Don't Call Me Hero

by Ray Villareal

  Rawly slammed the locker door shut. He looked pitifully at her and said, “But I busted Miyoko’s guitar.”

  Iris shrugged. “Accidents happen. Anyway, it was an old, cheap guitar my uncle picked up at a mercado in Mexico. He was planning to buy her a better quality one for Christmas.”

  Rawly adjusted his books in his arms. “I guess Miyoko’s pretty mad at me, huh?”

  “She’ll get over it,” Iris said. “By the way, I missed you in tutoring this morning.”

  Rawly had already planned to stop meeting Iris for tutoring. Some of the guys had seen them together in the cafeteria and had wondered about them. Arlie Hoyle asked Rawly if Iris was his girlfriend. Things might have been different if Miyoko had joined them, but that wasn’t likely to happen now.

  “Yeah, well, I probably shouldn’t be wasting any more of your time,” Rawly said. “I mean, I appreciate you trying to help me and everything, but I’m still flunking algebra. I guess I’m just not any good at it.”

  “Don’t say that, Rawly. You’re a lot smarter than you realize.” Iris winked at him. “Trust me. You just need a little confidence to get you going. Anyway, you’re not wasting my time. I like helping you. But if you can’t make it to tutoring, I understand.”

  When school was out, Rawly caught the DART bus and rode to the restaurant. He stared out the window at the wet, gray world. Rain had fallen intermittently throughout the day. It wasn’t raining at the moment, but Rawly knew those thick, dark clouds could open up at any time. He hoped the rain would hold off until he made it to the restaurant.

  Rawly wondered if anybody had given Nevin a hard time over the Open Mic Nite mess. If they did, he probably laughed it off.

  Nevin was right. Rawly did take life too seriously. Rawly wished he could be more like Nevin. Nothing ever bothered him. But then, why should it? Nevin was outgoing, witty and smarter than anyone Rawly knew. He sometimes wondered why Nevin even hung out with him.

  Rawly thought back to seventh grade, when he and Nevin first met. That was when Nevin had saved him from Charlie Matuszak.

  Charlie Matuszak was a fifteen-year-old Neanderthal, with an oversized forehead and frog eyes, who took delight in making Rawly’s life miserable. Rawly had never said or done anything to provoke Charlie, but it didn’t matter. Guys like Charlie Matuszak didn’t need a reason to pick on other kids. Charlie was a two-time flunky, who decided that as long as he wasn’t going to learn anything in school, he might as well make the most of his time there.

  He often threatened to beat Rawly up, but he never did. Instead, he found other ways to torment him. Charlie would purposely bump into Rawly in the hallways, causing him to drop an armload of books. Or he’d shoot spitballs through a straw at the back of Rawly’s head during lunchtime.

  One day Charlie snatched an Avengers comic book away from Rawly and strolled down the hall without saying a word. When Rawly yelled at him to give it back, Charlie Matuszak turned around, waved a fist in the air and said, “Take it from me, punk.”

  Rawly stood rigid with fear. Charlie was twice his size. He watched helplessly as Charlie walked away with the comic book.

  Then he heard a voice say, “Don’t worry, dude. I’ll take care of him for you.”

  Rawly turned and saw a tall, lanky kid he recognized from his science class. His name was Devin or Nathan. The kid had long, spindly arms that Charlie Matuszak could easily snap in half, like chicken bones.

  Rawly snorted. “What are you going to do? Beat him up for me?”

  “Do not despair, my friend,” the kid said. “For the pen is mightier than the sword.”

  Rawly didn’t understand what the kid meant. But then, Devin or Nathan was always saying weird stuff like that in class.

  Two days later, Charlie Matuszak was absent from school. No surprise there. Rawly figured Charlie was probably cutting classes or something. When Charlie didn’t show up the next day or the Monday of the following week, Rawly began to hope that maybe Charlie had transferred to another school.

  No such luck.

  Charlie walked into class on Tuesday morning, looking strangely dispirited, as if his dog had just died. Charlie’s expression turned to rage when he sat down and found a note inside his desk that read: YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. NOW LEAVE MY FRIENDS ALONE. OR ELSE!!!

