CHAPTER THREE STUART

Darkness came and I was in the quiet of my bedroom, all by myself, on my bed, which was in the middle of my room to keep me away from the walls. I was trying to sleep, but every time I closed my eyes I saw Sam on the floor. I rolled one way, then the other way, back and forth. I hate the dark. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. When I was little and still living with my biological mom I had to sometimes go in the closet when she drank too much or had a man over, and it was so dark in there. I always curled up in a small ball in the corner.

Now, my body was doing the same thing it did then, vibrating like a phone going off and it was like the person just kept phoning and phoning. I bolted up, ran to the walls, made a fist and punched. I didn't punch hard enough to make a hole, but then I fired another punch and cracked the plaster, making a little hole. My hand ached, so I held it for a second.

My bedroom door flung open and light shot in from the hallway like a bright laser beam.

"Stuart, that's enough," said my mother.

"I wanted to see Sam!" I punched again, making the crack a little bigger.

"I know you did. But it wasn't possible. You know the consequences of hitting your wall," she said.

"I don't care." She was always talking about stupid, stupid, stupid consequences. Didn't she know I didn't care? That's why my bed was in the middle of the room—so I couldn't stand up and punch the wall or draw on it from my bed. I had to get out of bed to get to the wall.

Well, I'd gotten out of bed.

She walked over to me and gently touched my arm. "How about we go downstairs for a few minutes? Have a snack?"

My body stopped vibrating and I didn't have any more energy to punch the wall. "Okay. Pizza."

"I can manage that," she said. She put her arm around me and guided me toward the door. "What happened to your night light?"

"I dunno."

"I'll make sure Dad fixes it while you eat."

We went downstairs to the kitchen. My older brother, Declan, was still up and he was sitting at the kitchen table, eating cereal. He's my biological brother and is three years older than me. We were adopted together, when I was five and he was eight. Now I'm fourteen and he's seventeen. Soon he's going to graduate from high school and get a job or go to school again. We both suck at school, although he does better than me. My parents want him to go to a school that will teach him how to be a mechanic because he loves cars.

We also have a brother, Randy, and a sister, Mary, but they aren't biological and are older and don't live in our house but in their own places. Randy works for some company and wears a suit to work, and Mary is a lawyer and married to a lawyer. Soon, she was going to have a baby, so I'd be Uncle Stuart.

Declan slurped at his cereal. I sat down across from him.

"You used my phone," he said.

"So?" I mumbled.

"You have to ask." He wiped his mouth off. Then he got up and took his bowl to the sink. "You wanna play Madden NFL?"

"Yeah," I said. Declan loved any video game with sports, but I liked ones with killing, shooting guns. I wasn't allowed to play those games though.

"Stuart," said my mother. "That's not an option for you tonight."

"Why?" I asked.

"You need to get some sleep because I'm going to wake you up early to fix the cracks in your wall."

"Did you punch again?" Declan asked.

I shrugged. "I dunno."

"He did," said my mother. "And he will have to fix it with putty and sand it down like he always does." My mother looked at me. "It's consequences. Now, what kind of pizza would you like?"

"Pepperoni," I said. "Why can't we just leave the walls? It's my room."

"Because they don't look very good." My mother stuck a piece of pizza in the microwave and pressed the buttons. "You need to respect where you live."

"Whatever," I said. "But not tonight, right?"

"No. I won't make you do it tonight. I know you've had a hard night." She put her hand on my shoulder and it felt good.

I slouched in my seat. "Is Sam gonna be okay?"

"I hope so." She spoke quietly. "He's in the hospital now and the doctors are taking care of him."

"That was so weird," said Declan. "He just collapsed."

"He's not weird!" I yelled.

"I didn't say he was weird," said Declan. "I said it was weird." Declan shook his head at me. "The way he fell was weird."

"Shut up!"

The microwave started beeping.

"Declan," said my mother. "Why don't you go to your room? Stuart has had a rough evening. We all have. I want to spend some quiet time with him."

"Okay," he said. "But I'm playing video games and he can't come in."

My mother put up her hand. "Thirty minutes max. Then I want you to get some sleep too."

Declan left, and my mother put my pizza in front of me. Then she sat down across from me. "I do understand, Stuart, how hard this is for you. We all have to hope that Sam will be okay. I promise, I'll call the hospital in the morning to find out how he is."

"I want to see him. Dad won't let me go to the hospital."

"Right now, only his family can see him, and they might not even see him until later. The doctors are working on him because his heart stopped for a little while. This is really serious. Even if Dad did let you go to the hospital, you would just sit in the hallway in a chair. The doctors wouldn't allow you in his room because they will have to run tests on him. It's better to stay here, but I promise if I hear anything I will tell you."

