David and Goliath

Chapter One: What's In A Name?

Tears of joy filled my eyes as I cradled my newborn son lovingly in my arms. Selena, my wife, lay sprawled out on the hospital bed. Beads of sweat trickled down her forehead, but she smiled anyway.
"Congradulations, Mr. and Mrs. Brown," Dr. Spencer said. "What do you want to name your baby?"
"We'll name him David," I answered.
Selena shot me a questioning look. "Why?" she asked.
"This is why," I said. I took a deep breath and began telling my story.

Chapter Two: Opposites Don't Attract!

At 6'4 and nearing 180 pounds, I was the largest student in the history of Maple Elementary. Other than that, my life seemed as average and boring as everyone else's. However, that drastically changed soon after David Birch moved in one Sunday morning.
"James, get up!" My little sister, Mindy, yanked off my blankets and threw them on the floor in a crumpled heap. She grabbed my hand and started walking, so I followed her. Otherwise, she might have thrown a fit and gotten me in trouble.
She lead me outside into the blinding sunlight and pointed enthusiastically at the old pink house next door. To my surprise, a U-haul truck and a battered jeep pulled into the driveway. A short, barrel chested man exited the jeep and began unloading boxes. His wife struggled to squeeze her tall frame out of the door, accompanied by a mere scrap of a boy with a mop of blonde hair.
"Mindy, it's not polite to point," mom said from in the doorway. She puffed on her cigarette and exhaled an impressive spiral of smoke. "Why don't you go invite the new kid over or somethin'? I'll have breakfast ready in a few minutes."
In the blink of an eye, Mindy skipped to the house next door and struck up a conversation with the boy as if they were old pals. Within minutes, she had him doubled over in hysterical laughter. Mindy could chat up just about anyone, and I envied her for that.
There was nothing else to do, so I dragged myself over there to get acquainted with him. "Um, good morning. I'm James Brown, and believe it or not, I'm only twelve. Welcome to the neighborhood."
The kid eyed me suspiciously from behind thick spectacles. "I'm David Birch, and I'm twelve, too. You look nowhere near that young!" he sneered.
"At least I don't look like a six year old!" I retorted.
"James is telling the truth. He's my brother," Mindy explained. "By the way, would you like to come over? My mom's making breakfast."
David shrugged, but he followed us into our house. We were greeted by a mouthwatering aroma of chocolate chip pancakes drowned in chocolate syrup with crisp bacon on the side.
"How come you're so small?" Mindy asked innocently. David hesitated.
"If you must know, my mom got in a car accident in her sixth month of pregnancy. She died, so the doctors had to get me out with an emergency c-section. She aslo drank pretty heavily, which is what caused the accident in the first place." I sympathized with David. My dad used to be a cop until he got shot in the stomach twice and bled to death three years ago. It didn't seem very appropriate to bring up at a meal, so I devoured the rest of my breakfast without saying anything.
My sympathy came to an abrupt halt soon after breakfast. David and Mindy wre playing Nintendo until he started yelling at her. I peeked inside to see what was going on and witnessed him punching her in the face. Blood trickled out of her nose.
"Get out of here, punk!" I roared.
"Okay, okay!" David slammed the controller angrily against the wall and stormed out of the house.

Chapter Three: Caught!

