151 Days (50 page)

I expected Powers to argue with her, but damned if he didn’t go over and unlock the door. Josh came barreling through the door like he was being chased. He glanced at me and then to Jennifer and asked, “Are you okay?”

Jennifer looked over to me, assuming he had been talking to me.

“Yeah, we’re good, dude,” I said, gesturing for him to come sit down. “Did you see Kyle out there?”

He shook his head. “No. I had a free period, all I heard were shots, and then all the doors locking.”

“Why did you come back here, then?” Jennifer asked. “Why didn’t you get off campus while you could?”

Josh opened his mouth to answer and then closed it again. Finally he admitted, “I panicked.”

Jennifer rolled her eyes and let it go.

Josh looked back at me and could tell I knew what the hell was going on. He pleaded with me silently to keep my mouth shut.

“Did you see anything at all?” Mr. Powers asked.

Josh shook his head. “I just took off running.”

“Yeah, ran across campus, down two hallways, and past half a dozen doors to end up here,” I said quietly.

He nudged me with his elbow. “Be. Cool. Brad.”

I had almost succeeded in not worrying about Kyle for five whole seconds when two blasts came over the loudspeaker.

“Everyone stay down,” Mr. Powers said as he crawled over to his desk. He picked up the phone and pushed a few buttons before hanging up. “This is almost done.”

He didn’t sound that reassuring.

“So, you guys are okay?” Josh asked, not meaning us guys at all.

“She Tased me,” I said, jerking a thumb toward Jennifer.

Josh looked at her and then back to me. “Well, you must have done something to deserve it.”

God, he had it bad.

About ten minutes later, the phone rang, and once again we all jumped at the sound. Mr. Powers picked it up and listened. “Got it,” he answered to whoever it was.

“We’re about to get out of here,” Jennifer said quietly, watching him talk.

“How do you know that?” Josh asked.

Jennifer looked over at me. “Because my
dad
told me so.”

Only I could make a school shooting worse than it was by just being me.

“Okay, listen up,” Powers said, getting our attention. “When the phone rings again, we are going to head left out of here single file, toward the fields. Once we get to the backstops, we are going to move around them and go through the gym to the parking lot. There is no talking, no running, no leaving your place in line. We leave as a class, and we arrive as one. When I call your name, line up at the door.” He had a clipboard in his hand.

He began to go down the list. One by one we lined up. When he called Jennifer’s name, Josh raised his hand. “Since I’m not actually in this class, should I just line up now?”

Powers nodded, not caring. “Fine, Walker, you’re behind her.”

I shook my head. Leave it to Josh to find time during a school shooting to make a move on a girl.

We all crouched down, waiting for the phone to ring. Thirty pairs of eyes stared at it, knowing when it sounded, the longest five minutes of our lives were about to begin.

“Greymark,” Powers called out to me. “You know the field and gym better than anyone. Lead us down the hall.”

I nodded and moved to get in front of the line.

Jennifer grabbed my arm. “We’re following you. Don’t take off to find Kyle.”

I nodded, realizing I hadn’t even thought of that.

The phone rang, and I waited for Powers to open the door. He nodded at all of us and then to me. “Take it slow, but not too slow, and don’t stop,” he instructed.

I took a deep breath and began to move down the hall, away from the quad and toward the baseball field. No one else was in the hallway. As we passed by rooms, I could see people watching us in some; others were empty. They must have been emptying the rooms one at a time, which seemed like a good idea now that I thought about it. Every sound was a thousand times louder than it really was. Every movement was a person coming at me. I ignored it and kept going until I got to the back doors and opened them up. The girl behind me walked out after me as I headed to the backstops.

I held the door open to the locker room as everyone dashed in past me. Jennifer didn’t even glance at me as she passed, but Josh patted me on the shoulder and gave me a small smile. Mr. Powers was the last person in. I closed the door behind us and moved toward the parking lot exit. There was an explosion of something metallic that echoed throughout the room. More than half the class screamed in shock as they hit the ground.

My heart skipped a beat for a second, but then my mind identified the sound as one I had heard about a thousand times.

