Seconds Away (18 page)

CHAPTER 38

For the briefest
of moments, no one moved.

I say the briefest of moments because in reality, it was more like a flash—a whirlwind mix that will forever be frozen in my mind. Have you ever had a moment like that, a moment that is shorter than a snap and yet stays with you forever? It was as though time had truly stopped. I remember it all. I remember the sound of the gunshot. I remember Spoon falling back. I remember Ema screaming. I remember Spoon on the ground, the red stain on his shirt spreading, his face losing color, his eyes closed.

I will never forget any of that.

But even in that flash, the one that couldn’t have lasted more than half a second, I could feel the sickening guilt wash over me.

I had done this to him. I had gotten Spoon shot.

But while part of me was devastated and panicked, another part of me relied on my martial arts training. Somewhere in my center I was suddenly calm. I could not let Spoon’s sacrifice go to waste. Spoon, for all his outward immaturity, had understood the truth. These two men were going to kill us. Someone, he realized, had to make a move. Someone had to do something even if it meant sacrificing himself.

Spoon had distracted them. I could stand here and cry.

Or I could take advantage of the opening.

The rest was a quick fury. It seemed as though a hundred things happened over a long period of time, but when I looked back on it, I knew that it had only taken a few seconds from the time Spoon was shot until the time it was over.

First, we all moved at once. It was as if someone suddenly released us from this pause into a frenzied tornado. I was the first to react. I started toward Sunglasses and his gun, though Scarface was in the way. Ema dropped to the floor to take care of Spoon. Scarface turned toward me. And Sunglasses swerved his gun in my direction.

I was too far away from him.

I was fast; I had gotten a jump on them. But I was still too many yards away to reach Sunglasses before he pulled the trigger again. I tried to calculate the odds. I could hope that he missed, but the chances were remote. I was simply too easy a target.

So what to do?

Make myself a less consistent target, for one. As Sunglasses began to pull the trigger, I jumped suddenly to the left and tackled Scarface. The bullet whizzed past me. I made sure now to keep Scarface’s body between the gun’s trajectory and, well, me. Scarface hadn’t been expecting that attack. As we toppled backward, I moved my forearm into his throat. When we landed on the floor, my forearm jammed deep into neck. His eyes bulged, and he made a choking sound.

I had him just where I wanted him.

Of course, if that had been all, if my only concern was Scarface, I’d be a pretty happy guy right now. But it wasn’t. He wasn’t even my biggest worry. My biggest worry was Sunglasses. He had quickly recovered from my surprise move and was now heading toward us with his gun raised.

I could only hide behind Scarface’s body for so long—and by “so long,” I meant “maybe another second.”

Sunglasses stood over us. He pointed his gun down at me. From my spot on the ground, I unleashed a kick that landed on his shin. He cursed, shook it off, took a step back, and once again took aim.

This was it, I realized. I was out of moves. It was over.

Scarface was rolling away, coughing, trying to regain his breath. It would take a while, but that didn’t really matter. I’d be dead by then. Sunglasses altered his aim slightly so that the barrel was at my chest. I was going to raise my arms in surrender, but I knew that would do no good. I was staring at that smile-twitch again, the last sight I’d ever see, when I heard a shriek.

It was Ema.

She leapt on Sunglasses’s back, her momentum knocking him forward. He managed to keep on his feet but just barely. Ema’s arms snaked around his neck and squeezed for all she was worth. Without hesitation, I rolled toward Scarface and threw another blow at his throat. It landed but not flush.

Sunglasses tried using his free hand to pry Ema’s arm off, but she was a lot stronger than he expected. He lifted the gun hand toward her, as though hoping to shoot her off his back. Ema was ready for it. She took her right arm off his neck and chopped down on his gun hand.

The gun dropped to ground.

Now was my chance!

I dived for the gun, but Sunglasses wasn’t through yet. He kicked the gun with his right foot just before I got to it. The gun skittered all the way down the recently waxed floor of the hallway. No time to go for it. Scarface was starting to recover. He, too, had a gun.

Sunglasses reeled back, trying to get Ema off him, but she wouldn’t budge. Then he stumbled backward and slammed her into the wall of lockers. He did it again, harder this time, head-butting her in the face with the back of his head. It worked. Ema’s grip went slack. She slumped to the ground, dazed. Sunglasses turned toward her, but when I shouted, he turned back to me. Ema used the distraction to roll into a classroom and out of harm’s way.

Meanwhile, Scarface was stirring again—and he still had a gun.

I leapt back toward him, but this time he was ready. Scarface rolled onto his back and kicked his foot out. It landed in my solar plexus. The air whooshed out of me. As I fell to the ground, I threw a flailing elbow strike. It struck pay dirt—Scarface’s nose. I heard a crunching sound and knew that it was broken.

But before I could get back up, Sunglasses was on me too. He kicked me hard in the ribs. I fell flat. He threw another kick. I grunted. The third kick made my head start to swim. I thought I might throw up. I lay there, defenseless.

