“Can I have a drink,” Justin asked. “I’m so thirsty.”
“Not until we get that arm fixed,” the nurse said kindly. “If you want, I can give you a little ice to suck on.”
As an orderly pushed Justin’s stretcher to surgery, he watched the recessed lights in the ceiling roll by and wondered what it would feel like to be anaesthetized. His life had taken a strange twist in the last few days. He had imagined this trip as a chance to show off his outdoor skills. But it was Lee who proved to Justin that he knew how to survive in a crisis.
A group of people in hospital scrubs, their faces covered with surgical masks, surrounded Justin in the operating room. Bright lights glared from the ceiling.
“I’m giving you something that will make you sleepy,” the doctor said, bending over the IV in Justin’s wrist.
It seemed like only a few moments later when he felt someone’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently.
“Justin, are you awake? You’re all finished,” a nurse said. “In a few minutes we’re going to take you up to a room.”
Justin opened his eyes. Everything was kind of fuzzy, and all he wanted to do was sleep. His arm didn’t hurt so much anymore, but it seemed to be held down by a heavy weight. Raising his head to look, he saw a clean, white cast engulfing his arm from his hand to above his elbow.
Charlotte appeared sometime later and stood next to his bed.
“You sure do look better,” she said. “Does your arm hurt a lot?”
“Not as much as it did,” he said, “but I’m sooo sleepy.” His mouth felt like it was filled with cotton, and his tongue was thick.
“I’m sleepy, too. I just wanted to say good-bye. My mom is taking me home. The rest of the kids left this afternoon on the buses. It’s still raining, so the ones on the bus with the broken window are going to get wet. But at least the school sent another bus down to replace the one that caught fire.”
“What about Lee?” Justin asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him. I guess we’ll see him Monday at school. That is, if your doctor lets you come back.”
Justin nodded.
“Gotta go,” Charlotte said. “Mom and your parents are waiting outside.”
Justin felt a flicker of disappointment. There was so much he wanted to say to Charlotte. He wanted to tell her how brave he thought she was, and how loyal. Finally he settled for saying, “Thanks, Charlotte.”
“No big deal,” she said on her way out the door.
* * * *
Justin didn’t go back to school the week after the YO Ranch trip. His doctor informed him that besides a compound fracture of the right arm, he had some broken ribs and a mild concussion. A monstrous purple and blue bruise formed on one side of his chest.
“You must have landed on rocks,” the doctor explained when he was filling out Justin’s dismissal forms the next day. “I taped your ribs for now, but you may find it’s more comfortable to wear a brace that you can take off at night. You’re lucky a rock didn’t cause even more damage to your head. It’s only got a few bruises and a small cut.”
“I know,” Justin said, remembering the feeling of flying off the edge of the bluff and falling toward the river with the horse flailing beside him. For a moment, the sight of the buckskin mare’s lifeless body lying in the water swam before his eyes again and tears threatened.
Stretched out in the back seat of the car on the way home, Justin was barely aware of the sound of his parents’ voices from the front seat. The doctor had given him pain medicine which dulled everything, pain and awareness.
* * * *
At home, sleep engulfed him for several days. He awoke when his mother brought food or drinks, but sitting up for long periods was a painful experience. Coughing or sneezing sent daggers of agony shooting through his chest. His parents didn’t mention going back to school, and Justin didn’t feel like bringing it up.
He opened his eyes one afternoon to find Charlotte standing by his bed, a pile of books in her arms.
“I brought some of your work,” she said, “but Mrs. Farr said not to worry about it until you feel up to it.”
“Thanks,” Justin said.
“So how are you doing? I heard you had some broken ribs and a concussion besides the broken arm.”
“I’m fine,” Justin said, knowing she would know it was a lie. “How about you?”
