This Is Not a Drill (6 page)

My love for these kids suddenly overwhelms me and my eyes fill with tears. I feel like I’ve come to know them so well in just a few short months. I can’t let anything happen to them. We have to get them out of here. I turn away from them and move quickly, before I can lose my nerve, to speak to Stutts in the front of the room.

“Mr. Stutts, why don’t you let the kids go?” Stutts looks up, surprised that I’ve addressed him. I’m surprised, too. “I know they’re driving you crazy, and I can’t promise how long I can keep them quiet. You can keep me and Jake.”

“Just keep me,” Jake chimes in, coming up behind me. “Look, my dad’s the mayor. He has a lot of clout, and he’s not going to let anything happen to me. You can use me to get what you want. Just let the kids and Emery go.”

“Jake—” I try to interrupt.

“
Don’t
tell me what to do,” Stutts yells at us. “I don’t need your help.”

“You can think better if you don’t have all this distraction,” I try again.

As if on cue, Mason Mayfield III yells, “You’re a poophead!” at Lewis, and Natalie starts to cry again over some slight, real or imagined. I turn back to shush them.

“If you let them go, I’ll do everything I can to make sure you’re heard,” Jake says.

Stutts looks over at the kids. He paces, still keeping the door in his line of vision, the gun waving dangerously in his hand every time he speaks.

“No,” he says. “Everybody shut up!”

I turn back to the kids. “Y’all keep counting.” What would Mrs. Campbell do? “Whoever has the most animals in your book gets to be the line leader tomorrow.” My bribe turns out to be the exact right thing to say. It seems to calm the overcharged atmosphere in the room—the idea that tomorrow will be a normal day and that we’ll be choosing line leaders to go to lunch again.

“Do we count people?” Alicia asks. Good question. I look at Stutts, prowling like a mean wildcat.

“Sure, let’s count humans as animals, too.”

“What about bugs? Are they animals?” Tyler asks.

Geez, I never knew making up a game could have so many darn rules. “Sure, bugs count.”

I’m touched by Jake’s offer of himself as a hostage. I’ve never even heard him refer to himself before as the mayor’s son. He hates it when anybody brings it up. I’m pretty sure it’s the reason for a lot of the stuff he does—that and losing his mom.

I saw Mrs. Willoughby at the grocery store soon after I heard she had breast cancer. She had a bright blue scarf around her head with big hoop earrings, like she was trying to look all cheery, but her face was pale and there were dark circles under her eyes. I didn’t know Jake well enough to talk to him then—it was before we started going out—but I heard from someone else just a few weeks later that things were bad. Even after we’d been together awhile, he didn’t want to talk about her death—or her life, either. It was hard to get him to go there, but I knew he needed to.

I don’t really know much about the marijuana bust. Molly heard he and Cole and Hunter got pulled over and the cop searched the car. I don’t think there was a lot of weed—but enough to get them arrested. I’ve never known Jake to smoke, but maybe it’s his way of getting back at his dad—for getting remarried so fast. And to Christine, who makes everything worse than it needs to be.

CHAPTER 10

JAKE

I KNOW THERE ARE A LOT OF RUMORS
about the drug thing this summer, but basically, what happened was, Cole and I went to pick up Hunter to get a milk shake after he had his wisdom teeth out. We had to wait for him to finish taking a shower. Cole says Hunter takes four showers a day—whenever he gets lonely, if you get the joke. Cole’s a real comedian.

We always go to a place down the road called Dee’s Burgers. Cole calls it Disease Burgers. So when we get there, Dee’s isn’t real crowded even though it’s a Friday night. But Hunter doesn’t want anybody to see him with his face all lopsided, so I park a little ways away from the door and bring the food out. We’re just finished eating our burgers in the car—Hunter’s drinking a shake—when Cole hauls out this baggie and some papers from his pocket and starts rolling a joint.

“Aw, naw, Cole, don’t pull that shit out here,” I tell him.

“It’s for our boy Hunter, dude,” Cole says. “Look at him; the man’s in pain. Why are you such a pussy about weed, Willoughby?”

“I just don’t wanna get busted, man. It’s stupid to pull it out here.”

“No, you’re being an old lady. C’mon, Church Lady, lighten up.”

“I believe you mean ‘light up,’” Hunter says, holding his jaw.

