“Yes, Maxwell?” Akira said.
“What’s your career?” Maxwell asked him.
“I’m a high school science teacher.”
“He’s going to help plan a science unit for all of us,” Akira said, “among other things. Won’t that be great?”
None of them appeared to think that would be great.
“Is it all right with you if I give them your mini bio?” Akira asked him under her breath.
“Sure.”
“Mr. Coleman grew up here in Misty River. Those of you who love sports will be interested to know that he played baseball in high school and college. Do you still play?”
“Casually. In a local league.”
“And all of you,” Akira continued, “will be interested to know that he is one of the astonishing Miracle Five.”
People mentioned the Miracle Five so often that, in a way, it no longer surprised him. In another way, it stillalwayssurprised him.
He was a normal guy. He liked to eat his mom’s pot roast. He let his nieces and nephews climb on his back to play fighting horses with pool noodles. He watched sports on TV. He went to church on Sunday mornings and graded papers at night.
Yet he often came into contact with people who identified him with the oneabnormalthing he’d experienced. The earthquake had happened almost twenty years ago, during his childhood. News of the five kids trapped under the rubble had spread around the world, and so people remembered it still. He’d had no control over any of it. He’d done nothing extraordinary.
But God had. So as long as people kept asking him about it, he’d gladly keep answering.
“Raise your hand if you know about the Miracle Five,” Akira said.
About half the kids raised their hands.
“Maybe,” Akira continued, “Mr. Coleman will be kind enough to tell the rest of you about it. Or,” she said with amusement, “maybe he prefers to keep it a secret.”
“No,” moaned the kids who’d never heard of the Miracle Five. A few gaveThat’s not fair!expressions.
He’d told the story so many times it often felt like he was delivering a monologue in a play he’d performed a thousand times before. He gave the short version, modified to kid level.
Hardly any of the kids moved. They simply listened with round eyes.
“So,” he said, to wrap up, “we’d been stuck down there for eight days when we heard big machines digging their way toward us. We were sitting under two diagonal concrete slabs. They formed the top of a triangle above us. We thought it would be safer to sit under one of them, but we didn’t know which one, so we flipped a coin. There was a lot of noise, a lot of vibration. And then,boom.”
The kids flinched.
“The wall across from us crashed down,” he said. “But the wall above us stayed in place. It protected us from the chunks of the building that were falling. The rescue team reached us and loaded us into a helicopter. As soon as we were safe, that wall crashed down, too. Later, we learned that there was no explanation as to why that wall stayed in place as long as it did.”
“Which is why they’re called the Miracle Five,” Akira said.
“What did you eat for those eight days?” asked a blond girl with a neat braid.
“We didn’t eat. Food you can go without for a while. But we would’ve been in serious trouble without water. We managed tocrack an exposed pipe. It turned out that it had water inside. We drank from it, and that’s how we stayed alive.”
“Do you have nightmares about it?” Maxwell wanted to know. “I never have nightmares.”
“It would have been normal to have had nightmares after being that scared. But for some reason, I never did.” He pushed his hands into his flat-front khakis. “I’ve lived every day feeling fortunate, because I shouldn’t be alive, but I am because God protected us.”
For the most part, living a life of gratitude had served him well. The only exception to that came when he faced something hard, like he had this last fall when Leah had broken his heart. He was used to feeling optimistic, joyful, calm. But sad? No. Sadness made him feel like a schmuck. He should’ve died when he was thirteen. So what right did he have now to grieve a broken heart?
Maybe he was flawed or selfish or low on faith. Or maybe, like his friends told him, he was simply human. Because yeah. Right or wrong, he was grieving.
