Courage

by Barbara Binns

  A second later he says, “Sorry, T. I keep forgetting.”

  “They robbed me too,” Sammy says. His eyes gleam. He sounds less hyper than before. I’m glad he found a way to relax and wonder if Lamont said anything to him.

  “Yeah, you too,” Lamont agrees, but keeps his eyes on me.

  Harmony joins us, looking both delighted and surprised. “You actually came.”

  “You called. Of course I came.” Lamont’s big grin widens when he sees her. I guess I wasn’t the only reason he came. Maybe not even the real reason.

  “Some friends are going out to celebrate after the meet,” Harmony says. “Want to come along?”

  “I can’t. Mom’s taking me out for lunch,” I say.

  She frowns, and I realize she hadn’t meant me.

  “I suppose you’d rather spend time with your mother too,” she says to Lamont.

  “I’d rather not spend time with your uncle.”

  “That makes two of us.” She places a hand on my brother’s arm. “That’s why he’s not invited.”

  An air horn sounds. The eight-hundred-meter race ends with Bishop taking first place by several seconds. Harmony leaves, saying she has to get back to the other swimmers. Sammy shrugs, then heads for the diving well.

  “You should go with her,” I say to Lamont. “I know you want to. She’s the reason you came.”

  “I came to be with you,” he says, looking at me.

  “But you want to go with her.”

  He gives a scornful smile and shakes his head. “I came to see what being on this team has done for you. You’ve accomplished a lot in a few weeks.”

  “I couldn’t have done it without you,” I say. I didn’t even expect to—it just slipped out.

  “What?” A muscle in his jaw jerks.

  “You got me over my fear of water and taught me how to swim.”

  “Oh, right. I did that.” His relief when I explain what I meant seems overdone.

  “I, uh . . . I have to get back to diving,” I say. “They’ll be calling my name soon.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll be watching.”

  My next dive is a jackknife. By the time I climb the ladder, I feel loose and relaxed. I know my dive is good the moment I hit the water with my hands clasped and toes pointed. Even Coach Mung gives me an approving nod when I climb from the pool. The judges give me seven. That’s at least a C. With only one dive left, I am sure I will escape last place.

  “Great job,” Jaleel says. Of course, he’s in first place with only one dive to go, so he gets to be generous. But it still feels like high praise. I look around, searching for Lamont. I find the black-clad form standing in a corner, almost hidden by the stands. He’s too far away for me to see his expression.

  “Samuel Baker, what are you doing?” a woman yells, jerking my attention up to the stands. Sammy’s mother in her Rays jacket stands, pointing at the springboard. People around her begin to rise. An air horn sounds, beginning the next race, the women’s two-hundred-meter freestyle. One girl stays in the blocks—Harmony Mung. She stands, stares toward the diving board, her mouth open, and misses the start of her race. Sammy’s mother pushes her way through the crowd in her row. I turn to look at the diving board. The three-meter board is empty.

  Sammy has climbed up onto the ten-meter board, towering over our heads. We haven’t used that during this meet. The board vibrates and rattles under his weight as he jumps around, punching the air like he’s boxing with an invisible opponent.

  “I’m going to make a ten!” he yells.

  “Samuel, get back down here right this second!” his mother screams. She almost falls on her way out of the stands, but people catch her and hold her upright. I don’t think Sammy notices what’s going on down here. At first, I think he is just being a trickster up on that board. He looks cartoon funny, like he’s trying to dance.

  Or like a kid high on drugs. My mouth falls open as I realize this is not a performance.

  Sammy begins running down the board, arms swinging like wings preparing for lift-off.

  He might have managed some kind of dive if his foot didn’t slip in the middle of his hurdle. That’s practically suicide for almost any dive, double that when attempting a gainer. As soon as I see the misstep, I know what’s about to happen. Every diver, coach, and judge in the place knows. Sammy rises in the air, turns like a wounded pigeon, and hits the board solidly with his head on the way back down.

  He drops, stone-like, his entire body hitting the water at once.

