Free I Owe You One by Natalie Hyde Page B

from Frank the rest of the day. I couldn’t do anything anyway.

    The next morning, I went straight to the tower.
    I could hear him muttering before I saw him.
    â€œFor the love of…Who in their right mind…Fit, darn it! Fit! I don’t believe this!”
    Sure didn’t sound good.
    â€œHiya, Frank. How’s it going? Can I get you anything?”
    Frank’s head popped up. “Oh, it’s going just great.” Sarcasm dripped off every word. “Two circuits aren’t working at all, the bandwidth is all wrong, one arm of an antenna snapped, the power supply shorted out and I cut my finger.”
    He glared at me as if daring me to say something optimistic. Man, was I sorry I asked. I shrugged my shoulders, shook my head and made what I hoped were sympathetic hand gestures. I needed help. I ran for Zach. We only had about two and a half hours until the start of the race. At some point we had to face Mrs. Minton. I say “we” because this stupid life-debt idea was Zach’s fault somehow, and he was going to suffer with me.
    Zach and I sat on my porch for a while, too terrified to check on how Frank was making out and even more terrified to go to Mrs. Minton with bad news.
    â€œShould we go see Frank?” Zach asked eventually. “There’s only about half an hour until the race.”
    I wanted to snap back that I knew how to tell time too, but there was that voice.
    A man faces the music, Wes.
    I guess it was time I did that.
    â€œCome on, Zach. Let’s see Frank and get the verdict.”
    I can’t even repeat the language we heard as we neared the tower. Well, at least we had our answer.
    â€œUh, Frank? You okay?”
    Frank backed out of the housing and stood up. “If this wasn’t for Mrs. Minton, I would have gotten Daryl to blow this up too.”
    I felt a heavy weight on my chest. How would I tell Mrs. Minton that we had failed?
    â€œHow bad is it?” asked the ever practical Zach.
    â€œI’ve got everything patched up, except there’s a break in this wire somewhere, and I’ll be darned if I can find it.” He was running the cable through both hands trying to feel for the break. “Now, if I stand on top of the transmitter housing and hold it like this”—he climbed up and held the cable over his head and out to the side a bit—“then I can get the signal. But the minute I let go”—he dropped his hand—“it’s gone.” He jumped down. “Why can’t I find this break?” He was speaking more to himself now.
    â€œAbout how long do you think you can stay in that position?” I asked.
    Frank looked at me in horror as he realized what I was thinking. “Oh, no. You can’t be serious!” He looked from me to Zach and back again. “You really expect me to stand up there with my arms in the air like some demented cheerleader?”
    â€œIt would only be for a couple of minutes. Just long enough for Mrs. Minton to see Rachel’s run.” Zach sounded so calm and logical that I knew he was reeling Frank in. “If you could only see how much this means to Mrs. Minton…”
    Really, Zach was so good at this, I believed he had a future in politics. Maybe foreign affairs. The United Nations, even.
    Frank banged his head a couple of times on the side of the transmitter housing like he couldn’t believe that he was about to agree to this. “And how will I know when her race is starting, or when it’s over?” he asked, resigned to his fate.
    â€œI’ll grab the walkie-talkies,” I said, thinking on my feet so fast, even my dad would have been impressed. “If you give us little scans every two minutes or so, we can listen for the race order and let you know when we’re getting close.”
    â€œTell me this is all a bad dream,” Frank said to the sky. I waited a second or two in case he got an answer. He sighed.