Boarding School (51 page)

The time had come. Matt now understood that if there was any chance still to keep us alive, he was going to have to take action rather than stand by the door and yell. So with that thought in mind, there was only one thing he could think of to do. Quickly then my roommate reached down and picked up the ring of keys he had hidden earlier beneath Joe’s shirt sleeve. “Hey, Joe!” my friend hollered. “I’ve decided I’m not gonna stick around here anymore. See ya later!” And with that Matt slid one of the three keys he had already picked out into the deadbolt on the door.

“Hey! Put those keys down now!” Joe thundered.

“No way!” Matt yelled out as he kept his focus on the lock. The first key was a failure. “I ‘m leaving now!” Without delay Matt pulled the first key out and slid in the second.

“Why you…!” My friend’s play worked. Joe’s attention was now distracted from his first victim and aimed directly at his second. Without giving another thought to me, Joe threw his knife down onto the Astroturf and began to jog around the pool toward the door. “Damn it, kid, put those keys down now, or I’ll beat the crap out of you!”

The second key was a failure as well. Matt knew he only had seconds now to make his escape. Without so much as a glance away to check on Joe’s progress, my roommate slid in the third key, turned it and then he heard the latch on the inside flip over. With no time to spare, Matt grabbed the knob with both hands, turned it and began to pull the door open so he could get away.

“Oh no you don’t!” Joe yelled as he placed a hand on the door and slammed it shut again before my friend could slip through the opening. In the process, Joe pressed his enormous body against Matt’s which wedged the boy in sideways against the door. “You’re not goin’ anywhere, you little son of a bitch!”

“Ah!” Matt was suddenly straining under Joe’s weight which was now pressing against his smaller frame. “Joe, you gotta let us go! We
both
have families that can give you money!”

The appeal still was of no consequence to our jailer. So the die was cast. Matt’s fate was now sealed. Joe continued with what he was going to do to my roommate by forming his right hand into a tight fist and then slugging Matt three times rapidly in his face. Of course Matt and I had taken plenty of punches to our faces since coming to the Academy. But when I saw my friend lose his wits and stagger after just one punch, I realized that these blows were doubly deadly because the sheer force from each of Joe’s punches was causing the boy’s head to be hurled to his right until it was slammed loudly against the safety glass in the door. And as this awful scene played out, I watched and listened in terror from my perch across the room. “Auh!” SLAM! “Uh!” SLAM! “__!” SLAM/CRACK! “Ha! Take that, asshole!” Joe yelled proudly at poor Matt. On the third SLAM, and as his eyes closed, the force from Matt’s head hitting against it cracked the glass in the door. I then watched as Matt’s body dropped to the floor to land in a heap against the exit he had nearly been able to escape through. He was now unconscious. Matt’s piercing high voice had been silenced. Joe had knocked the boy out.

“What a pain in the ass!” Joe yelled in frustration as he bent down and grabbed my friend’s still naked body under the armpits with both of his hands and then lifted the boy into the air. “Nothing works out the way I want, damn it!” Joe proclaimed his anger out loud as he turned with my friend’s limp body in his arms and took the few steps needed to move him from where he had been standing to the edge of the pool.

In horror then, I watched as Joe threw my roommate down into the water. “NO!” I screamed. “Joe, no!” But I might as well have been miles away, because Joe did nothing to respond to my pleas. And so helplessly I watched as my friend, my dear, dear friend sank quickly away from my view. It was only an instant before he was gone and I couldn’t believe that in another few moments Matt’s life would be over. As I stared at the surface of the water and watched the waves settle from Matt’s splash, I thought of the picture on our dresser back at the dorm of my friend with his parents. And as tears filled my eyes once more, I thought about the love I knew his parents had felt for their son and how distraught they would be now to see what had become of their boy since their absence. “Don’t let him die!” I gasped weakly.

“All I wanted was a fuckin’ blow job from one of you kids!” Joe bellowed from the pool’s edge as he looked down at my friend’s body which was now lying still on the bottom.