“It’s okay,” I called out, trying to calm people down. “It’s just the bats. Someone must have bumped into them.” I walked over to where we kept the bats stored, and sure enough, someone had caused them to spill out, bouncing everywhere across the cement floor. “It’s nothing—just an accident.”

I helped the guy up and then picked a bat up for good measure. Josh let out a sharp whistle, and I saw him behind me, holding a hand out for one as well. I picked up another and tossed it over to him. Rationally I knew there was nothing I could do against a gun with a baseball bat, but it made me feel a thousand times better having it in my hand. Maybe it was habit, maybe it was because baseball was one of the only things I knew I could do; all I knew was the bat calmed me down.

Once we hit the parking lot, any instructions not to run were forgotten as we saw the police cars and tents set up in front of the school. There were dozens of people just beyond that watching. When they saw us, they cried out, waving us to hurry. I tried to keep it together as long as I could, but the moment I saw my parents in the crowd, I just took off, running as fast as I could toward them in the same way I did when I was little kid being chased by bad dreams. My dad actually broke through the barrier and held his hands out toward me. I practically knocked him over as I dove into his embrace.

I was crying even though I couldn’t tell you why. He hugged me tight as he patted my back. “Shhh, it’s okay. I got you. I got you, bud.” His voice was as comforting and as soothing as I could ever remember. I was six years old, and I had broken my leg falling from the tree in our backyard. I was nine, and a wild football had broken two of my fingers as I tried to catch it. I was fifteen, and I was on my back trying to see as the echoing sound of the line drive that had careened off my batter’s helmet rang in my ears. I was eighteen, and I thought I was going to die. And as with each time before, my fears and pain faded away because my dad was there to hold me.

“Brad, are you okay?” I heard my mom ask from behind us.

“You okay?” my dad asked me in a whisper, somehow knowing I didn’t want to take my head off his chest. I nodded, keeping my eyes closed. “He’s fine, just shaken up.” He maneuvered me back behind the barrier, and I felt my mom hug me from behind. I kept feeling like I was regressing in age. Mere seconds ago I was a brave young man trying to keep his class in check, and now I was a crying baby who just wanted his mommy and daddy to make everything better.

It was a nice place to be for the next few minutes.

“Brad?” I heard someone ask from the crowd. I looked over and saw Mr. Parker standing next to Robbie. The thought that I might actually still be unconscious from Jennifer’s Taser crossed my mind. Tyler looked at my dad. “Is he okay?”

My dad nodded. “He’s a little in shock, but he’s okay.” Looking down at me. “Right?”

The years started to come back to me as I realized I was in public, clinging to my dad like a damn howler monkey. Pulling myself away, I nodded as I cleared my throat. “Yeah, I’m cool.”

Tyler smiled and was about to say something when Robbie interrupted. “Where’s Kyle?”

And just like that my panic was back.

Jennifer and her dad were hugging and talking by the main tent. If there were answers, he would have them. I took a few steps toward them, and my mom tried to stop me. “Brad,” she pleaded. “You have to stay here.”

“I need to find Kyle,” I told her, but she wouldn’t let me go. I looked up to my dad, hoping he would understand.

He put his hand over my mom’s and said softly, “Susan, he’s okay. You need to let him go. He needs to find Kyle.” He looked me right in the eyes, and for a moment I knew he understood perfectly what I was feeling. “There’s no way he is going to be able to relax until he knows the person he loves is out of danger.”

Her fingers let my shirt go, one finger at a time. The second I was free, she turned and embraced my father; it was her time to cry hysterically.

My dad nodded at me and mouthed the word, “Go.”

I had never loved him as much as I had at that very moment.

One of the cops was too busy trying to keep the local news back, so it wasn’t that hard to slip under the tape and head over to where Jennifer was. She saw me before her dad, and I could tell she was still pretty pissed at me. “You can’t be back here,” she said, just begging me to argue with her.

“Look I’m sorry, okay?” I said quickly. “I need to know where Kyle is.”

Jennifer looked over at her dad, and he sighed and put down the radio he was holding. “Look, Brad, Kyle is… Kyle is in there with the shooter.”