“Look, I’m not gonna be one of those burnouts at school,” I say. “Hell, half my first period business ed class last year was stoned outta their minds before they got to school every day.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Cole says. “First semester? I was in that class.”

“I rest my case. Look, wake ’n’ bake is a bad way to live, if you ask me.”

Cole lights up, inhales, then exhales with a big smile. He tries to pass it to me, but I shake my head, so he hands it back to Hunter.

“Just be careful, man,” I tell them as Hunter looks over his shoulder, takes a hit, then passes it back to Cole. “All we need is for some cop to show up.”

“Like that one?” Hunter asks. We all look back at the cruiser pulling into the parking lot.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Cole mutters as we try to act normal while he frantically stabs out the j against his shoe. Hunter’s fanning the air. “Don’t look back at him. He’ll know we’re up to something.” Cole pulls down the visor mirror and we watch a big bald-headed older cop get out of the car.

“He’s lookin’ over here. Go, go, go,” Hunter says. “Get the fuck outta here.”

I crank the car and throw it in reverse.

“Too late,” I groan, watching in horror as the cop walks in our direction.

Cole opens the glove compartment and shoves the baggie inside.

“What the hell you doin’?” I whisper-yell. “You can’t put that there!”

The cop is almost to the door.

“What do you want me to do with it?” he says, panicked.

“Shit, you know he’s gonna smell it,” I say. “Roll down the window on your side!”

“Too late,” Hunter says, and I look up to find the policeman motioning for me to roll down mine.

“You boys havin’ trouble?” he asks as I hit the window button, giving him my most innocent expression.

“No, sir, we were just headin’ out,” I say.
Please, God, just let us head out.

“Mind if I see your license, young man?”

“Sure thing, Officer.” Shit. The kiss-up’s a dead giveaway. I don’t even ask the obvious question about whether we’re doing something wrong—since I already know the answer. The policeman takes my license, studies it, frowns, and leans down to look in at me. “You Mayor Willoughby’s son?”

“Yes, sir.”

And then I see the inevitable sniff test and I know it’s all over.

I can see the guy struggling for a second. The decision of whether he wants to bust the mayor’s son takes some thought. I hold my breath, hoping he’ll decide it might be bad for his career.

“Smells like you boys been smokin’ some dope in here.” Apparently not a career cop.

“No, sir, we just had some burgers,” Cole says.

“Ain’t a burger in the world smells like that, son.” Boy, this guy is slick.

“Uh, my friend just had his wisdom teeth out,” Cole says, leaning over to speak to the cop. “They gave him some stuff to gargle with. Maybe that’s what you’re smelling.” His bullshit is so lame, even
I’m
embarrassed.

“How ’bout you boys step out of the car?” Officer Slick requests with a smile.

We have no choice but to climb out and face our fate.

“Keep your hands where I can see ’em. That’s it. Just put your hands on the vehicle,” he says as Cole leans forward on the back of the car. People in the parking lot stare as we “assume the position.”

“I’m gonna need you to spread ’em.” He taps his flashlight on the inside of Cole’s legs. “Just like that.” He searches Cole’s pockets and frisks him, patting down his upper body, then his pants legs and socks. He dumps Cole’s wallet on top of the car and turns his attention to me. Soon the contents of my and Hunter’s pockets are spread near Cole’s.

“Sir, we were just getting a burger,” Cole tries again. “None of us have ever been in any trouble.”

“Then you got nothin’ to worry about, sport.” The policeman moves to the car and shines his flashlight around the seat and floor.

That damn glove compartment might as well be glowing with phosphorescent light. It’s obviously the only hiding place there is. We’re all sweatin’ bullets by the time he reaches for the latch.

“Mind if I take a look in here?” he asks. It’s a rhetorical question. Hunter’s dad is a lawyer, and he’s told us cops can search your car. All they have to do is say they smelled something, and they can look anywhere they want.

As soon as he punches the button, the plastic bag pops out like a damn jack-in-the-box. He opens it, sniffs the contents, and looks over at us.

“I believe you boys’ll be takin’ a little ride with me.” No one says a word as we walk toward the squad car. Hunter’s looking a little green and my legs feel like jelly.

Just as the cop opens the back door for us to get in, Hunter leans over and barfs on the ground. We all stand there and watch him puke. Finally, he says, “Sorry, I don’t feel so good. It’s probably the pain pills I’m taking.”

