Upstander

by James Preller

  Mary felt listless, lacking in all energy. She walked absently toward the bike racks, forgetting that she had abandoned hers two weeks ago. Never a fan of the bus, she started to walk home. Out the doors, down the wheelchair ramp. In front of her, two girls chattered. Mary heard Azra talking about some dumb thing the boys were doing. A fight of some kind. Azra was telling Jamilah, a ringlet-haired girl with thick red glasses, and said, “Cody said he’s going to teach that new kid a lesson.”

  Mary squeezed Azra by the elbow and guided her out of the path of departing students. “What new kid?”

  Azra blinked her startled dark eyes, looked to Jamilah. “It’s nothing,” she replied, pulling her arm free.

  “Please, Azra,” Mary said. “I heard you. What new kid are you talking about?”

  “The nice one, Eric Hayes. He’s in our English class,” Azra answered. “Cody said he’s going to get him today.”

  “Today? When? Tell me what you heard,” Mary insisted.

  Azra nervously brushed hair from her face. “I don’t know anything, just that Cody and some guys are out to get Eric. Something about an ambush.”

  “An ambush?”

  Azra frowned. The sidewalk was thinning.

  “We have to go, my father’s waiting,” Jamilah said, looking toward the cars that idled on the curbside.

  “You don’t know where or when?”

  “Mary, that’s all I know. But I think it was supposed to happen, like, now. After school,” Azra said.

  Mary knew she’d have to scramble to find Eric. Or Griffin. Anybody who might know something. She raced through the empty halls, footsteps echoing. Near the gym, she saw a boy reaching for the handle of the locker room door. “Hey,” she called out, slightly winded, “are the guys from the football team in there?”

  The boy, a broad-shouldered, dirty-lipped eighth grader who was attempting his first mustache, gave her a funny look. “That’s right,” he answered.

  “Can you please see if Hakeem Downing is in there? I need to talk to him. I really appreciate it,” she said.

  “You his girlfriend?”

  “Please, it’s super important.”

  Hakeem came out two minutes later, dressed in black socks, white football pants, and a burgundy jersey, the number 56 stitched to his chest. He adjusted his shoulder pads. “You wanted me?”

  Mary asked if he knew about the fight. Hakeem looked up and down the halls. “What I heard is that Eric called Cody a weasel, something like that. Talking behind his back. Cody found out about it.”

  “Is that even true?”

  Hakeem shrugged. “Cody thinks so.”

  “I heard there’s going to be an ambush,” Mary probed.

  “That’s not me—I don’t have anything to do with that stuff.” Hakeem jerked a thumb, indicating the locker room. “Look, I’ve got to get ready for practice.”

  “Wait,” Mary said. “Where will it be?”

  Hakeem glowered, shaking his head. “What is it with everybody in this school? Haven’t you had enough? Now you want to go watch a fight?”

  “It’s not like that,” Mary said. “Please, Hakeem.”

  “I don’t know where for sure,” he answered. “Somewhere nearby, off school property. Check the cemetery first. I’ve heard people say they go there.”

  “Thanks,” Mary said.

  “You want my opinion? Don’t get involved,” he warned. “Whatever happens is going to happen. You’ll only make it worse.”

  Mary hadn’t gotten that far with her thinking yet, didn’t have a plan of action. She figured she’d improvise. “One last thing. Can I borrow your bike?”

  Hakeem chuckled. “You are unbelievable, you know that? My goodness. You know the one, right? Diamondback, green frame. Combo is twelve, thirty-two, seven. Black lock. It better be waiting for me when I’m done with practice, five sharp.”

  “You’re a good guy, Hakeem,” Mary called out as she took off down the hallway. She whirled and cupped her hands around her mouth, still backpedaling furiously, and bellowed, “For what it’s worth, I’m on Team Chantel!”

  Hakeem laughed and lifted his right arm, thumb up.

  Mary found the bike—after searching the wrong rack for another heart-pounding ninety seconds—and zoomed past Officer Goldsworthy on her way out. He looked at her and his eyes lingered on the new bike. “Gotta fly!” Mary called. “Don’t worry—it’s Hakeem’s!”

