by Dyan Brown
“I have,” I say, cutting him off. “I thought I was doing something good again last night. I thought I knew better. I was selfish without knowing it, ignorant to the fact that I thought I knew better than God, and he punished me. It only took a moment. Because I told my body to hush up, someone died. I… I killed someone. My lack of action let someone take their own life. It was my job to stop them, and I failed. I failed God.
“You’re right. I can’t do this. It puts too much at risk. I can’t handle failing and losing a life. How could I handle putting others at risk, especially you or Jason? Mom and Dad? Forget it. I already lost Sahra. I just…”
Uncle Carl holds up a tissue for me. I look at it and frown before I realize my cheeks are wet.
Taking it from him, I blot my eyes and scoff. “It’s ironic. These were all the same thoughts I had on why to fight, you know? I couldn’t stand the thought of not protecting my family. Knowing that there was someone out there, that evil was out there waiting to take you all from me, and that I couldn’t do anything about it was more than I could take. I had to fight; I had to keep you safe.”
“That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself.” He holds my hand in comfort. “I know I’m not helping by pressuring you to stop, but it is the right thing to do. You understand that, right?” I nod and sniffle, rubbing my drippy nose with the crumpled tissue.
“I know that now. It’s okay. Don’t worry about me.” I look around, realizing the conversation was a tad easier than I’d thought it would be. Maybe I could go back to just being normal. Just Sam. College student, career path yet to be determined, and mega-hot boyfriend…
Well, I think I still have a boyfriend.
“Something else bothering you?” my uncle says, frowning at my expression. I hate when he analyzes me.
I take a shaky breath before admitting. “Um, boy trouble?” My face instantly heats at the thought that he may ask me ‘what kind’ or if he could help. “I’m just having a banner week.” I laugh weakly.
“Well, then.” He claps his hands to his knees before rising to his feet. “There’s only one solution to help with that kind of trouble.” Uncle Carl’s tone is serious but lighter than earlier, leaving me slightly perplexed. Once again, he disappears through the doorway leading to the kitchen, taking longer this time. I hear the fridge open and close a few times, and cabinets and dishes pinging together.
A few moments later, he emerges with two bowls of chocolate ice cream and chocolate syrup topped with whipped cream, chocolate sprinkles, and even maraschino cherries.
Best. Uncle. Ever.
I grin through my blurry tears. “Oh, wow,” I laugh. “That works!”
He hands me a bowl and takes a seat on the sofa with me. “And just for good measure…” He flips on the TV and hands me the remote. “You should also be watching girl movies. This is the correct boyfriend-trouble therapy, right?”
“Yes!” I laugh again. It feels like I have the uncle I grew up with back, only ever concerned with making me laugh through my scrapes and bumps. “Are you sure you can survive a chick-flick-athon?”
“Yeah, well, my time with you girls was always making up for not having a daughter. This is just a new experience for your uncle.” He takes two fluffy blankets from the bottom nook of the end table and tosses me one. “We’ll see if I survive.”
I chuckle again as I kick off my sneakers, cuddle down in the corner of the sofa pillows with my ice cream, and scroll the cable guide for the movie channels. We watch the last half of Bridesmaids, which was funny but had weird humor to endure around a parent figure. I kept trying not to laugh at parts I thought I ‘shouldn’t know about’. I should have just changed the channel, but How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days was on next, and I really wanted to watch that one. Then I changed it to a marathon of What Not to Wear on TLC.
Curled up into a ball, lying on my side, and warm under my blanket, I find myself nodding off to the rhythmic sounds of my uncle’s snores and the dos and don’ts of plaid. This is what I needed. Just comfort. I still have no idea what to do about Grayson.
Grayson. Deep, dark blue eyes haunt my dreams. I’m so torn between the hurt and rejection from what he did and the way he made me feel when he wanted me. My dreams take me through a stroll down memory lane—going to the movies with him, training with him, sitting together in my living room half studying, half trying to make each other laugh at every turn, and tickle fights that would turn into wonderful bouts of kissing and snuggling. I don’t want that to end.