“Got a little excited there, huh, pardner?” the cop says. “Just make sure you don’t get vomit in my car.”

Hunter nods to show he’ll be all right, then gets a funny look on his face and pukes again.

“Aw, man,” the cop says.

I’m tempted to track it on my shoes on purpose, but we step over the mess and get in the car.

The rest of that night is a blur of mug shots, jail cells, and the worst—calls to the ’rents. My dad barely speaks to me when he gets there, then all the way home in the car he yells at me about how stupid I am. We both know he’s thinking about how this will affect his political career.

Before The Christine came along, things were good between me and Dad. We did stuff together every Saturday morning. It was our day—from the time I was, like, five or six. First we’d eat breakfast at Miss Ruby’s; it’s a down-home kinda place where local politicians and town bigwigs meet at what everyone calls the Liar’s Table. We always ordered biscuits and gravy; I guess that’s where my biscuit addiction started. My dad sat me at the table next to him, and when they were talking about some sports team or town squabble, he’d look at me and say, “What’s your take on that, Jake?” After breakfast, we’d run errands—to the hardware store or, in the summer, to the farmer’s market. When I got older, we threw a Frisbee in the park or went fishing or sometimes just hiking on one of the trails on Merritt Mountain a few miles away.

After Mom died, he tried to keep our tradition up, even though we’d been kicked in the gut. We still went somewhere every Saturday, just for an hour or so. But then The Christine came along, and she decided she liked to have her coffee on the back deck with my dad on Saturdays and read the paper, which takes her pretty much all morning—because she’s a brainless moron.

Fine by me. Dad and I don’t have much to say to each other lately, anyway. I didn’t really expect him to stand by me when I got in trouble. He just believed the worst—like everybody else.

So I got grounded that night for about a million years, and the worst thing about it was how happy it made The Christine. She’d been telling my dad for months what a loser I am. I hate like hell I proved her right.

CHAPTER 11

EMERY

“Look, Miss Emery, mine has
eleventy-three animals,” Kimberly announces proudly, holding up a picture book. Great, how am I going to reward the winner of the animal counting contest in a room full of made-up numbers?

“Terrific, Kimberly,” I tell her. “Anyone else have more?” No one speaks up. “Then Kimberly is the winner—with eleventy-three animals in her book.” I’m not waiting for anyone to argue.

“Eleventy-three’s not a number,” Alicia complains, very irritated.

“It is today, Alicia. By God, eleventy-three is a number today.”

I’m exhausted, and I haven’t even had a chance to show Jake what I found in Mrs. Campbell’s purse. When I was searching for insulin and found her phone, I thought maybe it was dead, but when I touched it, it lit up. She was totally convincing when she told Stutts her cell phone was broken. Talk about a poker face—Willa Campbell is a world-class bluffer.

It would be hard to text or e-mail for help without Stutts seeing, but it might be possible to use it to bring up Internet on the computer. I remember Jake’s brother doing some kind of tethering thing once, so maybe Jake’ll know how. If we could figure out a way to get Stutts to let us use the computer, we might be able to communicate with the police.

Mason whines, “I’m hungry. I wanna go outside. Do we get to go home today?” Being locked in a room with Stutts all morning is starting to wear on all of us. The kids need a diversion. I get up and walk to where Stutts is sitting.

“Look, we’re trying to keep the kids quiet, but it would help if they had something fun to do. Will you let us see if there are any games on the teacher’s computer? They could take turns.”

“No computer,” he growls.

“We can unhook the Internet. It’s just that blue cord that connects to the wall right there. The school system’s too cheap to pay for wireless.”

Jake’s looking kinda puzzled, not sure why the computer game idea is important, but he goes with it. He walks over and pulls the cord from the wall and puts it on the table near Stutts. “No connection.” Jake points to the computer. “See for yourself.”

Stutts doesn’t answer. Simon and Kenji are looking at him pleadingly. Patrick sinks lower in his seat; he’s sure he won’t be included in any group activities. I notice he rarely looks at his father.

Stutts glances over as Jake opens the programs and finds several games. “Just games, man,” he says to Stutts. “They’ll keep the kids out of your hair.”

Stutts grunts and turns away, which seems to be, amazingly, a yes, or at least an “I don’t care.” The kids are all waving their hands. Mason’s yelling, “Me, me! Pick me. I wanna go first.”

