Ghost of Spirit Bear (9 page)

Finally several teachers came rushing across the lawn as the sound of a siren wailed toward the school. A red and white ambulance pulled into sight, lights flashing, and drove up on the sidewalk. Two paramedics jumped out and rushed to Keith’s side. One took his pulse while the other checked his eyes and looked into his bloodied mouth.

“I’ve got his head now,” said the paramedic, allowing Cole to stand and back away. They placed a big plastic collar around Keith’s neck and strapped him to a backboard, then lifted him carefully into the waiting ambulance.

Covered with blood, Cole watched the ambulance pull away. The office secretary approached him. “Are you okay?”

Cole nodded.

“Thanks for helping,” she said. “Go home and clean up. I’ll have you excused from class until you get back.”

When Cole arrived home, his mother still hadn’t left for work. Coming from her bedroom, she spotted Cole, his T-shirt covered in blood. “Oh no!” she cried. “Did Keith do this to you again?”

“Keith wrecked his skateboard.”

“Where are you hurt?”

“This is all his blood,” Cole said. “I helped him. I held his head until the ambulance came.”

“You helped him?”

“Someone had to.”

All day, rumors of Keith’s accident spread. After Cole returned to school, kids kept asking him what had happened.

“I guess he couldn’t stop,” Cole repeated.

“Did you make him fall?” one student asked.

“No,” Cole replied firmly, haunted by the memory of Keith’s scared eyes. He wondered if this accident would make Keith realize how foolish he was being.

When school finally ended, Cole stopped by the office to ask about Keith.

“He was admitted to the hospital,” the secretary said.

“The one near the Interstate?”

She nodded, raising an eyebrow.

“Thanks.”

Peter caught up to Cole as he headed out the front door. “Where are you going?” he asked.

Cole didn’t feel much like explaining, but he didn’t want to hurt Peter’s feelings either. “I’m going to the hospital to check on Keith.”

Peter wrinkled his forehead with a puzzled look. “Why are you doing that?” he asked. “He tried to run you over.”

“I’m just going to see if he’s okay.”

“You’re weird,” Peter said. “I hope he hurt his brain! Can I go with you?”

Cole hesitated and then nodded. “Sure.”

“Maybe we can go someplace afterward and try to be invisible again,” Peter said.

Cole nodded but was lost in thought. The hospital was nearly a mile from school, and he doubted he would be allowed to see Keith when they got there. He still wasn’t sure why he was going.

When they arrived, Cole asked for directions to Keith’s room.

“Are you family?” the duty nurse asked.

Cole shook his head. “Just friends.”

Peter frowned at Cole. “Friends?” he whispered. “Like mud.”

The nurse motioned down the hall. “Room three fourteen. He’s in bad shape, and his family is with him.”

Cole hesitated outside Keith’s room. He found himself more afraid of facing Keith in a bed than on the street with his gang. Maybe he shouldn’t have come. Taking a deep breath, he walked in.

Keith’s parents were standing beside his bed. They turned and greeted Cole and Peter when they entered. “Thanks for stopping by,” Keith’s mother said.

Keith looked like a mummy with his face wrapped in gauze. Only his eyes showed. A straw protruded from his mouth through the gauze. Two holes allowed him to breathe through his nose. An IV bag hung beside the bed. A tube from it ran into Keith’s arm—he was totally helpless, unable to talk or move. Fear flashed into his eyes when he saw Cole approach. His gaze darted around the room for help.

Cole fumbled with his words. “I just came to see how you’re doing.”

After staring up for a moment, Keith reached to his side and picked up a notepad and pen. Awkwardly he scribbled a message and handed it to Cole. The note said,
Why are you here?

“To see how you’re doing,” Cole repeated. “I don’t want you hurt.”

Keith scribbled another note and handed it to Cole. It said,
Thanks for the help.

“No big deal,” Cole mumbled. “You were choking and bleeding—nobody else was helping you.”

Keith stared up curiously.