I fight the notion that it has any possibility of ending, but it is possible. Maybe returning my things was his way of saying it was over? There weren’t any messages saying ‘sorry’ or ‘call me when you want to talk’. The flower? It could mean either one, or even goodbye. Is this a fight or a breakup? Before I can make a choice between being angry or devastated, before I can wake myself up, before I can take another breath, I’m pulled away from my body…
No! No! No! I don’t want this! Please don’t do this! How can you make me? I’m a failure! I don’t do what you ask. My actions caused the death of one of your children! How can you pull me into another drift? I scream inside my head as I float out of my body and into the daylight.
Coming into focus, the world is bright and the air has kept its crispness. I’m in a park I passed earlier when I was walking—Eagle Cliff Park. I remember playing here when I was little with Sahra. I look around at the quiet trees around me. I’m not too far from my uncle’s house. I could just walk back to my body. The thought almost makes me snicker.
“Sam!”
I whirl around at the sound of my name. “What? How are you here?” The shock that my uncle—with blond hair now—is running up to me through the trees leaves me baffled. “Am I dreaming? I drifted, right? I thought you said this didn’t happen?”
“It doesn’t.” He looks around at the park, panicked. “I don’t understand why we both would have been called, unless…” His hand rubs over his face in an irritated exhaustion. “What time was it when you looked last?”
The question throws me, and I have to shake my head to think back. “Four, I think?”
“Shit.”
“Uncle Carl!” I scowl.
“No, seriously. I can feel it. Can’t you? Something is really wrong.”
I’ve never seen this much anxiety in him, and now I’m starting to feel anxious as well. I try to concentrate, but I’m suddenly too scared. Tears instantly well in my eyes.
Seeing my concern, he rubs my shoulder, comforting me but still looking around. “There is a reason we’re both needed, and we’ll be okay, Sam.”
“What are you thinking? You must have thought something,” I say. Why else would he have asked the time?
“I can’t be sure. I don’t want to plague you with my worries if they’re not right.”
The semi-distant hum of a lawn mower starts up. I can see a lawn-care guy across the four-lane road at the apartment complex starting on the outer edge of the strip between the street and the sidewalk.
There is a welling in my stomach. I nudge my uncle and lift my chin toward the man clad in a beige uniform. “Him?”
“Yeah, probably but I don’t understand. Why would it take two of us?”
True. Shit.
I murmur an agreement, looking toward the parking lot on our left. “Should we get closer?”
“Yeah, okay, but there’s always a reason you’re placed where you are, so not too much farther.”
We’re only forty feet from the road already, so we half the distance. Cars drive by in leisurely Friday-afternoon traffic.
“How long have we been here?” I ask.
Not that I want anything to happen. I’d love nothing more than to leave and never know what’s about to take place here, but I know that won’t happen until I’ve either succeeded or failed.
“It’s only been a few minutes.”
“Car accident?” I guess.
“Has to be.” Nothing else makes sense
.
My stomach clenches, and I know that it’s close. My fears come true as a blue Civic catches my attention. Even this far away, I can see a phone in front of the driver’s face. I wait for her to swerve to the right and hit the lawn guy, but she sails past him. Then, time seems to slow as, from the corner of my eye, I catch sight of a large yellow school bus coming toward her.
A horn blares from somewhere, and the school bus swings left, then right, not knowing how to avoid her. My mouth drops open to scream but only gapes as the bus takes flight, using the Honda as a ramp. Airborne, it turns on its side, then slams into the pavement so loud my head ducks into my body to avoid the screeching sound of metal on concrete. Uncle Carl grabs my elbow to hold me back and curses under his breath.
One moment, his hand is griping my arm, and then I blink and he’s across the street. I look back beside me, and my eyes widen at the vacant spot. My gaze flings back to the other side of the road.
