A blast from the past and the present. Paperback! / Kindle!
My teeth rattled. Everything blacked out. The ringing in my ears intensified. I opened my eyes, but everything was different. I was disoriented, shell-shocked. I wasn’t sure if it was real or just a surreal foreign movie.
“Too…too…too close to the blast,” I stuttered, only partially aware of what I was saying.
In slow motion, burning Jeep parts fell around us. That’s interesting, I thought nonchalantly, although I should have been freaked out. Funny what you think about when your defense mechanism kicks in. Flaming parts? Wow. There’s the seat—and that floating thing? Is it a ghost? No. It’s part of the tarp. Twisted metal fell around us. Sagebrush burned.
In a flashback, I saw Mrs. Price, my third-grade teacher, the middle-aged, plump woman with black, frizzy hair. Her baggy dresses fell just below her calves. She wore flats, no socks or stockings. Her puffy ankles hung over her shoes. Why didn’t she buy a bigger size? She didn’t move much.
Mrs. Price walked out of the room, leaving a rowdy third-grade class unattended. That’s when it all started. I stood to demonstrate how my friend, Jake, turfed it in the hallway at recess.
“Jake fell like this,” I announced. Kids turned their attention to me.
Show time.
I fell backward, arms flapping, face contorted, sound effects added, a real comic showman. It wasn’t my fault that floppy record—gotta love the vinyl—protruded from the stand below the phonograph. I loved those old phonographs, two parts you’d snap together and carry like a suitcase. Whatever happened to those? Anyway, my butt hit the record. It snapped. My head slammed into the metal stand, but I didn’t feel it. I knew my goose was cooked.
I commanded all the attention I wanted, but now wished I didn’t have.
“Ooh.” The voices built into a crescendo.
My third-grade classroom faded away. Fire approached. Fred shouted something, but his mouth moved slowly. No sound came out. What? I couldn’t speak. I pushed my real-life emergency out. The classroom faded back in.
Tough kids, the sons and daughters of hard-drinking refinery workers, pointed at me.
“Really?” I asked. Third graders are so irritating. Duh. They pick their runny noses with those fingers.
The “oohs” got louder. Jabbering kids spoke in distorted voices that echoed like singing in the shower. “You broke Mrs. Price’s record.”
“You saw it,” I said. “It was an accident. I’ll apologize.” I meant it. What else could I do?
You can’t rationalize with excited kids. You guessed it. When Mrs. Price walked in, everyone feigned shock and disapproval. “Mike broke your record.”
They sold me out. I understood. No chance to apologize with confession and sincere contrition. The judge and jury are one in the same. Punishment will be swift and severe. The earth will be scorched.
Mrs. Price didn’t like me. That’s the way I saw it. I’d complain to anyone who expressed a little sympathy. I guess I represented what she resented, the underachieving class clown, the poor kid with shabby clothes, reeking of second-hand cigarette smoke, the predictable outcast.
Mrs. Price ran from the door to my desk. I swear I’ve never seen her move that fast. Then with a jerk, she grabbed and twisted my ear, all in the same fluid motion. She lifted me out of my chair. I winced. “I’m sorry I broke your record. I’m sorry,” I apologized. And I was. I gazed into the bitterness simmering in her eyes, which had darkened as black as her frizzy hair.
Yet, I knew it wasn’t real. How could it be?
She tightened her grip and pulled harder. It hurt—that seemed real. I talked a hundred miles a minute. “I’m so sorry,” I said. No mercy. With all the quickness in that lethargic body, she swung the ruler at my head.
Apparently, somewhere in her educational background, she mastered Newton’s second law of motion: force equals mass times acceleration. Now, she applied that theory quite well. Of course, as a third grader, I didn’t know Newton. This is gonna hurt, was all I thought. Then I realized, I was both experiencing the scene as a participant, observing it, and analyzing it from the perspective of an adult, all at the same time. Very strange. I braced for impact.
Just as the ruler smacked my head, the falling gear shift nob grazed it. Ouch! I hung suspended, fluctuating between two worlds, and then I crashed back into full consciousness, chaos, and confusion.
I knew the approaching fire was real. I felt the heat on my cheek. A soft breeze fanned the flames closer to the blanket.