The ambulance arrived first, followed by four police cruisers. The paramedics took the man away on a stretcher—he was still unconscious and barely alive by the looks of it—while the police blocked off the alley with yellow crime scene tape. The officers wanted to ask me some questions, so I gave up any hope of making it to my first class. I described the men as best I could: big, burly, and mean-looking. “You might want to check if any large animals recently escaped from the zoo,” I said, hoping a bit of humor would stop me from trembling.
One of the officers nearby gave a chuckle, but the one taking my statement looked stoic. “Zoo? Why would you say that? Did you hear them say something about the zoo?”
“What? No. I’m just saying they were big. Like animals. But they weren’t animals.” He just stared at me, so I added sheepishly, “They were people.”
The officer sighed and pointed back down the alley. “Which way did they go?”
“Left,” I said. “They went left.”
An officer looking over the scene for clues pointed at a broken window facing the alley. “Wrong place at the wrong time,” he said. “Looks like those men were trying to break in. I bet the man you helped interrupted them. Thieves aren’t big on leaving witnesses.” He jotted down a couple more notes and added, “There’s been a string of break-ins around here this past week. I bet it’s the same men.”
I shuddered. A couple minutes earlier and it would’ve been me who interrupted the break-in. I might have been the one getting carted off on a stretcher.
Despite my protests, an officer—the one who had understood my warped sense of humor—insisted on calling my mom. I reddened as he talked to her, going on and on about my “act of bravery,” until he finally handed the phone to me.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Dean?” Her voice was sharp, and I imagined her clutching the cord of her phone as she paced in her office. “Are you okay, Dean?”
“I’m fine. It wasn’t that big a deal.”
“Are you hurt? The officer said you stopped some muggers from killing a man.” She sounded skeptical. “Is that true?”
I snorted. Only Mom would entertain the idea that I had hired a police officer to give her a prank call. “It’s kinda true. I didn’t actually—”
“What were you thinking, Dean!? Putting yourself in harm’s way like that. You could’ve been killed.”
“Mom, just—”
Now Mom sounded shrill. “I’m coming down there right now. Just stay where you are and I’ll be right there.”
“Mom!” It wasn’t often that I raised my voice to my mother, but the situation seemed to call for it. Plus, given what had just happened, I figured she’d forgive me. “I’m fine. Really. It wasn’t that big of a deal. You don’t need to come down here. Please, don’t come down here.”
There was a lengthy pause. Mom seemed to be considering her options. “You promise you’re okay?”
“I promise.”
“Do you feel well enough to go to school?”
I might not have been the smartest kid on the block, but even I saw the opportunity. Since to-day was Friday, taking the day off would mean I’d get a three-day weekend. I turned my back on the officer and lowered my voice. “Maybe it would be nice not to see everyone today. I need to go home and get changed anyway.”
“Why do you need to get changed?”
“Well, my shirt’s ripped and—”
There was a sharp gasp from the other side of the phone and Mom’s voice turned shrill again. “Ripped? Did the muggers attack you!?” Her voice reached a pitch that probably had every dog in the block barking.
“Mom, I’m fine. I’m not hurt. It’s a small rip. I think I caught it on the fence or something. I’m not bleeding.” I probably shouldn’t have said anything, especially since my mom faints so easily. Dad and I always joked that her fainting was the reason the university covered the floor of her office with double-thick plush carpet even though all her colleagues got hardwood. “Okay, Mom,” I said, raising my voice slightly and hoping some of what I said would make it through her hysteria and calm her down. “I’ll just go home and get cleaned up. I’m fine. Don’t worry. Bye.”
I handed the phone back to the officer. “She, um, she said I should just go home and get cleaned up.”
“I’ll have someone drive you.” The officer looked over his shoulder and gestured to one of his colleagues near the perimeter line.
“No, no, you don’t need to do that,” I said. We weren’t that far from the school and I’d probably be spotted by someone I knew. Then everyone would want to know how I’d managed to hitch a ride with the police. Sure, I wanted to see the inside of a cop car, but not badly enough to deal with that kind of scrutiny. “I’m fine to walk. I only live a few blocks away. Honest, I’ll be fine.”
