The Birth of Super Crip (15 page)

“I already have a big problem,” Chuck yelled, aiming
the gun at each person he spoke to. His face started turning red
and the occasional spit came out of his mouth. Red was his focus
now. “You know how much shit I’ve been taking because of you? Every
practice. During the game. ‘Hey, you let a cripple kick your ass.’
‘You let a cripple knock you on your ass.’ Even my coach is giving
me crap.”

Red stole a glance at Alley. She still stood behind
the teacher’s lab station with nothing but the cart between her and
Chuck. She bit the edge of her lower lip, the only outward sign
that she was nervous.

“How’d you do it, you little shit?” he demanded.

“Luck,” Red said, forcing the words past the fear
that made talking more difficult. “I just caught you off
guard.”

“I can’t even understand what the hell you say!”
Chuck screamed, leaning forward as if getting in Red’s face even
though they were thirty feet apart.

“He said it was just luck,” Alley said calmly.

Chuck suddenly turned and hit her in the face with
the back of his hand. Alley turned toward the blackboard and put
her hands up to protect herself from another blow. Instead, Chuck
grabbed the cart and jerked it violently out of the way. It bounced
and slid on its side the few feet to the door, violently coming to
a stop as all but one of the bottles shattered. Chuck put Alley in
a chokehold with his right arm and walked toward the two brothers,
practically dragging Alley with him. His left arm was shaking as he
pointed the gun at Red.

“Luck, huh?” Chuck said. “I’m gonna eat shit the rest
of my life ’cause you got lucky? Fuck you!”

Blood trickled out of Alley’s mouth and rage swarmed
over Red. He focused on Chuck and pushed the wave around his neck.
Squeezing the wave around his tormentor’s throat as if he could
feel himself doing it with his own hands, Red saw Chuck’s eyes
bulge as he searched for air. Chuck’s grip on Alley loosened, and
Red pushed him back across the room, crashing through the
experiment set up at the teacher’s lab station. As he slammed into
the blackboard, the gun went off.

The bullet hit the last unbroken bottle of chemicals
on the teacher’s cart, touching off a small fireball and sending
fragments of glass and other debris in every direction. The room
momentarily sounded like a shooting gallery as the lights above
popped
in rapid succession as three or four pieces of the
shattered glass found them. The sparks were enough to set off the
gas that had accumulated in the back of the room with a mini
explosion at the station just behind Red, who was going to the
floor in the hopes of finding safety.

“Stay down!” Scott ordered.

Red looked up to see his brother and Alley had taken
cover under desks. He checked the door to see flames spewing thick,
dark smoke. Back-to-back small explosions from the student lab
stations forced Red to put his head down again, each explosion
causing him to have a full-body spasm. Regaining control, Red
focused on the wall of windows overlooking the school courtyard and
sent the wave across the room, shattering every window and blowing
out most of the wall. He ducked instinctively. Debris and some
glass blew back on them. Desks flew through the air. When he looked
up again, he couldn’t hear a thing. The explosion seemed to surge
through his body just as the wave left him drained. Paper drifted
in the air all over the room. The sprinklers in the ceiling sent a
weak flow of water down on them and shards of glass littered the
floor.

Red grabbed the back of a chair to stand, glass
crunching under his feet. He felt his ears pop. He looked around
for Scott, and found him under two desks. Shoving the desks aside,
Red grabbed Scott’s shirt to help him up, relieved when he saw his
brother’s eyes.

“Get up!” Red yelled even as Scott stood.

He could see the fear that he no doubt mirrored for
his brother as he examined the scrapes and spots of blood on
Scott’s face.

Finally, they both moved to get Alley. They found her
unconscious just feet from the gaping hole that moments ago had
been the side of the wall. Red went to her shoulders and started to
wedge his arms under her. Scott hesitated before leaning down to
help his brother get her to her feet from the front. He was
surprised when Red tried to hoist her onto his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Scott screamed, reluctantly
putting his arms around Alley. Red only managed to get her head up
to Scott’s shoulder, but was satisfied with Scott holding her
upright against him.

