The Field (25 page)

“That was good!” I yell. My breath comes out in puffs of steam in the chilly night air, but I'm sweating with the exertion and I have to wipe my face on my sleeve so I can see past the sweat trickling into my eyes. I grab onto the bumper. “Again on three. We can do this! One, two, three—LIFT!” A deep, primal yell comes welling out of my core and I lift with everything I've got, feeling the limitless power of the Universe flowing through me, giving me strength.

A loud guttural sound bursts out of me, and we lift the car up off the ground and move it several feet to the right before dropping it back to the ground with a crash where it rocks violently back and forth on its springs.

“We did it! I can't believe it, we actually did it!” Paul yells and runs to the driver's side door, but his excitement quickly fades when he gets there. I'm right behind him and see that the metal
of the door is crumpled like aluminum foil and caved in right where Will is sitting. The door frame is bent like a smashed beer can. Through the broken window we can see Will clearly, slumped over the airbag, his shoulder at an odd angle, blood running down his face from multiple cuts. Paul tries the handle, then pulls on the door frame, but it doesn't budge. “Damn it.” He says slamming his hand against the roof. The others are standing close behind us.

“What do we do now?” Bonnie cries.

“I don't know, but we'd better hurry or pray that help gets here soon, because gas is leaking and the fumes could ignite at any minute,” the guy from the other car says. I look down and see gasoline pooling in the grass beneath our feet.

“All of you, get way back,” I yell. “It's gonna explode.” I take off my jacket and put it over the jagged edge of the window to cover the bits of broken glass and sharp pieces of metal sticking out, grab the frame of the door with both hands and put my right foot against the car for leverage. I'm hardly thinking at all, just acting on pure emotion. Time has slowed down for me, but also expanded so that I see Will through the window and my hands on the door, and I also see the scene as if I'm viewing it from a distance, like a long shot in a movie, with the others huddled together a short distance away and me by the car. I feel both a laser focus and an odd detachment from the scene. All I know is that Will, my best friend, will probably die unless I get this door open.

In my head, I count to three and begin to pull with my arms and push against the car and the earth with my feet. I feel the effort of pulling, but it's not painful or even particularly difficult. Power is flowing to me, through me. It's part of me and I am part of it. I know I can do this. The door starts to move, imperceptibly
at first and then I hear the sound of metal giving way, ripping apart, coming loose. Incredibly, I find that I can pull even harder and the door abruptly tears free, making me stumble backwards from the momentum. I regain my balance and shove it fully open.

Will is slumped over the airbag, his left arm bent at an unnatural angle and his left leg exposed, showing a deep gash in his thigh. I put one arm behind his back and the other under his legs and carefully pull him from the wreckage. His head lolls onto my shoulder as I lift him into my arms, his breath warm on my face. In the distance I hear sirens wailing.
Hurry
. The strong smell of gasoline is all around us. I turn away from the car with Will in my arms and run as best I can toward the others. I've only gone about twenty feet when the car explodes.

T
HE FORCE OF
the explosion slams into me like a sledge hammer and I fall to my knees, dropping Will to the ground. The heat is next, searing my back. I cover my head with my arms and hunch my body over Will's to shield him as much as possible. Someone starts screaming.

After the initial explosion, I look back and see red-hot orange and yellow flames engulfing the car, tongues of fire like a living thing lighting up the night and spewing black smoke. Right where Will had been sitting. Right where I was a moment ago. Within a few seconds the others are upon us. Bonnie is crying, tears stream unchecked down her face, streaking it with black mascara. She kneels next to Will where he's sprawled on the ground, still unconscious, and puts her hand on his bloody cheek. Paul is saying, “Oh my God, Oh my God,” over and over like a mantra, and Cole and the other driver just stand there in shock. Renee kneels down next to me and puts her arm around my shoulders.

“You saved him,” she says. I turn to her and lose it. All the energy and adrenaline whooshes out of me and I'm left a spent and ragged shell. I grab on to her like a life raft and bury my head in her shoulder, clutching fistfuls of her hair. She puts her
arms around my shaking body and just holds me while I try to pull myself together. The magnitude of what could have happened crashes over me. But it didn't happen. Will is hurt, but he's okay. I lift my head to take in a lungful of cold night air and wipe my face on my sleeve. “I'm okay,” I tell her, which is only partly true. I still feel totally used up and physically unsteady, but I'm calm. The worst is over and I made it through.

The ambulance and fire trucks arrive at almost the same time, sirens wailing and lights pulsing and flashing, dispelling the dark. The paramedics rush towards us and we're happy to let the professionals take over. The firefighters quickly pull out hoses and start dowsing the fiery inferno with torrents of water.

The six of us get out of the way while the paramedics work on Will. One of them comes over and gives us some blankets, and I realize that it's gotten much colder and my teeth are chattering, but it's as much from shock as the cold. Renee and I huddle together under a blanket and numbly watch the paramedics and firefighters work to contain the fire and stabilize Will.

Then the police arrive and we talk to them about what happened and call Will's parents and our own families. I wonder what kind of trouble Will's going to be in—with the police and Coach Swenson, but the officers don't say anything about it. Before the ambulance leaves to take Will to the hospital, Bonnie asks the paramedics if he'll be okay.

“Yes, honey, he's gonna be just fine.” The woman paramedic pats her arm and reassures her. “The gashes on his head and leg definitely need stitches and he may have broken his left arm, but nothing that won't heal.”

