The Revealers by Doug Wilhelm Page B

Brown!”
    â€œYou suck, Brown! You all suck! You’re all ganging-up suckhead coward asses, you know that?”
    â€œGeez—you can’t even swear normal, Geekowitz!” said Blanchette, smiling. “So, you want to fly, Bird Boy? Or would you like to apologize to the man?”
    Elliot’s head whipped around. He spat in Blanchette’s face.
    I yelled, “No!” and sprinted toward them.
    Blanchette’s head jerked back; his arm shot up to wipe his cheek. Elliot’s head dropped, Chris lunged, and then
Blanchette went lunging, too. They were leaning down grappling and I got there just as Elliot, his hands grabbing upward and his face wide open, came loose and fell away.
    He was crumpled up in the rocks, partway down in the rushing water. Burke and Blanchette backed up and looked at me, wide-eyed. Then they turned and pounded off the bridge.
    They were gone.
    Chris grabbed my arm. “Come on!” he yelled.
    We ran the other way, the bridge shaking beneath us. We scrambled down the steep riverbank, and started hopping across the rocks.
    â€œElliot!” I was yelling. “Elliot!” I couldn’t hear an answer.
    Out where the water kept them wet the big rocks were slippery. You had to stay on the dry parts or you could go down. Chris jumped ahead, from rock to rock. Out in the middle he put his hand on a rock and hopped down into water. I slipped and banged my knee—but I got there.
    Under the bridge Chris was in swirling water up to his waist. He was leaning back against the current and he had Elliot by the shoulders, trying to pull him out of the water. Elliot’s head was rolling around.
    I slid down and into the water. I guess it was cold; I didn’t notice. I got one of Elliot’s arms and Chris hauled on the other. We pulled him loose and hoisted him onto a rock. I was yelling at him, the water was rushing by, and my heart was pounding in my ears.

VULCANIZING
    â€œWhy?” Catalina said. “Why’d he do it?”
    We were sitting in the emergency room on colored plastic chairs, the kind with a shiny square bar underneath the whole row.
    â€œWell, he was mad about what happened to you,” I said. “But I also think it was all the stuff people’ve done to him for years.”
    â€œPeople have really been doing things to him for years?”
    â€œOh yeah. It’s always been open season on Elliot.”
    She shook her head. Her face was flushed. “And those two just ran away?”
    â€œYeah. When they lost him and he fell, they got scared.”
    â€œThey could have killed him.”
    â€œWell … it wasn’t that far to fall.”
    â€œBut he hit his head.”
    â€œYeah.” I couldn’t argue with that. When we pulled Elliot out, his eyes were rolling back and he didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know who he was.
    Catalina was looking down the hall where they’d taken Elliot. His mom was in there with him. His two older sisters,
Jaimie and Hannah, were looking up at the TV that was hanging in a corner. My mom sat next to them, paging through a magazine.
    After we got him out, after Chris ran to the house next to the park and called for the ambulance and came back, I went and called my mom at work. I asked if she would try to find Catalina’s number, and call her. The ambulance came, then my mom picked me up and took me home so I could change, then we picked up Catalina and drove to the hospital. Chris didn’t come. He was pretty upset. “We didn’t mean to,” he kept saying while we were waiting for the ambulance. “We didn’t mean to.”
    â€œCatalina?” My mom was looking up from her magazine. “Do your parents know you’re here?”
    â€œI left a note for my dad.”
    â€œOh,” she said. “What about your mom?”
    Catalina looked away. “She’s not here,” she said softly. “She’s back