Chapter 17: Give It Back

The microphone was warm from Brody's hand.

I climbed the three steps to the stage on my bad leg, and the whole lawn waited for me.

Four hundred faces, and I knew most of them by name.

The gray-haired man in the second row had opened his leather folder on his knee.

I took the medal out of my jacket and set it on the lectern, where everyone could see it.

"Thank you for the burgers," I said. "And the flags. And for eleven years."

A few people laughed warmly, the way you laugh at a hero being modest.

"I'm giving this back tonight," I said. "I'd like to tell you why."

Brody was standing a step behind me with his hand on his hip.

"Wyatt, buddy," he said, under the sound system. "Careful."

I ignored him.

"On the ninth of June, eleven years ago, I didn't jump in the lake to save anyone."

The lawn went quiet in a ripple, from the front to the back.

"The red flag was up. There was a raft past the swim line. A girl dared me to swim out to it."

I heard my own voice go out across the water and come back.

"I went under, and I didn't come up."

Nobody moved.

"The girl went in after me. She was eleven."

"She dragged me to the pier ladder and held my head out of the water until a neighbor came and breathed for me."

My mother had her hand over her mouth in the third row.

"That's in the county report," I said. "Anybody can read it. The girl was Sadie Kincaid."

A low sound went through the crowd.

"She was scared of being blamed, and she said it was the other way around."

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