This had to be what it felt like when you were in a car that started to roll over. The whole world begins to spin around you, but you are just there, perfectly still unable to move.

“We think someone burst in to his alliance meeting with a gun. So far, the guy has let the other people go, but Kyle is still in there with him.”

I suppose I stopped breathing at some point, because Jennifer was screaming in my face, but she wasn’t making any noise. All I could hear was Kyle’s laughter and how I was never going to hear it again.

Something stung the side of my face, and I started breathing again. I touched the side of my cheek and saw Jennifer’s hand reared back to slap me again. “Brad. Snap out of it.”

“Is he… is he….” I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say anything at all.

Her dad shook his head. “He’s fine right now.”

“I have to get to him,” I said, ready to fight my way into the school. “Me and Josh have bats, and we could….”

Sheriff Rogers put his hand up to stop me. The look on his face was as grim as I had ever seen before. “You don’t need to do that, son. This is about to be over with.”

I was about to ask him how the fuck he knew that—how did he know when this was going to end or not?—when the radio crackled, and I heard a voice call out. “Eagle one is in position. I have eyes on the target.”

Oh my God.

He picked up the radio, and in a voice that sounded like he hadn’t slept in days, he said, “Eagle one, if you have a shot without endangering the hostage, take it.”

“Wing?” the voice called back.

Sheriff Rogers said nothing for a long time. The voice asked again. “Base, wing or not?”

He closed his eyes and pressed the button on the radio. “Jim, end this thing now. If you think you can wing and incapacitate him without endangering the hostage, do it. If you don’t, end this. Now.”

Small pause. “Roger that, base.”

He put his radio down and looked back at me. “This is about to be over with.” To Jennifer he said. “Honey, I need you guys to get behind the line.” Before she could argue, he added, “Please, I can’t have you here.”

She seemed to consider arguing with him but then just grabbed my arm. “Come on, Brad, we need to go.”

I let her drag me away, not sure I’d just heard that right or not.

Someone was about to die.

K
YLE

T
HE
LIBRARY
was eerily quiet once everyone else was out.

We put the chairs back in front of the door and sat down by the front desk again. Neither one of us knew what was next, so we sat in silence for a while as we tried to figure it out. Finally, he sighed and said, “This really isn’t turning out like I thought it would.” It was such an absurd comment that I started to giggle. Not a normal giggle but one of those nervous laughs you can’t stifle even if your life was on the line.

Like now.

He looked up at the sound, and I could tell he wasn’t thrilled by my reaction at first, but as my laughter doubled, he cracked a smile in return. “Yeah, it’s been a day for me too,” I spit out before letting the day’s nervousness and panic spill out in the form of hysterical mania. Jeremy began to laugh too, but we weren’t laughing at something funny; we were on the edge of losing our minds and had no other way of expressing it.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I shouldn’t have dragged you into this.”

I took a few deep breaths, holding my sides as my stomach ached from laughing. “It’s okay. This is kind of inevitable, don’t you think?” He cocked his head in confusion, and I elaborated. “I mean, since that day in the theater, it just seemed like we’ve been on a collision course. It’s my fault.”

His mouth dropped open. “Yours?”

I nodded. “When you told me you were gay, I should have tried to be friends with you. I mean, how many of us are in Foster? I guess I was just put off by how matter-of-fact you were about it. I spent most of my life trying not to give it a name, and you were so ‘whatever’ about it.”

“I didn’t kiss a guy in front of the whole school,” he said, still obviously shocked.

I grinned at that memory, wishing Brad was here. “To be honest, he kissed me. I just stood there trying not to pass out.”

“People like Brad don’t kiss people like me,” he remarked darkly. “So it all worked out for the best.”

“Not for everyone,” I added, wishing I hadn’t almost instantly.

“There we go,” he said, the anger coming back in his eyes. “I had almost forgotten that I was the bad guy here because precious Saint Kelly killed himself.”

Common sense told me to shut up. Common sense told me to just shut the fuck up and let the Wookiee win.

Of course, me and common sense had never been the best of friends.

“You outed him in the worst way possible. You came to school with a gun. Jeremy, no offense, but yeah, you’re the bad guy.”