“But it’s in the bathroom, if you’ll just follow me,” Sully tried again.
“If I’m not mistaken, Mr. Brewster, you and your mother just finished telling me that you’re perfectly okay. I’m sure you’ll find a way to deal with whatever it is you’re talking about, given that you are, as your mother put it, intelligent and sensitive. Perhaps you’re just being overly sensitive about your height, Mr. Brewster, and the best cure for that, in my experience, is to face your adversity head on. Embrace who you are and don’t concern yourself with others’ opinions.”
“But you don’t understand—”
“Look, Mr. Brewster. I already set aside time for you this morning. By all means, book another meeting with me through the school secretary, but right now, I have other business to attend to and you are supposed to be in class.”
Sully nodded and stumbled into the hallway. While his brain fully intended to head to Green’s class, his feet carried him out of the school and into the parking lot. His brain and his feet continued to ignore each other until he stepped onto True Street.
Seconds before his head hit the ground, he became aware that something small, round, and green was accelerating toward him at an alarming pace.
CHAPTER 34
“What the—!”
Sully touched his forehead, where something had just whistled past, narrowly missing him. In a defensive reflex, he threw himself on the ground, which caused his eyes to slide sideways. In a chain reaction, his mouth cowered beside his nose and his ears crowded his left jaw.
“Can’t you see what’s going on?”
Sully turned his head to see Mr. C. hollering and hobbling toward him at breakneck speed. His canes flashed in the sunlight as he darted nimbly round the fence.
“That nearly hit me!” Sully sprang to his feet and thrust his palms before him like stop signs. “What are you, crazy? You could have killed me!”
“If I’d wanted it to hit you, it would have hit you. You are such a nutcase; a nut is what you deserve.”
“Stay away.” Sully backed away. “I’ll call the cops.”
“You will not do even that,” said Mr. C. He waved one of his canes at the fence. “It seems you will do nothing except run.”
As Sully jogged backward, his sleeve snagged on the knight and Sleeping Beauty. The sudden motion spun him around. He landed with his jaw on the rail, eyeball-to-eyeball with Darth Vader. The Madonna figurine’s blue cloak and large black backpack were a blur in the background.
“Stupid! Stupid!” Sully pulled his sleeve free and spun in the other direction to make his escape to Perdu.
“Can’t you see what’s happening?” Mr. C. yelled after him. “Those two are trying so hard to help you. Do you really think it’s coincidence that you landed face-to-face with the Vader? Oh-h-h, I’m not supposed to be telling you these things! Perhaps you cannot be helped.”
“At least I’m not crazy!” Sully yelled over his shoulder.
“I think maybe you are wrong about that,” Mr. C. called after him. “Look at the fence, Boy, just look at it. It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion.”
As Sully rounded the corner, he whipped his head to the side so his eyes could see where he was going. The Purse Lady jumped into his line of vision.
“My goodness.” She shook her head. “Look at you. Are you even trying?”
“No!” Sully pushed past her. “Don’t talk to me!”
He ran the rest of the way home and sat at the kitchen table. The short list, he thought. What am I going to do? He’d pretty well burned his bridges with Miss Winters. He doubted even he’d believe himself after his track record at school to date.
Morsixx and Blossom were willing, but the cafeteria episode proved them incapable.
What about Mom? The thought had passed through his head this morning when they’d met with Miss Winters that Mom might well be a good match for Tank. Out of desperation, he punched Mom’s work number into the phone.
“Hello?” The tone of her first word was already making him second-guess himself, but he pushed on.
“Mom,” he said. “There’s this list at school and I’m on it.”
Mom hesitated a beat. “A class list? Does this have to do with that presentation you gave, or the incidents your principal referenced?”
“Well, sort of. I mean, it can’t have helped. I mean, I was kind of set up, and—”
“Set up?” said Mom. “By whom?”
“The ones who put me on the list.”
“What list are we talking about, Sullivan. And can we talk about this tonight?”
Now that he was actually on the phone with his mom, Sully remembered why he hadn’t gone to her in the first place. Having his mom fight his battles for him would make him more of a target, not less of one. A virtual straight line to the black spot.
“Well,” he hedged, “it’s not a long list.”
He needed to detour this conversation and fast. All he really needed was Mom’s permission to stay home so he could evade all of this. If he wasn’t at school to receive the Black Spot, they’d have to pick one of the other two.
“So, it’s a short list?” said Mom.
“Ahhh,” said Sully. “Don’t say that.”
“Don’t say what?” said Mom. “Sullivan, I’m more than a little confused.”
That makes two of us, thought Sully.
“Are you on a list or not,” said Mom, “and what does it mean if you are? And, more to the point, since I can see that you’re calling from home, what does that have to do with you cutting class again?”
“Forget the list, Mom. The truth is, I’m really just not feeling well.”
And this certainly was the truth. His heart was racing far too fast, and it felt like someone had a grip on his windpipe.
