Paper Airplanes (32 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

Cassie

Jared faced forward, a slight smirk on his face as he rested his hand on my
bare thigh in chemistry. I tried to mask my own smirk and actually pay attention to what Mr. Graves was saying, which was uber-distracting with my new boyfriend sitting so close to me. Memories of what we’d done early that morning before class made my stomach twinge in sweet remembrance as the minutes on the clock ticked by in an excruciating fashion. Class had literally never seemed so long.

We’d been together for almost a week, and we’d barely spent any time apart. True to his promise, Jared had replenished his stash of condoms
, and we’d made a serious dent in them over the past few days. I felt bad that I’d been ditching Marley to see Jared every night that I wasn’t working, but I didn’t think she cared. She spent most of her time with Scott. It was truthfully the happiest I’d seen her in months, so I didn’t question it. I knew exactly how she felt.

“I like this skirt,” Jared said, leaning over to whisper in my ear.

I smiled. “I wore it for you,” I said in referenced to the short pink bright skirt I’d picked out that morning because I knew it made my legs looked killer.

“You’re
torturing me,” he whispered.

That made me smile even wider.
“Totally the intention.”

He squeezed my thigh playfully, and I giggled.

“Mr. Lansing? Ms. Witter? Did you have a question about the lecture?” Mr. Graves asked then, and I froze.

But Jared seemed to be as cool as ever for some reason, not
even bothering to remove his hand from my thigh.

“No, I was just telling my girlfriend what an interesting
element Uranium is,” he said, and I was shocked to realize he’d actually been paying attention to the lecture. But more than that, he’d just announced who we were to each other to our entire class. Not that any of them cared, but Jared never spoke up in class. This was a completely new, confident side of him. I liked it.

“Were you now?” Mr. Graves questioned, not convinced Jared was being forthright with him. He was right. “And what, pray tell, is the thing that you find most interesting about Uranium, Mr. Lansing?”

“That it was used in early photography,” Jared said, and I had no clue where he was pulling that from.

I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. Mr. Graves started to say something else,
probably wanting to probe to see if Jared was bullshitting him, but an alarm suddenly sounded overhead, and I looked up to see the fire alarm flashing a bright red light, but the sound was different than what I was used to hearing. This was three short blasts, a pause, then three short blasts again. The sequence continued as students looked around confused.

Mr. Graves wasted little time walking to the back of the classroom and locking the door. He peered outside through the small window looking for something, the apprehension and tension on his face evident.

“What’s going on?” I asked Jared, and he just shook his head, his eyes on Mr. Graves.

The phone on his desk chose that moment to ring, and he crossed the room to answer it. His hand poised over the receiver, I noticed he hesitated for a few seconds before picking it up.

Chatter around the classroom kept me from hearing what he was saying, but I could see the tense look on his face. Just then a loud noise from outside made me jump.

“What was th
at?” I asked as I watched all the color drain from Jared’s face.

“Not
hing. I’m sure it was nothing,” he said quickly as his arm went around me and pulled me against him.

“Jared, you’re shaking.”

“I’m fine,” he insisted, but he wasn’t telling me the truth.

“Ladies and gentleman,” Mr. Graves said then. “I need your attention please.
The campus is on lockdown at the moment, and we have been asked to stay in here until we get the all clear from the administrator in charge. Please don’t panic, and please remain in your seats.”

I felt like I was going to be sick. Lockdown? Why was the campus on lockdown?

Jared’s arm around me tightened, so I turned into him, letting him pull me against his chest.

“Not again,” he whispered, and I wasn’t sure he even realized he was speaking out loud.

“What do you mean not again?” I asked in horror as the puzzle pieces started to come together.

“Nothing,” he said quickly. “We’re fine.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t gloss things over for me. You think that noise was a gunshot, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he said quickly,
but he sounded so certain that my blood ran cold.

I could feel Jared’s chest rising and falling rapidly, his breath coming in shallow bursts
, but I didn’t know what to say to comfort him. The best I could do was curl up against him and pray that he was wrong. We were both paranoid after what had happened to us. Our first instinct was to think the worst, but we also had good reason to. The campus was on lockdown after all.

After
two hours of near silence, I was starting to lose it. I wasn’t sure what we were waiting for, but we’d seen policemen walk by our classroom several times. We hadn’t heard any more of what we thought were gunshots, but that didn’t mean anything. The campus was huge, and the buildings were spread out.