“I landed in the water, so I didn’t have that many injuries. Just a few ugly bruises.” She lifted the sleeve of her T-shirt to expose a large, puffy bruise on her upper arm. “I just swallowed a lot of water and couldn’t stop choking and puking when Lee pulled me out of the river.”
“Yeah, I know. I heard you,” Justin said.
“Gross, wasn’t it?”
“It didn’t sound any worse than the noises I was making.”
Embarrassment made them both look away.
“How’s Lee?” Justin asked.
“I’m not sure. I guess he’s all right. He came back to school, but he’s quieter than ever. Still seems angry, too. I think everyone thinks Lee was the one who released the brake on the bus. I guess I should have said something about seeing Casey get off the bus just before it started to roll. I just didn’t want to be in the middle of a big turmoil. But now it seems unfair to Lee that I let everyone go on thinking he was responsible when I knew it wasn’t him”
“Does Coach Cox think he did it?”
“I have no idea. He hasn’t said any more about it. I think going over the bluffs into the river took everyone’s mind off the bus incident.”
“Did you say anything to your parents about Casey?” Justin asked.
“It’s just my mom. My dad’s been gone a long time. I talked to her about it, and she said I would have to decide for myself.”
She stopped and for a minute her eyes got a faraway look.
“If I talk to Coach Cox and Casey finds out who told him, she’ll never stop harassing me.”
Justin nodded. He could see the truth in that statement.
Justin’s mom came into the room.
“Anyone want a soda or some lemonade?” she asked.
“No thanks,” Charlotte said. “I have to go. My mom’s waiting in the car. She just brought me out here for a minute so I could bring Justin his make-up work.”
“Tell her thanks for us. And you can’t imagine how much we appreciate the way you took care of Justin,” his mom said, putting her arm around Charlotte’s shoulders and giving her a little hug. Then she picked up a few empty cups and headed for the kitchen.
“That’s okay,” Charlotte muttered, looking embarrassed. “Let me know if you need anything from school, Justin. I can bring it by some day when my mom gets off early.”
She smiled, and Justin noticed she had a slightly crooked front tooth and a kind of natural prettiness that didn’t require makeup. He wondered why he had never noticed it before.
“Where did you learn to ride?” he asked. “You’re good at it.”
“At my grandparents’. They raise quarter horses.”
“I’ll see you Monday,” Justin called as she left the room. Until that moment, he hadn’t given a thought to going back to school.
* * * *
By Friday, Justin was up wandering around the house and watching TV. Joel came out to see him, and they sat together in Justin’s room with the CD player blaring loud music.
“Tell me what happened,” Joel said. “All I know is that you took off after Charlotte and didn’t come back. Then Coach Cox told us you had been taken to the hospital in a helicopter. He wouldn’t tell us any details about what happened. I called a time or two, but your mom said you were asleep.”
Justin filled Joel in on the bare essentials of the story.
“Man, that must have been scary,” Joel said. “Didn’t you see the edge of the bluff?”
“Not until it was too late. Charlotte’s horse fell and threw her over the edge, but mine couldn’t stop and went over the edge, too. It killed
her.” Justin’s voice was husky with emotion, and he found he couldn’t go on for a moment.
“What happened with the rest of you?” Justin asked. “Did you get back to the barn without any trouble?”
“We got back half-drowned,” Joel said. “Corrie’s horse went lame, and we kept stopping to wait for her to catch up. Casey started cussing and said she hated horses and was never going near one again. Very dramatic.”
“She’s not much with horses,” Justin observed with a wry smile.
“You got that right,” Joel agreed. “Ty wanted to leave the rest of us and go back to look for you and Charlotte, but Mrs. Farr didn’t know the way back to the barn. I guess he couldn’t leave so many of us, but you could tell he was sick with worry. We didn’t even realize Lee was missing until we got back.”
“He pulled both of us out of the river,” Justin said. “I don’t know if I would have made it if he hadn’t come after us.”
“Lee pulled you out of the river?”
“Yeah.”
