tray. No tests, homework or squirming in a desk. Except for the pain in my legs, not a bad trade, especially because I could ring for a nurse whenever I wanted something.

 
“It’s really awful that I’m going to miss school,” I said, lowering my voice. A second later, I said, “Did that sound more sincere?”

  “Not even close.” But she was smiling.

  She looked out the window, then back at me.

  “Jim,” she said. “You have just proved to yourself that you are a remarkable young man.”

  I opened my mouth, but she shushed me. “I don’t think you’ve ever believed in yourself. But I want you to remember for the rest of your life the courage you showed, and the strength and resourcefulness you used. A lot of other people would have gone into panic. I’ve always known you are remarkable, and I’m glad you proved it to yourself, even though it took something terrible like this.”

  What does a person say to that? Fortunately, she continued talking, so all I needed to do was listen.

  “It doesn’t matter where a person comes from,” she said. “What really matters is where a person chooses to go. Believe me, after all my years of teaching, I’ve seen a lot of kids grow up. Some have all the advantages—great family, money and connections—and choose to do nothing. Other kids face every and any obstacle you can imagine and choose to do what it takes to reach their dreams. And they succeed.”

  She smiled. “You can become whatever you want, Jim McClosky. Dream big and chase those dreams.”

  Again, I didn’t know what to say.

  “School’s an important step in following those dreams,” she said. “Even when you don’t enjoy every minute of it, you can use what you learn in school as a foundation for all the great things you want to accomplish later in life. Understand?”

  I’d never thought about these things, but it made sense, even the part about believing in myself.

  “So it won’t be good to miss all this class time.” I knew I sounded sincere because suddenly I was.

  “I think I can make you a deal,” she said. “If you agree to it, I should be able to keep the social workers out of this.”

  “I’m listening.”

  And that’s when she told my how I could get a passing grade by using my hospital time to put my experience into a story. She said that maybe someday I would be a writer. I asked her if she would get me a notebook and a pen, and that seemed to make her happy.

  Funny enough, it made me happy too.

  chapter eighteen

  A day later, Micky walked into my hospital room with an armful of comics.

  “Thought you might like these,” he said. He tossed them onto my bed. “With that body cast, you’re not going anywhere for a while.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I hid my notebook. It was one thing being honest and writing things on paper. It was another to have him ask me questions about what I was doing.

  “Don’t thank me,” he said. “Lisa and Carter got together and bought them for you.”

  “Lisa and Carter?”

  He nodded, knowing why I sounded so surprised. “I think they’re getting used to the idea of being part of a family, even though it’s not a normal family.”

  He shrugged. “But then none of us are normal, are we?”

  I thought about what some of the teachers called us: dysfunctional kids.

  “No,” I said, thinking the teachers might be right. “We’re not.”

  I also thought of what Miss Pohl had said about it not mattering where a person came from, but where a person decided to go in life. “Doesn’t mean we have to be that way forever, does it?”

  Micky didn’t answer. He pulled a chair up beside me. For a few minutes, we didn’t talk.

  “I’ve got to ask you,” I finally said. “Why did you come back? Don’t get me wrong. If it weren’t for you, we would never have got Lisa loose. But from what you say about your Dad and how you think heroes are stupid...”

  I held my breath. I didn’t want Micky to get mad and leave.

  Micky surprised me. He grinned.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “A lot.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “Why did I go back? It’s like this. I couldn’t not do it. Does that make sense?”

  I thought about why I’d kept trying to help Lisa. I nodded my head to show him I agreed.

  “And I’ve been thinking more,” he said. “About my Dad.”

  I waited.

  “All along I’ve been mad at him because I thought he was trying to be a hero,” Micky said. “But now I don’t think it was like that. It was probably the same for him as it was for us. We couldn’t stand by and watch. We had to do something. Or always hate ourselves.”

  I nodded some more. I’d learned that bravery wasn’t about the panic that might hit. It was about allowing yourself to be afraid. And not quitting because of that fear.

  “You know that’s what the newspapers are saying about us,” Micky said. He made a face and shook his head. “But we’re not heroes. It’s just that other people have decided to call us that.”

  Micky looked at his hands and thought for a few more seconds.

  “Anyway,” Micky said. “For a long time I’ve been angry because I thought my dad died trying to be a hero. I hated him. I mean, I thought he cared so little about me and Mom that he threw his life away for the chance to be a hero.”

  Micky smiled sadly. “I guess I know different now, don’t I?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess so.”

  Micky’s sad smile grew less sad. “So I don’t hate him anymore. In a way, it’s like having him back. Which is pretty cool after all these years.”

  That was all Micky said. He left me alone in the hospital room with the comics.

  I picked up the top comic book. It was about a galactic soldier who never lost any battles.

  I tossed the comic book onto the floor.

  Micky had his father back.

  Me? I didn’t need Zantor anymore.

  photo credit: Bill Bilsley

  Sigmund Brouwer is the best-selling author of many books for children and young adults, including Wired in the Orca Currents series. Sigmund enjoys the chance to visit schools to talk to students about reading and writing. Watch for Sigmund’s sports adventure novels, Rebel Glory, All Star Pride and Tiger Threat in the new Orca Sports series in the fall of 2006. Sigmund currently divides his time between Red Deer, Alberta, and Nashville, Tennessee.