The Pink Soccer Ball
More laughter. Tabitha and Mac were kicking my pink soccer ball to each other. I shouted louder. “That’s my soccer ball!” A picture of calm, they watched me as I stalked closer. I was looking for a fight, but they weren’t cooperating.
“No it isn’t, Bertie,” Mac said.
“That is my ball. I brought it with me from North Carolina.” I remembered squeezing the soccer ball between boxes of junk inside the trailer.
They stopped kicking the ball.
“Even if it is your ball, which it isn’t,” Tabitha said, “why can’t we kick it? That’s why soccer balls exist, so they can be kicked.”
“You know what? You’re right,” I said, putting on a fake smile. “If you guys want to keep playing with my soccer ball, go right ahead. But first you got to go fetch it.”
I booted the ball. It landed on the road and bounced across the street. Stopped rolling about fifteen feet onto someone’s lawn.
“I’ll get it,” Mac said.
The first thing that happened was I saw and heard a crow up in a tree. That same bizarro crow I’d seen earlier, I was pretty sure. It shrieked at me. Caw! Caw! Caw!
All at once the world slowed down. Mac dashed after the ball and into the street. He didn’t check for traffic. I heard my heartbeat, loud in my ears.
Ba-bump … Ba-bump … Ba-bump …
A silver pickup truck rounded a corner. The driver, a middle-aged man with curly brown hair, glanced down at a phone he held.
Ba-bump … Ba-BUMP … BA-BUMP …
Tabitha screamed, “Mac! Truck! Look out!”
My heart roared BA-BUMP … BA-BUMP … BA-BUMP …
Mac froze in the middle of the road as the truck got closer, speeding on through.
BA-BUMP-BA-BUMP-BA-BUMP …
“No!” I yelled.
BA-BUMP-BA-BUMP-BA-BUMP …
The crow shrieked, CAW! CAW! CAW!
The driver’s eyes shocked wide.
BA-BUMP-BA-BUMP-BA-BUMP …
Tires bit the road as the driver tried to stop.
BA-BUMP-BA-BUMP-BA-BUMP …
The truck was about to hit Mac, brakes squealing from the pressure.
CAW! CAW! CAW!
CRASH! SMACK! CRUNCH!
BA-BUMP-BA-BUMP-BA-BUMP!!!
The truck’s front fender struck Mac and knocked him backward onto the road. When the truck stopped moving, Mac was underneath it.
Tabitha screamed in a way I had never heard before, as she ran to her brother. The kind of scream you’d never forget.
The driver jumped out of his truck and looked beneath it.
“Kid? Can you hear me? Help is on the way! Are you alive? Say something if you can hear me.”
Mac said nothing. He wasn’t moving, not at all.
The air thickened around me. I could not breathe. I was going under. Mac had run across the street because of something stupid I did. And now he was lying on the road, under a truck. Was this really happening? I was pretty sure I had killed the kid.
The door to Howard’s office flew open. Mom and Howard, wearing crisp white clothing, burst out of the office and ran to the accident scene.
“Mac! Oh my God! Oh my God!” Howard cried out. He dove to the street so he could get a clear view of his son under the pickup. “Mac, say something. Tell me you’re okay, Mac! Please tell me you’re okay.” Reaching for Mac’s left arm, Howard took Mac’s pulse at the wrist. There was blood on Howard’s coat sleeve. He said over and over, “Hang in there, Buddy. The ambulance is coming!”
Patients from Howard’s office poured out into the street. Neighbors left their houses. Two older boys stopped their bikes. Drivers parked their cars, gawking at the little boy pinned under the pickup truck. Some people whispered prayers; others gasped and put their hands to their mouths and hearts.
A few minutes ago, the world had slowed. But now it sped up. Faster and faster like it was about to spin out of orbit. When my mom looked at me, my legs wobbled. A siren sounded in the distance. My heart was this close to erupting out of my chest. What had I done to the bighearted eight-year-old boy who loved dogs and weirdness, and who wasn’t afraid to invest in lost causes?
Lights flashed as the ambulance arrived. Two medics jumped out. Howard scrambled out of the way as the medics slid under the truck. Working together, they fitted Mac with a neck brace and readied a backboard, which I recognized from watching Carolina Panthers football games with my dad. They used them on players whenever they suspected serious neck or back injuries.
A growing crowd of bystanders watched the medics work. I shivered. Even the filthy axeman was there, recording the events on his old cell phone, like an innocent boy getting struck by a truck was entertaining. The medics slid Mac onto the backboard and into their ambulance. Howard tried to crawl inside, but one of the medics told him to follow the ambulance in his car. A door slammed shut. Away they went, siren blaring.
Howard and Tabitha hurried to Howard’s minivan. Through the blurry haze of my falling tears, I caught Howard’s gaze. Face red and blotchy, Howard waved me away, loud and sharp. “Ride with your mother, Bertie!”
My mom was waiting for me in the driver’s seat. Climbing inside, I buckled up, numb and afraid. Mom backed up our car onto the road. We drove in silence for about a minute. She put her hand on my shaky knee. Looking up at her, I wanted to confess my sins. I wanted my mom to forgive me, and then lecture me about kindness, and putting other people first. I wanted to feel like I was her not-so-terrible daughter.
But all I could say was, “Mom, they’re going to blame me.” My head hung low. “I don’t know if I should go to the hospital. I don’t know if they will even want me there.”
“No one will blame you,” she said.
“No, they will! Tabitha will definitely blame me!”
“Bertie, you need to calm down. This is not about you, understand?”
“But don’t you want to know about––”
“We will talk later about everything,” she said. “Right now, we need to find out Mac’s condition at the hospital. Then we can figure out what’s what. Got it?”
There was no anger in her voice. She gave me a look of love. A mother’s love. It wounded me even deeper. Mac Morton and I would now be forever entwined, tangled up. I would always be the girl who caused Mac to be hit by a truck. He was badly hurt, and it was my fault. Depending on what happened next, lives hung in the balance. If Mac died, in a way, I would too. And that would mean the end of my mother.
Straining against my seatbelt, I clutched my knees to my chest. Like Alice in Wonderland, I wanted to shrink down so small I could crawl inside the glove box and hide. The shame of what I had done cut so deep, I didn’t want anyone to see me, especially my mom. When she found out that I was the reason Mac was riding in an ambulance, she would never look at me the same way again.
Mom turned onto the road for St. Anne Hospital, and my stomach clenched. Dark thoughts bounced around my brain like a bullet ricochet. Since we’d arrived in Altoona, I had been warning my mom and my dad and the Mortons that something horrible was going to happen.
And now I finally realized the harsh truth. I was the something horrible.
