The Call (The Magnificent 12 1)

Stefan nodded. His never exactly perky expression was even duller than usual. But he jerked his chin toward his pants pocket.

“Okay, you need to pull on this tourniquet, right?” Mack said. Seeing the blank expression, Mack explained, “The shirt. Pull on the knot with your left hand. Pull hard.”

Stefan managed to do this but barely. Mack noticed that his fingers were clumsy, fumbling. His strength was fading.

Mack pried the cell out of Stefan’s pants pocket and dialed 911.

“Nine-one-one, what is the nature of your emergency?” a bored voice asked.

“I have a nine-year-old boy pumping blood all over the place,” Mack said.

“Nine?” Stefan asked, like he wasn’t totally sure it wasn’t true.

“They’ll come faster for a bleeding kid than a bleeding teenager,” Mack explained, covering the mouthpiece. “Now shut up.”

It took eight minutes for the ambulance to arrive, which, as it turned out, was barely fast enough.

After the EMTs took Stefan away, Mack made it home unmolested by any more bullies, possibly because he was shirtless except for the neck band of his destroyed T-shirt, and his hands were red with blood up to the elbows. That sort of fashion choice tends to discourage people from bothering you.

Mack’s father was home when Mack came in the side door. His father was staring into the refrigerator with the door open, looking like he might see something really cool there if he just kept searching.

“Hey, big guy,” his father said.

“Hey, Dad,” Mack said.

“How was school?”

“Enh,” Mack said. “School’s school.”

“Yeah. I hear you,” Mack’s dad said without looking up.

Mack headed toward the stairs and the shower.

Four

Let’s just skip the part where Stefan lost two pints of blood. And the part where the doctor told him he could easily have ended up dead.

Let’s skip over the slow workings of Stefan’s mind as he sought to make some sense of the fact that he had come quite close to dying at the age of fifteen.

And while we’re doing that, let’s skip over the fact that Mack’s father didn’t

notice that Mack was more or less covered in blood.

Mack’s parents didn’t pay a lot of attention to him.

It wasn’t really sad or tragic. They weren’t bad parents. It was just that at some point they had given up trying to figure Mack out.

He’d had one phobia or another since age four. His mother had tried many, many, many (many) times to talk him through these irrational fears. His father had tried as well. And sometimes both at once. And sometimes both at once with a school counselor. And a minister. And a shrink. Two shrinks. Two shrinks, two parents, a minister, a school counselor. But they had never had much success.

In between talking Mack out of being terrified of things that weren’t really scary, they had tried to talk him into being scared of things he actually should be afraid of.

Things like bullies, for example.

The boy had no sense. That was clear to his parents and everyone else. The boy simply had no sense.

So, over time, Mack’s parents had learned to steer around him. They’d given him his own space. Which was how he liked it. Mostly.

Mack assumed that when Stefan returned to school he would have to demonstrate his toughness by giving Mack a serious beat-down. The upside was that in anticipation of the epic bloodbath, the other bullies were leaving Mack alone. It was just possible that Stefan would be irritated with any bully who presumed to prebeat Mack. No one wanted to deny Stefan his clear rights.