What Have We Done (8)

pounds he’s no match for Derek and his goons.

Derek lets him above water, Donnie sucks in a morsel of precious air, and he’s back under.

Donnie should’ve waited for Ben before going in the pool. Derek and his friends leave Donnie alone when Benny’s around.

His eyes feel like they’re going to shoot out of his head, torpedoes jetting into the blue haze, his lungs burning. But Derek won’t release his grip. This isn’t the first time Derek has dunked Donnie under—Donnie has even trained for Derek’s attacks, practiced holding his breath. On the walk home from school he can hold his breath from the boarded-up house with the mattress in the yard, past the pit bull raging after him along the chain-link fence, to the corner bodega. But today is different.

Derek’s grip is more forceful, the time Donnie is submerged longer.

Donnie’s thoughts are floating, his head light. He should fight. I can’t die here! He needs to live.

To show them all. That he’ll be somebody. He’ll be onstage in stadiums and on MTV and everyone who ever called him Twig or Cletus or Redneck will beg for backstage tickets. They’ll want his autograph. Brag to their friends that they knew him way back when.

Fight, Donnie. But he’s too weak. In the blur of legs and bodies in the over-chlorinated pool, the water splashes violently. Someone cannonballing. His chest hurts from holding his breath.

More splashing.

Then, miraculously, Derek releases his hold. Donnie feels two hands under his armpits and he’s yanked out of the water.

Next thing he knows, he’s on the concrete lip of the pool. Rolled on his side, someone pounding on his back with an open hand. He hears a cough and feels water jettison from his mouth.

He’s on his back now, the wind howling, the world spinning. He makes out the figure looking down at him. Benny. Big, tall Benny, standing there with his hands on his hips, a Superman pose. He is Superman, Black Superman, as he’d say.

His best friend nods, and Donnie knows he’s going to be okay.

But when his vision clears, he’s not at the Chestertown public swimming pool. Derek Brood isn’t

nursing a bloody lip. There’s no battered diving board, no rusted fence surrounding the shadeless, overcrowded slab of concrete. And then it hits him all over again, nearly destroys him: Ben is dead.

Donnie tries to sit up, but a voice says, “Whoa, hold on there, amigo.”

A man with a beard, standing with other men with beards, looks down at him. The floor sways and there’s the smell of fish and salt, the sound of waves and wind. He’s on a vessel, a commercial fishing boat, maybe.

The fishermen look like they’ve seen a ghost—or a miracle.

“You’re one lucky son of a bitch, brother,” one of them says.





CHAPTER SEVEN

NICO

A sliver of light from his cell phone’s flashlight cuts through the black. Nico needs to preserve the battery. There’s no service down here, but maybe if they dig down deep enough searching for him they’ll get a faint ping. He knows it’s unlikely. His shoulder aches, but the bleeding seems to have stopped. He swings the light toward his feet. Four red beady eyes stare back at him. He’s never been so happy to see rats. Scurrying, dirty, disgusting varmints that will unquestionably tear his flesh down to the bone if he dies. But for now, they’re a welcome sight: They’re alive. There’s still oxygen. No deadly CO? buildup in this cave of gloom. Yet, anyway.

Nico thinks back to his mandatory mine-safety training. He should have paid more attention.

There’s been a roof collapse. He’s not buried alive, so the biggest risk now is running out of air. The explosion has likely sucked away most of the oxygen, but he’s in a chamber. He needs to find a SCSR, the self-contained oxygen self-rescuers. They’re stored in receptacles along the mine. And he remembers that he needs to keep his movements to a minimum, use as little air as possible. That won’t be a problem. He’s sore, groggy. One of the rats scurries onto his leg and he kicks it away, sending a searing pain through him.

He wonders if anyone is searching for him or if they even know he’s missing. They have to know about the mine collapse. The crew has sensors that detect problems underground. MSHA, WVOMHST, NIOSH, and the other alphabet soup of mine-safety agencies are probably on-site. The showrunner will make sure the cast and crew are accounted for.

The cast.

It was Roger who got Nico into this mess—asking him to meet at Mine B after hours. But it wasn’t Roger who attacked him, Nico is sure of that. He never got a clear look, but if Nico has to guess, it was a woman. Who is she? And what in the hell was that weapon that pierced into him with such ease?

He clicks off the phone’s flashlight. It’s frightening in the dark, but the iPhone is already on low-power mode. His mouth is dry and his shoulder is screaming.

He’s supposed to bang on the roof bolts; they have equipment to listen for it. He wonders for a moment what the Vegas oddsmakers would set his chances of survival.

He shakes his head. Even now, his thoughts return to gambling. He should make a promise—an oath—that if he gets out of this jam he’ll never make another bet again. Maybe a 12-step program will stick this time. What were those twelve steps? Another instance when he should’ve paid better

attention.

In the disorienting darkness, his mind meanders. He’s in a black hole, time relative, impossible to gauge. He resists the urge to check the phone again. With his good arm, he reaches into his front pocket. He feels the ridges of the old silver dollar. Some good-luck charm it turned out to be. He should flip the coin: Heads he’ll survive, tails … He decides against it.