I turned to go home, when I noticed a small door to the right, set back into the brickwork and fastened with a padlock and a crisscross of narrow slats of wood. Some of these were broken lower down, leaving a gap large enough for a person to crawl through, if they were stupid enough to want to. And then I noticed that the padlock was not locking anything together. It was hanging from a hook, but behind it the door was slightly ajar. I put my hand through the slats and pushed the door gently. It squeaked on its hinges and the bottom dragged on the ground, but it gave way a little. I listened for any sounds from inside. Nothing.
DANGER! the signs warned me. I was sure there was nobody there, but curiosity made me hesitate to go away. DANGER! DANGER!
Then I heard something move. My first instinct was to run. My second was that it might only be a rat. My third was that if Wills was in there with his horrible friends, I wanted to know what they were doing. I’d had enough of all the secrecy. I’d had enough of his friends interfering in my life. I’d had enough of his friends all together. What could they do to me if I did barge in on them, except call me more rude names? At least if Wills knew I knew whatever it was he was up to, he might think twice about continuing with it, especially if I said I was definitely going to tell Mom and Dad.
I squatted down and pushed gently again at the door, cursing because it squealed at every nudge and gave away the fact that I was there. I steeled myself to come face to face with a welcome party as I crawled on my hands and knees through the gap. I stood up to find that on the other side of the door a narrow concrete staircase rose steeply to an upper floor. I waited at the bottom for a few seconds and listened, trying to blot out the whooshing of blood in my head. There was no sound. I crept up the first three steps, but hesitated again. My nerve was deserting me. Why was I putting myself through this? I didn’t have to. Why didn’t I just make up my mind that there was nobody there and go home?
Something flashed past my face, and I screamed. A pigeon landed behind me and fled through the door. I became aware of several more pigeons scrabbling around above me, and saw piles of their droppings on the steps ahead.
Then I heard a different sound. It was like someone sobbing. I took a deep breath and whispered, “Who’s there?”
“Don’t hurt me,” a voice cried back.
“Wills?” I said.
The sobs increased. I climbed to the top of the steps, ducking to avoid the sheets of cobwebs that hung from the rafters.
A huge room opened up before me. The darkness was broken only by patches of light where the roof had caved in. Sinister-looking shapes seemed to move around in the gloom, but I saw that they were only pieces of scrap metal that had been left lying there. The sobs were coming from the other end of the room. I walked slowly towards them, the floorboards creaking and groaning under my feet.
“Wills?” I said.
I moved forward again, until I could make out Wills’s face. He was cowering in a corner, shaking uncontrollably.
“What are you doing, Wills? What’s happened?”
Wills howled now, his whole body heaving. It was frightening. I didn’t know what to do to make him stop. If only I’d had my cell phone with me I could have called Mom or Dad.
“Where’s your cell phone, Wills?” I asked. “Let me call Mom.”
He shook his head miserably. I didn’t understand what that was supposed to mean. And then I remembered that he had thrown it into his gym bag.
“Come on, Wills,” I said. “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”
At last, he whimpered, “It is that bad. It’s worse than bad.”
“What is? Tell me, Wills.”
“I’m going to go to jail.”
The words leapt around inside my head as I tried to make sense of them.
“What are you talking about?” I spluttered.
“When they find out I was there, they’ll send me to jail.”
“Don’t be silly, Wills. Nobody’s going to send you to jail,” I said.
Why did everything have to be such a drama? I thought.
“They didn’t tell me they were going to do the library. I didn’t want to do it, Chris, but they made me go with them.”
He started to sob again. Suddenly I felt as if my insides were being squeezed tight by an iron fist.
“I hate them,” howled Wills. He shrank back further into the corner. “They might come and get me. I ran away. They said they’d come and get me if I ran away.”
“Your friends?” I whispered.
“They’re not my friends,” he wailed. “I hate them. They threatened that woman with a knife.”
This was no play. This was for real. Even Wills couldn’t make this up. I wanted to laugh and cry and be sick all at the same time. I was losing control. This was my brother talking about my friend. A knife, he said. THE KNIFE. I wanted to run away, to get out of that place, and be at home sitting on the couch with Mom. I wished this was just a bad dream so that I could wake up in the morning and everything would be like it was every day, with Mom clattering away downstairs and hippo snorts coming from Wills’s bedroom.
“They said we were just going to frighten her because she’s a stuck up cow and deserves it. I didn’t know they were going to use a knife. I didn’t know they were going to trash the place.”
I was angry then. I could feel it boiling up inside me like a volcano.
“She isn’t a stuck up cow,” I raged at him. “She’s my friend. What have you done?”
I started to pummel him with my fists.
“Why do you have to ruin everything, EVERYTHING?” I yelled.
I wanted to hurt him so badly. He tried to protect himself with his arms, while he begged me to stop.
Then the hurricane broke through. He yelled at the top of his voice, “LEAVE ME ALONE. IT WASN’T MY FAULT!”
At the same time, he pushed me with all his might, hurling me backward like one of those crash test dummies. I went straight through the rotten floorboards. For a moment there was silence.
Shocked silence.