  I jump in the diving well almost before his limp body hits. Three strokes and I grab him, put an arm around him, and struggle to hold his head above water while I sidestroke toward the edge of the pool. He’s so muscular, his body doesn’t want to stay at the surface. I feel myself being pulled down. Before that happens, a half-dozen adults are in the water, grabbing us both and guiding us to the side of the pool.

  Someone wraps a towel around me when I climb out of the water. I watch, shivering, as Mr. Hundle and Coach Mung begin CPR. The Hun does chest compressions; Mr. Mung, mouth-to-mouth. Mom pushes through the crowd to me, towing Rochelle.

  “I’m fine,” I say through chattering teeth. Rochelle hugs me. She doesn’t know what’s going on and laughs as she fingers my wet head. Nothing is funny to me. The springboard continues vibrating in the air above us.

  Harmony stands nearby, slowly shaking her head.

  Members of all three teams hang close, staring. I barely hear the coaches as they count out chest compressions and breaths. The skin on the side of Sammy’s head has been torn by his collision with the board. Blood flows sluggishly. His parents stand nearby, hugging each other and sobbing. Lamont . . . I can’t see him anywhere. The crowd is too big.

  It seems like forever before paramedics rush in. Mr. Hundle and Coach Mung step back to let them take over.

  They work on him for several minutes, checking his heart and breathing. My heart barely beats.

  “Show’s over,” Mr. Hundle says. He gestures for us to leave the area. I can’t move, can’t jerk my eyes away from the paramedics working on Sammy. I hover as close as I can, hoping to see him wake up. So many people talking, but all I hear is the sound of Sammy’s head hitting the board.

  “Any idea what drugs he was using?” one paramedic asks his parents.

  “Drugs? He’s not sick.” Sammy’s mother shakes her head.

  “I think he means illegal drugs,” her husband says, wrapping an arm around her.

  “Never. He’s never taken anything.”

  “His parents obviously know little about his life,” Harmony mutters.

  People pat my back and call me a hero. Me, the villain’s brother. If Sammy took drugs today, someone gave them to him. I was right not to trust my brother.

  “Where’s Lamont?” I ask Mom.

  She looks puzzled by my question. “He’s not here.” Shows how little my mother knows.

  The paramedics lift Sammy onto a stretcher and take him out. Sammy’s arm twitches as the paramedics wheel the stretcher to the exit. His parents clutch each other as they follow. Harmony trails behind them. A huge hole opens in my heart, and I shiver inside as I drag myself to the locker room. All three teams are heading there. The meet is over. No one wants to race or dive again.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Seven

  RUMORS SWIRL INSIDE THE LOCKER room as I struggle to change. My hands fumble with the buttons on my shirt. No one actually knows anything, but many have something to say.

  “Had to be drugs. Nothing else makes you that crazy.”

  “I heard performance enhancers.”

  “Betcha Sammy put on an act because the Park District kid was creaming him.”

  “Those guys must have slipped him something,” one Ray says. Most of my teammates nod. The Park District kids are huddled in a corner, backs turned, pretending not to hear. I understand. I always wonder what my teammates say about me when I am not around.

  The coaches are waiting outsid
e the locker rooms. “Head for the bus,” Mr. Hundle says.

  “Can we visit Sammy?” Carmela asks. She pauses at the door, blinking rapidly and rubbing her eyes.

  “We’ll let you know if—I mean, when he can handle visitors,” Coach Mung says.

  “He meant if,” Harmony whispers to me. A tear traces a path down her cheek as we walk out of the building. “His parents worry about brain damage.”

  “They told you that?” I ask, astonished.

  “I overheard them talking with the paramedics.” She closes her eyes and wipes her forehead.

  “Those who provide drugs to children don’t belong around civilized people,” Coach Mung says next to me, almost vomiting out the words.

  “My brother isn’t an animal,” I say.

  He moves to stand in front of me, breathing heavily. “Apparently we both know who I mean. Where is he now? Don’t deny he was around the building. I saw him earlier.”

  “He didn’t do anything. He just came to see me.”