  For an instant, Mary considered telling him about the fight. But her feet kept pedaling, making the decision for her. No time to lose.

  34

  [boot]

  It was one of those facts that everyone in town knew, a random source of local pride: the Final Rest Pet Cemetery was the third largest of its kind in the United States. Adjacent to the middle school, it was sprawling with marble gravestones for cats and dogs. Mary guessed there were probably other types of pets buried there, too—because people absolutely loved their pets. Five minutes on YouTube could tell you that. And when those animals died, a part of their owners’ hearts died with them. A decent burial and a $5,000 tombstone was the least they could do. Even for a pet iguana.

  It felt disrespectful for Mary to zip around the gravel paths on a bicycle, but she had no choice. The grounds were empty anyway. She pedaled to a hill in the back, believing it would offer the best vantage point. Mary was right. Down below, she saw a group of seven boys: Cody, Sinjay, Will, Droop, Griff, Hallenback, and Eric. Two stood close together, Cody and Eric, engaged in a heated discussion. Cody’s hand pushed against Eric’s chest. The other five boys formed a ragged three-quarter circle around those two, spectators forming a noose. Cody drove a fist into the side of Eric’s face. Eric rocked back, staggered, but was still standing.

  Mary leaned forward, unsure of what to do next. Should she ride down? Try to stop it? Would they listen?

  Or would that only make it worse?

  Walk away, she silently urged Eric. Don’t fight back.

  And as if he’d heard her, Eric tried to do exactly that. He turned to walk away. Cody wasn’t having it. He grabbed Eric by the shoulder to spin him around. Eric swung wildly, an errant roundhouse right, and Cody danced out of range, bouncing and weaving.

  “Fight, fight!” the cries roared.

  Mary could practically see a current of adrenaline shoot through the group. The boys were instantly energized by the action. They pressed closer, shouting.

  “Do it, Cody!” Griff yelled.

  And it was too late for Mary to do anything at all.

  The fight was a mismatch, quickly finished. Two minutes, three minutes, tops. Eric defended himself to the best of his ability, but Cody was by far the more skilled fighter. In the end, Eric was on his hands and knees, spitting blood. Cody stepped back, looked at Griffin, made a final comment to Eric, and the boys all moved away. Satisfied customers every one. Except for David Hallenback, who moved closer to Eric. The freckle-faced boy pulled back his leg, swung forward, and planted his boot deep into Eric’s stomach.

  Eric crumpled to the ground, covering up his head with his hands, elbows tight together, pulling his knees into a protective ball. Hallenback kicked and kicked again, a spastic, uncoordinated rage that mostly failed to connect. It was as if a lifetime’s anger poured into that chaotic assault. Every insult, every hurt he’d ever endured over a lifetime of hurts, fueled Hallenback’s fury. Cody hurried back and pulled Hallenback away. Even from the high hill, Mary heard Cody shout, “Leave him alone, Hallenback. He’s down.”

  Helpless, Mary waited for the boys to leave. When they were out of sight, she rode down and braked beside Eric, who lay facedown on the grass. “Are you okay?” she asked, climbing off the bike. She heard worry in her voice, as if she didn’t want to know the answer. For the first time Mary realized that she was scared.

  She had feelings for this boy.

  Eric slowly rolled over to look up. One of his eyes was already half shut, swollen and discolored. He squinted through the other one, lifting hi
s head a few inches off the ground. He tried to smile, but it was unconvincing. A poor imitation. He mumbled something that Mary couldn’t understand. She leaned close, touched him on the shoulder. “What?”

  He let his head fall back on the cool earth, his one good eye staring up at the clouds. He breathed slowly and softly, open-mouthed. Felt tenderly for his ribs, grimaced. It seemed to Mary that while Eric was bloodied and bruised, he didn’t appear to be seriously damaged. “I was hiding,” she explained. “I watched from the hill.” She wiped the hair from his face, touched him gently, and after a few more minutes she supported his torso and helped him sit up.

  He gave a deep exhale. He spat. Just saliva, not blood anymore. A good sign. Eric looked at Mary questioningly.

  “I’ve seen worse,” Mary said, “but only in slasher movies.”

  He laughed like it hurt.

  She helped him stand.