Then the pain hit me like a blow from a hammer, and Wills’s voice cried hysterically from above, “Chris, are you all right, Chris, oh God, please let him be all right, please don’t let him be dead!”
I lifted my head to speak, but the only sound I could make was a loud moan from deep in my throat. I saw that my right leg was twisted sideways. I knew right away it was broken. I’d seen soccer players with broken legs on the television. I tried to be brave like they were, because the funny thing is that if soccer players are really, really hurt they don’t make a fuss. It’s only when they’re being prima donnas or want to get another player into trouble or want to make the referee point to the penalty spot, that they roll around as if they’re about to die. I didn’t think I was about to die, even if the pain was worse than any pain I had ever felt in my life. But I was scared, and I wanted Mom.
“Chris?”
Wills’s voice was panic-stricken. I heard a low wail and thought it was him, until I realized it had come from my own lips. There was a scuffling sound up above.
“Wills,” I cried, summoning all my strength, “keep away from the hole, Wills! Don’t come near the hole.”
“I thought you were dead,” he howled. “I didn’t mean it, Chris. I didn’t mean any of it.”
“I think I’ve broken my leg, Wills. You need to get help.”
“I can’t go outside,” he said. “They might get me.”
He was terrified, I could hear it in his voice.
“There’s nobody there, Wills.”
“I want to stay here with you. Please don’t make me go.”
I heard him moving around again. I was scared that he might fall through the floor and hurt himself, even more badly than I’d been hurt. But I was relieved that he didn’t want to go, because I didn’t want to be left on my own however much I wanted Mom.
“It hurts, Wills,” I groaned. “Keep talking to me. Tell me things so I don’t have to think
about the pain.”
There was a silence before he said, “I don’t want to talk about what happened, all right? I don’t want to remember it.”
I didn’t either.
“We lost the basketball game,” I said. “I was horrible.”
There was silence again, and I thought Wills might not want to talk about basketball because he would know it was his fault we lost.
“You’re not horrible,” he said then, quietly, and I think he really meant it. “You just need to grow a bit. I’m lucky cuz I’m big.”
“Sometimes you’re unlucky being big, because people think you’re older than you are and expect you to behave older.”
“Dad’s like that,” said Wills. “He thinks I should act older.”
“And Mom sometimes babies you,” I said.
“I suppose Clingon is furious with me,” Wills sighed.
“I don’t think you’re his favorite.”
“I’d like to be a basketball player when I’m grown up.”
“I’d like to be a writer,” I said, and I immediately wished I hadn’t.
“So you can write about me, I suppose,” Wills threw down.
“Been there, done that, got the torn pages,” I threw back. “You’re not the only subject in the world.”
“I’m the only one worth writing about,” said Wills. I could hear the chuckle in his voice and was glad.
We both fell silent for a time. Thoughts of Penny kept breaking through, even though I was trying to keep them buried. I was beginning to feel dizzy with pain and fear and hunger. As if he could read my mind, Wills suddenly said, “I could chow down a pizza.”
“They don’t deliver here,” I groaned.
Wills chuckled again. “You’re quite funny sometimes,” he said.
“Thanks for the vote,” I muttered.
“Does it hurt much?” Wills sounded anxious again.
“It hurts like crazy,” I said, “but I’ll live, no thanks to you.”
And then, in a flash, it hit me. Penny didn’t work on Saturdays. Someone else did. If anyone had been hurt, it wasn’t Penny.
I felt so relieved, and then I felt guilty about feeling relieved, because it meant that the girl who worked on Saturdays was the girl who had been threatened.
I had to be sure. “Wills?” I called.
“Yes, bro,” said Wills.
“What did she look like, the girl in the library?”
“Don’t want to talk about it,” he snapped.
“Did she have dark hair?” I persisted.
“No. I don’t know. I don’t think so. Leave it alone, will you?”
We went quiet again. I could hear Wills shifting around. I didn’t know which would be worse: his thoughts, with the knowing what had happened; or my thoughts, with not knowing what had happened, and trying not to fear the worst. It was pitch-black now, and I was beginning to shiver. I closed my eyes, but I was scared I wouldn’t wake up again, and I wanted to see Mom. I wanted to see Mom more than anything else in the world. She would make everything all right again. That’s what moms do, isn’t it?
“Chris?” Wills called. “When are they going to find us?”
“I don’t know,” I sighed. I didn’t want to think about it. Someone would come eventually, but the thought of being there all night terrified me.
“Mom and Dad will be worried. I expect they’ll call the police.”
“No!” cried Wills. “I don’t want the police! They’ll send me to jail! Don’t let the police take me, Chris. Tell them it wasn’t me.”
He was becoming so agitated that the floor was beginning to creak.
“Keep still, Wills. Stay in the corner!” I yelled.
“Promise you won’t let them take me away,” he wailed.
“I won’t let them take you away, Wills,” I promised. “You’re my brother.”
“Together we stand?” he shouted.
“Divided we fall.” I grimaced.
I had fallen, badly, and we were divided not just by a rotten floor, but by what Wills had been through that day, which I couldn’t even begin to understand, and which threatened all of us. Just like Dad leaving had threatened all of us. Still threatened all of us. We weren’t the same any more. Could we somewhere, somehow, discover a different sort of togetherness when all of this was over?
