Last Full Measure - Michael A. Martin [53]
His cheeks bulging as he struggled, Malcolm felt as if his lungs were on fire, felt his blood hot beneath his skin. He opened his eyes and saw moss-covered concrete deeper in the water. He struggled further, and as his vision became hazy again, felt the absurd sensation that the air that remained in his lungs was what was actually suffocating him. He pushed it out in a steady stream of bubbles, and gulped to breathe again.
But there was no oxygen beneath the surface of the old fountain to the southeast rear acreage of Evington Academy.
And so, Malcolm Reed began to drown.
Leicester, England,
Friday, April 11, 2138
Two years had passed since the incident behind the Academy, more than enough time for stern lectures to be thought proper punishment and for expulsions to be reversed.
Mistress Linscott, who had, unbeknownst to the other faculty, been carrying on a torrid affair with Mister Taupin, the greensman, had been coming to call on the man who was her secret shame when she had discovered the trio of youths bullying Malcolm Reed near the fountain. Luckily, she had paid attention in her health class two decades prior, and thus was able to use cardiopulmonary resuscitation to bring young Malcolm Reed back from the brink of death.
Morris, Bishop, and Balinsweel had escaped the grasp of the law—and permanent expulsion—owing mainly to Emily Linscott’s nearsighted inability to positively identify Malcolm’s tormentors, and to the wealth and influence of the families of all three boys. A new surface to the sports field and a set of padded chairs for the staff lounges had bought the churlish trio much forgiveness from all—save from those they had harassed over the years. Still, the teachers now watched the three boys with hawklike acuity, and the three offenders were not allowed to take any classes together.
Their punishment, such as it was, provided scant comfort to Malcolm. Now through the throes of puberty himself, and all the discomforting newness that that rite of passage toward adulthood entailed, Malcolm also had to deal with psychological baggage from the assault. He had never been particularly outgoing to begin with, but now he was even more reticent about talking to people and making new friends. He also found himself fantasizing about destruction often, dreaming of great explosions that would collapse the school around his enemies.
But most tellingly, he now had a nearly pathological aversion to water. He couldn’t explain to his father or grandfather why he didn’t want to join them on the sea this summer, nor did he wish to admit to his physical education teacher why showering after gym class held such terror for him.
The one area in which Reed really excelled was in his academic schoolwork—the mathematical disciplines most especially—and he had become one of the Academy’s top students.
It was then, precisely two years after the incident at the fountain, that he had finally hatched his plan.
Several of the students in the class one form above his were performing poorly. He got to know a handful of the worst of them that year by offering to help tutor them, then ingratiated himself further to the teens by helping them produce some of the work that they turned in as their own.
By now, he had accumulated a group of boys around him who were, if not exactly his friends, at least loyal to him for as long as he continued to help them academically. They were all larger than he was, some significantly so, and a good deal rowdier as well.
Two years to the day since his near-death experience—his near-murder, really—Malcolm arranged with a quartet of his academic acolytes to take Leslie Morris out for a joyride in Leicester’s dockside district. They brought him to a darkened pier area, ostensibly to partake of some Irish whiskey that they had pilfered from their parents’ liquor cabinets. And then,