  “Let’s get you home.”

  35

  [narcan]

  Vivian Connelly nearly died on a Saturday night in late October from an opioid overdose. By some measures, she did die. Her heart stopped. If not for the swift actions of a librarian at the town library and the emergency medical technicians who arrived a few minutes later, the Connellys would have been planning the funeral of their twenty-one-year-old daughter.

  The next morning, a rainy Sunday, Mary’s family gathered around the kitchen table. A visibly shaken Jonny recounted the events of the previous night. He looked ill, gaunt and rattled. He sat with his legs crossed, left arm wrapped awkwardly across his chest and his right hand free to run through his hair, pick at scabs on his face, or fidget nervously on the tabletop. He wore baggy, beltless jeans and a baseball tee and gray hoodie. Had he changed clothes since yesterday? Mary didn’t think so.

  “We scored that afternoon. Vivvy and I planned to get high together. There’s that little park by the library we sometimes go to. It’s a nice spot, you know, pretty and out of the way,” he said, glancing at Mary. “We used to go there as kids.

  “Saturday was our date night,” he said without realizing the awfulness of what he’d said. “We always got really high on Saturdays…” His voice trailed away, abandoning the thought as if the sentence no longer interested him. He reached for a tall, thin glass of orange juice. Didn’t lift it off the table, just turned it in his fingers. He spoke the next part directly to the orange juice glass, forehead knitted in concentration. “Vivvy was having trouble finding her veins, so I had to put aside my kit to help her. Otherwise it might have been me to take the first push. There was something wrong with this batch. We didn’t get it from our regular source—maybe it was cut with fentanyl or rat poison or something, I don’t know.

  “After I gave Vivvy her dose, she smiled, so peaceful and beautiful, then her eyes got real big and she went sickly pale and slumped to the grass. I knew something wasn’t right.”

  Mrs. O’Malley’s hand found Mary’s fingers beneath the table and squeezed, the two hands entwined, holding tight while their bodies sat rigid.

  “I tried to carry Vivvy into the library, but her body was so floppy—I could barely lift her up. Her head kept lolling to the side. I stumbled and fell and kind of spilled her onto the lawn. I looked up and this woman came tearing through the front doors of the library, pulling on blue plastic gloves with her teeth as she ran.” Jonny’s body shivered from a sudden chill. He bit down hard on his lip. His words came faster now, more agitated, in droning, trancelike succession. “I was screaming, you know? Just screaming: ‘Vivvy, Vivvy!’ Out of my mind. The people in the library must have heard me.

  “The woman pushed me aside and started asking me: ‘Is this an overdose? Is this an overdose?’ and I told her, ‘Yes, yes, help her, please.’ And she was at Vivvy’s side and I saw her hands ripping open the Narcan kit, filling the needle from the vial—it was taking forever—and I’m just sitting there, holding my knees, yelling, ‘Save her, save her!’—and she looks at me and says, as cool as you can imagine: ‘You need to be quiet now, I have to concentrate if we want to save your friend,’ and so I didn’t say another word. I just shut my mouth and watched her jab that needle into Vivvy’s shoulder. More people gathered around, somebody said the EMTs were on their way, and a man joined in. He gave her CPR and was saying, ‘Come on, girl, come back to us, come on, come back to us.’

  “It was like a chant, you know, or a prayer, whispering over and over, ‘Come on, girl, come back to us, come on.’”

  Mary felt like her fingers might snap off, her mother was squeezing so hard. She looked at Ernesto, and she saw that he was fighting back his emotions, lips a tight thin line, one finger tensely twirling his beard. Jonny looked totally distraught, so far lost into the memory of that scene that his eyes filled with horror, like he was staring into the face of some terrible beast.

  Jonny said, “And the lady was getting scared, I could tell, because nothing’s happening, so she said, ‘I have another, I’m giving her another shot. Turn her, help me turn her,’ and she’s ripping open a new box. The man shifted Vivvy to her side, so now she’s facing me and I can see her face. Totally lifeless, you know, like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Not sleep, not rest, not anything. It was just blank, empty. And this time the woman stabbed the needle into Vivvy’s other shoulder. After a minute I could see her eyelids flutter like butterfly wings and open. Vivvy looked right at me, but I couldn’t tell if she saw me or not. I don’t even know what world she was in right then—I think maybe some land between life and death.