The remaining momentum slings the back of the bus in a full one-eighty, hitting the curb on the other side of the road as it barrels toward the landscaper. The bus is teetering on the edge of the roof. I watch, stupefied, as my uncle, moving at light speed, shoves the landscaper with such force he rolls backward, the mower left behind.
Another blink and Uncle Carl is braced, hands up, toward the bus that is coming at him. I can see the massive amount of strength he uses as he pushes the bus back toward the road, away from the slope that would take it tumbling down and into the apartment building. The heavy metal slams into the pavement again with a solid and deafening final crunch.
The only other sound is the sound of my name, as if it were being yelled through a tunnel. Who is calling me?
“Samantha! Get your ass over here now!” Uncle Carl barks at me. “It’s Jason!”
29
I break into a dead run, my heart pounding in my ears.
No, no! God please, no!
I don’t know if there’s another name that could’ve made my stomach turn inside out other than his. As my first stride hits the concrete, I catch a scent that’s all too familiar and immediately inhale deeper, sucking the odor in to be sure. I sprint across the three empty lanes toward my uncle. “Gas!”
“I know. I smell it. I’ll get the kids out; you get them away from the bus.” In a blink, he’s gone, and then inside the bus there is cranking at the back door, a push, and then a pause. I jump, yelping as a foot makes contact with the inside of the door. Once, twice, and the third kick sledgehammers the door onto the ground, breaking the window into a splintered sheet of shards that refuses to let go of one another.
Bleeding kids spill from the rectangular opening. I grab hands, helping them, one after another, out of the bus and pushing them toward the park. I bellow at them to keep moving and to run to the grass. Nearly a dozen pass me when one boy emerges with a small girl in his arms, then nothing.
No Jason.
“Jason,” I scream into the opening. “Where is he?” I shout to my uncle.
“He’s stuck! I need your help!”
I don’t need to be told twice. Rushing in, metal shards bite into the apex of my right foot. I curse at myself for my lack of shoes, but I don’t slow. I try stepping on the curved ceiling, getting my feet out of the broken metal and glass.
“Get your weight off the bus! Step through the windows!”
Stepping down into each window, wincing as glass pierces through the meshed cotton of my socks, I approach Jason’s back as he lies on his side. Uncle Carl is in front of him, smoothing the hair back from his face. I don’t understand how he could be stuck until I look over the side of his unconscious body.
Air leaves me in a rush. Jason had been gripping the bottom center frame between two windows, and now his hand is pinned under the heavy metal strip, the entire weight of the bus turning the skin a deep violet. “Oh my God…” My voice trails into a whimper.
“There’s no time for that, Sam. We have to get him out now.”
“How?” I nearly shout.
The hard, stony look on his face says everything. Not even with two of us and our combined strength could we lift the bus off his hand. We’d have to…
“No!”
“There’s no other way. We’re running out of time. Look for something to cut with!”
I can’t believe the words, even though I know he’s right. I’ve never wanted a blowtorch before, but I’d give anything for one right now.
The thought brings a pull to my stomach.
What, damn it? Not the best time to be cussing at God, but whatever. What? A blowtorch? You’ve got one around here?
There’s another pull on my stomach, and my hand heats so fiercely I pull it back from the ceiling of the bus. I think for a fraction of a second that the gas has caught fire, but when I remove my hand from the metal, the heat doesn’t lessen.
“What the…” I look down at my hand and gape at the hot-white light that burns the center of my palm, then chuckle. “A blowtorch,” I mutter under my breath. Spinning around, I make my way back toward them. “I got it!” I yell over the seats, where Uncle Carl is digging through the front the bus.
“I’m coming, let me be the one to do it. I don’t want to—”
“No,” I say quickly. “We don’t have to cut… his hand.” I can’t even verbalize ‘cut his hand off’.
“What are you talking about?” He steps back over to me. Seeing that my hands are empty, he starts to protest.
“Wait,” I plead with him. “Just let me try and save his hand. I think—no, I know I can do this.”
He sucks in air, looks down at his only child, and then nods to me, as if to tell me to hurry up.
