“He thinks I’m guilty. So do you.”
“Now, Valerie. I never said that.”
“You’re never even here when he comes in to grill me, Mom. There’s nobody here. I’m always alone.”
“He’s a very nice officer, Valerie. He’s not out to get you. He’s just trying to find out what happened.”
I nodded again, deciding that I was suddenly too tired to fight with her. Suddenly I decided it really didn’t matter what
she thought. This was so big she couldn’t save me even if she did think I was innocent.
We sat there for a few minutes. I flipped the channels on the TV and ended up watching Rachael Ray, who was cooking some sort
of chicken or something. We were both silent, save for the shush of Mom’s shoes when she shifted positions or the squeak of
the vinyl seat of the wheelchair when I did. Probably Mom couldn’t think of anything else to say, either, if I wasn’t going
to give her some big, dramatic soap opera confession or anything.
“Where’s Dad?” I finally asked.
“He went home.”
The next question hung heavily between us and I considered not even asking it, but decided she was waiting for it and I didn’t
want to disappoint her.
“Does he think I’m guilty, too?”
Mom reached over and unkinked a spot in the remote control cord, keeping her fingers busy.
“He doesn’t know what to think, Valerie. He went home to think. At least that’s what he says.”
Now that was an answer that hung just as heavily as the question, if you asked me.
At least that’s what he says.
What was that supposed to mean?
“He hates me,” I said.
Mom looked up sharply. “You’re his daughter. He loves you.”
I rolled my eyes. “You have to say that. But I know the truth, Mom. He hates me. Do you hate me too? Does everyone in the
world hate me now?”
“You’re being silly now, Valerie,” she said. She got up and picked up her purse. “I’m going to go down and grab myself a sandwich.
Can I bring you anything?”
I shook my head, and as Mom left a thought flashed through my head like a strobe light: She hadn’t said
no
.
Mom hadn’t been gone long when there was a soft knock on the door. I didn’t answer. It just seemed like too much energy to
open my mouth. Not like I could keep anyone out these days, anyway.
Besides, it was probably Detective Panzella, and no matter what, I was determined that this time he wouldn’t get a single
word out of me. Even if he begged. Even if he threatened me with a life sentence. I was sick of reliving that day and just
wanted to be left alone for a minute.
The knock came again and then the door swished open softly. A head peeked around it. Stacey.
I can’t tell you the relief I felt at seeing her face. Her whole face. Not just alive, but not even marked. No bullet holes.
No burn marks. Nothing. I almost cried seeing her standing there.
Of course, you can’t exactly see emotional scars on someone’s face, can you?
“Hey,” she said. She wasn’t smiling. “Can I come in?”
Even though I was really happy to see that she was alive, I realized once she opened her mouth and the voice that came out
was the voice I’d laughed with, like, a million times over the years, I had no idea what to say to her.
This may sound stupid, but I think I was embarrassed. You know, like when you’re a little kid and your mom or dad yells at
you in front of your friends, and you feel really humiliated, like your friends had just seen something really private about
you and it totally takes away from the “got it under control” persona you’re trying to project into this world. It was like
that, only times a billion or something.
I wanted to say a ton of things to her, I swear. I wanted to ask her about Mason and Duce. I wanted to ask her about the school.
About whether or not Christy Bruter lived and Ginny Baker, too. I wanted to ask her if she knew that Nick was planning this.
I wanted her to say it blindsided her, too. I wanted her to tell me I wasn’t the only one guilty of not stopping it. Of being
so incredibly stupid and blind.
But it was just so weird. Once she came in and said, “You didn’t answer when I knocked so I thought you were asleep or something,”
it all felt so surreal. Not just the shooting. Not just the TV images of students streaming, half-bloody, out of the cafeteria
doors of my high school like a nicked vein. Not just Nick being gone and Detective Panzella chanting
Law & Order
phrases at my bedside. But all of it. Every bit, going all the way back to first grade when Stacey showed me a loose front
tooth that stuck straight out like a piece of gum when she poked her tongue behind it and me baring my stomach on the monkey
bars on the playground. Like it all was a dream. And this—this hell—was my reality.
“Hey,” I said softly.