  When class was over, Charlie grabbed Rawly by his shirt and slammed him against the lockers. He demanded that Rawly tell him about the dirty magazines. Quaking with fear, Rawly sputtered that he didn’t know anything about any dirty magazines. Charlie could sense that Rawly was telling the truth, so he let him go.

  That afternoon, the kid Rawly now knew as Nevin Steinberg explained Charlie Matuszak’s absences. It seemed that Mr. and Mrs. Matuszak had received a letter from the school informing them that their son was being given a three-day suspension, after a custodian found a stack of porn magazines in Charlie’s locker. Both the letter and the envelope had the official school district logo and the principal’s signature.

  Nevin figured Charlie’s parents couldn’t be any brighter than their dim-witted son. Sure enough, neither parent showed up to contest the suspension, despite Charlie’s protests that he’d never had any dirty magazines in his locker.

  Soon after that, Charlie Matuszak received a coupon in the mail for five free pizzas and drinks from Gino’s Pizzeria as part of a “Getting to Know Our Neighbors” promotion. Charlie wasn’t about to share his prize with his parents or his two snotty little brothers. Anyway, the letter was addressed to him. He could invite whoever he wanted. He decided to treat three other grunts from his school instead.

  After they’d had their fill of pizzas and sodas, Charlie, grinning like a chimpanzee, handed the cashier the coupon.

  Three minutes later, Mr. and Mrs. Matuszak got a call from the manager of Gino’s Pizzeria, telling them that their son and his friends had eaten sixty-five dollars worth of pizzas and drinks and had tried to pay for them with a counterfeit coupon.

  The next morning, Charlie found a note taped to his locker that said: THIS IS YOUR SECOND WARNING. DON’T PIZZA ME OFF. LEAVE MY FRIENDS ALONE. OR ELSE!!!

  Charlie Matuszak didn’t bother Rawly after that. Rawly didn’t know if it was because Charlie had been frightened off by Nevin’s pranks, or if Charlie had become so obsessed with finding out who was setting him up that he didn’t have time to waste on small fish like him.

  That was two years ago.

  Since then, Rawly and Nevin’s friendship had been hit-or-miss. Sometimes, they were as close as brothers. Rawly had met Nevin around the time of Jaime’s accident. Nevin was the only person Rawly trusted to tell about what had happened to Jaime. Other times, Nevin acted so clownish, Rawly couldn’t discuss anything serious with him.

  The bus stopped. The doors hissed open and a woman holding two grocery bags got on. Rawly looked out the window and saw a Walmart.

  But the Walmart was five miles past his exit! Rawly had lost track of where he was going.

  As the doors started to shut, Rawly ran to the front of the bus. “Sorry, I need to get off.”

  The driver opened the doors and let him out.

  Rawly stood in front of the Walmart and looked around. The bus had been traveling south. It made sense to him that in order to get to the restaurant he would have to catch a bus going north.

  He crossed the street and walked toward the bus stop in front of Winnetka Creek.

  Because of the persistent heavy storms, the water in Winnetka Creek had risen to an unusually high level. Any more rain and it would begin to spill into the streets.

  A Channel 12 News truck was parked along the curb. In the distance, Rawly saw Delia Franco, the Channel 12 newswoman who had done the report about the pig. She was standing near the steel and timber bridge that stretched across the water. Apparently she was doing a story about the potential flood threat.

  The reporter, wearing a yellow rain slicker, spoke into her microphone and pointed to the high, rushing water, which almost touched the bo
ttom of the bridge, while a cameraman videotaped her.

  Rawly decided to stay away from the reporter. When the pig story aired, his mother cursed Delia Franco and her news coverage. From then on, she refused to watch the Channel 12 News.

  As Rawly reached the bus stop, he was startled by the sound of loud, screeching tires. A white Mercedes Benz skidded uncontrollably on the wet street. It slid sideways, then forward, but it didn’t slow down. It continued accelerating at a high rate of speed.

  Rawly turned.

  The car was coming at him!

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Rawly jumped out of the way. The car hit the curb at the edge of Winnetka Creek and vaulted over it, missing him by inches. It tore across the grass, flew past the embankment and plunged into the swollen waters below.