I could tell that there wasn’t much time left for me either. As I lay there and hoped for a miracle that would cause my roommate to return to the surface somehow and surprise us, I could feel myself sinking gradually into a void from which I knew I could never return. “Please God, don’t let the best friend I ever had die!” I couldn’t bear the idea of going on without Matt. And then I found that I no longer had the strength to keep myself looking at the water, so I allowed my eyes to roll up and gaze at the ceiling while I waited for my turn to cross over.
At least Matt and I will go together,
I thought. And then like a wave of revelation sweeping over me, I realized that I just didn’t care anymore whether I lived or I died. “Come on, you bastard!” I wheezed at our assailant. “I’m fed up with this shitty world. Get your ass over here and end it for me, now. I don’t want to wait any longer.” CRACK!

It took me an instant to realize that something had just happened. Quickly I decided to look over by the pool once more to see what it was that had caused that odd sound to occur. And when I did, I beheld the sight of Joe, losing consciousness and collapsing onto the Astroturf. At the same instant, I saw and heard someone dive into the pool, jackknife his body so he could do a surface dive and then slip away from view. Suddenly my battered being was swelled with hope. While I waited for a result from under the water, I looked back again at the patio and saw that it was Frank’s cousin who was now standing over our attacker with the bat… that Goddamned baseball bat that Joe had been so proud of which was now poised in the hand of the young man. “You knocked him out by taking a swing at his head?” Without a bit of hesitation I was now a Red Sox fan. Frank’s cousin heard me and glanced my way for a second, but then his attention was drawn to something new that was happening in the water.

With a SPLASH, Frank shot noisily through the surface with Matt’s lifeless body grasped between his hands in front of him. And while feeling an enormous amount of trepidation, I looked closely at my roommate to see if I could detect any signs still of life. But Matt didn’t move and his thick black hair hung flattened and even all around the top half of his head like a shroud. “Come on,” Frank’s cousin called out. “Give him to me.” Unable to move, I continued to watch then as Frank swam with our friend’s body over to the edge of the pool. A moment later Frank’s cousin had hauled poor Matt from the water and had laid my roommate out on the patio so he could administer CPR to the boy. Now at least Matt had a fighting chance to live but as the seconds ticked by, the likelihood of him reviving suddenly seemed to dwindle before our eyes.

“Don’t give up!” Frank urged as he sat on the edge of the pool in his sopping wet clothing and dripped.

“I’m tryin’,” Frank’s cousin confirmed. “But I’m beginning to think its hopeless.”

“I don’t care! Just don’t quit yet!” Frank was as frantic for Matt to live againas I was.

So Frank’s cousin continued with his efforts at CPR and mouth to mouth. But a few moments later his movements began to slow, and we were all beginning to share in a feeling of utter discouragement.

“COUGH!” Suddenly Matt spit out a lungful of water onto his face. Immediately then Frank’s cousin rolled Matt over onto his side and my friend continued to cough himself back to life. He was alive! My friend was alive! I was overjoyed. Matt was going to live after all. “Aw yeah!” I had never felt such elation in all of my life… and then I blacked out.

* * *

I opened my eyes to find myself lying in a hospital bed, yet it didn’t seem to me as if I was really in a hospital.

“Hey, he’s awake!” I heard Frank’s voice suddenly so I began to move my head and focus my eyes to see him.

“Well how are we doing?” This was a man’s voice and it sounded closer. So quickly I abandoned my effort to see Frank and I looked instead to where I heard this new voice. And when I found him, he spoke to me again.

“Your friends got you here just in time. If you had lost very much more blood, I don’t know if we’d been able to save you.”

I could see more clearly now. The man was clean shaven, but he had long hair down to his shoulders like some of the kids at the Academy. I decided that he must be a doctor because of the white lab coat he was wearing, but he didn’t look like any doctor I had ever seen. Still, he was smiling at me.

“Where am 1?” I asked still in a fog. Frankly at this moment, I was amazed to discover that I was still alive. It was also at this point when I noticed the IV in my hand. My eyes then followed the tubing up to the stand which was positioned next to my bed and I saw that they were giving me whole blood and something else. From the way I was feeling, I figured the something else was a very fine pain killer.

“You’re in my clinic. I don’t think I’ve ever put so many stitches into one person before. But we’ve got you all sewn back together again and I’ve bandaged up your mid section pretty well. And your nose is broken, so you’ll notice that I’ve got some bandaging there as well. So tell me, how do you feel?”