Oh, fuck! What was I thinking? A pull from my core tells me to set aside doubt and trust in… well, everything.
I place my still-hot palm on the metal of the window frame, farthest away from Jason’s hand, and focus on the light that starts to grow there. I see it in my mind’s eye getting bigger and hotter, heating the metal to liquid. Reality matches my mind’s eye, and the steel around my hand begins to change color as it softens. Bright red fades into oranges and yellows. I feel the heat, but no pain comes with it as the now white-hot metal melts away.
I don’t dare look at my uncle yet or jerk my hand back. I’m sure I’ve reached concrete, but I don’t want my uncle or Jason looking like my shampoo bottle. I see the light getting smaller, cooling, until it has pinholed deep into my palm. After that, I imagine my hand freezing. Once the back of my hand has returned to its normal skin tone, I chance a glance at Uncle Carl.
He stares at me with his mouth hung wide open. “Super-heating hands?” he says. He grabs the edge of the frame just above the trapped limb and far from the heat of the melted metal, digging his fingers into the small gap left by Jason’s hand.
“Energy ball.” I edge Jason’s hand out through the break in the metal as gently as I can. “What’s with the flashing everywhere?”
“That’s an old trick. I’ll show you how later.”
I don’t know if he means it, but the idea makes my chest bloom. “He’s free. Let’s get him out of here.”
Uncle Carl wraps up his son and starts heading to the back.
“What about the driver?”
“Dead.”
Without any other words to say, I quicken my pace out the door, disregarding the warped metal and glass I step on along the way. We’ve been in here far too long, and my core is pushing me to hurry. I won’t doubt it again. When we emerge from the bus, clean oxygen fills my lungs. I hadn’t even realized we’d been breathing in smoke inside the bus.
Several steps into the grass, I finally look back and see the fuel has caught the bus on fire. It’s now blazing, with thick black smoke that wafts toward the apartments behind the bus. Uncle Carl sets Jason down on the grass by his classmates. Pushing the hair off his son’s forehead, he checks for a fever while another two fingers are pressed to the inside of Jason’s good wrist.
I survey t
he crash site. Uncle Carl has Jason, so it’s all me now. The flattened Civic is off to the left of the fire. The moment my eyes touch on the mangled mess, my stomach pulls again. The woman! I break into another run, wordlessly.
Uncle Carl appears in front of me as I make it to the driver’s side of the car. While we survey the twisted metal, I can’t help myself. “Why are you still helping?”
He pulls at the door, and it cracks but doesn’t open. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly, looking over the car instead of at me.
“I wasn’t trying to stop you from saving people,” he continues after a moment. “That wasn’t the point. I do believe in what we do, Sam. I just can’t lose anyone else.” He glances at me. “We need to push the car away from the gas. They’ll have to cut her out.”
I glance at the woman, who’s looking dazed inside the car and moaning pain. I can’t believe she’s still alive. “Move the car?” I say, perplexed.
“Yeah, come on and help me.”
He leads to the rear of the car and leans his tailbone against the trunk. I follow suit and use the force of my legs to dig into the ground, my feet screaming in protest. The car must still be in drive because it shifts and rolls under our combined pressure.
“Then why prevent me from all this?” I huff out through ragged breaths.
“I told you. Jason.” He nods toward the pile of terrified teens surrounding his son. Half are on their cells, calling parents or, hopefully, 911; the rest are filming the scene. “Obviously, that didn’t keep him safe. But I’m also failing to keep you safe, and I’m sorry. You really need some training.”
I almost protest, but he continues. “You’ve honestly been running everywhere? Doing all this manually, for lack of a better term?”
I look at him and nod as we continue pushing and sirens wail in the background.
“Well, there are also, apparently, some things you can teach me and things we can learn together.”
There is a drop in my stomach, and we both stop pushing the car, simultaneously knowing it’s far enough. Sparks fly from the belly of the bus, and the ground lights up, stopping ten feet from where we let the car rest.