Choke CHAPTER 1 Under Great Pressure
CHAPTER 1
Under Great Pressure
The field on the edge of Callowbrow was filled and students
of all shapes and sizes milling around, trying
not to look as self-conscious as so many students often
did. Callowbrow itself had been torn apart by the dragons,
but now many of the repairs were well underway or completed.
The school was beginning to look like itself again—the dark
bricks jutted out of the green fields and pushed up into the
misty sky like scaly beasts. Low clouds crowned the roofs and
the high-climbing roses that peppered many of the walls and
towers.
I walked quickly through the milling students, holding one
end of a very heavy duffel bag. The other end was being carried
by Kate. She had reluctantly agreed to help me with what I was
calling an “experiment.” I had invited Wyatt to join us, but he
had to stay in the library and do some make-up work.
Kate and I pushed through the students and up to a freestanding
shop shed. The door was unlocked, and we slipped
in unnoticed. I closed and bolted the door behind us. I could
still hear students doing student-like things outside. I set the
weighty bag on the ground and unzipped the long zipper.
“What is it, Beck?” Kate asked.
“I think it’s some sort of huge ball.”
“Someone gave it to you?”
“Kind of,” I answered.
We pulled it out of the bag and unfolded part of it.
“We need to lift it up and spread it open,” I said, tugging at
the thick material.
“It’s huge,” Kate said with awe. “Not to mention incredibly
heavy.”
“Baby,” I replied, slightly out of breath. “Listen, if you
wanna leave, have at it. The door’s right there.”
I flipped my head back, pointing to the door.
“No way,” Kate whispered. “Someone needs to keep an eye
on what you’re doing.”
I smiled, unfolding the thick material further.
“Wyatt should be here,” she added.
“I know. I feel bad for him, missing all this fun.”
“You’re crazy, Beck, you know that,” Kate added. “Absolutely
crazy.”
I looked down at my hands and thought about what Kate
had just said. My hands didn’t look crazy. They looked like normal
sixteen-year-old-boy hands. And I didn’t feel crazy. I mean I
should have known better, but that was usually the case.
It’s sad, really. You’d think that a sixteen-year-old boy with
brown eyes, dark hair, and a mischievous smile, who had lost
his mother, been shipped across country to live with his crazy
uncle (only to learn he could make things grow and bring dragons
to life), and practically ruined an entire town, would know
better than to go messing around with things that could cause
further amounts of trouble.
“What’s the matter?” Kate asked.
“Nothing,” I said, looking up. “Here, give me that air hose.
There’s a nozzle here.”
Kate handed me the thick black hose with the large metal
tip. I shoved it into the dusty plastic hole on the bottom of the
material. The air hose slowly slipped into the opening, chirping
like a sick dolphin. Once in, the two plastic parts seemed to
bond, making it impossible for me to pull it back out. I tugged
as hard as I could.
“Cool,” I said, smiling. “It fits perfectly.”
Kate continued to unfold the large cloth ball. “You’re going
to blow it up in here?”
“There’s plenty of room,” I assured her.
We were in the small shop shed that our school used
to teach shop. It was old and sat at the far end of the neatly
groomed soccer field. It was one of the few buildings that had
not been damaged by the dragons as they had picked apart
the town of Kingsplot and, more specifically, the campus of
Callowbrow. The shed was relatively empty, with tools lining
the walls and a welding tank in the far corner. Near the door
was a large air compressor with two silver tanks.
It was the air compressor I had come for.
Two days ago, while searching through a dusty room in
the manor I live in, I found an old wooden trunk. After accidentally
breaking the lock on the trunk, I stumbled upon
what I thought was a massive folded blanket. I was wrong. It
wasn’t a blanket. It was a huge folded ball. It was made of red
velvet with orange stripes running down it and a valve at the
bottom. I thought it was a pretty interesting discovery, but I
felt like it would be an even more interesting find once it was
blown up. I figured I would blow it up, roll it out of the large
doors of the shed, and then all of us at Callowbrow could
mess around with it. It seemed like it would make for a funfilled
afternoon. So, I had smuggled the ball to school in a
huge black duffel bag. At that point, I recruited Kate to help
me fill it with air.
“This is dumb,” Kate said. “This is another one of your
dumb ideas.”