“Hold on a second.” I reach for Mrs. C.’s flowerpots.

Every morning when the kids come in, they pick up the popsicle stick “flower” with their name on it from the box on the table and stick it in the hot lunch pot or the cold lunch pot. That way Mrs. C. can send in the lunch count to the office without having to ask. She also keeps the flowers on her desk to use when she needs to choose someone for a job or to answer a question. She picks a flower and reads the name, then puts it back in the box for the next day. She told us that, by the end of each day, everyone’s been chosen for something.

I draw three names: Nick, Tyler, and Kaela. They bounce to the front of the room, and several other kids pout.

“Don’t worry. Everybody’ll get a turn. And the rest of us can work on the coloring puzzles some more.”

“You said you were gonna read us a book,” Natalie says.

“As soon as we finish the puzzles.” I don’t trust my shaky voice to read aloud just yet.

Stutts moves a chair—an adult-size one—halfway between us and the door, still watching the hall. He looks so nervous. I watch his hand on the gun and hope he has better control than he seems to.

“Mason’s messing with Mr. Worley,” Alicia calls out from the back of the room.

“Mason, go back to your seat,” I say, sighing.

“I hate you,” he says to Alicia as he passes her desk. “I hope you move to Pluto.”

“Pluto’s not even a planet anymore.” She sticks out her tongue.

“Hey, you two, that’s enough,” I tell them. They can’t help it that they don’t really understand what could happen here. I have trouble comprehending it myself.

The natives are restless, so I offer a bribe. “The first three finished can choose something from the prize basket.”

And they’re back to work. Toys and treats always do the job.

Stutts is leaning back in his chair in front of the fall leaves display on the wall—deep red and orange and yellow ones the kids brought in for Mrs. C. to help them iron between pieces of waxed paper. His eyes are half closed, and he’s dividing his attention between the door and the computer. The shadows under his eyes look like bruises; I doubt he sleeps much. You could almost feel sorry for him—except that he’s holding a gun on a room full of little kids.

Patrick’s head is on the table, one arm bent to form a pillow. Stutts reaches over and opens his son’s backpack. He pulls out Patrick’s jacket, wads it up, and pushes it under his head. Patrick burrows into the soft fleece. The unexpected tenderness surprises me—and motivates me to try to make a connection with him.

Screw your courage to the sticking place, Emery. It’s now or never.
I walk to the front, pull a chair within a few feet of Stutts, and sit down, my knees shaking a little. He looks over at me, then back at the door. But he doesn’t tell me to go away. I can feel Jake’s eyes on me from across the room.

“Patrick’s a great kid,” I say to him.

He glances at his son. His face softens just a little. “Yep.”

“He doesn’t talk a lot, but he always knows the right answer if you call on him.”

No comment. I feel a little silly talking to myself, but I keep going.

“You must read to him a lot.” I look around the room, like I don’t care if he answers or not—no pressure.

“My wife—she does.”

Long silence. Nick lets out a whoop of victory and the other kids at the computer moan. “Your turn, Kaela,” Jake says.

“My parents always read to me when I was little,” I say.

Stutts squints his eyes like he’s trying to focus on something across the room.

“You read much?” I ask him.

He shrugs, then says without looking at me, “Tom Clancy, stuff like that.”

“Did you always want to join the military?”

“No.” He sighs and shifts in his chair like he wishes I’d go away. But he doesn’t run me off. “Didn’t know what else to do,” he mumbles, “when I graduated.”

Long pause.

“I guess you’ve seen a lot . . . over there. A lot of bad stuff.”

“What’re you trying to say?” He turns to look at me, his eyes cold, his voice hard. “You think I’m crazy?”

“No, no, not at all.” I keep my voice casual, trying not to show how much he scares me. “I just think that would have a big effect on anybody, that’s all.”

“You could say that.” He’s watching the door again.

I wait.

“You know what an IED is, kid?” he finally says, glancing over at me.

“An explosive device.”

“You got it. Improvised explosive device. Shit’ll blow. You. Up. It’s packed into empty soda cans, paper cups, plastic bags, food containers, dead animal carcasses—you name it. People think you can just avoid stuff in the road when you’re driving over there. You know why you can’t?”

I shake my head, trying not to show my surprise that he’s talking to me.

