Kent spit on my hoodie. “He’s done.” I picked my head up. Kent had leveled a finger at my face. “You stay away from Missy. In fact, you just stay away from everyone. Nobody wants to see your face.”
He laughed and backed up towards the side railing of the bridge. A couple of his friends looked back at me as he pulled out a cigarette and lit it.
“Hey,” one asked, “we done or what?”
Kent took a drag and stared down at me, his upper lip lit up in the orange glow of the tip. “Yeah, we’re done.” He wound up to deliver one more kick.
That was one too many for me. I caught his leg and leapt up, shoving him gently back. “Go home, Kent.”
Kent staggered, thrown off guard. His arms pinwheeled above his head as he tried to regain his balance. And then his back hit the railing and he was toppling over, the lit tip of the cigarette disappearing over the edge into the roaring river below.
Chapter Two
Put to the Test
Are you kidding me? I barely shoved him.
Out of all the clumsy, idiotic morons to go tumbling into the river, it had to be him.
“Kent!” One of his friends yelled. They hurried to the edge and peered over the railing. “Man, somebody get ‘em! Somebody save him!”
Yeah, somebody could help him, like maybe his friends. But none of them looked willing to do it. So it came down to me. I swore to myself and vaulted over the edge.
The fall was a lot farther than it looked. I had a second to take a breath before I hit the roiling water, and it felt as if it had just thawed right before I jumped in. My lungs froze. I tried to grab a rock, but my fingers were already numb and the rock just out of reach. My backpack had soaked with water and was dragging me down. I could vaguely hear kids shouting above my head and see Kent’s flailing arms just cresting the water. He was getting away from me.
Abandoning all pretense of subtlety, I let loose with all my strength. No amount of hiding it would do any good if Kent or I were dead. I sliced through the water towards him, using the rocks I could push off beneath me to propel forward to him. My muscles rejoiced in being used to their full capacity.
“Help! HEL—” He plunged under again.
What a whiny baby. I lunged forward and snagged the back of his jacket. With my other hand, I latched on to a wayward tree branch that had dipped too close to the surface, but it wouldn’t hold us for long. And the icy water would make my muscles seize up before that.
I judged the distance to an open spot on shore. It was a good twenty yards away, and the longer I waited, the more the tree branch stretched, about to break. My feet slipped and slid beneath me as I tried for footing.
Screw it. I had no other choice. Here went nothing.
I twisted in the water, managed to lodge my foot between two rocks and with a massive heave, wrenched a semi-conscious, soaking wet, dead weight Kent out of the water and hurled him on to shore, where he landed with an ungraceful splat.
Olympic potential right there, ladies and gents.
I hung on for just a second or two longer. Long enough for the water to soak into my arms, long enough to see Kent sputter and spit up water, long enough to hear the calls of his friends as they threaded through the trees on the side of the river.
Then I let go and let the stream carry me away.
* * *
Somewhere along the way, my powers kicked in again.
I had a knack for a regenerative healing of sorts. Nothing like restoring limbs or anything extreme, but my muscles almost never grew tired under normal conditions, and any smaller injuries I did get, like cuts, or even broken bones, healed remarkably fast.
One time, shortly after I gained my abilities and still had friends, I busted my skull open trying to prove that you could in fact ride head first on a skateboard while tethered to the back of said friend’s truck. No surprise, I’d started swerving side to side and my face promptly met a NO PARKING sign off Blair road. My friend had stopped the truck and nearly vomited at the amount of blood pooling from my head.
The cut was gone by the time the ambulance arrived. The EMT’s had confusedly searched through blood-matted hair for a cut that was, miraculously, not there anymore.
Another slosh of cold river water brought me back to the present. I had continued drifting down the river. My arms had started tingling.
Slowly they gained strength, warming up until I was able to fight the current and pull myself onto shore and catch a breath.
Surprisingly, I felt great. The rest of my body heated up, driving out the icicles of cold that had seeped all over me.