I smiled at Kate—she didn’t smile back. I was okay with
that. She still looked just fine, what with her long, red hair and
deep blue eyes. Her skin was pale—like two-percent milk—and
she was wearing her school uniform, which consisted of a plaid
skirt, white shirt, and white knee socks.
She was pretty, but I was in no mood to tell her that.
“I’m not doing this,” she insisted, but still making no move
to leave.
I smiled. “I think you are. Besides, it will be cool. The school
will talk about this for years.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“It’s going to be fun,” I said with my most convincing voice.
I flipped the switch and the compressor began to whirl and
moan. It was loud and pulsating, the thump of it bouncing off
the shed walls and pounding my ears.
“It’s loud!” Kate yelled.
“I know,” I hollered back.
The thick fabric of the ball began to puff up. A large fold
pushed out, doubling the size of the material. Like a fat wad of
velvety dough, the velvet ball began to swell.
“It’s really big,” Kate said needlessly.
She was right, but that was becoming a rather obvious detail.
My heart started to race as the ball swelled. My life had
been way too calm the past eight months. I could barely remember
my life before Kingsplot. My mother, who had really been
my aunt, was a memory I had to work on to bring into focus.
Her death still hurt, but the sting wasn’t as sharp or as clear
as it had once been. And I was thrilled to have discovered my
father, but, to be honest, the relationship had a lot of growing
to do. He still lived on the top floor of the mansion and came
down only when I pestered him. He claimed he knew nothing
about raising a son. I agreed with him, but I was willing to help
him learn. Two nights ago we had argued over bringing a TV
into the huge manor.
“Just one,” I had argued.
“Noise,” was his clipped reply.
Truthfully, the gigantic manor I lived in could use a little
more noise. It was still a huge, dark home with hundreds of
locked rooms and winding halls with no one to walk its halls
but me, Millie, Thomas, and Wane. But, as most adults do, my
father had put up a wall and insisted the discussion was over
without ever hearing me out. It was later that night that I discovered
the ball. I think that’s why I wasn’t too worried about
what was happening now, seeing how I could always argue that I
never would have even found the ball if I had been safely watching
TV.
The material of the ball pushed out again, a long fold popping
open like six sleeping bags. My excitement began to feel
like fear.
“I don’t think it’s just a ball!” Kate hollered.
The expanding ball was as wide as the shed and rapidly
growing taller. I could only see Kate from the neck up now. I
watched her scoot back to provide more room for the ball.
“Open the doors!” I yelled.
“I can’t reach them,” she yelled back. “Just turn it off!”
I reached down and hit the switch. The compressor began
to scream even louder.
“Off,” Kate yelled, as if I had misunderstood her the first
time.
“I can’t!”
The ball sprang open three more folds making it as large as
the room. I couldn’t see Kate. Actually, I couldn’t see anything
besides the material of the ball pushing into my face as it expanded
even faster. I could hear Kate’s muffled scream and the
sound of someone violently rattling the doors to the shed trying
to get in. I reached down to hit the switch again, but I could
no longer reach it.
The ball pushed me up against the wall, lifting me off my
feet and scraping me up the wall. It expanded tightly against
my chest and face. My head was forced to the side and crammed
flat against the wall. I wanted to yell, “I’m sorry,” to Kate, but
the moment didn’t seem right, and my lungs were completely
compressed.
The ball expanded even further, stealing any room for my
lungs to expand. I was stuck to the wall, my feet inches from the
floor. Velvet was pushing into my nose and the ball was smothering
me.
I tried to kick and hit, but my arms and legs were pinned
against the wall. My vision was nothing but a fading smudge, as
bits of my life drifted across my mind like the fluid on the back
of my eyelids. I could see my father, Aeron, and Millie. I could
see two Kates, the happy one and one that was going to wring
my neck if and when we survived.
“I thought this would be fun,” I yelled, unable to fully move
my mouth. “I’m going to die.”
There was no air, and the pressure was so painful I could
feel my blood being squeezed from the top half of my body
and down into my toes. The air compressor was squealing
and hissing so loudly that if a genie had appeared and granted
me three wishes, at least one of them would be that I could
close my ears.
I should have at least closed my eyes.
Just when I thought I was going to die from suffocation, a
noise unlike any I had heard before—and I had heard dragons
fighting and towns being torn apart—ripped through my head.
Wind raced over me and I could feel a tremendous pain in my
head as I flew backward and into a misty, blinding darkness.