  Rawly ran to the edge of the creek. The car sat at a tilt, halfway submerged. The airbags had deployed. He saw someone inside, a female, struggling to remove her seatbelt. Finally she managed to undo the buckle. She pulled on the door handle, but the strong waters jammed the door shut. The car began to fill with water.

  Rawly looked all around, wild-eyed. His heart pumped spasmodically. He wanted to jump into the creek to help the woman, but he realized it wouldn’t do any good. He wasn’t a swimmer. His only swimming experience had come from swimming at Hurricane Harbor. But the water park consisted mostly of slides and lazy rivers, and the main pool was too crowded for anyone to do any real swimming.

  Rawly saw the woman floating inside, thrashing her arms and legs, screaming. He was aware that he was watching her drown.

  “Hey!” Rawly shouted at Delia Franco and the cameraman. “There’s a woman trapped inside that car!”

  The reporter, holding her microphone in front of her face, ran toward him. The cameraman trailed after her, keeping his camera aimed at the car.

  Rawly returned his attention to the woman. She had flipped herself upside down and was kicking at her car’s sunroof.

  Seconds later, the glass panel shattered. The woman pushed her head out of the hole like a jack-in-the-box and sucked in a deep breath of air.

  She was a lot younger than Rawly first thought, probably no older than Jaime.

  The woman pulled herself up and sat on the roof. Her eyes were glazed. Blood poured out of her nose and from a gash that had opened up above her left eyebrow. Her dark-brown hair hung down her face like snakes.

  Rawly cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Are you all right?”

  His voice snapped the woman out of her disoriented state. She looked at Rawly and nodded weakly. She reached back inside the car, grabbed her purse and took out her cell phone.

  Delia Franco and the cameraman stood next to Rawly. The reporter continued speaking into her microphone while the cameraman captured the scene on tape.

  All of a sudden, the car lurched to one side. The muddy creek bed that had initially supported it gave way, and the car sank, leaving the woman floating in the water. Immediately, the raging currents swept her away.

  Delia Franco and the cameraman ran after her, continuing to report what they were witnessing.

  Rawly chased after them. He could see the woman’s head bobbing up and down as the water carried her off.

  In desperation, the woman grabbed a tree branch that floated alongside her, but the branch couldn’t support her weight. Rawly watched her sink into the water. She burst through the surface a moment later, gasping for air.

  He had to do something. But what?

  Think like Batman, Nevin said in his mind. You’re in a predicament. You’ve got a problem to solve. Go over all your options.

  Rawly’s eyes darted around maniacally for an answer. A branch? A vine? What could he use to rescue her?

  Up ahead, he saw the steel and timber bridge.

  That’s it!

  He had only one chance. If he failed, the woman was sure to drown.

  Still running, Rawly ripped open his long-sleeve blue shirt. The white buttons popped off it like bullets. He pulled off the shirt and raced to the middle of the bridge. He dropped to his stomach and stretched himself through a pair of steel beams that formed an X on the side. He got as close as he could to the edge of the bridge and dangled his shirt.

  As the woman drifted toward him, he shouted, “Grab it!”

  Even in her panicked state, the woman had enough composure to understand what Rawly was doing. She lunged up and grasped the shirt sleeve with both hands.

  The sudden weight almost jerked Rawly off the bridge. He was dragged forward. Splinters from the wooden floor stabbed his chest and stomach. Ignoring the pain, Rawly turned himself sideways and locked his legs around the X beams.

  “Don’t let me fall!” the woman screamed. “God, don’t let me fall!”

  Rawly tried to pull her up, but he didn’t have the leverage he needed to lift her.

  The woman kicked her legs and tried to swing herself to the top.

  “Stop moving!” Rawly yelled. “You’re going to tear the . . . ”

  R-r-i-i-p.

  The woman shrieked.

  Rawly reached down as far as he could and grabbed her by the back of her pants. With his legs still coiled around the steel beams, he yanked her up as hard as he could.

  Coughing and spitting creek water, the woman scrambled up Rawly’s arms and climbed over him. She squeezed through the steel beams and pulled herself to the floor, where she collapsed, face down.