Cole coughed and looked around. Keith’s parents were watching him. “Hey, we gotta run,” Cole said to Keith. “I just wanted to check on you. Get better, okay.”

“Yeah, g-g-get better,” Peter said.

As Cole and Peter turned to leave, Keith’s father stopped them. “Thanks for coming. I’m Troy Arnold, Keith’s dad.” He put out his hand. “And your names are?”

Cole shook his hand. “I’m Cole,” he said. “And this is Peter.”

The man frowned. “You’re not Cole Matthews, the boy who filed assault charges against my son?”

“He beat me up pretty bad,” Cole said, pointing to his own black eye and swollen cheek. He lifted his shirt to show his bruises.

Mrs. Arnold gasped. “Then why are you here today?”

Cole hesitated. “I’m not exactly sure, but I didn’t want Keith hurt. I gotta get going.”

“That was too weird,” Peter said as they rode the elevator down to the main floor. “Way too weird. Why did you do that?”

Cole didn’t answer.

“Hello, Planet Earth to Cole.”

Cole stopped on the sidewalk outside the hospital and faced Peter. “When my mom gets home tonight, I’m going down to drop the charges against Keith.”

Peter frowned. “You’ve really lost it now. First you visit Keith at the hospital and then you drop the charges?
Excuuuse
me! This is the jerk who beat you up and tried to run you over. You should be beating the snot out of him.”

“I
am
still fighting him,” Cole said, realizing it even as he spoke.

“By visiting him at the hospital and dropping charges?”

Cole nodded. “I’m fighting him with my heart.”

Peter jabbed a finger in Cole’s chest. “You’re
really
weird.”

Cole wanted to be quiet without hurting Peter’s feelings, so he pointed to a small knoll just past the end of the parking lot. “Let’s go sit on that hill and try to be invisible.”

“Okay.”

Soon both boys were sitting quietly on the grassy knoll, their eyes closed. This time Cole focused his mind simply on being empty. He pretended he was a big leaky bucket hanging from a hook, and every drip from the bucket made him emptier. The water dripped slower and slower and slower. For nearly an hour he imagined water leaking out until finally the bucket was completely dry and floated away into the sky. As the bucket disappeared, Cole opened his eyes.

He found two robins close by picking worms from the grass. Sensing another presence, Cole glanced up and caught his breath. Barely twenty feet away stood the old homeless man, his ragged white blanket draped over his shoulders. Baggy pants hung from his bony frame, but his shirt was tucked in and his pant cuffs were rolled up neatly so they didn’t drag on the ground. The bum stood motionless on the grass, halfway between them and his cart. His gaze was relaxed, as if he had been standing there for some time.

Cole reached out and touched Peter’s arm. Peter opened his eyes, blinked, and spotted the old man. He started to stand but stopped when the homeless man crouched and placed something in the grass. Without looking back, the man retreated and continued down the sidewalk, pushing his cart.

Peter jumped to his feet and ran to retrieve the object. “It’s the same bear he was carving the day the police arrested him, except now it’s finished,” he exclaimed.

Cole took the miniature bear and rolled it in his fingers, tracing his thumb over the delicate body. “It looks real enough to start breathing,” he said. “Why did he give it to us?”

“Maybe because I gave him the bear I carved,” Peter said. “Or maybe he knows we returned his cart to him that day.”

“Maybe,” Cole said.

Chapter 9

T
HAT EVENING, COLE
told his mother he wanted to drop charges against Keith.

“You’re making a huge mistake,” she argued.

“It’s what I need to do,” Cole insisted. He told her of his visit to the hospital. “Do you remember when Garvey said I should try fighting with my heart?”

“Are you sure this is what he meant?”

Cole wasn’t sure of anything, but it seemed right. He nodded.

“Okay then, let’s go—I’ll get the car keys,” she said.

As Cole had figured, the police tried to talk him out of dropping charges. “We need people to stand up and fight,” the sergeant argued. “That’s all thugs understand.”

“I am fighting. In my own way.”

“You’re chickening out,” the sergeant insisted.