She stood at the end of my bed, awkwardly, the way Frankie was standing on the day I woke up.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
I shrugged. She’d asked me the same question a million times, after a million scrapes, in that other, dream world. The one
where we were normal and little girls didn’t care about their stomachs showing on the playground and the teeth stood out like
Chiclets. “A little,” I lied. “Not bad.”
“I heard you have, like, a hole there,” she said. “Frankie told me that, though, so who knows if you can believe it.”
“It’s not bad,” I repeated. “Most of the time it’s pretty numb. Pain pills.”
She started scraping at a sticker on the bedrail with her thumbnail. I knew Stacey well enough to know that this meant she
was uneasy—maybe pissed off or frustrated. Or both. She sighed.
“They said we can go to school next week,” she said. “Well, some of us. A lot of kids are afraid, I think. A lot are still
recovering…” She trailed off after the word “recovering,” and her face flushed, as if she was embarrassed to have mentioned
it to me. I was struck with another dream image, one of the two of us sweating under a sheet draped over a picnic table in
her back yard, shoveling imaginary food into baby doll mouths. Wow, it had seemed so real, feeding those plastic babies. It
had all seemed so real. “Anyway, I’m going back. So is Duce. And I think David and Mason too. My mom doesn’t really want me
to, but I kind of want to, you know? I think I need to. I don’t know.”
She turned her face up and watched the TV. I could tell that her mind was hardly on the cream puffs being pulled out of the
oven by whatever food show host was cooking at the moment.
Finally she looked at me, her eyes a little watery.
“Are you going to talk to me, Valerie?” she asked. “Are you going to say anything?”
I opened my mouth. It felt full of nothing, like maybe full of clouds or something, which I think is only appropriate when
you come out of a dream world like that and into an ugly, horrid reality, so horrid it has a taste, a shape.
“Did Christy Bruter die?” I finally blurted out.
Stacey looked at me for a second, her eyes sort of rolling around, all soft-like, in her head.
“No. She didn’t. She’s just down the hall. I just saw her.” When I didn’t say anything, she tossed her hair back and looked
at me through squinty eyes. “Disappointed?”
And that was it. That one word. It told me that Stacey, even my oldest friend Stacey, the one who was with me when I started
my first period, the one who wore my swimsuit and eyeshadow, believed I was guilty, too. Even if she wouldn’t say it out loud,
even if she didn’t think I pulled the trigger, deep down she blamed me.
“Of course not. I don’t know what to think about anything anymore,” I answered. It was the most truthful I’d been in days.
“Just so you know,” she said. “I couldn’t believe what happened. I didn’t at first. When I heard everyone saying who did the
shooting I didn’t believe them. You and Nick… you know, you were my best friend. And Nick always seemed so cool. A little
Edward Scissorhands or something, but in a cool way. I never would have thought… I just couldn’t believe it. Nick. Wow.”
She started to walk toward the door, shaking her head. I sat in my wheelchair, feeling numb all over, taking in everything
she had said. She couldn’t believe it? Well, neither could I. Mostly I couldn’t believe that my oldest and “best” friend would
just assume that everything she’d heard about me was true. That she wouldn’t even bother to ask me if what they were all saying
was what really happened. That moldable Stacey was being molded into someone who no longer trusted me.
“Neither could I. I still don’t sometimes,” I said. “But I swear, Stacey, I didn’t shoot anybody.”
“You only told Nick to do it for you,” she said. “I’ve gotta go. I just wanted to tell you I’m glad you’re okay.” She put
her hand on the door handle and pulled it open. “I doubt they’d let you anywhere near her, but if you see Christy Bruter in
the hallway here, maybe you should apologize to her.” She stepped out, but just before the door swished closed behind her,
I heard her say, “I did,” and I couldn’t help but wonder for, like, eight hours after that, what on earth Stacey had to apologize
for.
And when it dawned on me that she was probably apologizing for being my friend, that dream world just blinked out, vanished.
It never existed.
I thought I was going home. Mom had slipped in while I was sleeping and had laid out another outfit for me to get into, before
disappearing again like smoke. I sat up, the morning light streaming through the window and across the foot of my bed, and
brushed the hair out of my eyes with my fingers. The day felt different somehow, like it had possibility.