As I lay on the rocky bank of the river, I finally let my thoughts wander to what had just happened. Kent hadn’t seen what I’d done, I was sure of that. But had any of the kids on the bridge? Even if they had, they probably wouldn’t believe it, or I could convince them otherwise.
And then: How late was it? Mom and dad would probably be a little concerned. I usually never stayed out this late. The river had fried my phone so I couldn’t call them to let them know where I was.
I sighed, stood, and walked up the steep embankment back towards the road.
After a mile of following the path I came to a gravel road I recognized. The left led to more networks of farm back roads and equipment barns, to the right, Maize.
I was nearly outside town when I heard a truck approaching behind me. I got scared for a sec. It could be Kent and his friends. Not that I was scared of getting hurt, they couldn’t hurt me if they tried, but I wasn’t quite ready to face them, or what had happened, yet.
The truck headlights washed over me. It slowed. I prepared to make a break for the far tree line if necessary.
“Hey, kiddo.” A familiar voice called.
I whirled around.
“Dad? What are you doing out here?”
He pushed open the passenger side door and I clambered inside. “I could ask you the same—Drake! You’re soaked! And it’s practically freezing outside!”
“I kind of slipped into the river.”
My dad’s concerned face tightened as I buckled my seat belt and he turned up the heater to full blast. “Geez, Drake. You could have called me.”
I waggled my waterlogged phone at him. “Not possible.” He stared at me for a long time. Then he threw the truck in gear and we rumbled the rest of the way into Maize.
“How’d you know where I was?” I asked. My dad chuckled, but there wasn’t any humor in it. The lines in his face were still tight.
“Out doing the same thing you were, probably; clearing my head. Without taking a polar plunge. I like to come out here and get some space. Then I came upon this idiot kid just walking on the side of the road.” He looked over at me. “Really, Drake? You slipped into the river? That’s the best excuse you could come up with?”
I just shrugged.
“So you were just out walking, maybe thinking a little too hard, and then slipped and tumbled what, fifty feet? into the water?”
I shrugged again.
“Is there anything else you want to tell me?”
“No, Dad. That’s what happened.”
We were close enough to read the water tower in Maize (Go Bulldogs!). My dad rubbed his eyes and ran a hand down his tired face. Then he stared straight ahead as we rolled past the only shopping district and through the other side towards our house.
“You know,” he said, breaking the silence, “when you go to college, wherever you decide to go, your mom and I won’t be there with you.”
Great. Back to the college thing. I started to open my mouth, but my dad went on,
“And there might be things that don’t have a clear answer. You may be in a situation where you can’t tell right from wrong. But I want you to know that your mom and I are proud of you, whatever decision you make. You’re an amazing young man, and I know these last few years haven’t been the easiest for you,”
My eyes snapped towards him. Was he saying what I think he was saying?
�
��But college will change all that. You can be who you really are, who you want to be. But one thing you must always do,” he shook his finger out in front of him as his headlights came across Briarsridge Lane. “A man stands his ground for what he believes. That is all he can do, physically or not, he can stand his ground. And I know you can do that, Drake, I know you can. And if you do that, well,” he threw the truck into park and killed the engine, letting the country silence settle over us. “Well, you can be whoever you want.”
I couldn’t say anything. My throat had tightened up. Whether it was from what he was saying or how much water I’d swallowed during my brisk swim I didn’t know. My dad pulled the keys out and laughed softly.
“You know, I heard the weirdest story from the Brooks brothers this morning. Something about them just walking in the woods, minding their own business, when a savage deer attacked them…”
In the reflection of the window, I grinned.
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About the Author:
Sean Fletcher was born in the broiling, arid state some people lovingly refer to as Texas. He is the author of the I Am Phantom series, as well as the upcoming sci-fi adventure trilogy In the Depths of Darkness. He has taught writing classes at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference, writing groups, libraries, and writing workshops. When not making things up and putting them on paper, he can be found hiking, biking, or traveling. You can visit him on his website: https://seanfletcherauthor.com, or on his Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/seannfletcher.
I Am Phantom (Novella): Subject Number One Page 6