“Man, who’d have thought he would ever do anything to help anybody?”
“He must have followed to help Charlotte,” Justin said. “He hates me, at least I thought he did. He could have left me in the river to drown, but he didn’t.”
“That’s weird. He’s never said anything about it at school. He just sits off by himself like always.”
* * * *
The steps leading up to the school looked like a small mountain when Justin’s mom pulled into the parking lot the following Monday. She parked and got out to carry his backpack in, but Joel and J.R. came running down to meet them.
“I’ll carry that for him,” Joel offered, taking the backpack from Justin’s mom.
“Will you be all right?” his mom asked, giving Justin a worried smile.
“Sure,” Justin answered, sounding more certain than he felt. He climbed the concrete steps slowly while J.R. fired questions at him. The Velcro brace around his ribs helped, but it made him feel stiff and awkward.
The three of them made their way to the gym where students were required to wait until the bell rang to go to first period. Justin guarded his arm against the crush of students. The sling that supported his cast was already chafing the back of his neck. At the far end of the bleachers in the top row, Justin spotted Lee sitting by himself. Perched like an owl on the branch of a tree, his dark eyes scanned the crowd. Justin wanted to climb up and sit down next to him. There were a thousand things he needed to say. But he was surrounded by kids asking him questions about what had happened on the trail ride. There was no way he could get through the crowd and talk to Lee alone. Before he found his way to a seat, the bell rang and the teachers on duty in the gym started dismissing students to go to their first period classes. A hand slipped around Justin’s left arm and guided him to a corner of the gym, away from the stampede of students coming down from the bleachers.
“Wait here with me until the flood crests,” Mrs. Farr said. “Whoops, you probably don’t want to talk about floods. I’ve been wondering how you were doing. I called and talked to your dad after we got home, and he told me about your injuries.”
“I’m okay,” Justin said. “It’s just going to take me a while to catch up on my work. I haven’t been able to sit up for very long until the last day or two.”
“Take all the time you need to catch up,” Mrs. Farr said. “I broke a rib once, and I still remember how hard it was to do things. It hurt to breathe and to cough—even reaching for something above my head was painful. The good news is it will eventually get better.”
“I hope so,” Justin said.
Joel was standing at the door to the gym with Justin’s backpack.
“I’ll carry his stuff to class for him,” he told Mrs. Farr.
“Good idea,” she said. “If you get too tired, Justin, ask for a pass to the nurse’s office and lie down for a while. Or just call your mom and go home. Let me know if you need anything.” She patted his back and hurried off to class.
The school day loomed ahead like an obstacle course, and Justin’s chest already hurt. His mom had given him a handful of over-the-counter pain relievers to carry in his pocket, and he took two of them on his way to second period. Moving around helped, and he stood up until the tardy bell rang and the teacher was ready to start.
Later in the day, Justin went to P.E. and sat on the bleachers while the rest of the boys crowded into the locker room to change. He was grateful to be out of a desk for a while.
“When we get outside I want to talk to you about what happened at the YO Ranch,” Coach Cox said. “I sure am glad you’re doing all right. You had us pretty scared for a while.” He ruffled Justin’s hair and then headed for the dressing room to light a fire under the slow dressers.
The class went outside, and Justin wandered out to the baseball field. Coach Cox sent the boys out in teams to play and sat down in the bullpen with Justin.
“So tell me how all this came about,” he said. “I’ve only heard second-hand information.”
Justin told Coach Cox about Charlotte’s panicky horse and the lightning strike that started the mare running blindly through the trees.
“I knew it wasn’t far to the river, and I was afraid she’d run right over the edge. I tried to get there in time to stop her. It was so dark and pouring rain, and the horse slipped just before she got to the edge of the bluff. She went down, and Charlotte was thrown forward over the edge. My horse couldn’t stop, and we went off the edge, too. If Lee hadn’t followed us, I’d probably have drowned in that river. Charlotte, too.”