  Harmony steps up. “Why blame Lamont or members of the Park District team? What about the Dolphins? Or one of the people on our own team? What about me?” Her voice grows louder and more shrill with each question. “Anyone could be responsible.”

  “But it wasn’t anyone,” Carmela says, eyes still on me.

  I shake my head, walk out, and ride the bus the rest of the way in silence.

  My mother and sister are already home when the bus drops me off. Lamont is nowhere around.

  Hours pass, and nothing about the event appears on any official news outlet. An accident involving a solitary boy is too unimportant, I guess. The networks are full of stories of shootings, stories that are repeated again and again, leaving no room for things that are important to us. Only rumors fill social media. Neither Sammy‘s parents nor our coaches post any information about what happened at the pool.

  All I find online are posts and tweets from team members and spectators continuing the rumors I first heard in the locker room. Mom always says you can’t trust rumors. But they are all I have. Lamont used to deal drugs when he was in the gang. What if he’s begun doing it again? And the thefts that have occurred around W3C and the neighborhood. Maybe he . . .

  No. I don’t want to think he had anything to do with any of this. But the headphones are still sitting in their box in the closet. He has money but still claims to have no job. That adds up to trouble. That I can’t deny.

  Rochelle wanders into the room while I sit on the bottom bunk with my head in my hands.

  “You’re in the wrong bed,” she says in a solemn imitation-Mom voice. “Where is my other brother?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” I admit. Then I calm down. She’s too young to really understand, so I gently add, “I think Lamont messed up and doesn’t want to come home.”

  Rochelle gives me a long, quiet look and tilts her head to one side. It’s another imitation-Mom attitude, used when my mother has difficult choices. Then Rochelle climbs on the mattress beside me and leans close to my ear. “I mess up too. Then I say I’m sorry, and things get all better.”

  I smile at her. She makes everything sound simple.

  I brush a braid aside and kiss her forehead. “You’re smarter than me, Shelly.” I don’t remember when I started using Lamont’s nickname for her.

  “Yeah, I’m this smart,” she says, throwing her arms wide and almost hitting my nose.

  My phone buzzes with a text from Carmela asking—practically demanding—I go.

  I text her back, saying I’m on my way. I tell my mom I’m only going to Dontae’s—otherwise she’ll worry.

  The Rhodes family lives in a small two-story bungalow with a tiny lawn and a garage opening onto the alley. Both Dontae and Linda are waiting for me there.

  “What’s so important?” I ask Carmela, feeling grumpy.

  “What happened to Sammy is all Lamont’s fault.”

  “You can’t say that. There’s no proof,” I insist.

  “I can say whatever I want.”

  “Even if it’s not true?”

  “I think it is true,” she snarls, which doesn’t answer my question. Carmela always thinks everything she believes has to be true. “He was at the meet. I saw him.”

  “Sammy was worried about his scores. That’s all I know.” It’s all I will say.

  “Someone is responsible for what happened to him. Did you see anything unusual at the swim meet?” she asks.

  Unusual like Sammy worried and shaky before he entered the locker room and all smiles when he walked out with my brother?

  “I didn’t see Sammy take anything. Lamont wouldn’t hurt him, but he was there, in the locker room, with Sammy.”

  “I see your loyalty and understand you don’t want to believe the worst. You need to accept the truth.” She points to her computer. “Sign. Or else whatever he does next is your fault.”

  Lamont doesn’t come home until after dinner.

  He appears unconcerned, pulls a can of soda from the fridge, and starts drinking. He says nothing about what happened at the pool this morning, almost like he wasn’t there, didn’t see what happened. Or maybe he wants to forget. He never asks anything about what happened at the pool. It’s like he pushed it all from his brain.

  “What did you say to Sammy in the locker room?” I ask.

  “What? Nothing. I didn’t . . .”

  His head snaps around, and he looks directly into my eyes. “You think I had something to do with what happened to that kid? That I’m a dealer? Maybe handing out drugs wholesale?”

  “I didn’t say anything about drugs.”