“Look, Sullivan. You got me out of a meeting. As I said to you this morning, I think what you’re feeling is just nerves. Get yourself back to class and we’ll talk about all of this after school, okay? Promise me?”
“Okay, Mom,” said Sully.
“Bill’s working from home today, after he gets back from taking Eva to school, so he can drive you.”
A day home hiding from Bill was not going to make things better.
“It’s okay, Mom. I think the walk will do me good.”
“All right, Sullivan. You understand attending class is important, right? Especially after our meeting this morning?”
“I do,” said Sully. “I plan to stay out of trouble.”
And that’s exactly what he intended to do. Without home to hide out in, he’d find a way to pass the time until school let out and he could legitimately head back home.
To avoid Mr. C and The Purse Lady, he navigated alternate sidewalks with no clear plan of where he was going. Still, even with his cap pulled forward, his hands jammed under his armpits, and his shoulders hunched, he felt as exposed as a worm after a rainstorm.
More by accident than design, he found himself at the foot of the falls. These weren’t Angel Falls, or even Niagara, but under the cold, gray October sky, they were unfriendly and menacing. A homeless man had fallen over the edge here when Sully was younger. While the vertical drop wasn’t that high, the riverbed was shallow at the base, with numerous jagged rocks. It wasn’t the fall that had killed him, it was the landing.
Sully hurried along the walkway into the park, to where the path forked around the lake. Heading right would launch him over the footbridge toward the playground and True Street. Continuing straight would put him on the path he normally took to school. He had no intention of going either place, but off the path ahead was a shallow forest he could hide in.
Scanning for the right place to enter, he realized he was at the entrance to the path that wound under the rail bridge. His first instinct was to point himself in the exact opposite direction. He knew wh
at ptsd was, and this place was a big-time trigger. Just looking at the path caused his chest to tighten and his head to ache.
A crazy mix of emotions flickered through him. Hanging out here with Blossom and Morsixx had made him feel part of something bigger than himself. Like he actually might be able to have good friends, even if they were both a little odd.
But that golden moment had been warped into some-thing monstrous. By opening himself to something good, he’d exposed himself to the worst experience of his life.
And now he was on the short list.
If he was honest with himself, he knew he had already been flagged as a candidate for the Naked Niner, probably from that first day on the bus when he’d literally fallen in Tank’s lap. But the video couldn’t have helped. It probably sealed the deal. Gift-wrapped him.
But even as he thought this, he realized he had it backward. Dodger must have followed them here. Who else? It wouldn’t be hard to hide in all the overgrowth.
But so what? Even if that’s the way it happened, it still happened. He couldn’t afford to trust anyone again. It was like what Mr. Escrow had asked them to copy off the board last week—a quote from President Obama: “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
Mr. Escrow had explained that these words called upon citizens to stand up for what’s right and challenge what’s wrong, rather than waiting for someone else to come to the rescue, but Sully decided to put his own spin on it. He decided to go back to his solo mission; to look only to himself for a change in his situation. Or, more correctly, evasion of his situation.
He climbed up, past the graffitied alcove under the tracks and through the tall grass, until he was on the same level as the tracks themselves. It felt private in here. A few feet of sloped gravel left space to sit on either side of the rails, but the overgrowth beyond that on either side enclosed him like the walls of a room.
He sat a few feet from where a train would pass on its way to cross the small river. In front of him, the rails converged to a single point across the water and down the line.
The chill wind bit into his fingers, but it would only be for a little while, and then he could head home. No one would think to look for him here.
But then someone did.
“My name is Sullivan Brewster. I peed myself! Don’t look at me! Oooooh!”
CHAPTER 35
Sully jumped to his feet and gawked around like a bobblehead doll, as he tried to locate where the voice was coming from.
“Boo, Sally!”
Dodger leapt out of the bushes and landed within three feet of Sully, who clambered backward to the shallow gravel embankment on the other side of the tracks.
“Not so fast, guyPad.” Ox popped out of the bushes on this side, menacing Sully back to the tracks at the center.
“Well, well, well, Sally.” Sully turned slowly to see Tank enter the clearing behind Dodger.
“You’d be surprised at how good the acoustics are here, Sally.” Dodger held his phone at arm’s length, pointed at Sully. “We plan on getting lots of raw footage for another fabulous feature movie. Ready or not, three-two-one . . . action!”
Sully scanned the area, looking for a way to escape.
With Tank and Dodger on one side of the tracks and Ox on the other, Sully’s only choices were to inch backward along the rails behind him, or forward toward the rail bridge that crossed the small river.
Back seemed the smarter choice, but as he took a step in that direction, Tank sauntered to the middle of the tracks to block Sully’s path.
Pivoting in response, Sully tripped and landed on his butt between two ties.
“Riddle me this,” said Dodger. “What’s physically short, short on self-respect, and is now on a list that is short?”
“Short is not the least of what you are.” Tank took a step toward Sully, who jumped to his feet. “It may, in fact, be the best of what you are.”
Sully’s eyes swooped from one side to the other, as if searching for a way to escape his face. The only open space was now behind him. Over the rail bridge across the river.