I then glanced for a moment over to where I had heard Frank’s voice earlier. When I found him, he was sitting in a chair near the foot of my bed. He was wrapped in a blanket and wearing only his underwear, but his expression conveyed to me feelings of concern and relief. “Fine, I guess,” I didn’t know what else to say.

“Well, don’t try to do anything just yet. I want you to lie here until tomorrow at least before you start moving around again.”

“Doc, we’ve gotta get out of here as soon as we can. I’ve gotta hide these kids while we’re still one step ahead of the people who did this. Ya know what I’m sayin’?” This voice belonged to Frank’s cousin.

I then looked up at the doctor again in time to see him frown.

“Well… you can’t move him ‘til at least tomorrow morning. And he’s going to need to be able to stay lying down. He’s not going to be strong enough at first to sit up for very long, and he needs to stay on his back anyway so the tissues around his stitches have time to strengthen.”

“Well, we’re gonna hide them down in New York for a few weeks to start with,” Frank’s cousin continued. “That way I’ll be able to keep an eye on them.”

The doctor thought for a moment, and then he spoke again. “And are you bringing Frank back up here after that?”

“Yeah,” Frank answered. “I’ve gotta be back at the Academy by around dinner time tomorrow night so nobody’ll think I ‘m involved in any of this.”

The doctor then thought for a moment longer. “Ok… here’s what I think we should do. You guys keep your car hidden in my garage for now. Tomorrow morning then, before dawn you can use my station wagon to transport these boys to wherever you’re taking them down in New York. We’ll put the back seat down and fix up the back so they can lie comfortably during the trip. Then when you bring Frank back up here in the afternoon, you can bring me back my car. But you better exchange vehicles before you take Frank back to school so nobody sees you in a different car with Massachusetts tags on it. That could cause someone to get curious and run a trace on my car. And I don’t need any headaches coming down on me or the people here in my clinic. Ok?”

Frank’s cousin then smiled. “That sounds great, Doc. Thanks.”

“No problem. You just be sure to hide these boys someplace where they’ll be safe.”

That reminded me suddenly. “Where’s Matt?” I was now worried for the welfare of my friend.

“He’s resting comfortably in the room next door,” the doctor assured me. “In spite of the fact that he’s got a mild concussion and he nearly drowned this afternoon, he’s doing just fine.”

“Do you promise?” I wanted to make sure that the doctor wasn’t just saying what he thought I wanted to hear to keep me from becoming agitated.

The doctor then smiled at me again. “Yes, I promise. Now I want you to get some sleep. You’ve got a long ride ahead of you in the morning.”

“Yeah, I probably ought to go out now and get your car gassed up and pick up some provisions for the trip tomorrow,” Frank’s cousin announced.

“That sounds fine,” the doctor continued. “Come on and I’ll get you the keys. Oh, and I’ve got an extra room upstairs where you and Frank can sleep tonight. Under the circumstances, I think it’d be better if you two stayed close to your friends until it’s time tomorrow for you guys to leave.”

“Yeah ok. Thanks, Doc. Come on, Frank. Let’s let him sleep.” Frank’s cousin then took a few steps toward the door to leave.

“Is it all right if I stay here and talk to Clint for a minute, Doc?” Frank asked. “Well ok, but make it quick.” With that the doctor then stepped over to the door also and opened it. A moment later he and Frank’s cousin had both left, and it was then just the two of us.

“Well, here you are all banged up in a hospital bed again,” Frank began. “I thought you were mad at me?” I was still a little confused over how everything had managed to work out for us.

“Nah… not really. And besides, when I saw youz two get into that silly-lookin’ blue finned job, I knew that somethin’ wasn’t right. So I told my cousin to follow you guys cuz I thought somethin’ fishy was goin’ on.”

This alarmed me. I f Frank and his cousin had been close by the whole time, then why had they allowed us both to nearly die before they came to our aid? “Well why did it take you so long to get us out of there, then?”

“Becuz we lost youz after you took your exit off the Pike. It took us nearly a half an hour of drivin’ around Framingham before we finally spotted that guy’s Caddy.”

“Oh,” I felt relieved again. “Well thanks for not giving up on us.”

“I never have, pal. I never have. Besides, I told you I’d figure out what was going on with youz two.”