But when I took the first shot, I missed.
Thunk.
I missed! But I never miss!
‘Told you.’ Rambo grinned.
Suddenly the crowd hushed.
Bernardo, I’m coming.
I licked my lips. Focus, Andi. Only one more minute and the game will be over.
I released my second free throw.
Swish.
The crowd roared. 29–30!
Rambo charged, elbowing me aside to grab the ball. I stumbled but the referee didn’t call a foul.
I skittered down the court, not even checking to see which of the Souls would retrieve the ball. There was no time. I had to be ready on the three-point line if we were to—
‘ANDI!’
I looked round in time to see Rocky throw himself between Rambo and the ball, knocking it down the court towards me.
Stay cool. Stay cool.
The Colts galloped after it. They were steaming, desperate.
The ball bounced twice and then rolled slowly in my direction.
‘SHOOT! SHOOT! SHOOT!’
The crowd was beside itself.
Stay cool.
I picked up the ball and released it in one swooping movement.
Bingo.
Three points!
Souls: 32, Colts: 30.
The Souls had won their first and last game of the season.
‘Andi! Andi! You did it!’ I could hear Rocky’s voice above the pandemonium as the crowd rushed onto the court to congratulate us.
‘Andi! Andi!’ Mrs Green’s voice rose above the crowd.
‘Hey! Andi! Come back!’ Rocky yelled.
But I didn’t stop running. Out of the double doors, out of the school gates.
I kept on running until I got home.
11
Bernardo
‘Your brother is here.’
The nurse nodded towards the doorway.
Brother? I turned my head slowly and peered through the fog of pain at the small figure in the basketball uniform.
‘That my sister,’ I whispered and the nurse made a small snorting noise before she turned away.
Andi rushed to my side. ‘Bernardo!’ I closed my eyes, the light was so bright. Raindrops trickled on my face. ‘Oh, Bernardo, I ran all the way here. Mum left a note on the door.’ The raindrops were Andi’s tears, and they were falling fast.
I lifted my hand to point at the uniform and the gesture launched another shard of glass into my brain. My lips were parched. I had to force my voice through the dry sand in my throat. ‘Why?’
‘I played for the Souls. I was point guard. That was my wish on the stone, Bernardo. It came true.’ I felt Andi’s lips on my cheek. They were soft and cool and the pain seemed to dim just a little. ‘And we won.’
I tried to smile, but smiling made the knife dig deeper into the base of my skull. ‘You are so galing,’ I whispered. ‘So good.’
‘You have to leave, miss.’ The nurse put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Your brother has to go into the operating theatre now. The surgeons are waiting.’
12
Andi
And then we had to wait.
Mum and Dad had been upstairs when he came home. They found Bernardo on the kitchen floor. How long had he lain there, unconscious?
The ambulance, when it came, had to call another ambulance to help them manoeuvre Bernardo out of the living room and through the front door. There was only room for Mum in the ambulance that took Bernardo to hospital so Dad followed in the other one.
When Bernardo woke up, his head hurt, his eyes hurt, his neck hurt, he could barely move. At casualty, they did some tests, ran all the scans again. By the time I turned up, they had decided to operate.
‘How bad is it, Mum?’
It must have been bad bad. I could tell from the terror in Mum’s eyes. Having retrieved Bernardo after all these years, she thought he was about to be snatched away again. Was it the tumour? Were they going to cut him open and take it out? She was beside herself, and getting any information out of her was impossible. And I couldn’t get Dad to explain anything to me either. He was too busy wrapping himself around Mum, turning into a human firewall, trying to shield her from all the things that have to be decided and signed and approved before your child goes into surgery. Shield her from the possibility of grief. Shield her from the people too.
Mum and Dad knew practically everyone at the hospital, of course. Doctors and nurses and orderlies were constantly stopping to talk to us.
‘Oh, is this your daughter?’
‘So sorry to hear about what happened to your son.’
‘Poor you, is there anything we can do?’
Nobody would leave us alone.
So in the end we went home. It would be hours before they let Bernardo out of the operating theatre, and anyway, it was two in the morning and we needed to get some sleep. As if.
When we got home, I rushed upstairs and looked wildly around my room. The wishing stone. It was lying on Bernardo’s bed.
I picked it up and knelt with the stone clutched to my heart. Please. Please. Make Bernardo better. If ever there was a time to believe in miracles, this was it. Please heal the tumour.
Then I knelt there for a long time. Willing the wish to come true.
But of course nothing happened.
Wishes don’t come true.
Bernardo turning into a giant.
Getting my wish to play with the Souls.
It was all stupid coincidence, wasn’t it?
I dragged myself to my feet, feeling foolish.
The stone lay cold and useless in the palm of my hand. I was such an idiot.
I ran downstairs, pulled open the front door, and threw it into the rubbish bin by the front gate.
When I came back into the house, Mum and Dad were standing like statues in front of the answering machine in the living room. Its lights blinked furiously, like landing lights on a runway.
Ten messages, the digital counter said. Clearly, the lines from the Philippines had unblocked while we were at the hospital and here, at last, was news.