“Don’t let go!” Red looked over the side of the
building, but there weren’t any options for a soft landing. The
bushes on the other side of the courtyard were the best thing he
could think to use.

He grabbed his brother by the other shoulder and got
him to stand with his back to the opening.

“Whoa!! No way!” Scott screamed, sensing Red’s plan.
“Are you crazy?”

“Crouch! And keep your head down! Hers too if you
can.”

“You’re gonna kill us!”

Red couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he
punched Scott in the shoulder twice. “Two for flinching,” he said.
“Now, crouch! And hang on.”

Scott bent down and put Alley’s head into his
neck.

Red controlled the wave better than ever, wrapping it
around his brother and Alley and pushing them gently out of the
building. He heard Scott mumble, “Oh my God,” feeling the initial
push of the wave lifting them off the floor. Red couldn’t even look
at his brother’s face for fear of losing focus. Slowly but steadily
he moved them like a piece of china across the courtyard and into
the bushes.

Finally, he pushed the wave into the floor, thrusting
himself out of the building, then quickly pushed into the grass
below as every muscle in his body tensed up when he found himself
passing through the air. After a second he was able to relax, and
he lowered himself gradually to the ground. The courtyard looked
like it had been dug up by a backhoe.

“You okay?” Red yelled, reaching his brother. Scott
lay face-up in a bush, his arms still wrapped tightly around Alley.
Red got his brother to let go, then gently lowered Alley’s limp
body to the ground.

“Yeah,” Scott said as Red took his hand and helped
him get out of the bush. He checked Alley for a pulse.

“Is she?” Red asked.

His brother nodded. “I think so,” he said.

Red turned around and took a few steps toward the
building, looking up at the burning room. “We should get out of
here,” Scott said. “You don’t know what’s gonna happen.”

“Stay with her,” Red said. He knew he had to get
Chuck despite every urge to leave him behind in the flames.

“Forget him!” Scott screamed. “He tried to kill
us!”

Almost every impulse Red had told him to listen to
his brother. He looked back at Scott. “I have to get the little
asshole,” he said, feeling as though he was apologizing
somehow.

Once again he thrust the wave into the ground and
reached the second floor with ease. Almost able to stay on his feet
as he pushed the wave into the floor to soften his landing, he
quickly grabbed a desk for balance and got up from his knees. His
heart pounding, Red moved away from what was now a ledge with the
wall blown out and looked toward the front of the room. He ducked
as another student lab station exploded. With flames making it
impossible to reach Chuck from the other side, Red was forced to
try to get behind the teacher’s lab station from the side closest
the ledge. He walked as fast as he could to the teacher’s desk,
which sat next to the lab station on the opposite side of the door.
He eased himself back down to his knees, afraid he might slip or
have a spasm and fall back down to the courtyard if another station
exploded.

Red crawled around the desk with room to spare, and
spotted Chuck sprawled out on the floor, flames surrounding him and
his lower left leg burning. He quickly pushed the wave around Chuck
and pulled him headfirst to the ledge. Another mini explosion in
the back of the room had Red’s heart racing even faster. Grabbing
him by the shirt, Red pulled Chuck’s head up off the floor and the
bully began to come to.

With a quick look outside, Red saw the baseball
practice field off in the distance to his left.

“You don’t get a soft landing, dickhead,” he said.
There was just enough time for confusion to begin to register on
Chuck’s face before Red pulled him up even further, wrapped his
arms around Chuck’s neck and under his right shoulder, and slammed
the wave into the floor, launching the two of them toward the
field.