"Even if it's the middle of the night?"

"Yes, I promise." She held up her hand, and I tapped it. That meant she would wake me up, even though I normally hated to be woken. Sometimes I didn't fall asleep until 3 or 4 in the morning.

I stared at my pizza. "They hurt his heart by pounding on him."

"No, they didn't. If anything, by doing what they did with the defibrillator, they helped him." She squeezed my shoulder. "Do you understand that?"

I looked up at her. "A what?"

"It's called a defibrillator. I think Sam's trainer called it an AED, which is just a short-form name. Sam went into cardiac arrest—that means his heart stopped—so it was necessary to use the machine to get his heart started again. Would you like to look at this on the internet?"

"Sure."

As we scanned through information on the internet about what had happened to Sam, I ate my pizza. My mother talked to me and showed me things like she always did. The AED was actually short form for words that were way too long. It did help me to see that it was something that would help Sam's heart start again.

After I'd finished my pizza, she closed the lid on the computer. "Time for bed."

This time when I went to bed, my room was a bit lighter because my dad had fixed my night light. Plus, my mother put a door stopper in my door, so it didn't close shut on me. It helped a little. Both of them came in and said good night to me.

Lying on my bed, I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to sleep but everything bounced and bounced.

****

I must have slept because when I opened my eyes again it was morning, and my mother was shaking my shoulders.

"Time to get up," she said.

"No." I rolled over.

"You need to do a little work in your room after last night."

"Last night?"

For ten minutes (my mother put a timer on), I had to putty the cracks I had made on my bedroom wall. My dad came in to see how I was doing before he went to work and we talked about Sam still being in the hospital. My dad was a lawyer too, just like my sister Mary, so he went to work every morning. And sometimes he worked late. I wanted to see Sam, but both my mom and dad said they would let me know when I could go.

My mother dropped me and Declan off at school, and we walked in together. The first person I saw was Justin, the leader of the Best Buddies program. He organized all our events, even the dodgeball in the gym, which was my favourite because I love running and I'm faster than everyone, except for Sam.

"Hey, Stuart," said Justin.

"Hey," I mumbled. Nothing about the morning made me smile.

"How you doing this morning?" he asked.

I looked up at Justin. "Sam's hurt."

"I know," he said.

"He's not going to die?"

"I sure hope not."

"Will he play basketball again?"

"I don't know any more than you do, Bud."

"My parents won't let me see him."

Suddenly the ball rang. My aide, Tony Simmons, came to stand with us. Tony had only been working with me for a few weeks because my other aide moved. I've had a lot of aides. Some of them just didn't like being with me.

"You ready to head to class?" Tony asked me.

"No."

"Come on, let's go." He started walking and I knew he wanted me to follow him, but I didn't want to. I started running, as fast as I could, my backpack thumping against my back. I dodged kids in the hallway, like I was a football player. My dad taught me how to dodge when we played in the park. I heard someone tell me to stop running in the halls, but I didn't listen. I was rounding a corner and sliding, when I smacked into a body. I looked up and it was Mr. Fujimoto, the vice-principal. My backpack slid off my back and landed on the tiles with a thud.

"Slow down," said Mr. Fujimoto. "You know the rules."

I squatted down to pick up my books and stuff that had spilled out, all over the dirty tiles. Tony came up behind me and bent down to help. His face looked red. The bell rang before we'd picked everything up. All the other kids had gone to their classes.

Finally, Tony and I stood up and he handed the last book to me. "How about we walk the halls before we get started on our school work?" he asked.

I'd rather walk the halls then do schoolwork, so I nodded. We started walking. The halls were now clear of other kids.

"This is how we walk in the halls," he said. "Not run."

I didn't say anything but kept walking.

"Good job on the walking," he said.

I continued walking because I liked that he said I did a good job. "I know you must be worried about Sam," he said. "Did you not sleep very well last night?"

"My mother made me patch the walls in my room." I ran my finger along the wall.

"Last night?"

I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. His eyebrows were squished together. They were dark brown, like his hair, which always flopped over his eyes, but he wasn't black like my parents. Once he told me he was brown. That's how he described himself. He had so much hair on his eyebrows.

"She made me wake up when it was dark, and I had to work for hours," I said. "Right until morning."

He shook his head. "That's not good. I'll look into that," he said.

"They won't let me see Sam either."

"Well, Sam is quite sick."

"I want to see him in the hospital, but they said I can never go there. Never."