"Good morning, class!" Mrs. Harrison said the next morning. "I forgot to tell you on Friday, but we have a new student. He will be arriving any minute now."
Right on cue, David entered the room. "This is David Birch. He just moved here from Colorado. There are no spare desks, so you will be sharing the back table with James," she added. What a nightmare!
David hung up his backpack and joined me at the back table with a smug smile. Over the next few weeks, he did everything he cold to make my life miserable. He "accidentally" spilled black paint all over my art project, stole a pack of Twinkies from my lunch box, and tripped me up at recess, just to name a few. It tried my best to ignore him until one day when he mouthed off about my mom. We were in the hallway by ourselves. Without even thinking, I lifted him up and slammed him against the wall.
"What is your problem?" I snarled. "I haven't done anything to you, but you're driving me nuts!" I slammed him against the wall again, this time with more force. By now he was crying, but I didn't care.
"James Brown, put that child down this instant!" Mrs. Harrison ordered. She excused David to scurry on down to the health room, then dragged me by the ear to Principal Hatchet's office. She gave him a brief explanation about what happened and left me at his mercy.
"You've always been such a good kid, James. Why were you slamming David against the wall like that?" he demanded.
I gulped. Although he was barely five feet tall and a hundred and twenty pounds, he could be pretty intimidating. "Mr. Hatchet, you don't understand. David has been really annoying ever since he moved in next door. He even annoys me in the lunch line because, thanks to the new alphabet system, we are stuck together in line. A few minutes ago, he was going off about my mom, so I totally lost it."
"You are roughly twice his size, kid! How could you let a little runt like him bully you around? Since I like you, or at least used to, I will let you go with an office referal, but next time I'm calling your mother!"
I nodded timidly and returned to class. The moment I walked in, every kid in the room whirled around to gawk at me. Most of them didn't really get to me except for Kristy, my crush. "Have a seat, James. Do problems one through seven in your math book on page 79," Mrs. Harrison said curtly. All throughout the lesson, my mind wandered back to the incident. It sickened me to think of the terrible thing I had done. Evidently, everyone else thought the same thing. They whispered to each other and cast nervous glances in my direction, as if they expected me to slam them against the wall any second. It was pretty tempting, but I didn't.
Surprisingly, David acted halfway decent to me when he returned from the health room, but he really enjoyed the venomous rumors being spread around about me. The little butthead even went around telling people that I got mad at my sister, and he that had to pry me off of her. I didn't want to risk exploding again, so I got Mrs. Harrison's permission to go to the nurse's office and waited there until mom came to take me home. Even Mindy heard about David's tall tale, but she never bothered to stand up for me. Despite his hatred against me, David invited her over or came over to play with her nearly every day. She has a major crush on him, so she pretended not to hear me when I mouthed off about him. Go figure!

Chapter Four: The Battle in the Bathroom

"Hey, little runt, think you can get away with eating my cupcakes, huh?" an angry voice said.
"N-no," David sniffled. Curious, I opened my bathroom stall to investigate. Roy Winters, a big dude in our class, had him pinned on the floor. David wriggled around, but he was trapped.
"Calm down, Roy! The cafeteria has more cupcakes," I said. Roy scowled at me and left.
"Thanks, I guess," David mumbled. "Why did you stand up for me?"
I shrugged and reached out my massive hand to help David up. From that day on, we were friends.

Chapter Five: The Confession

"Hi, James. I wanted to apologize to you for getting you in trouble," David said the next day. "I told Mrs. Harrison about what's really been going on, so you're off the hook. The office referal has been taken off your record and tacked onto mine." Whether he was sincere or not, I forgave him just to stay on the safe side. My day got even better from there. At recess, Kristy kissed me on the cheek and congradulated me for saving David.
Later that day, Mrs. Harrison passed out yellow permission slips for a surprise field trip. Unfortuantely, anybody who had received an office referal that semester would be banned, except for me, thanks to David's confession. Not even being barred from the field trip kept David from getting in.
The surprise field tirp turned out to be a visit to an obscure nature park called The Raven's Haven. Mrs. Moyer's 1st grade class boarded the bus first. David donned a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses for his disguise. When the coast was clear, I gave him a thumbs up sign so he could climb on safely. Mrs. Harrison matched up the little kids and the sixth graders by their classroom numbers. "Anybody who doesn't have a partner, raise your hand!" Mrs. Moyer bellowed. David raised his hand timidly.
"I'll sit with him!" I volunteered. Mrs. Moyer narrowed her eyes at me. To my relief, she didn't interrogate me. Man, that was close!