He shrugged, then handed me a card. “If you think of anything else, a better description of the men you saw, or if you remember anything later, give me a call.”
“Sure.” I slipped the card into my jeans pocket and ducked under the police tape.
I started feeling different right then. I don’t know if I’d call it a sense of dread necessarily, but it was a general uneasiness that felt all the more urgent because my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. At the time, I thought it was just strained nerves.
It wasn’t.
***
I took the long way home, hoping a walk would calm me. It did. In fact, the more I thought about what had happened, the calmer I became and the more I started believing that I had actually done something remarkable. I’d stood up to two muggers. Thugs who might’ve had machine guns and machetes for all I knew. I’d risked my life for a stranger! I was a hero.
I grinned as I turned left on Fairfield Drive, stopping at Oakridge Mall. A mob milled around the doors to Gadget Emporium, one of the largest electronics chains in the country. Brightly colored banners announcing the grand opening flapped from flagpoles. An extra large banner was plastered across the red-brick structure, while on the rooftop a giant iPod-holding inflatable gorilla waved in time with the breeze and held a sign that promised “Free giveaways! Today only!”
When you’re a kid who doesn’t get an allowance, the lure of a free giveaway is kind of hard to ignore. Plus, what if the cosmos were rewarding me for risking my life? If so, I wasn’t going to argue. And if that reward came in the form of some cool—and free—electronic device, all the better.
Determined, I cinched the straps of my backpack and pushed, ducked, and shimmied my way past one person after the next, buffeted back and forth until I stood at the front, my face inches from the double-wide glass doors.
Displays, advertisements, and colorful boxes covered with blinking lights lined the aisles and dangled from the ceiling. A handful of employees scuttled around, doing some last-minute shelf stocking.
“What time is it?” a woman asked over my shoulder. “It should be open now, shouldn’t it?”
“Hey! Stop pushing,” another voice said.
“Ouch!”
“Get off my foot!”
“C’mon already, open the doors.”
The crowd pressed forward as an employee wearing a dark blue smock approached the doors from inside. He smiled, gave an excited wave, and inserted a key into the lock. Then he looked down at his watch and silently mouthed down the final ten seconds.
As soon as the key clicked, the crowd surged. But the automatic doors didn’t open quickly enough. My shoulder caught the edge as I was shoved through, and I staggered to regain my footing only to get slammed against the floor. I managed to pull myself to the side before I was pulverized to lunchmeat.
Great, I thought. I survive a couple muggers only to be killed by a mob of bargain hunters.
A foot caught me in the ribs. As I started coughing, an arm reached around my chest, heaved me to my feet, and yanked me through the mob, away from the entrance.
“Jeez, kid, whaddaya think you were doing down there?”
“G… getting trampled, m… mostly,” I gasped, rubbing the side of my chest. “Thanks for helping me,” I managed.
“That’s what I’m here for,” he said, keeping his gaze fixed on the crowd. He wore a green Gadget Emporium golf shirt that was ripped and stretched, and he had a few scratches on his arms. I probably wasn’t the first person he’d fished out of the mob.
A heavyset woman came barreling out of nowhere, and we both leaped back as she dove into a videogame display next to us. She emerged from the twisted cardboard a moment later with a triumphant scream and a copy of Bounty Hunter III clutched in her hands.
“What is wrong with these people?” I wheezed.
“When there’s free stuff to be had, people go nuts,” the guy said. “Are you gonna be all right?” He grimaced when I turned to him. “Ouch. You don’t look so good.” He gestured to my T-shirt. “Is that your blood? Do you want me to call someone for you?” He pulled out a cell phone from his pocket.
“Blood?” I glanced down at the spatter across my shirt, shivering as I remembered the man in the alley. “I’m fine. It’s not my blood.”
He cocked an eyebrow.
“Really. I’m not too hurt.”
Another wave of shoppers closed in on the display. I dove left and he dove right. I heard a crash but thought it best not to waste time looking back. So much for the cosmos. I slid around the outer wall of the store until I ducked through a side exit.