Free Ghost of Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen Page B

frowned. “You’re not Cole Matthews, the boy who filed assault charges against my son?”
    “He beat me up pretty bad,” Cole said, pointing to his own black eye and swollen cheek. He lifted his shirt to show his bruises.
    Mrs. Arnold gasped. “Then why are you here today?”
    Cole hesitated. “I’m not exactly sure, but I didn’t want Keith hurt. I gotta get going.”
    “That was too weird,” Peter said as they rode the elevator down to the main floor. “Way too weird. Why did you do that?”
    Cole didn’t answer.
    “Hello, Planet Earth to Cole.”
    Cole stopped on the sidewalk outside the hospital and faced Peter. “When my mom gets home tonight, I’m going down to drop the charges against Keith.”
    Peter frowned. “You’ve really lost it now. First you visit Keith at the hospital and then you drop the charges?
Excuuuse
me! This is the jerk who beat you up and tried to run you over. You should be beating the snot out of him.”
    “I
am
still fighting him,” Cole said, realizing it even as he spoke.
    “By visiting him at the hospital and dropping charges?”
    Cole nodded. “I’m fighting him with my heart.”
    Peter jabbed a finger in Cole’s chest. “You’re
really
weird.”
    Cole wanted to be quiet without hurting Peter’s feelings, so he pointed to a small knoll just past the end of the parking lot. “Let’s go sit on that hill and try to be invisible.”
    “Okay.”
    Soon both boys were sitting quietly on the grassy knoll, their eyes closed. This time Cole focused his mind simply on being empty. He pretended he was a big leaky bucket hanging from a hook, and every drip from the bucket made him emptier. The water dripped slower and slower and slower. For nearly an hour he imagined water leaking out until finally the bucket was completely dry and floated away into the sky. As the bucket disappeared, Cole opened his eyes.
    He found two robins close by picking worms from the grass. Sensing another presence, Cole glanced up and caught his breath. Barely twenty feet away stood the old homeless man, his ragged white blanket draped over his shoulders. Baggy pants hung from his bony frame, but his shirt was tucked in and his pant cuffs were rolled up neatly so they didn’t drag on the ground. The bum stood motionless on the grass, halfway between them and his cart. His gaze was relaxed, as if he had been standing there for some time.
    Cole reached out and touched Peter’s arm. Peter opened his eyes, blinked, and spotted the old man. He started to stand but stopped when the homeless man crouched and placed something in the grass. Without looking back, the man retreated and continued down the sidewalk, pushing his cart.
    Peter jumped to his feet and ran to retrieve the object. “It’s the same bear he was carving the day the police arrested him, except now it’s finished,” he exclaimed.
    Cole took the miniature bear and rolled it in his fingers, tracing his thumb over the delicate body. “It looks real enough to start breathing,” he said. “Why did he give it to us?”
    “Maybe because I gave him the bear I carved,” Peter said. “Or maybe he knows we returned his cart to him that day.”
    “Maybe,” Cole said.

Chapter 9
    T HAT EVENING, COLE told his mother he wanted to drop charges against Keith.
    “You’re making a huge mistake,” she argued.
    “It’s what I need to do,” Cole insisted. He told her of his visit to the hospital. “Do you remember when Garvey said I should try fighting with my heart?”
    “Are you sure this is what he meant?”
    Cole wasn’t sure of anything, but it seemed right. He nodded.
    “Okay then, let’s go—I’ll get the car keys,” she said.
    As Cole had figured, the police tried to talk him out of dropping charges. “We need people to stand up and fight,” the sergeant argued. “That’s all thugs understand.”
    “I am fighting. In my own way.”
    “You’re chickening out,” the sergeant insisted.
    Cole didn’t know how to explain to