Tutoring the Alpha

Chapter Eleven: Memory Lane

            Too shocked to respond, I stood gaping at my best friend in amazement while he shifted uncomfortably on his feet. My mind was reeling a mile a minute, but I couldn’t seem to come up with a suitable response besides open-mouthed disbelief.

“Everything okay out here?” Mickey’s voice permeated the stunned silence as he stepped out into the hall and took in my surprised expression and Sam’s guilty one.

“Ummm…yeah, I think so,” I finally said in an abnormally high voice, turning my back on Sam and taking Mickey’s hand. I lead him down the stairs, clomping clumsily until I reached the front door and ushered Mickey out.

“I’ll call you, ‘kay?” I squeaked before I practically slammed the door shut in his face and spun around, heart hammering in my chest. Too many questions and protests were clouding my judgment, but as I stood with my back pressed against the dark mahogany, I felt a pull in the back of my mind and I suddenly recalled Sam’s words from a few minutes ago.

Mickey wasn’t playing basketball that night. He wasn’t even on the court. I gasped as a feeling of utter relief and realization poured over me like water let out of a dam. I remembered that night. I remembered looking over the edge of the track and not seeing Sam.

You turned and bumped into somebody, and that’s why you fell. I remembered the impact, the shock, the fear.

I turned to go, and found myself crashing into somebody’s hard, muscled body. It felt like I’d run face-first into a wall, and I bounced back, hitting against the railing. To my horror, the wood splintered behind me, and before I could do anything I was falling backwards, all the way down to the court twenty-something feet below.

Tears welled up in my eyes involuntarily as the surge of memories threatened to destroy me. I gasped for breath, struggling not to cry. No. No, Mickey couldn’t…he couldn’t be…

That same somebody then jumped over the edge and grabbed you in midair, taking the brunt of the fall when you landed. The memory of falling, hard and fast, brought back an unpleasant splash of ice-cold, bone-chilling fear that I’d rather not go through again.

I let out a high-pitched shriek of terror again as I felt the ground slip from underneath my feet, and now I was falling rapidly. Although my eyes were scrunched tightly together, I suddenly felt the rough impact of something large and heavy slamming into me, and I screamed again as the ground came closer and closer.

“Sam!” I wailed, sinking to the ground as the air around me grew thicker and heavier and my breaths grew shallower and shallower. The room spun around me, and I felt like I was about to be sick. No. No, this can’t be happening. This isn’t happening.

The distance that you fell and the force of impact would’ve killed whoever was on the bottom. Through my blurred vision and wall of tears, I noticed that my hands and legs were shaking, and I felt an irrevocable sense of being out of control with panic hit me.

I let out an ear-splitting scream when I realized Mickey was hurt, much worse than I was. His face was cut up in several different places and blood was soaking into his clothes, as well as the floor beneath him. The arm that was twisted behind him looked mangled and broken in more than one spot, and I could see a bit of bone sticking out of his leg, which was completely bent the wrong way.

“No, I’ll be okay,” Mickey protested.

I bumped into Mickey. I fell over the railing and he grabbed me. Mickey saved my life.

This is not a boo-boo on your elbow, these are life threatening injuries!

            “Benny? Benny, can you hear me? Benny!” Sam’s voice sounded far off, as though he were shouting to me from Guatemala. I tried to gulp in more air, but my head was spinning too fast, too fast for me to concentrate. Darkness began to creep into my vision, dotting it and eventually luring me away until I couldn’t hear Sam anymore.