Diane Chamberlain - Before the Storm

“Now I’d like to recognize the firefighters and EMS workers who did such an amazing job under grueling circumstances. Not only our Town of Surf City Fire Department, but those firefighters from Topsail Beach, North Topsail Beach and the Surf City Volunteer Fire Department as well.”

Applause filled the building, and as it ebbed, I saw Trish drop her gaze to us.

“And I’d like to ask Andy Lockwood to stand, please.”

Beside me, I felt Andy start.

“Go ahead, sweetie,” I whispered. “Stand up.”

He stood up awkwardly.

Before the mayor could say another word, applause broke out again, and people rose to their feet.

“Are they clapping for me?” Andy asked.

“Yes.” I bit my lip to hold back my tears.

“Why did they stand up?”

“To honor you and thank you.”

“Because I’m a hero?”

I nodded.

He grinned, turning around to wave at the crowd behind us. I heard some subdued laughter.

“Can I sit down now?” Andy asked finally.

“Yes.”

He lowered himself to his seat again, his cheeks pink. It took another minute for the applause to die down.

“As most of you know,” Trish said, “Andy not only found a safe way out of the church, but he risked his own life to go back in and lead many of the other children to safety. Our loss is devastating, but it would have been much worse without Andy’s quick thinking and calm in the face of chaos.”

Andy sat up straighter than usual, his chest puffed out a bit, and I knew he was surprised to find himself suddenly the darling of Topsail Island.

Andy

MOM PUT HER VITAMINS IN A LINE by her plate. She ate breakfast vitamins and dinner vitamins. Maggie and I only ate breakfast ones. Maggie passed me the spinach bowl. Dumb. She knows I don’t eat spinach. I tried to give it to Mom.

“Take some, Andy,” Mom said. “While your arm is healing, you need good nutrition.”

“I have lots of nutrition.” I lifted my plate to show her my chicken part and the cut-up sweet potato.

“Okay. Don’t spill.” She put her fingers on my plate to make it go on the table again.

I ate a piece of sweet potato. They were my favorite. Mom made sweet potato pie sometimes, but she never ate any. She didn’t eat dessert because she didn’t want to ever be sick. She said too many sweet things could make you sick. Maggie and I were allowed to eat dessert because we weren’t adults yet.

“Andy,” Mom said after she swallowed all her vitamins, “your arm looks very good, but maybe you should skip the swim meet tomorrow.”

“Why?” I had to swim. “It doesn’t hurt!”

“We need to make sure it’s completely healed.”

“It is completely healed!”

“You’ve been through a lot, though. It might be good just to take a rest.”

“I don’t need a rest!” My voice was too loud for indoors. I couldn’t help it. She was pressing my start button.

“If your arm is all better, then you can.”

“It’s better enough!” I wanted to show her my arm, but I punched it out too hard and hit my glass of milk. The glass flew across the table and crashed to the floor. It broke in a million pieces and milk was all over. Even in the spinach.

Mom and Maggie stared at me with their mouths open. I saw a piece of chewed chicken in Maggie’s mouth. I knew I did an inappropriate thing. My arm did.

“I’m sorry!” I stood up real fast. “I’ll clean it up!”

Maggie catched me with her hand.

“Sit down, Panda,” she said. “I’ll do it. You might cut yourself.”

“I’ll get it.” Mom was already at the counter pulling off paper towels.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “My arm went faster than I thought.”

“It was an accident,” Mom said.

Maggie helped her pick up the pieces of glass. Mom put paper towels all over the milk on the floor.

“My arm did it because it’s so strong and healed,” I said.

Mom was scrunched on the floor cleaning milk. Sometimes when I talk, she looks like she’s going to laugh but doesn’t. This was one of those times.

I put my napkin on top of the spinach to clean off the milk.

“Andy,” Maggie said, while she got five or maybe six more paper towels. “I know you’re upset that you might not be able to swim, but you’ve got to think before you react.” She sounded exactly like Mom.

“I do, ” I said. That was sort of a lie. I try to think before I act, but sometimes I forget.

Mom stood up. “We’ll check your arm again in the morning.” She threw away the milky paper towels. “If it still looks good and you feel up to it, you can swim.”

“I’ll feel up to it, Mom,” I said. I had to be there. I was the secret weapon, Ben told me. I was the magic bullet.

The pool was the only place where my start button was a very good thing.

Maggie

I WAS SPACED-OUT AS I LINED UP MY TEAM of ten little Pirates at the end of the indoor pool. Aidan Barber pranced around like he had to pee and I hoped that wasn’t the case.

“Stop dancing, Aidan,” I called to him, “and find your mark.”

He obeyed, but then Lucy Posner actually sat down on the edge of the pool and started picking at her toenails.

“Lucy! Stand up! The whistle’s going to blow any minute.”

Lucy looked surprised and jumped to her feet. I usually loved these kids. I was good with them. Incredibly patient. That’s what the parents always told me. You’re so much more patient with them than I am, Maggie, they’d say. Now that I was floating through this meet like I was in a weird dream, I had no patience at all. I wanted it to be over.

People talked about canceling the meet, since it was only a week since the fire. It was like Mom had called me to say the church was on fire minutes ago instead of days; I was still that shaken up. I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing flames and smoke pouring out of the church and was afraid of what I’d dream if I shut my eyes.

Since I coached the little kids’ team, I had some say about if we should hold today’s meet between our team, the Pirates, and the Jacksonville team, the Sounders. I voted for canceling. I told Ben, who coached Andy’s team, that it was totally insensitive to hold it, but mostly I didn’t think I could concentrate. Ben wasn’t much in the mood for a meet either. He still had a bandage over the gash on his forehead, and he was on pain meds for his headache.

One of the girls who was in the burn center at UNC was on Ben’s team, though, and her parents wanted us to have the meet. The kids need it, her mother said. They need the normalcy. They persuaded Ben, and I didn’t have much choice but to go along.

The whistle blew and my kids were off, paddling furiously through the water in a way that usually made the people in the bleachers laugh, but either there was less laughter today or I couldn’t hear it through the fog in my head. I shouted encouragement to my kids without really thinking about what I was saying.

I got through their event—they lost every match and that was probably my fault—but they didn’t care. I hugged every one of their cold, wet little bodies as they came out of the pool and told them they did great. I was so glad it was over. I pulled my shorts on over my bathing suit and headed for the bleachers. Ben passed me as his team came together at the end of the pool.

“They’re getting better,” he said.

I almost laughed. “Yeah, sure.”

I climbed the bleachers to sit next to my mother. “You’re so good with those kids,” she said, as usual. “I love watching you.”