Chapter Nineteen
I must have drifted off to sleep, because the next thing I knew was that someone was rattling the door and I had the crazy idea that I was supposed to shout, “Come in!” The pain from my leg hit me like a bolt of lightning, and my chest felt as if someone had jumped on it.
“Wills?” I called.
There was no reply.
I heard a scuffling sound, and a dog barked.
“Wills?” I called again. There was still no answer and I guessed he must be asleep.
I heard voices and the noise of wood snapping. The door scraped on the ground. The dog barked again. Heavy boots thudded on the steps. The pigeons flapped.
“Christopher?” a man called. I saw a light dart around the room above and hover over the hole. The dog barked excitedly.
“I’m down here,” I called.
“It’s all right, son, it’s the police,” the man said. “Stay where you are, just stay there.”
I’m not going anywhere, I thought to myself.
A woman’s voice continued, “There’s nothing to be frightened of. We just want to get you back home. Are you on your own?”
“Wills is in the corner up there,” I called. “You have to be kind to him, it wasn’t his fault.”
“Wills is safe and sound outside with your parents,” the woman said. “He told us you were here.”
What did she mean? How could Wills have told them? He didn’t have his cell phone with him.
Someone began to shuffle slowly across the floorboards. They creaked loudly, sending down showers of dust.
“It’s too dangerous,” the man’s voice said. “Christopher? Are you all right?”
I tried to answer, but it was like my voice had been banged out of me. A loud groan was as much as I could produce.
“We’ll have to break in downstairs, son. Just hold on tight, all right?”
I nodded in the dark and let my head flop back on the ground. I felt so relieved. It was over. Someone else was taking charge. I could hear the police talking up above, making arrangements to get me out. I would see Mom and Dad again soon. I bet Wills was glad that it wasn’t his horrible friends who had found him, even if he was scared stiff that the police would lock him away. And then I realized that it wasn’t all over for Wills. It had only just begun. When they broke through to where I was lying, I wanted to be awake enough to tell them that it wasn’t his fault.
The rest was a blur. There was a lot of banging and sirens and more voices and walkie-talkies and waves of dust and cobwebs and great gasps of air, when the doors gave way, and paramedics lifting me and Mom hugging me and Dad saying all right son and Wills leaning over me, saying, “I did it, Chris, I went and got help,” and the bright light in the ambulance and the IV in my arm and Mom holding my hand, while Dad listened to Wills talking and realized that it wasn’t all over.
Chapter Twenty
I lay on the hard hospital bed, my right leg in a cast to halfway up my thigh, my chest strapped because I’d broken three ribs, and stitches underneath a wad of bandage on my other leg where I’d gashed it.
“You won’t be playing soccer for a while, then,” observed Jack.
“I could beat you one-legged, no problem,” I said.
“In your dreams,” he retorted. “I got picked for captain even though my best friend didn’t help me practice.”
“Shows you didn’t need me, then,” I shrugged.
“It’s only your cookies I’m after,” he laughed, and grabbed one from a packet on my bedside table. “Still no chocolate ones, I see. Speaking of which, has that Penny been in to see you?”
I nodded. “She’s the one who
brought the cookies.”
“How’s her friend?” Jack asked.
“She’s going to be all right.”
“Lucky for Wills, eh?”
“It wasn’t his fault,” I said quickly, and for the hundredth time. “They told him all he had to do was keep an eye on the caretaker out back. He thought they were just going to scare her and see if she had any money. I know that’s bad enough, but he didn’t know they were going to use a knife. He didn’t know they were going to trash the place.”
“It’s been in the newspaper,” said Jack, “about thugs causing fifty thousand dollars’ worth of damage and threatening the librarian with a knife.”
“Did it mention Wills?”
Jack shook his head. “But there was another piece about brothers William and Christopher Jennings creeping around in a dangerous building, and Christopher falling through the floor.”
I groaned. Mom and Dad would have hated that. I hated that.
“Wills went to get help, even though he was terrified those thugs would get him for running away,” I said.
“So Wills is a hero now,” Jack smirked.
“Course he’s not,” I said, “but at least he tried to do something to make things right.”
“So he should, after what he did to you.”
“Wills is the one who got hurt the most,” I murmured.
“You’re the one who got hurt the most,” argued Jack.
“Only my body,” I said. “Not my head.”
I knew as I said it that it was more than that. We had all been hurt. Mom and Dad were tearing themselves and each other apart trying to work out where they had gone wrong, what they could have done better, why they hadn’t taken enough notice of the warning signs that Wills was running off the rails. They kept saying sorry to me that they hadn’t protected me more. I kept saying sorry to them that I hadn’t told them more about Wills’s horrible friends and the knife and the money under the bed, money that his horrible friends had given him for distracting onlookers while they used the knife to frighten store owners into opening their registers. Wills kept running around like a headless chicken saying sorry to everyone, but it didn’t stop him from having to spend hours down at the police station explaining exactly what he had been up to over the past few months.
Hurricane Wills Page 12