Cole didn’t know how to explain to the officer that it had taken far more courage to visit Keith in the hospital than to file charges or fight him with fists. A huge weight lifted off his shoulders as he walked from the police station. It was the first time in his life that he felt he had really won a fight, not by controlling Keith but by controlling his own reaction. This was what Garvey had been talking about.

Cole rode home with his mother, lost in thought. He had always assumed that when two people fought, someone needed to lose. But today, nobody had lost. Cole realized he had done more than make it hard for Keith to be an enemy. By preserving Keith’s dignity, he had also saved his own.

It was a week before Keith returned to school, his cheeks and nose still bandaged. Cole spotted him in the hallway and approached him. “How are you doing?” he asked.

Distrust showed in Keith’s eyes. “How does it look like I’m doing?”

“Man, you really crashed hard,” Cole said. “Are you okay?”

“It hurts to talk and I have trouble breathing. Does that make you happy?”

“I didn’t want you hurt,” Cole said.

He could see Keith struggling with his emotions. “Thanks for dropping the charges,” Keith said. “Why did you do that? And why did you help me when I crashed and then come to see me in the hospital?”

Cole shrugged. “To show you I wasn’t a jerk.”

Keith stared down at his shoes. “I’m the one who’s been a jerk.”

The bell rang.

“We better get going,” Cole said, feeling the world lift from his shoulders.

Cole felt good to be sorting some things out for himself, but Minneapolis Central High still simmered with fear and anger. Tensions ran high, and each morning the bulldog’s pedestal was tagged with new gang symbols. Many students feared coming to school. Cole wondered how long it would be before something boiled over.

His answer came all too soon.

That weekend the school was vandalized; windows were broken and paint was sprayed on the front doors.

After school on Monday, Cole was waiting patiently for Peter near the front entrance. Students milled around, talking and waiting for rides. When Peter didn’t show, Cole returned inside. From the hallway, he spotted a commotion in the main office. Peter’s parents were there, along with Ms. Kennedy and the school nurse, all crowding around someone in a chair. Cole ran in to find Peter, sitting bent over, clothes torn and face bruised and swollen. “What happened?” he cried.

Peter’s father turned and gave Cole a shove. “Get away from our son.”

Cole backed away and watched as Peter was helped to his feet and led, limping, from the office. His lip was cut and his eye was swollen, nearly closed.

“What happened?” Cole asked the secretary.

“He was attacked in one of the bathrooms. Somebody turned out the lights and beat him up.”

Cole thought he might vomit. Peter had worked so hard and come so far—he didn’t deserve this. Cole felt responsible. Stomach churning, he walked from the school and wandered aimlessly. He wished he was on a spaceship leaving Earth, never to return.

When he finally got home, Cole skipped eating and told his mother he didn’t feel good. He spent the evening lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling.

The next morning at school, word of Peter getting beat up was overshadowed by news that one of the students had committed suicide by taking a bunch of drugs. It turned out to be the girl who’d been called a slut the first day of school—the one Cole had helped when she was hassled in the cafeteria. Her mother had found a note beside her bed saying she couldn’t take being picked on anymore.

Talk of the suicide spread like wildfire. Cole walked the halls feeling numb. First the vandalism, then Peter’s beating, and now this! His eyes filled with tears. It was crazy, so crazy. Suicide hadn’t killed the girl. The kids who tormented her were the real killers.

After school, Cole returned home and called Peter’s house. When there was no answer, he tried calling Garvey. As the phone rang and rang, Cole squeezed the handset harder. “C’mon! Don’t they give parole officers answering machines?” he muttered with building frustration. He was about to hang up when Garvey answered.

“Hello?”

“Garvey, this is Cole. Did you hear about Peter getting beat up?”

“No, what happened?”

Cole tried to keep his voice from shaking. “Someone turned the lights out in the bathroom and beat him up really bad.”

“How is he now?”

“I don’t know. Nobody answers the phone. His parents won’t let me near him. And then, last night, a girl at school committed suicide. This place is going crazy.”