Dead to You

“Hey!” she says, and sits down next to me. “Make room!” she yells, and smacks Zack on the head. Everybody shoves down. She puts her hand on my shoulder. “You’ll be glad you came,” she says in my ear.

I shiver with excitement. I’m already glad.

The game isn’t nearly as exciting as being in the middle of a huge screaming crowd next to a girl you used to take baths with. I yell along with everybody when it comes time to compete for the juniors in the school spirit shout-off, but we take second place to the stupid loudmouth sophomores.

At one point I see my family, up in the first balcony above one basket. I think Dad’s watching me. I don’t wave because that would be dorky, even though I know he probably wants me to. It’s so weird being here. Having a dad, a whole family like this. I’m almost overwhelmed for a second.

Halftime comes and I stand up. I really have to pee now. I lean down to let Cami know I’m going to hit the restroom, and she gets a funny look on her face. “No, don’t—there will be a mad rush right now. Wait until third quarter starts and you’ll be in and out in a minute.”

I shrug and sit down again. And then the announcer guy comes onstage, near the pep band. He calls for attention and Cami grips my knee. I look down at her hand, then at her, and she’s grinning huge.

“What the . . . ,” I say.

The announcer is talking now, and the field house grows fairly quiet. He welcomes everybody and the lights dim a little. A large screen, hanging from the ceiling above the pep band, rolls down, and then the announcer says something that scares the crap out of me.

“Once there was a boy who disappeared from our fair city, snatched from his front yard, leaving no trace,” he says in this awful overdramatic voice. My heart stops beating. “He was abducted, and the people of Belleville searched high and low for him. But he was gone, leaving Belleville, his neighbors, and especially his family mourning deeply over his loss.” A film begins playing. My jaw drops open and I feel the heat start to creep up. “But now the community and KTRX-AM radio are so pleased to welcome Ethan De Wilde back home!”

The audience breaks out in applause and the people around me start clapping me on the back, and Cami’s squeezing my knee and laughing, and I’m just staring, flabbergasted, horrified, so very horrified, when the makeshift film tribute begins.

And there I am, my second-grade picture splashed on the big screen, and then part of the news clip that Cami showed me, and another news clip from a different TV station that I hadn’t seen before of people searching, and then a clip of me on some missing-and-wanted TV program, which nobody told me about ever, and I am feeling so sick I think I’m going to throw up right here, right in the bleachers, over the entire junior class of Belleville High.

But then the film ends, the lights go up, people are cheering, and the announcer, shouting over the noise, calls me to come down to the floor where he stands. And that starts me off in hysterics. The laughing. I know I look like a freak, and I can’t catch my breath, and Cami’s pulling me to my feet and dragging me down the steps, and then slowly everything gets eerily quiet and things start swaying around me and getting dim, and I’m cackling like a lunatic, gasping for air, tripping down the steps, when my knees give out. I plunge forward, feel my bursting bladder let go and my head hit hard on the wooden step.

Everything goes black.

CHAPTER 19

When I come to, it’s chaos. There are people all crowding around me. I blink, and somebody’s mother, in a BHS hoodie, is looking down at me. “I’m a paramedic,” she says. “You fainted. Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” I say. I’m out of breath and my head hurts. And I feel it—the clammy, quickly cooling wetness all down my jeans. “Oh, shit,” I say. I close my eyes.

“I called an ambulance when I saw you go down. Keep your eyes closed, try to relax, and we’ll get you out of here,” she says. “Here comes the stretcher.” She shields me from onlookers, and every once in a while she yells at them, “Stand back, we need room!”

“I pissed my pants.”

“It happens. Your jeans are dark. Nobody can tell. It’s okay. What the hell were they thinking springing this on you, anyway? Did your parents know about this? I wasn’t far away. You looked like you didn’t know this was going to happen.”

I don’t answer. I don’t know about my parents. But I think they are in on it. Why else would they suddenly start going to games when they never have before? Cami, definitely. She knew it was coming. Hell, so did J-Dog, I bet. That’s why he forced me here. Plus, they probably tell each other everything. Jesus. I keep my eyes closed. I don’t want to see any of them.

The other paramedics come. They put me on a stretcher and take me to the ambulance, and the woman with the sweatshirt stays by my side. I see Mama and Dad and Blake and Gracie fighting their way through the crowd, trying to get to me. Gracie’s bawling.

The woman leans down and says in my ear, “You want anyone to come in the back here with you?”

My throat hurts. “No,” I whisper. I turn my head, which is really pounding now.

“Meet us at the hospital,” she barks at my family, and the other paramedics close the doors.

CHAPTER 20

They examine me at the hospital. Concussion. Keep me there for observation overnight because they are worried about my brain bleeding, but it looks like I’m fine. Just a gigantic bump on my head. That, and my room smells like a urinal.