I pulled myself out of bed, grabbed the crutches the night nurse had left propped against the wall next to my bed, and used
them to hop to the bathroom—something I’d been able to do by myself for a full day now. The pain medication still made me
woozy, but I was off the IV now, and the wrap around my leg was still bulky, but not bad. My leg only throbbed a little, sort
of like a splinter lodged in the wedge between your fingers would do.
It took me a while to maneuver myself around and get down to business in the bathroom, and when I emerged again, Mom was sitting
on the edge of my bed. There was a small suitcase on the floor at her feet.
“What’s that?” I asked, crutching back to the bed. I picked up my shirt and began peeling myself out of my pajamas.
“Some things I thought you might need.”
I sighed, pulling the shirt over my head, and began working on my pants.
“You mean I’m stuck here for another day? But I feel fine. I can get around fine. I can go home. I want to go home, Mom.”
“Here, let me get that,” Mom said, leaning forward to help me shimmy into my jeans. She snapped them and zipped them for me,
which felt weird and comforting all at the same time.
I hobbled to the wheelchair and plopped into it. I pulled my hair out of the back of my shirt and got settled. I wheeled to
the nightstand, where a nurse had left a tray of food for me. I smelled bacon and my stomach growled.
“So have they said yet when they’ll let me go home? Tomorrow? I really think I can go home tomorrow, Mom. Maybe you can talk
to them about it.” I opened the lid on the breakfast tray. My stomach growled again. I couldn’t get the bacon into my mouth
fast enough.
Just as Mom was opening her mouth to speak, the door swung open and a guy in a pair of khakis and a plaid shirt with a lab
coat tossed over it came through.
“Mrs. Leftman,” he said jovially. “I’m Dr. Dentley. We spoke on the phone.”
I looked up, my mouth full of bacon.
“And you must be Valerie,” he said, his voice measured and careful. He held his hand out like he wanted me to shake it. I
swallowed the bacon and shook his hand tentatively. “Dr. Dentley,” he said. “I’m the staff psychiatrist here at Garvin General.
How’s your leg feeling?”
I looked at Mom, but she was looking at her feet, like she was pretending we weren’t in the room with her at all.
“Okay,” I answered, reaching for another piece of bacon.
“Good, good,” he said, the smile never leaving his face. It was a nervous smile, almost like he was half afraid, but not of
me personally. It was almost like he was half afraid of life. Like it was going to jump up and bite him any moment. “Tell
me about your pain level right now.”
He reached behind him and whipped out my chart, which, of course, had their pain management assessment page taped to the back
of the clipboard. I’d been answering this question about a hundred times a day since I got here. Is your pain a ten? A seven?
Maybe it’s a 4.375 today?
“Two,” I answered. “Why? Am I getting out?”
He chuckled and used his forefinger to push his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose.
“Valerie, we want you to heal,” he said, in this patient kindergarten-teacher voice. “And we want you to heal inside as well.
That’s why I’m here. I’m going to do some evaluations on you today so we can determine the best way we can help you get to
a place of mental health. Do you feel like hurting yourself today?”
“What?” I looked over his shoulder again. “Mom?” But she just kept staring at her shoes.
“I asked if you’re feeling like you might pose a danger to yourself or others today.”
“You mean am I going to commit suicide?”
He nodded, that stupid grin hanging on like a barnacle. “Or cut yourself. Or if you’re having dangerous thoughts.”
“What? No. Why would I want to commit suicide?”
He shifted slightly to one side and crossed one leg over the other. “Valerie, I’ve spoken quite extensively with your parents,
the police, and your doctors. We talked at great length about the thoughts of suicide that have apparently plagued you for
a good long time. And we all fear that, given recent events, those thoughts might be increasing.”
Nick had always been obsessed with death. It wasn’t any big deal, you know? Some people were obsessed with video games. Some
people thought about nothing but sports. Some guys were totally into military stuff. Nick liked death. From day one when he
was sprawled across his bed talking about how Hamlet should have killed Claudius when he had the chance, Nick had talked about
death.