“Lee went over the bluff?”
“No, he got stopped in time. The river was already rising, and he pulled Charlotte out on the bank and then me.”
“I have a hard time picturing Lee as a hero.”
“Me, too. But I think if he hadn’t followed us, we both might have drowned. I was knocked sort of senseless. I don’t think I could have gotten out by myself.”
“After he pulled you out, he went for help?”
“No. He stayed and helped me get up to the top of the bluff. The river was rising fast and the bluffs were so steep. He found a place where we could pull ourselves up on a tree, and then he and Charlotte dragged me the rest of the way to the top. If he hadn’t moved fast, we would have been washed downriver.”
“This doesn’t compute,” Coach Cox said. “First he causes all that trouble at the ranch, and then he saves two people. I’d have a hard time believing it if he hadn’t shown up at the ranch in the middle of the night, soaking wet, and led us back to you. We were going to search the banks of the river with horses and a helicopter, and he insisted on coming along.”
“I’m not really sure he was responsible for all that trouble before,” Justin said, cautiously measuring his words. “No one saw him get on the bus and release the brake, did they?”
“No,” Coach Cox admitted. “But Casey is convinced he did it, and most of the other kids agree with her.”
Shouts of excitement from the baseball field drew Coach Cox’s attention.
“I’d better go see what the fuss is all about,” he said. “Take it easy, Justin.”
As Coach Cox headed for the playing field, Justin’s conscience fought a battle with itself. He wanted to call him back and tell him about Casey, but he didn’t want to cause trouble for Charlotte. He knew there would be trouble if Casey found out Charlotte had seen her get on the bus just before it started its unfortunate journey down the slope without a driver. It was too late now, and he needed to talk to Charlotte before he said anything else. There must be a way they could tell the truth without putting Charlotte in the way of Casey’s razor-edged tongue.
Popping two more pain relievers on the way to his next class, Justin met Casey in the hall.
“Hi,” she called cheerfully. “I heard you almost met your maker trying to save Miss Ditzy from disaster. Glad you’re okay. Thank goodness not a hair on her tiny little head was harmed.”
&
nbsp; “Get off her,” Justin said. “She’s a lot tougher than you think she is.” He sounded irritated, even to himself.
Casey looked surprised.
“Okay...okay...,” she said. “I didn’t know you had a thing for her.”
Justin stepped around her and continued down the hall. He’d heard more than enough of Casey’s petty name-calling at the YO Ranch, and he didn’t want to say something he might regret later.
Mrs. Farr’s class had started a group project researching the effects of World War II on a European country. Justin was in the group studying Poland, and as the groups moved their desks close together, Justin saw that Lee was a member of his group. Using his good arm and his knee, he shoved his desk into the circle next to Lee.
“Hi,” he said. “How’ve you been doing?”
“Good,” Lee answered, keeping his eyes on his desktop.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Does everybody have a separate part of the assignment?”
There was a pause while everyone waited for Lee to answer. Corrie was uncomfortable with the silence first.
“We each have an assigned part,” she said. “You are supposed to find information about the ghetto in Warsaw. Last week we went to the library, but we can use Internet research, too. And you’re supposed to find some pictures and get copies.”
The whole time Corrie was talking, Justin continued to look at Lee. He had gotten out some notes and was staring at them. Justin noticed there was a space in the circle between Lee’s desk and David’s, the boy sitting on the other side of Lee. It looked like David had moved as far away as possible, as if Lee had a contagious disease.
“We’re supposed to go around the circle and fill everyone in on what we’ve found so far. Who wants to start?”
Justin tried to listen as David read some facts about the Polish resistance and the invasion of Poland, but his mind was wrestling with the question of why Lee had suddenly reverted to his old antisocial behavior. After David finished, Corrie went through her notes about the history of Poland before Nazi occupation. Pictures were passed around the group as she talked. When she finished, she put her notes down.
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