  Rawly hauled himself up and crawled toward her on all fours.

  Delia Franco and the cameraman hovered over them. A small crowd of witnesses, who had seen the car hydroplaning, gathered nearby.

  “Is she all right?” the reporter asked.

  “I don’t know.” Rawly gently turned the woman over and stared at her ashen face. He thought he should perform CPR, but the only thing he knew about CPR was that you covered the other person’s mouth with yours and blew into it.

  He shifted his body and leaned into the woman. He held her face in his hands and awkwardly pressed his mouth against hers. He puffed a couple of breaths of air into her, and then he stopped. What if he was doing it wrong? What if he was causing the woman more harm than good? He looked up at the people standing around them—three Walmart employees, an elderly woman with her young granddaughter, and a teenage girl wearing a Dallas Mavericks jersey.

  Rawly reached in his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. One of the Walmart workers, an old man with a blue bib apron, told Rawly that he had already called 9-1-1. “Me, too,” the teenage girl said. She showed Rawly her cell phone.

  The little girl looked up at her grandmother and asked, “Nana, is the lady dead?”

  At that moment, the woman began to stir. Rawly took her by the shoulders and said, “Don’t try to get up. Someone’s already called for help.”

  Soon he heard a faint woowoowoowoo. As the sound grew louder, Rawly saw an ambulance approaching, its red, white and blue lights flashing.

  The ambulance stopped at the curb of Winnetka Creek, and two paramedics jumped out. They pulled a gurney from the back and wheeled it toward them. After making a quick assessment of the situation, one of the paramedics clamped an oxygen mask over the woman’s mouth while the other one took down a report. Afterwards, they lifted her onto the gurney. As they rolled her into the ambulance, the woman took Rawly’s hand. She offered a slight smile and said haltingly, “Thank you . . . for saving . . . my life.”

  Because of all the commotion, Rawly hadn’t had a chance to think about what he had done.

  “That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” the cameraman told him. “She would’ve drowned if it wasn’t for you. You’re a hero, kid. An honest to goodness hero. And the best part is that I caught the whole thing on tape.”

  A police officer arrived a few minutes later. Both the officer and Delia Franco asked Rawly a million questions, but their words sounded distant, muted. Rawly’s mind raced back to the start of the incident—the car driving out of control, almost strik
ing him; the car plunging into the water; the woman scrambling to free herself from her watery prison; escaping, only to fall into the creek and be swept away in the heavy currents; Rawly throwing himself down on the bridge floor and using his shirt to fish the woman out of the water.

  Thank you . . . for saving . . . my life.

  You’re a hero, kid. An honest to goodness hero.

  An hour later, Rawly, exhausted, dragged himself inside the restaurant.

  His mother stared at him with cold speculation. “Do you have any idea what time it is? You’ve had me worried sick. I called the school. I talked to Jennifer Steinberg. I even sent Teresita to the comic book store to see if you were in there. I was getting ready to get in the car to try to find you. And look at you. You’re all dirty.”

  “I . . . I . . . ” Rawly started. His knees buckled. Then he passed out.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Rawly regained consciousness a few moments later. He was lying on the couch in the restaurant office with a wet towel on his forehead. His mother stood over him, fanning his face with a menu.

  “What happened?” Rawly asked.

  “You tell me,” his mother answered in a harsh tone. “You were late for work. Then you fainted.” Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You’re not doing anything you’re not supposed to, are you?”

  Rawly removed the towel and sat up. “No, Mom. Wait! Are you accusing me of . . . ”

  “I’m not accusing you of anything. But you don’t have a fever. You don’t look sick and . . . where’s your shirt?”

  “Mom, I saved a lady’s life,” Rawly blurted out. “She lost control of her car and drove into Winnetka Creek.”

  “Winnetka Creek? What were you doing way over there?”

  Rawly told her everything.

  When he finished, his mother weighed his story with mixed feelings. She cracked her knuckles and said, “Rawly, I know you were trying to do the right thing, but you almost got yourself killed. You could’ve drowned trying to save that woman. You should’ve let the police or the paramedics rescue her. That’s their job.”