“S
O HOW DID
you get him out of the car exactly?” one of firefighters asks me. He and I are standing next to Will's Taurus, now blackened and smoking. Melted paint hangs off the exterior like crêpe-paper streamers, and water drips rhythmically to the already soaked ground. The firefighter has his helmet in his hand and is rubbing his head, puzzled. The interior of the car is a gaping, charred hole. The driver's side door hangs open, and the burnt remains of my jacket cling to the edge of the window. “Because, this looks like something we would usually have to use the Jaws of Life to get open.” I've already been through it a couple of times with the police and the fire chief, but patiently I say again, “All of us picked up the back end of the car and moved it away from the tree, and then I wrenched open the door to get to him.” Which is what happened and saying it that way makes it seem almost like a normal everyday occurrence. But he and I both know it isn't.

“I know that's what you did, but I can't quite wrap my head around exactly how you did it. Even when I can see it with my own eyes right here in front of me.”

“I don't know how I did it. I can't explain it either.” I can't explain to him that I felt a strength and power that I've never felt before in my life. Not on the soccer field and not in Dr. Auberge's lab. At the moment I needed strength, it was there. I didn't consciously do anything except have the need and the desire and a singular focus. The power felt infinite, limitless, enormous. And in the core of my being, it felt good and right. I have no doubt now that there is a Universal Energy Field, and that I am able to access it, that probably we can all access it.

I've already reassured the police that I'm okay enough to drive, and after we've each given our statements they tell us we're free to go home. I take Cole and Bonnie and Paul back to
the Vickery's to get their cars. No one says much during the drive, but when I stop to let them out, I get out to stretch my legs and each of them gives a me big hug in turn. Paul pounds me on the back and says, “You're the beast.” And Bonnie whispers, “Thank you for not giving up on Will.”

I
'M SITTING IN
an incredibly uncomfortable orange plastic chair in Will's hospital room the next morning, waiting for him to wake up. He has a white bandage wrapped around his head and his left arm is encased in a cast from wrist to shoulder and immobilized in a sling. His left leg is lying on top of the blanket where I can see the bandage on his thigh, and his face is black and blue from the impact of the airbag. He looks like he was in a really bad fight and got his ass kicked. Knowing that he's going to be okay makes me able to wonder if this is the kind of asskicking that he needed. Maybe it's not the nicest thing I've ever thought, but I hope it's true. I hope this wakes Will up to how self-destructive he was being.

But the reason I'm here isn't to talk to him about that. Last night after dropping off Renee, I had to talk to my parents for a while about the accident, and then I totally crashed into bed, exhausted, and fell immediately asleep. At some point in the middle of the night I woke up completely disoriented. I'd been dreaming about Will's dad and being at the coal gasification plant with him and Will. He was giving us a tour and they were arguing, and the entire time I was trying to get his attention to tell him something. I kept saying, “Mr. Asplunth! Mr. Asplunth!”
but he didn't hear me and I couldn't tell him that something was terribly wrong. The words were stuck in my throat. Then I couldn't find him or Will, and when I finally did see them, Mr. Asplunth was at the end of a long hallway silhouetted against a backdrop of fire and Will was running toward him yelling “No!” That's when I woke up. I still smelled like smoke from the accident and for a minute after I woke up, I thought I could smell the fire from the dream. It scared me even more than the explosion dreams because in this dream I could see the people and the place where I knew something terrible was going to happen.

So this morning I'm here because after having the explosion dreams come true, I'm not about to ignore this dream. Especially since this time there were actual people and a place in the dream. I don't know exactly what I'm going to say to Will, though. It seems pretty clear that it has something to do with the gasification plant and Will's dad. Because of everything that's happened to me, I know there is more out there than we could possibly understand. I'm ready to accept that it's real, but it's a totally different thing to tell someone else, someone like Will, that you had a dream about his dad and a fire at the coal plant and you're here to warn him. So, I'm just sitting here in this uncomfortable chair waiting and hoping that'll I know the right thing to say when Will wakes up.

After a few minutes, the nurse comes in and says she has to check on Will.

“How're you doing, young man?” she says cheerfully to Will as she jostles his shoulder to wake him. She pulls the curtain closed around the bed and does whatever she needs to do, taking his temperature and blood pressure I guess. Will groans awake and says groggily, “I feel like I've been trampled by a herd of elephants, but otherwise I'm great.”

“You're pretty lucky from what I understand,” she replies.

“Yeah, I know,” he says quietly.

“You have a visitor,” the nurse tells him.

“Mom? Are you still here? I thought you were going home to get some sleep.”

“No, it's Eric.”

“Oh, hey,” he says. We can't really talk since the curtain is still closed and the nurse is there, so we're both silent while she chatters to Will about what she's doing. When she's finished she opens the curtain sharply, making the metal hooks rattle and crash against the wall.

When she's gone, I say, “You look like shit.” Trying to be funny, to alleviate the seriousness of his being in the hospital covered in bandages.

“Well that's pretty much how I feel. The drugs they're giving me definitely give you an awesome buzz, but I wouldn't recommend crashing your car to get some.” He cracks a smile and then grimaces. “Even my face hurts.”

“Your face got slammed by the airbag.”

“I don't remember much from last night, which could be a good thing. I do remember you trying to stop me from leaving the party, and losing control of the car and heading for the tree, but nothing after that.” He pauses, looks down at his bandaged leg and smoothes the sheet over his lap. Then he looks up at me directly and says, “My mom told me that you guys moved the car away from the tree and that you pulled me out of the car just before it exploded. That if it weren't for you, I would be toast, literally. The fire trucks wouldn't have gotten there in time. Man, I don't even know what to say.” He leans his head back against the pillows. “You saved my life. And I've been such a freaking asshole to you.” He looks at me again. “I'm sorry, man.” He
chokes out the last few words and wipes his hand across his eyes.