Chapter Six: Sweet Dreams

David and I whispered to each other so that Mrs. Harrison, who sat dangerously nearby, wouldn't recognize David's voice and figure out our scheme.
"Remember when I told you about ow my mom died? About a year later, my dad remarried. We had to move over here all the way from Colorado because Wendy, my stepmom, wanted to be near her parents. I've been taking it out on everybody else ever since," David admitted.
"I can relate to that. My dad was a police officer. He got shot twice in the stomach a few years back and bled to death."
"At least you got to know him," David pointed out. The bus driver pulled over to Eddie's Ice Cream Shop so that everyone could purchase an ice cream cone. David and I ordered strawberry, our favorite flavor. Somehow, as we licked away at the pink goop, we got around to discussing our dreams.
"My dream is to become a hero, like my dad," I said. "I don't want to be a cop after seeing what he went through, but would still like to make a difference."
David grinned. "Same here. I'm always the one being saved, so it would be nice to save someone else for a change."
We polished off our ice cream and returned to our seats. When all of the passengers finally returned, the bus took off again. One by one, the kids all went off like a light.

Chapter Seven: Courage and Cowardice

My peaceful sleep, along with everyone else's, came to an abrupt halt when the bus driver swerved to avoid hitting a deer. The bus plummeted down the hillside and into a lake. Screams of terror pierced the air. I uncovered my face in time to see him stumbling away into the darkness.
"Damn that coward!" Mrs. Moyer muttered under her breath. Mrs. Harrison clutched at her chest, gasping for breath.
"Oh, dear God, she's having a heart attack!" Mrs. Morey yelled. "Children, I'll be right back. Help will be here soon!"
One girl got up to escape to dry land, but the bus lurched forward, knocking her off balance. She fell to the floor and hit her head with a sickening crack. People started panicking even more. Little girls started crying, and even the older boys seemed pretty nervous.
"Everybody, calm down!" David roared. Amazingly, they listened to him.
"Water is coming in fast, and if I don't close the door, it will flood and drown us all!" He pushed past me and played around frantically with the controls until the doors closed.
"Open the windows, fast! We'll have to swim through them. If any of you guys know how to swim, feel free to get the heck outta here, but try to help the others." About ten sixth graders grabbed a partner and swam away to safety. One boy, Gregory, got stuck in the window.
"Suck your gut in," I told him. He took a deep breath and contractred his potbelly just enough so that I could shove him out. David escorted each remaining kid back to dry land...or so he thought.
"Crap! I left the girl behind!" David screeched. Before I could stop him, he swam back into the bus. Suddenly, it sank in even further. Water seeped in through the open windows. A few minutes passed, and they still didn't show up. I couldn't take it anymore, and went in after them. I'm not nearly as skilled at swimming as David is, but can get still get around in water.
David's head popped up from underwater. His glasses floated about five feet away. He groped around blindly with his hands until he found the girl, then grabbed her around her ample waist and tried to shove her out the window. I grabbed the girl's underarms and heaved with all my might until she finally poppped out. Her hair was soaked, and matted with blood.
Frantically, I held my free hand out to David, but he shook his head no and pointed to Mrs. Harrison. He was determined to save her, too. If I tried to help him, both the girl and I could have drowned, so I swam away with a heavy heart rather than risk our lives.
Mrs. Moyer greeted me and gently removed the round little body from my arms. Within a few minutes, paramedics arrived in a screeching ambulance. Some of them stayed to talk to Mrs. Moyer and cover my shaking body with blankets. Another one wheeled the girl in on a stretcher. He started to load me up to. "Wait! David and Mrs. Harrison are still inside!" I protested.
"Don't worry about them, they will be taken care of," he assured me. Mrs. Moyer raised her eyebrows, but didn't say anything.
David and Mrs. Harrison arrived in the arms of a paramedic. "They're still alive. I think the teacher will survive, but I'm not so sure about David," he reported solemnly. Once the two of them and Mrs. Morey were safely loaded up in the ambulance, it sped off to the hospital.