  “She tried to sit up, but they were like, ‘No, no, stay down, you’ve got to rest on your side in the recovery position,’ and that’s when the ambulance pulled up, and the cop cars, and the EMTs rushed up carrying bags and gear and they’re pumping us with a hundred questions, all the details. It’s like they had to know everything. Calling me ‘sir this’ and ‘sir that.’ And that’s when I saw Vivvy go away again, her eyes falling shut.

  “They took out these paddles attached to wires like you see on doctor shows, and pulled up Vivvy’s shirt.”

  “Defibrillators,” my mother said.

  Jonny nodded, yes, yes, that was the word. He leaned back in his chair, his face filled with something new, a kind of glow. “And this time it worked, and I could see everybody sort of relax, they could breathe, you know, and it didn’t matter if they were cops or librarians or paramedics or people like me, we were all together on the grass. After a little while they carried Vivvy on a stretcher into the ambulance and took her away. I asked to ride with her, but they were like, ‘No, sir, no, not happening.’ They promised me she’d be okay.”

  “Thank God,” Mrs. O’Malley said.

  “That lady, from the library—”

  “Mrs. deGrom,” Mary’s mother said. “She’s the head children’s librarian. She’s been at the library forever. You might remember her, Mary.”

  Mary could picture the woman’s face from story hour and other programs geared toward young readers. Brown hair parted on the side, flecks of gray. Always wore big necklaces and colorful, dangly earrings. She didn’t look like someone who’d be a hero.

  Maybe heroes didn’t have a look.

  “I read about something like this,” Ernesto offered, still running a hand down his wispy beard. It looked so tuggable to Mary, like a billy goat’s. Ernesto said, “More and more public libraries are keeping a supply of Narcan on hand, just in case. One librarian in the article said she used to worry about overdue books, now it’s overdoses.”

  “Times change,” Mrs. O’Malley said. “Not always for the better.”

  Jonny listened politely. “She drove me to the hospital. That was nice of her. And then, I guess, she called you.”

  Mrs. O’Malley nodded, smiled at Ernesto. “I don’t know how many red lights we ran getting there. Do you remember what you told us, Jonny, sitting in the waiting room?”

  Jonny swallowed. He remembered. “I said, ‘I’m ready, Mom. I don’t want to live like this anymore.’�
��

  Mrs. O’Malley tilted her head back, eyes closed, turned her neck from side to side. Mary could actually hear the grinding of the bones of her spine. She leaned forward, placed her two open palms on the table, reaching toward her only son, and asked, “Is it still true today? Are you ready to go to rehab and give it everything you’ve got?”

  36

  [never]

  Jonny answered in a soft, clear, vulnerable voice: “I’m ready, Mom. I’m ready.”

  Mary was happy to hear those words. It felt like a winter wren had wriggled free from her heart, and a feathery hopefulness filled her chest. Her mother, on the other hand, did not show any joy. She simply nodded with a serious expression. No smile. “Then I think we need to act right away. I don’t want to wait, Jonny. I’ll need to make some calls. I have a few contacts. Finding a bed, and a place that accepts at least partial insurance, won’t be easy.”

  She rose to her feet, ready to get started.

  “What about Vivvy?” he asked. “I love her, Mom. She’s my soul mate.”

  “Oh, Jonny,” Mary said, the words passed her lips before she could stop them. “You can’t.”

  He scowled at his sister. “They released her already. She’s back home.”

  “Is that true?” Mary asked her mother.

  “That’s the way it works,” Mary’s mother replied. “Some of these kids are back using that very same day. The system can’t hold them.”

  Jonny hung his head and his shoulders heaved. “I don’t know if she’s using or not.”

  “You can’t wait for her,” Mrs. O’Malley said. “I know how much that hurts. I know you both care about each other. But Vivvy almost died last night. And it very easily could have been you.”

  Jonny never raised his head. “I know, I know.” He shivered, rubbed his eyes. “It made me think of Dad.”

  “Oh?” Mrs. O’Malley said.