The next kick sapped me of whatever strength I had left.

I was losing consciousness, almost ready to surrender, when my eyes traveled past Scarface and landed on Spoon. His eyes were still closed. His face was pure white. The blood poured from an open wound. I didn’t know if he was dead or alive, but I’d be damned if I would let him bleed out.

I had to do something, and the answer was suddenly obvious.

Scarface’s gun.

It was in his back pocket. If I could just reach . . .

Sunglasses saw what I was going to do. He smiled down at me and lined up for another kick, one that would probably finish me off, but suddenly the air was shattered by the sound of an alarm.

“Lockdown!” a voice over the loudspeaker intoned. “Lockdown . . . Lockdown!”

Ema! That was why she had rolled into the classroom—to hit the panic button Spoon had told us about. The distraction was all I needed. With one last grunt I reached over and grabbed the gun from Scarface’s back pocket. I pulled for it, but it wouldn’t come out. Sunglasses looked back over at me. He reeled back for another kick, but it wasn’t in time.

I freed the gun and pointed it at him. “Freeze!”

Sunglasses stopped and slowly put his hands above his head. I crawled away, keeping the gun on him, making sure I was far enough from Scarface too.

The loudspeaker kept going: “Lockdown . . . Lockdown . . .”

Ema ran back out into the hallway and knelt down next to Spoon.

“Spoon? Arthur?” Her voice was a tearful plea. She cradled his head. “Talk to me, okay? Please?”

She was crying. I was crying. But Spoon didn’t move.

I could hear sirens approaching in the distance. I turned and looked at Scarface and Sunglasses. Part of me hoped that they would make a move, because I wanted to shoot them for what they’d done.

They must have seen my face and knew. Neither moved.

I looked over at Ema. “Is he . . . ?”

“I don’t know, Mickey. I don’t know.”

CHAPTER 39

I don’t know
how many hours passed.

When the cops showed, they surrounded me and told me to put down the gun. I did. The rest was just a murky haze. Sunglasses and Scarface were cuffed. Paramedics rushed over to Spoon. Ema sat, cradling his head, trying to stop the flow of blood. I ran toward him too because for a moment, a very brief moment, I feared one of the paramedics would be the sandy-haired paramedic who took away my father. I feared that he would wheel Spoon out of there and I’d never see him again.

“Mickey, what have you done?”

That voice, I knew, came from deep inside of me. I had been warned, hadn’t I? Detective Waters had told me in no uncertain terms not to get involved, but I hadn’t listened. It would have been one thing to put my life at risk. But look what I had done to Spoon.

I don’t think I will ever forgive myself.

I don’t know how many cops showed up. I remember the flashing lights from a long line of emergency vehicles slicing through the still night air. For the next several hours—I cannot tell you how many—I answered questions. I kept asking only one in return, over and over:

How is he?

But they wouldn’t tell me about Spoon’s condition.

For the most part, I told the truth, but when they asked, “How did you guys get into the school?” I lied and said, “I forced open the door.”

“Kid,” the cop said to me in a grave voice, “breaking into the school is the least of your friend’s problems.”

Several officers came in and out, including Chief Taylor and even Detective Waters. The mood of the officers swung between pissed and pleased—pissed because we had been foolhardy and gotten Spoon shot; pleased because we had cracked the case of who shot Mrs. Caldwell and Rachel. Two hardened criminals had been apprehended and were going to jail for a long time. The surveillance cameras would see to that, plus the guns they used were Smith & Wesson .38s—the same kind used to shoot Mrs. Caldwell and Rachel.

At some point, Uncle Myron showed up. He took on the dual roles of panicked guardian and attorney. He immediately told me to stop talking to the police. But I waved him off. They needed to know. So instead Myron sat next to me and listened too.

The last person to interrogate me was Detective Waters. When he finished, I said, “Does this help your other case?”

“What case?”

“Mr. Caldwell. He’s a drug dealer, right?”

Detective Waters glanced at Myron, then back at me. “That isn’t your concern.”

“Are you going to arrest him?”

“On what charge?”

I stared at him. “I just told you. The stuff in that gym bag—”

“What about it?”

“It came from his house.”

“Do you have any proof? How are we going to prove any of that stuff belonged to Henry Caldwell? Maybe if you’d left it there and told us about it, maybe something could have been done. But now?”

He shook his head and walked out the door.

By the time Ema and I met up in the hospital waiting room, the sun was up. Uncle Myron and Angelica Wyatt had wanted to take us home, but we were not about to abandon Spoon. We sat in the waiting room. Ema and I were in one corner. Angelica Wyatt, decked out in sunglasses and a head scarf for disguise, and Myron kept their distance.

“Wow,” Ema said to me.

“Yeah.”

Her eyes were tinged with red from tears and exhaustion. I imagined that I looked the same.

“He’s going to be fine,” I said.

“He better be,” Ema said, “or I’m going to kill him.”