Red thought his heart might pound all the way through
Chuck’s chest as they rocketed over the courtyard. He dropped Chuck
over the infield, wrapping the wave around him just enough to break
his fall. Rolling through the infield dirt extinguished the flames
on his jeans. Red could barely breathe as he hurtled towards the
outfield. He desperately pushed the wave into the ground, trying to
slow himself down. The twelve-foot gash in center field would later
be blamed on flying debris. Red rolled about ten feet after
crashing down a little harder than he expected.

Staring up at blue sky, he was happy to just lie
there in the grass. He heard his own breath over the approaching
sirens of a fire truck. Voices seemed to be coming closer as well,
but he was too exhausted to even turn his head to look.

A couple clouds peacefully passed overhead. Red
closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and knew the quiet wouldn’t
last.

Chapter
18

Reaching down to pick up the Duke football after
dropping another pass, Red gripped it as firmly as he could. It
almost slipped out of his hands as he brought it up to his chest,
but he used his left hand to try to squeeze it into his right for a
better grip. Thinking about his form, he cocked his arm, held the
ball with both hands as long as he could, leaned into the throw,
aimed high, and was pleased with the solid
thwump
he heard
when Scott caught it.

“C’mon, Super Crip,” Scott said, “throw it.”

“I threw it,” Red said. “And knock it off.”

“You’re stuck with it, dude,” Scott said, tossing the
ball back.

Red tried to catch it with just his hands, but
ultimately had to bring it into his body to control the pass. He
was able to get a firm grip for the return pass without dropping
the ball, and felt like he gave a stronger throw back.

“You know what I mean,” Scott said. “Use your thing
and really
throw
it. It’s more fun.”

“You want me to use my
thing
to throw?” Red
joked. “Not sure that would work.”

As much as he didn’t want to give his little brother
credit for a good comeback, Scott laughed. “Asshole,” he said. He
leaned into his next pass and threw the ball hard enough that he
knew Red couldn’t catch it without using the wave.

Red laughed, and had to knock the ball down with his
hands to avoid getting hit.

“C’mon, Super Crip,” Scott yelled. “
Throw
it!”

Returning the favor, Red pushed the ball back to him
with the wave so hard that Scott needed two hands just to knock it
away. Then he had to run about twenty feet to retrieve it after the
football ricocheted off his hands and rolled a little further away
on the ground.

“Keep calling me that and I’m going to drill it and
put you into the firehouse,” Red said.

“You know you’re stuck with the name,” Scott hollered
as he went after the ball.

What Red hated almost as much as the name was the
fact that his brother was probably right. He was stuck with
Super Crip
as a nickname.

Reporters seemed to arrive at school almost as fast
as the EMTs and the police after getting word that there had been
an explosion. They just didn’t go away as fast. When school
reopened on Wednesday there were so many reporters trying to get
comments from students as they entered the building that the
principal had barricades set up by the afternoon. But while the
barricades kept news crews off school grounds, they didn’t stop
reporters from talking to kids leaving school on foot to walk home
after the final bell. For the rest of the week, school buses were
fuller than usual and the line of cars to drop off and pick up
students stretched for a block-and-a-half.

When word spread through school that police had found
a wheelchair that looked like it had been deliberately destroyed at
the top of the middle stairwell in A-wing, rumors started to fly.
One of the most popular tales was that Chuck had beaten up Red,
destroying the wheelchair in the process. Yet more gossip said that
Red had been separated from his wheelchair in a scuffle for Chuck’s
gun, and the explosion had sent the wheelchair in the opposite
direction. The fact that Red used a power wheelchair in school did
little to convince the kids who accepted these stories as gospel
that they weren’t true.

But when members of the football team started joking
about how
Super Crip
had arrived to take down Chuck again,
the story took on a life of its own. The
Philadelphia Times
even ran a sidebar on the wheelchair, mentioning the “name students
have given the unidentified wheelchair user” in what ended up being
a week of coverage about the explosion. The minute he saw the
headline—“Super Crip?”—Red knew the nickname wasn’t going away for
a while even though his name was never mentioned in the story.