But they just stood there, staring.
Dad put his arm around Mum.
‘Go on, you have to find out,’ he whispered gently.
Mum cringed.
I climbed onto the sofa, hugging my knees. I waited, my heart in my throat.
Mum pressed the button and screwed her eyes shut as if something was about to hit her.
‘First message,’ the brash metallic voice said. Beep!
‘Hello, hello? Mary Ann? Can you hear me?’
It was Auntie Sofia.
Auntie Sofia told Mum that up and down Montalban, the earthquake had pounded villages to extinction. The land was reduced to rubble as far as the eye could see. Everywhere, too, death had swept away men, women and children. The Philippines wept for hundreds.
San Andres itself was flattened. It was as if a giant foot had descended from above and stamped on the village.
And yet San Andres was hailed as the great miracle of the earthquake. Because though not a single house was left standing and the dome of its idiosyncratic stadium had collapsed into itself like a boiled egg tapped too hard by a spoon, in San Andres lives had been spared.
Only one person was found to be missing.
‘Who is it? Is it someone we know?’ Mum had cried. And when Auntie answered, I knew right away that all that stuff about San Andres being a miracle had been a kindness. Auntie had been preparing Mum for some really bad news.
‘Jabby? Oh no, no, no.’ And Mum put her head down on the table and began to sob. Dad bowed his head and awkwardly patted her shoulders.
I stared into space. Bernardo loved Jabby like a brother and now he was gone. How were we going to tell him what happened? How were we—
That was when I heard it ringing. It was the theme from Star Wars. Bernardo’s ring tone.
It was behind the fridge for some reason. I had to lie on my tummy and re
ach through a curtain of cobwebs to retrieve it. How did it get there?
Twenty missed calls, Bernardo’s screen said.
I clicked through.
All of them from Jabby.
13
Bernardo
I didn’t know, of course, that Andi found the phone.
I was busy, lying on two operating tables laid end to end to accommodate my length, my shaven scalp peeled away from my head as the surgeons probed for the source of my troubles.
I didn’t know, but when I heard the story later, there was a strange familiarity to it, as if I had been there, as if I’d seen it all unfold with my own eyes.
It was the day the Arena would have opened, the day the Mountain Men would have played the Giant Killers. But of course things had not gone according to plan. The current contractor (was it the fourth or the fifth?) had insisted that half the building ought to be torn down because the foundations were substandard. He was fired and another contractor hired and then fired, and then suddenly they were all suing each other and there were newspaper articles about bribery and corruption and illegal building permits and …
It had turned into a huge mess.
That very day it was announced that the owners were finally washing their hands of the Arena. They were going to rip out its insides and turn it into a covered market. Wreckers were scheduled to come in a week.
Jabby was devastated. All his dreams of glory had amounted to nothing. His immediate reaction was to call me, and his cellphone was ringing before he remembered that I was in London and that the call was going to cost a fortune and anyway it was probably four in the morning on the other side of the world. So he hung up before I could pick up.
That was Missed Call Number One.
And then he thought there was no time like now and he had better make the most of the Arena’s basketball court while it was still there.
And he thought of inviting one of the other boys, revealing his secret entrance, having a play … but no. There was still time before the wreckers came to dismantle the courts. He could show it off later. For now, he just wanted to enjoy having the Arena to himself. It was evening: there would be nobody there.
And that’s why Jabby was in the dome when the earthquake struck.
The first time the Earth moved, he was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he ignored it.
To be fair, earthquakes had been so frequent in San Andres that most village folk paid them no mind.
And then the bright yellow sports floor jerked up as if some great creature had shrugged its shoulders underground.
Jabby stood very, very still and realized that the ground was continuing to move. The creature was travelling the length of the court in one long motion. The stadium gave a loud groan. Snap! The glass light at the very top of the dome suddenly exploded into a thousand brilliant shards. He threw himself out of the way, cowering behind the first tier of seats as glass fell in a deadly rain.
The ground continued to move and the building groaned again. There was a series of popping noises and, looking up, he realized that the window panes were breaking, one after the other. A long crack split the ceiling and pieces of concrete were falling away in huge chunks.
Suddenly the seriousness of the situation hit home. The dome was cracking up. If he didn’t get out, he would be killed. Jabby began to run.
He made it to the entrance of the tunnel by which he’d entered, when the dome collapsed.
He remembered a lesson taught by Sister Mary John, a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, when San Andres was still the rock-and-roll capital of the world (at least according to the Book of World Records). ‘If you are caught indoors during an earthquake,’ Sister Mary John advised, ‘look for triangles.’ Put yourself in a triangle and you might survive, she said. Stand under a door frame, under a table, under a sofa – triangles would give you some protection from a collapsing building.
Sister Beaulah had dismissed the theory. ‘That was a hoax, Sister,’ she’d argued with Sister Mary John. ‘You are wrong!’ And then they’d quarrelled while the class had fidgeted.