A few minutes later, I saw a thin black woman wander into the waiting room zombielike, looking worse than we ever could. It was Spoon’s mother. We had never met, but I had seen her hug her son when I dropped him at his house. The devastation was written all over her face. Her eyes had that thousand-yard stare you sometimes see in war documentaries.

I looked at Ema. Ema took a deep breath and nodded. We rose together and started toward Spoon’s mother. It seemed to take forever to reach her, like the more we walked, the farther she moved away from us.

When we finally arrived in front of her, Mrs. Spindel had her head down. We didn’t know what to say, so we just stood there, waiting. A few seconds later, she looked up at me and when she saw who it was, a shadow fell across her face.

“You’re Mickey,” she said. “And you’re Ema.”

We both nodded.

“What are you doing here?”

“We just wanted to know how Spoon—I mean, Arthur—is doing.”

She looked at Ema and then back to me. “He’s . . . he’s not good.”

It was like my heart was on the top of a long staircase and someone shoved it off.

“He’s out of surgery, but the doctors . . . they don’t know.”

“Is there anything . . . ?” I tried, but I couldn’t finish. Tears started brimming in my eyes.

Spoon’s mom said, “I don’t understand why you were all at the school so late.”

“It was my fault,” I said through the tears.

Ema was about to add something, but I gave her arm a nudge.

I saw the shadow cross Mrs. Spindel’s face again and then she said something I didn’t expect but completely deserved. “Oh, I know it’s your fault.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, her words landing like punches.

“I never heard of you a week ago. Now you’re all Arthur talks about. He wanted everyone to start calling him Spoon. He said his new friend gave him that nickname.”

My heart crashed to the bottom step, and now a foot with a heavy boot stomped on it.

“You were Arthur’s friend,” she went on. “Maybe the first real one since the fourth grade. You probably don’t get how much you meant to my son. He looked up to you. He worshipped you—and how did you repay him? You used him. You used him to break into some stupid locker and now look.” She turned away in disgust. “I hope whatever was in there was worth it to you.”

I opened my mouth, closed it, tried again. But what could I say?

“I think,” Mrs. Spindel said, “that you should both leave.”

“No.”

I turned toward the voice and recognized Mr. Spindel, Spoon’s father.

She looked up at her husband and waited.

“Arthur just woke up,” Mr. Spindel said, turning and meeting my eyes. “And he’s insisting that he speak to Mickey.”

CHAPTER 40

There were tubes
and machines and beeping noises. There were curtains and antiseptic smells and monitors with green lights. I saw none of it. All I saw as I entered the room was my friend lying in the middle of all this horrible gadgetry.

Spoon looked so small in that bed. He looked small and as fragile as an injured bird.

Mrs. Spindel’s voice—
Oh, I know it’s your fault
—still echoed in my ears.

The doctor, a tall woman with her hair pulled back, put a hand on my shoulder. “Normally I would never allow it, but he’s so agitated. I need you to make this short and keep him calm.”

I nodded and slowly walked toward his bed. My legs felt rubbery. I stopped at one point because the tears were starting to come. I turned around, bit down hard on my lip, and gained enough composure. It wouldn’t help Spoon if he saw me hysterical. To keep him calm, I knew that I needed to be calm.

When I got to the bed, I wanted to pick him up and take him home and make it somehow yesterday. It was all so wrong, my friend lying here in this hospital.

“Mickey?”

Spoon seemed suddenly to be straining to move. He looked distressed. I bent down low, close to him. “I’m right here.”

He lifted his hand and I took it in mine. He was struggling to talk.

“Shh,” I said. “Just get better, okay?”

He shook his head weakly. I bent my ear to be closer to his mouth. It took him a few seconds but eventually he said, “Rachel is still in danger.”

“No, Spoon. You saved us all. It’s over.”

Spoon’s face tightened. “No, it isn’t. You can’t sit here doing nothing. You have to save her. You can’t stop until we find the truth.”

“Calm down, okay? Those two guys shot her. They’re in jail.”

I saw a tear escape his eye. “They didn’t do it.”

“Of course they did.”

“No, listen to me. Get out of here and help her. Promise me.”

Spoon was getting more agitated. The doctor rushed over and said to me, “I think that’s enough. You should go wait in the other room.”

She started to add something into his intravenous tube, a sedative, I guessed. I tried to let go of Spoon’s hand, but his grip grew tighter.

“It’s going to be okay, Spoon.”

Nurses came to the bedside too. They tried to hold him down and pull me away.

“She was shot in her house,” Spoon managed to say.

“I know, Spoon. It’s okay. Calm down.”

But he suddenly had new strength in his arm. He pulled me close, desperate. “You said they asked you which house was Rachel’s. Remember? When you saw them that first time on the street?”

“Right, so?”

The doctor finished injecting the medication. The effect was immediate. Spoon’s grip grew slack. I was about to pull away but now—

That the Caldwell house?

—Scarface’s voice came back to me. Spoon looked up at me and managed to ask me the same question I was suddenly asking myself:

“So if those two guys had already been at the house, why would they ask you where it was?”