“Because there’s trash everywhere. The roads are lined with garbage. No way to know which garbage’ll kill you. You ride down the road looking as hard as you can for the stuff that’s gonna make you dead—and you know all the time you can’t tell it’s comin’ until it’s too late.” He glances at me with a sneer. “So if I seem a little jumpy to you, princess, you’ll have to excuse me.”

“I didn’t say you were.” I’m navigating my own land mines here. “I just don’t know what it’s like there. I’m just asking you . . . because I’m interested.”

“What do you want to know?”

“About the people. Were you able to get along with the Iraqis?”

“Yes, I’ve spent time with Iraqi families in their own living rooms, talking about their culture. I’ve given their children candy and treated their women with respect. I’ve had little old men shake my hand and thank me for helping them. I’m not some meathead who goes around busting in doors and intimidating people, if that’s what you think.”

“No, I never—”

“That said,” he cuts me off and continues, “if you try to kill me or my buddies, that makes you the enemy, and you are going down. I don’t care who you are or what your religion is or isn’t; we’ll hunt you down and we will take you out. That is nonnegotiable.”

His tone is steely; the volume escalates. Jake looks up, but I shake my head slightly. A tense silence hangs in the air.

I try another angle. “Were you able to talk to your family much?”

“Had Internet most of the time, and I phoned some.” His eyes are heavy—from fatigue or booze, I’m not sure which.

I try not to look at the gun—or think about his sweaty hands.

“How long were you there?”

“This last time, a year—but I was there two years starting in 2005.”

“Where’s ‘there’? What part?”

“Baghdad.” He runs a hand across his cropped hair.

“I guess there were a lot of things you can’t ever really describe.”

He stares at me, narrowing his eyes. “Look, I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

“Sure, no problem, I understand.” I stand up and walk over casually to read the kids’ papers hanging on the wall. Mrs. Campbell helped them write out their Rules for Life. She likes for them to be free to write without worrying too much about spelling. The one closest to the window is Tyler’s. His rules are:

1. Dont leev yur bike in the dry way.

2. Dont poop in the bat tub.

3. Dont fergit to pee befor hid and seek.

The obsession with potty business makes me smile, but the narrow scope of their problems before now tugs at my heart.

The rules changed today.

I can hear car doors slamming outside, and I wonder if there are news cameras. Hensonville’s a sleepy little town. A purse snatching at the mall gets top billing on our one local TV station’s nightly news, and police don’t have much to do besides stop speeders . . . until today.

When kids start school here, moms worry about whether they’ll have somebody to sit with at the lunch table, or whether they’ll have a nice teacher—not whether they’ll come home.

My mother must be climbing the walls by now. I glance at Jake at the computer and wish I had a way to let her know I’m all right.

I turn back to Stutts and say casually, “I’m just going to fix these blinds where they’re twisted.”

He looks at the small gap in the blinds and says, “Go ahead.”

I reach for the problem spot, which is, conveniently, at eye level.

What I see takes my breath away.

There are police cars everywhere, people running, news trucks lining the curb, and SWAT team guys suiting up beside a dark-colored van. I’m sure we don’t have a SWAT team; they must have brought them in from somewhere else. Yellow crime scene tape has been used to block off the front of the building, and the parking lot’s been cleared.

There are two single-file lines of kids walking fast out of the building, with teachers and policemen walking beside them. They’re evacuating the school—getting as many kids as they can out of the reach of Brian Stutts. I’m guessing they decided not to empty the classrooms in our wing.

And then I see something that nearly drops me to my knees.

Four ambulances.

All lined up in a row in front of the school.

Waiting for victims of the shooter. Waiting to take them—us—to the hospital. Or to . . . My head spins, the scene blurs, and I reach out to steady myself on the windowsill. I take deep breaths, fighting the spell that threatens to pull me under.

I turn to look at the children behind me working quietly, mostly unaware that their lives could be cut short at the whim of a madman.
Dear God, please help us find a way out of this.

I realize if I’m going to help these kids, I need to concentrate on the here and now. I straighten out the blinds and walk away from the window, but I’m careful not to look at Stutts. Maybe I was a fool to try to strike up a conversation with him when SWAT team guys are suiting up to protect themselves from him. My head tells me to stay away, but my gut says I have to make him see us as people, so he’ll know who we are. Maybe then it’ll be harder for him to—

I can’t think about that. I won’t let that picture into my head.