  “Oh, please. Everyone else has. All I did was see what happened to that kid. I recognized the signs—I’ve seen them often enough. For that, I spent the last few hours being questioned by the police.”

  “You’ve done bad things before.”

  He crushes the can in his hands and tosses it toward the garbage can. It clangs on the floor when he misses. “The world has done bad things to me.”

  Like that’s supposed to be an excuse. Does he expect me to feel sorry for him? The world has done bad things to me, too.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Eight

  THE NEXT DAY, WHEN MOM takes Rochelle for a walk after church and I sit at the kitchen table trying to make my mind concentrate on homework, a sudden buzzing noise jerks me from my funk. It’s the intercom, someone is downstairs outside the security door, asking to be buzzed through the lock. I look at Lamont. We aren’t expecting any visitors. He gives an anxious shrug.

  “Maybe Mom lost her key,” I mutter as I push aside the math work sheets and head down the hall.

  “Who is it?” I call into the security phone on the wall.

  “Arthur Cho,” is the surprising answer.

  “What does he want now?” Lamont grumbles. I wonder the same thing.

  I press the buzzer to unlock the building security door. Then I open our apartment door and stand at the top of the landing to watch Mr. Cho climb up and enter our apartment. Someone in the apartment unit opposite ours opens their door and watches. I quickly close our door; I don’t want the neighbors all up in our business. Lamont stands in the middle of the front room, looking strangely unsurprised.

  “Are you searching for a reason to bust me?” he snarls as Mr. Cho walks in. “You had me in your office last week.” He crosses his arms over his chest, but I don’t think he feels as uncaring as he appears. I move closer to my brother, surprised by an urge to defend him.

  Mr. Cho walks around the room, stopping to touch the lamp on a table, then sitting on the sofa as if he owned the place. He removes his glasses and pulls a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe them. “I don’t have time to harass anyone except idiots dying to go back inside. Is that your goal?”

  “What am I supposed to be guilty of now?” Lamont snaps.

  Mr. Cho resettles the glasses on his face and opens his briefcase. He pulls out a plastic cup and holds it out to Lamont.
“You know what to do with this.”

  “Again?” Lamont shakes his head. “I gave you one last week.”

  “And you’ll give me another one now. And any time I ask.” Mr. Cho seems to be enjoying this.

  Lamont snatches the cup and starts for the bathroom. He pauses at the door to ask, “Sure you don’t want to come and watch, make sure I do things right?”

  “Maybe next time.” Mr. Cho chuckles.

  Lamont snorts before slamming the door.

  Mr. Cho turns to me. “I don’t need another drug drop from your brother. I really came here to talk to you. I want to see how you are doing in person. I’ve dealt with a lot of men and women just like your brother, seen a lot return to their old ways. I’m not allowed to consider his presence at the swimming event a coincidence.” He flushes and wipes his forehead. “You need to think long and hard. This petition . . . what do you expect it to accomplish?”

  “You know about it?”

  “I use the internet too. I have alerts set on all my charges.”

  What if Mom set some kind of alert on her kids? She’s not an online expert, but I bet she knows how to do that much. Sooner or later she’ll find the petition page and see my name.

  “Once you get the petition, how quickly would he be gone?”

  “I could have him back in prison by this evening,” Mr. Cho says. “Is that what you want?”

  “No! We thought—I mean, I thought you said you had choices. That’s what discretion means, right? Just send him somewhere that’s not here but not back in a cell.”

  Lamont returns and tosses the plastic container at him. Luckily the cap is on tight.

  “Ooops,” Lamont says, grinning as Mr. Cho juggles the cup. My brother doesn’t seem to get how close he is to being in major trouble.

  The parole office struggles to keep the jar from landing in his lap. His bulging eyes are priceless. Even I have to laugh.

  “That was a stupid thing to do,” I say after Mr. Cho leaves.

  Lamont flops down on the sofa and lets out a long, defeated sigh. “Maybe, but it felt good.”

  “When I do things just because they feel good, it usually lands me in trouble.”