Chapter Eight: Finder's Keepers....Or Not

I opened my eyes to find myself surrounded by a group of smiling people.
"Good job, James!" Mrs. Harrison said. Luckily, she had survived her heart attack, but was temporarily confined to a wheelchair.
"What?" I asked.
"You're a hero!" piped up Mrs. Morey. "In fact, the principal heard about what you did, and he sent you a medal of courage." She extracted it from her pocket and proudly draped it around my neck.
"But what about David, and the girl?" I blurted out.
"David is in intensive care. Selena, on the other hand, is in the ER with a concussion, but will definately survive," she said.
"Can I visit David?" I asked.
"Sorry, guys, but David isn't in the mood for celebrating, which is understandable. Come with me, and I'll show you where he's at." I followed her for what seemed like aneternity until she finally opened a door and pushed me inside.
David lay listlesstly on the hospital bed. "David?" I croaked. "It's me, James. You know, we're just like David and Goliath, aren't we? In the Bible, Davis is small and Goliath is huge, but David managed to conquer him with a rock. You conquered something, too...danger. And your dream to become a hero. Anyway, I'm sorry for how mean I was to you. Mindy really likes you, too. We both miss you a lot." I paused to wipe the moisture from my eyes. "Mrs. Moyer gave me a medal for courage, but you're the one who really deserves it." I removed the medal and draped it over David's tiny neck. He opened his eyes and smiled weakly up at me. "You keep it," he said. Those were his last words.
A few weeks later, mom drove Mindy and I to David's funeral. By now, everyone in town had heard about the situation. It even showed on the news, but I didn't have the heart to watch it. Hundreds among hundreds of cars pulled in until they extended throughout the enitre town. Many people exited those cars and laid a bouquet of flowers among David's grave. The pastor said a prayer in his honor. His parents went up and gave a heartfelt speech about what a good kid he was. Even Mindy scurried up and admitted about her crush on him.
"Does anyone else have anything ot say about David?" the pastor asked.
"I do!" I said. Hundereds of pairs of eyes watched as I walked up to the microphone.
"David and I didn't get along at first," I admitted. "But later on, we became friends. He wasn't supposed to go on the field trip because of a referal he had earlier that year, so he put on a hat and sunglasses to disguise himself as one of the first graders. He had a mischevious streak in him, but he wanted to become a hero. It's my fault he died because he wanted me to save myself and not him. His spirit has passed on, but he got his wish. He died a hero."
Everybody applauded my speech. "Wait, I have more to say!" I hollered. The clapping stopped.
"My principal gave met his medal of courage. I gave it to David in the hospital, but he gave it back right before he died. I'm giving it back!" I took it off and laid it on top of the mountain of flowers.
At the end of the funeral, I saw Kristy kissing with Roy. On top of losing David, losing my potential girlfriend was too much, and I started to cry.
"Thanks for saving me," a little voice said. I looked down at the same pudgy first grader who bashed her head on the bus. She hugged me around the knees. "You are my hero!"
Suddenly, I didn't feel so sad anymore. I stooped down so I could hug her back. "You're welcome, Selena."
My attraction to Kristy had been based mostly on her beauty: her luscious red curls, her sparkling brown eyes, her slender waist. In the end, however, I married Selena. In my eyes, she is more beautiful then Kristy ever was. When I finished telling my story, she was in tears.
"James, we've got to take David to his namesake's gravesite," she said. Two weeks later, we zoomed back to his grave in our Toyota. It felt like the longest car ride in my entire life.
When we arrived, Selena knelt beside his grave. "What's this?" she asked, holding up a dirty gold disk attached to a green ribbon.
"That's my ribbon!" I exclaimed. She wiped off the dirt and laid it back down. We said a long prayer for David, although he probably couldn't hear us. It started to get dark pretty soon, so we went back home.
I got out of the car and went to unlock the door. I almost dropped my keys when I saw the medal hanging on the doorknob. "Selena, did you put the medal on our door?" I asked. She gave me a strange look.
"No, honey, I didn't," she answered.