Victor, Victorious

Chapter Six

The boys had landed with thuds. It wasn't immediately clear if either hit his head very hard or not. They both lay still, facedown.

Courtney rushed to her brother, Sergio and Bart to Victor.

No one knew what to do. They just shouted, "Are you okay?! Are you okay?!" but got no response.

Finally, after half a minute, Victor stirred. He moaned, rolled over to his side, tried to stand. But he was dizzy, like that one time he snuck some beers from his dad's stash.

"Sit down, Victor," said Sergio.

Bart nodded. "Yeah, stay down, man."

Victor just sat there for a moment, looking at Colin. "Is he...? Is he gonna be alright...?"

Courtney cried. "I don't know!"

Sergio knelt beside his friend. "How you feeling?"

"My hands..." Victor looked at his palms, wiggled his fingers. "They feel funny." There was also a buzzing in his ears like television static.

"'Funny' how?" asked Sergio.

"They're, like, all tingly. But they don't really hurt or anything."

"Let me see." Bart grabbed Victor's hands. "Damn, dawg. Your skin's all hot. Like when I walk barefoot by mi abuela's pool in the summ—"

Bart screamed in agony as he was suddenly shocked by thousands of volts of electricity. His muscles tensed before he passed out and crumpled, smacking his head on the ground.

Sergio jumped back. "Victor, what did you do?!"

The other boy was speechless. What the hell had just happened?

Sergio went over to Bart. "Hey, dawg, are you...? Hey...Bart?"

Victor thought back to when his mom had been in the hospital. A kid was brought in with a head injury. The nurses were very careful about moving him at all.

"Just—wait!" To stop Sergio from causing any more damage, Victor grabbed the boy by the shoulder.

Sergio immediately shrieked in pain. His eyes rolled back, showing their whites. He collapsed next to his pal.

Victor crawled away. "Oh, man. Oh, man."

Courtney held a hand over her mouth. "What's going on?"

What was going on? Holy crap. Holycrapholycrapholycrap.

"I...I..." Victor stammered. "I gotta get outta here..."

He staggered to his feet. It seemed as if he had tweaked his right knee in the fall from the telephone pole. His back was sore, too, where he had been struck.

Victor did his best to ignore the pain. He stumbled past Courtney, lifting his backpack from the ground, and hobbled out of the alley.

"You're just gonna leave me here?" Courtney yelled after him. "Just leave us all here like this?"

She sobbed as she looked at her brother. He was pale, lifeless. Definitely dead.

Colin sat upright. Courtney, not expecting that in the least, fell back.

"God! Colin? Are you okay?"

The boy held a hand to his head. Above the bridge of his nose, the glasses were twisted out of whack. "Man..."

"How do you feel?"

He didn't answer. Instead, Colin looked at Sergio and Bart. He asked, "What happened to them?"

Courtney explained, "It was really weird. Victor touched that one kid, and he screamed, like he was on fire or something. He fell, and then Victor grabbed the other guy, and he screamed...and...and..."

Colin scanned the alley. "Where is Victor?"

The girl pointed. "He ran that way. Colin, are you okay?!"

Her brother stood, dusting himself off. "Huh, would you look at that?" He held out his left hand. The ring and pinky fingers stuck out at horrible angles. "Broke these, I guess."

"Damn. That looks bad."

"Listen to me. I don't know what happened to these idiots." He indicated Sergio and Bart. "But, honestly, I...I feel..."

"Yeah?"

He smiled. "I feel special. Different."

"What's that mean?"

"Awesome. I feel really awesome."

"Your fingers!"

"People break fingers all the time."

Courtney looked at her brother's back. A hole had been torn through his shirt, the fabric burned black. His skin was also scarred and a little charred. "But you and Victor both got hit by lightning!"

Colin's eyes became ice cold. "So?"

"What do we do about these two?"

"Jerk-io and Barf? Who cares?"

"Are they alive?"

Colin stared at the boys for a little while, massaging the sides of his head. He said, "Well, I can hear the electricity in their brains."

"What?"

"They aren't dead."

Sure enough, both boys began to stir. They were obviously in pain, very slow to move, unable to get up.

Colin gestured to them. "See, Courtney? Alive, but not necessarily well."

"Uhhhhh," was all Sergio had to say.

Bart agreed. "I don't feel so good."

Colin laughed, pointed. "Bart, you wet yourself." The crotch in the boy's jeans was indeed soaked. "How pathetic. Don't worry, guys. You'll live. I think you'll be hurting for awhile, though."

Colin stepped up to Bart and kicked him squarely in the ribs. Bart went back down, sniveling.

"Yeah! This is what you get for screwing with my brother!"

She drove her foot deep into Sergio's side. He folded like a lawn chair next to Bart, gasping for breath.

Colin nodded approval. "Let's go."

"But my shoes are still up there! Aren't we gonna try to get them down?"

"How do you suppose we do that?"

"I don't know! You're the smart one!"

"Forget your shoes." Colin lifted something from the ground.

It was Victor's wallet, forgotten by its owner.

Colin flipped through it, grinned like a devil. "We have something even more valuable."