“If you had any spine at all, maybe you wouldn’t be quite so short.” Tank had halved the space between them. All he had to do was reach out his hand and Sully was toast.
“The only thing that might save you is that you’re so pathetic, it’s almost boring. It was a point of debate, Sally. You’re such a loser, there’s almost no sport in it.”
“Note he said ‘almost,’” said Ox, who advanced from Sully’s right.
“More!” Dodger filmed with his camera and directed Sully with his free hand. “Give me more! I’m not feeling it, Sally!”
Sully stepped backward. His right foot hesitantly claimed the last rail tie on solid ground before the tracks sprinted over the water ten feet below. The riverbanks were unforgiving here. If Sully jumped to either side, he’d land badly and probably break his neck.
“You don’t have more, do you, Sally. You don’t have nothing. Because that’s all you are . . . nothing.”
Sully took another step back. His eyes plunged under his chin and stared at the foot and a half of almost empty air between the tie under his left foot and the one behind him.
“If I didn’t know better,” said Tank, “I’d say you were trying to get chosen.”
Sully’s right leg shook as he swung it back to feel for the next tie. He shifted his weight onto it and bent his knees for support. The water was now entirely underneath him. He was committed.
“You don’t have the guts to keep going, Sally.” Tank steadily closed the space between them. “You’re not even good at running away.”
Sully jutted his chin up and to the side. He calculated that it was only ten, maybe twelve, feet across the rail bridge to the other side of the river.
“You’re asking yourself ‘why me?’, aren’t you, Sally.”
That’s only ten or twelve steps, Sully reasoned. Surely he could take ten or twelve steps to save himself.
But Sully’s left foot seemed to be glued to the tie in front.
“It’s because you’re weak, Sally.” Tank took another step toward him. “And as my dear old dad would say, the weak grow up invisible and useless. Exposing you would actually be doing you a favor.”
With his arms out to the side for balance, Sully lifted the enormous weight of his left leg and pulled it back. He toed the air, at first missing and then finding the tie that would move him another step away from Tank.
“You don’t even try to stick up for yourself. Invisible doesn’t mean safe, Sally. Invisible means dead.”
Tank took another step forward. “Let’s see what you got, Sally.”
Instinct took over, and Sully’s feet and brain once more disconnected. With the prowess of a tightrope walker, he edged steadily backward, bending the knee of the leg in front, pushing it back, finding the rail with the tip of his sneakers, pressing back until his foot hugged the tie. When he realized Tank was no longer following him, his brain caught up, telling him he’d made it halfway to the other side.
Sully’s eyes catapulted up his face with something like hope gleaming at their center. The river was loud in his ears. He could no longer hear what Tank was saying. By the look of it, though, even Tank seemed to recognize the astonishing brilliance of the moment, given the strange look on his face as he stepped off the tracks and away from Sully.
And it wasn’t just Tank. Behind the big bully, Ox put his hand over his mouth while Dodger jumped around, waving his arms in a crisscross motion and yelling something Sully couldn’t make out.
Maybe Tank is right, Sully thought, as he took another step back. Maybe that’s the secret, after all. I just have to stick up for myself. Well, here I go. Just watch me. Sticking up for myself. Showing some self-respect.
Ox and Dodger crowded by Tank’s side. Now all three of them were making wild gestures. Tank shook his head and pointed more forcefully at Sully. Dodger kept up the crisscross arm motion thing, while Ox cupped his mouth and bellowed something. He then pointed to the river on Sully’s left. It was like having his own personal cheerleading squad.
Sully found himself amazed and relieved. Can this really be happening? Can it really be this simple?
He didn’t have the nerve to retrace his steps and actually face them, but he was halfway to freedom. Tank had asked him what he was made of and he’d shown them. All he had to do was take another five or six steps to reach the other side of the river, and he’d already have proven to himself, and to them, that he had the courage to do this. It was all downhill from now.
The incredible bonus was that he no longer had to do it backward. With Tank, Ox, and Dodger cheering him on with their shouts and arm movements, and the sweet sound of triumph seeming to actually toll like a victory bell in his ears, Sully pivoted his body so he was now facing in the direction that freedom lay.
That was the moment he realized a train was heading straight toward him.
CHAPTER 36
The train horn drowned out every other sound: the insistent crossing bell, the vibration of the rails, the thudding of Sully’s heart. Midway through a hasty step backward, Sully realized such a passive effort wasn’t going to cut it.
He spun toward Tank, Ox, and Dodger, and suddenly understood what their gestures had really meant. He forced himself forward at top speed and landed hard on his knees. His misplaced eyes locked with the water beneath him as he clutched the tie in front.
The rails vibrated, the bridge shook, the train horn blasted with an increasingly panicked tone.
Sully realized he had only one option.
Before he hit the water, the steel wheels sliced over the space he’d inhabited just seconds before. The river gulped him up. Sully found himself suspended in a vacuum of sight and sound where nothing seemed to exist. Not even himself.
Sully Messed Up Page 11
