The Birth of Super Crip (9 page)

“Tie score, man. Thought you were gonna help us
out.”

“How do you think it’s tie, genius?” Red said. “Dude,
I’ve stuck it in their gut about twenty times and they still drop
the damn ball.”

“You could stop messing with our right tackle.”

“Yeah, but what fun would that be,” Red said. He
could see his brother was less than amused. “Relax. He’s off the
hook for the rest of the night.”

Scott shrugged. “How ’bout shutting out the Folsom
Rats?”

“You come up with that one by yourself?”

“Whatever. C’mon, man.”

Red looked at him with raised eyebrows. “I’m trying.
You really think the wind caused . . .” A gust of wind was so
strong he had to turn his head.

“I guess it is worse up here,” Scott said.

“. . . all those passes to sail out of bounds. I
can’t just push down every running back when nobody’s near
them.”

“Yeah, I got it.”

Red looked around. The people nearby seemed too busy
trying to stay warm to worry about them, even if they could hear
the conversation.

“I was thinking about doing something on the punt,”
he said, now having to scream into Scott’s ear just to be heard.
“But it would take a lot. If it’s too crazy, I don’t know, I don’t
want to make it obvious.” He didn’t bother trying to explain his
slip-up around Pete.

Scott leaned into his ear. “You really think one
crazy play is going to make anyone think some kid is using his
newfound superpower to help the Lions?”

Superpower? Red thought. Is that what this is? he
wondered for the first time.

“Besides, what are they really going to do?” Scott
continued. “Tell someone? Everyone would think they were nuts.”

Red barely heard the last couple words his brother
spoke. He leaned against the railing to steady himself against the
wind.

A loud crack pierced through the wind and the
students’ chants. The brothers both looked up as a massive tree
came crashing down on the broadcast booth. Red saw the kid who was
calling the game already halfway down the steps with a guy on his
heels. The tree’s path was only momentarily halted, its weight
beginning what many had always thought was the inevitable toppling
of the booth.

The sound of splintering wood from both the tree and
the booth elicited a loud gasp from the crowd, along with a few
screams of teenage terror. Red’s muscles tensed up. He watched in
horror as the booth gave way, crashing slowly but undeniably toward
them.

Grabbing his brother from behind, Scott started to
pull Red over the railing. Finding the lower rung of the railing
with his foot to push himself up as Scott pulled, Red suddenly
grabbed the top rung with his hand.

“Pete!”

He was never going to make it. He was on his feet,
leaning on just one crutch while reaching down for the other.

The wave came like never before, Red unleashing a
tsunami at the booth, pushing it back against the falling tree as
if it had been hit by a cannonball. The explosion of the booth and
the tree shattered windows half a block from the school.

Finally, yanking Red over the railing, Scott forced
his brother to the walkway and laid on top of him, waiting for
debris to fall on them. Thunderous footsteps seemed to surround
them as the crowd scrambled for the exits.

Scott eventually got to his knees and looked down at
his brother. Red’s eyes were closed and he lay motionless.

“Red,” Scott said, “c’mon, we gotta get out of
here.”

Red didn’t move. He didn’t even flinch. “Red!” Scott
screamed, shaking him. “Red!”

Chapter
12

Midday sunlight soaked the room despite the drawn
shades. He could hear himself breathing as he lay still, having no
desire to get out of bed. Red rubbed his face. A long,
lung-clearing yawn escaped from him. Every muscle in his body
yearned to go back to sleep. Before pulling the covers back up over
his shoulders, he reached for the clock to turn it around so he
could see the time, but it was already facing him.

He couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the
daylight-dulled digits read 12:09. Sliding his legs to the edge of
the bed, he sat up.

How is it afternoon already? he thought.

Red suddenly realized he didn’t remember going to bed
the previous night. What did I do? Running his hand through his
hair, he noticed his clothes in a pile on the floor and his
sweatshirt slung over the desk chair. It triggered a memory of
pulling the hood string as far as he could to try to stay warm
against the wind.

A strange knock, more like a light thud, came at the
door, and his mom gently pushed it open with a tray holding his
breakfast.

“Well, it’s about time,” she said softly. “I was
getting worried. You never sleep this long.”

“Hi,” he said, in a low early morning voice. “What’s
going on?”

His mom put the tray down on the desk and cleared
away a couple books. “I just thought I’d bring your breakfast up,”
she said, and took him by the arm to help him to the desk chair. “I
want you to take it very easy for a couple days. Besides, you’re a
bit of a celebrity.”

Too tired to resist and not really wanting to, Red
sat at his desk and took a long drink of orange juice through the
straw. A disjointed memory of talking to Scott at the game the
previous night raced through his mind. “Celebrity? Why? How’d I get
to bed last night?”

Beginning to straighten up the room, his mom pulled
the shades up. “Your father carried you,” she said. “Scott called
from the game after you passed out. A doctor was there and gave you
a quick once-over, and said you just needed some rest. You woke up
a couple times, even talked to him, but you were pretty out of
it.”

He didn’t remember talking to a doctor at all.

“Since we’re going out to York for the specialist on
Monday, I figured he can just check you out,” she said. “And a
photographer for the Folsom school paper caught a picture of Scott
hauling you over the railing. It made the front page of the
Philadelphia Times.
”

It all rushed back to him now. The cold wind. The
rain. Freezing most of the game. Pushing passes with the wave. The
tree. The booth.

“Pete!”

He had a mouthful of waffles and even his mom
couldn’t understand him at first. Swallowing, he repeated, “Pete,
is he okay?”

“He’s fine,” Scott said, coming in and slapping the
front section of the paper on his desk. “Pretty cool picture,
eh?”