It was too dark to see anything, much less a triangle. Jabby groped along the tunnel wall towards the exit. Only a few feet more. Something groaned, and under his fingers he felt the wall bulge. Hurry, hurry. There was a roaring, rushing noise as, behind him, the Arena crumbled. Just a few more feet.
Too late.
Suddenly there was an animal roar and the tunnel collapsed. He found himself lying under a layer of rubble in total darkness. Pieces of concrete fell away from his face.
I’m dead! he thought. I’m dead! If this was death, it stank. Foul toilet smells wafted around him. A pipe must have broken somewhere nearby. The air billowed with concrete dust. When he breathed in, his lungs filled with grit instead of air. But his head seemed to be in some kind of space. He could turn his head right and left. Perhaps he had found his little triangle.
There was a crushing weight on his legs, and his shoulders, chest and ribs hurt. His left hand had gone numb. A sharp pain scythed up his right elbow. I’m broken, he thought. My legs must be broken, my arm is definitely broken and my ribs must be broken too.
And then he realized that nobody knew where he was. The only person he’d ever shown the secret entrance to was me. He had not told anyone where he was going, of course. Nobody was going to find him.
And then a tiny square of light appeared in the total darkness somewhere to the left. There was a beep. It was his cellphone, which had somehow fallen out of his pocket into the rubble, opening the most recent text message on impact.
DREAMED U CD DUNK.
My text message.
He could see the message by craning his neck. Pain flared hot and sharp up his arm at the movement, but he smiled.
And then he thought, Bernardo, I think you’ve just saved my life!
He only had to call me back.
Tell me to tell everybody where he was.
So he gritted his teeth and forced himself to move his broken arm towards the phone. The pain slammed into him in waves, and he actually saw stars. There, I’ve done it. Probably severed my arm. But when he checked he had only moved his arm a few inches.
It was going to be harder to get rescued than he thought.
In fact, once he got his hand on the phone, his hand was so rigid, he could not possibly dial or send a text message. He could not do anything that involved any kind of dexterity. The only way I can dial is if the phone had buttons the size of platters.
Then he remembered. He could press the green send button. Pressing the green send button should call the last person he had dialled. That last person being Bernardo.
He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, flexing his shoulder muscles (probably torn) to raise his hand and drop it haphazardly on the phone. Nothing happened. He craned his neck.
Call Bernardo?+63091703333, the phone wanted to know.
‘Yes!’ he yelled. And then, since yelling didn’t seem to have any effect on it, he dropped his hand on the phone again.
It dialled.
The ringing was thin and distant in the little space. ‘Hello? Hello?’ he shouted.
But the phone was not finished. ‘Pick up, Bernardo.’
There was a click. ‘Hello? Hello?’
He craned his neck.
Call ended.
In a temper, he tried to grab the phone; he wanted to shake it until it begged for mercy, shake it and break it and stamp on it. But his arm would not do it, and the sudden movement launched a wave of pain so intense that he screamed.
He closed his eyes.
Try again.
And again.
And again.
As long as it took to get through.
Or as long as he could still move his arm.
Or as long as his battery held out.
14
Andi
‘Try again,’ I begged Mum.
‘The Arena people said the dome was empty at the time of the
earthquake. They said it was locked up. They were going to gut it and turn it into a market, you know. The wreckers are coming tomorrow,’ Mum said. ‘How could you be sure Jabby was at the dome? For all you know he was visiting one of his other friends.’
I looked at Mum. She was right. I didn’t even know Jabby. All I knew was that Bernardo had told me he liked to play in the dome, unbeknownst to the contractors, unbeknownst to anybody. It was the logical place to look for him. But we couldn’t organize a rescue operation on the basis of twenty missed calls. Jabby could be anywhere.
‘Could you try the Red Cross again?’
Mum sighed. ‘Look, Andi, they’ve got enough on their plates at the moment. Even if I got through, the Red Cross are already stretched to breaking point. They weren’t interested. I really don’t want to call them again.’
‘What about the army?’
‘Andi!’ Mum shook her head. ‘There are hundreds of people who need help. The army wouldn’t have the time.’
Poor Jabby.
Bernardo’s phone was totally silent. No more missed calls. Time was ticking away.
That a miracle had happened in San Andres had not escaped the news. The TV was full of heart-warming stories about the only village to survive the earthquake, every report ending with a photo of Jabby in his Mountain Men kit. ‘Sadly the miracle is marred by one casualty. Young Henry Montano is missing and presumed dead.’
It was not just that Jabbar was Bernardo’s best friend. Bernardo felt responsible for San Andres. In a weird way, he himself had believed he could keep the village safe. I am the blame. If Jabbar was found safe and sound, surely then Bernardo would be free? He wouldn’t have to spend his life worrying that he was responsible for an entire village’s well-being. Because the village would have survived without him.
We had to keep trying. For Bernardo’s sake.
‘Mum,’ I said. ‘Call Auntie.’
15
Bernardo
It’s dead, Jabby thought. And I am dead too. Goodbye, cruel world.
The mobile phone battery had lasted a long time. Long enough for Jabby to make twenty excruciating attempts to call me. But always the phone disconnected itself.
Tall Story Page 15