The two of them, seen from behind, were in the
foreground of a photo showing the broadcast booth about to topple
under the weight of the tree. Red was still looking back at the
booth as his brother pulled him over the railing. Pete could be
seen attempting to reach his feet, serious injury at the very least
appearing inevitable. The picture covered a quarter of the front
page above the fold, the headline asking a one-word question:
“MIRACLE?”

Red looked up and Scott answered the question that
was on his face. “Some people swear a mini tornado formed at just
the right time,” Scott said with a subtle shake of his head that
told Red no one knew that he had done it. “I think they’re full of
shit.”

Their mother stopped making the bed just long enough
to lightly smack him in the back of the head. “You know I don’t
like that language,” she said, returning to making the bed without
missing a beat. “Besides, how else do you explain that booth—and
the tree—being pushed backwards all of a sudden? Pete didn’t have a
scratch on him. No one did.”

“It
was
a miracle,” Scott whispered with as
much drama as he could deliver.

“Funny boy,” Mary monotoned, and began picking up the
clothes scattered around the room.

Red stopped eating long enough to ask, “Where’s Dad,
Mom?”

“I sent both your father—and brother—outside so you
could rest,” she said, giving Scott a look.

“I came in to get a drink and heard you two talking.
I figured I’d come check on my brother,” Scott said. “Besides,
Dad’s working on the hedges. And we all know . . .”

“Don’t touch the hedges,” the boys said in
unison.

Mary couldn’t help but laugh, knowing her husband was
obsessed with having the hedges perfectly sculpted. He didn’t allow
anyone else to trim them. “Anyway,” she said, changing her tone and
the subject, “your brother was very worried about you. And both of
your older brothers have called from college.”

“How’d they hear anything?”

“Well, Timmy’s at Penn,” she said. “I’m sure there’s
plenty of
Times
floating around. And he must have called Tom
at Notre Dame.”

“We’re all just so worried about you,” Scott teased,
reaching out to caress his brother’s face.

Red quickly swatted his hands away. “Get off.”

“Do not rile up your brother,” their mom said
sharply. Despite the clothes in her arms, she managed to point at
Red. “I mean it. You’re resting this weekend. No horsing around. No
football.”

“Alright,” he said, feeling so exhausted he didn’t
need the warning.

Before their mom had even closed the door, Scott
lounged on Red’s bed with the decorative 1980 Philadelphia Eagles
plastic football from his shelf. He heard the slurping sound of
Red’s straw as he tried to get the last drops of orange juice in
the glass.

“So?” Scott said.

Red wiped his mouth with a napkin his mom had put on
the tray, and swiveled the chair halfway around to his brother. And
farted.

“Nice,” Scott said.

Red simply shrugged. “Needed that,” he joked, leaning
back with his eyes closed.

“Dude?”

“What?” he said, eyes still closed.

“You’re really not gonna say anything?”

He knew what his brother was getting at. Or at least
he thought he did. But he really didn’t know what to say. “I’m
tired,” he said, yawning. “You know what happened more than I do.
Did we win?”

Scott rolled his eyes. “Seriously? That’s your
question? No, we didn’t win. The game was called. Dude, you
obliterated the booth and a tree. I mean, it was like they just
shattered.”

“You’re mad?” he asked, beginning to get annoyed
himself.

“No. I’m just saying . . .”

“I was scared to death,” Red said. “It was coming
right toward us. Then I saw Pete had no chance to get out. I saw
the kid in the booth and whoever was with him running down the
stairs. I just reacted.”

“Dude, I’m not questioning why you did it,” Scott
said. “It’s just . . . I don’t know. People think a tornado did it.
Yesterday we were screwing around with a football. Now . . .”

The words just hung there. Red knew he was right. The
whole thing was insane. “I know,” he said. “Last night it
practically exploded from me. I’d been using it all afternoon. At
the game. In gym class.”

“Gym class?”

“I told you about the freshman who’s been kicking
everybody’s ass every week,” he said. Red shrugged. “I just felt
like shutting him down for once.”

“What’re you doing that for?” Scott said.

“Yeah, I got it, I probably shouldn’t have,” Red shot
back, having felt bad enough about it on his own. “It was a
one-time thing. Besides, you had no problem with it when I was
helping you win a bet.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t do it at all anymore,”
Scott said.

Red wasn’t surprised by the suggestion. In fact, he
realized he’d been moving toward the same conclusion. But hearing
it out loud made something else even more clear. “I like it,” he
said softly. “It’s a feeling, a sense of control, I never thought
I’d have.” Red searched for the words. “Whatever this is, it’s
power. It’s strength. It’s everything. I mean, I never really
thought about being cured. I didn’t even care about going to that
doctor.”

“I know.”

“It was just reality,” Red said. “It sucks, and you
deal with it, and you hate it sometimes. But most of the time the
CP’s just there. But this . . . I don’t even know what
this
is. It’s not curing the cerebral palsy. I don’t even know if it’s
helping my CP at all.” He paused. “But, whatever it is, it’s pretty
awesome.”

“But if doing it made you pass out this time . .
.”

“I know. I get it,” he said. “But I don’t think I
could ever go back to . . . Back to being whatever I was. Back to
being just some disabled kid in school.”

“You said yourself you were doing it a lot in gym.
Then at the game. Maybe it wasn’t that one huge push that knocked
you out. Maybe if you do it too much . . .” Scott didn’t want to
say the words he was thinking. “Who knows what could happen?”

It might kill me. Red knew that’s what his brother
was thinking. He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. He looked
at Scott. “But the more I think about what I can do, the more I
want it.”