My heart nearly leapt out of my throat as the phone on M
r. Graves’s desk rang once more. He picked it up, and every student in the room listened to his side of the conversation. We were all sufficiently freaked out at that point.

“Yes. Yes. Okay, thank you. I understand. Thank you.” He set the phone down and turned toward us. “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your cooperation during this time. The police have declared the campus safe, and you are all free to go.”

All around us, students started to pack up their bags, more irritated with having to stay in class longer for no apparent reason. None of them had a clue what could have happened if there had been a real threat. The administration was right in doing what they had to keep us safe. Regardless of the outcome, I felt better knowing that there was a plan in place so history didn’t repeat itself.

I separated myself fro
m Jared for the first time in more than two hours and started to put my textbook and iPad back into my backpack. When I looked up at him, he was staring straight ahead, shaking his head.

“You okay?” I asked him.

“I hate this world,” he mumbled.

My heart sank as he said that, but how could I argue with him? We lived in a world where people hijacked planes and dropped bombs on innocent civilians and randomly gunned down people they didn’t know for reasons beyond my understanding. It was sick, and we were powerless to control any of it. I couldn’t remember ever feeling more helpless in my life.

“I know,” I said solemnly, my hand going to rest on his shoulder.

Then he started to wordlessly pack up his things. I looked up at the front of the room where Mr. Graves was turning off the overhead projector and unplugging his laptop. I walked up to him and stood there for a few seconds, wondering if he was going to notice me.

“Yes, Ms. Witter?” he asked tersely, confirming my suspicions that he wasn’t fond of me. With good reason too. Jared and I spent more of class time joking around with each other than we did listening. But I was hoping Mr. Graves wouldn’t hold that against me now.

“Um, Mr. Graves?”

“Yes,” he repeated impatiently, looking up at me.

I swallowed hard, my mouth feeling so dry. “Why did they lock down the campus?”

“I’m not at liberty to say, Ms. Witter,” he said as he started to pack up his things again.

“Someone had a gun, didn’t they?”

He froze and looked up at me. “Why would you say that?”

I swallowed again, wondering why the words were so hard to get out. “Well, I heard that loud
banging noise right after you locked the classroom door.”

He looked at me speculatively for a few seconds.
“Coleman College,” he said then, recognition dawning in his eyes as they softened. “You were a student there?”

“Yes sir. I was. I mean, I am.”

He nodded. “I knew I recognized your name. You and Mr. Lansing were involved in what happened back in January, weren’t you?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“I’m very sorry you had to go through something like that, but I’m glad you’re both safe. Even though neither of you has a very promising future in chemistry, I can see you’re both very bright individuals.”

I smiled a weak smile at his attempt at a joke/compliment. “Thank you.”

“For your own peace of mind, no one had a gun on campus today. What you heard was probably a car backfiring. The lockdown was due to a bomb threat that ended up being the prank of some teenagers. The police have assured us that there isn’t anything to worry about.”

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “Thank you for letting me know.”

He nodded. “I can’t even begin to imagine what you went through earlier this year. I would assume it’s not easy to rebound from something like that, and the fear probably never goes away, does it?”

I shook my head. “No, it doesn’t.”

He walked over to his messenger bag that was sitting on his desk chair. A few seconds later he came back to where I was standing. He handed me card.

“My wife, Theresa, she’s a counselor. She helps people who’ve been through traumatic situations. You should give her a call.”

It wasn’t the first time since the shooting that someone had offered me the name of their shrink.

“With all due respect, Mr. Graves, I’m not sure that’s going to help,” I said as I started to hand the card back to him.

He put his hand up to refuse me. “Keep it. You never know when you might need to talk to someone.”

“Okay,” I said, figuring
I’d humor him. He’d been nice enough to tell me what had happened that day, which I was sure he wasn’t supposed to do, but it had honestly eased so much of the tension I was feeling. “Thank you.”

“Sometimes it’s okay not to be brave, Ms. Witter. There are times in our lives when we all need help, and it’s okay to ask for it.” With that, he slid h
is laptop into his messenger bag and slung it over his shoulder. “Take care. I’ll see you in lab tomorrow.”

“Bye.”

I watched him leave the room before my eyes darted back to Jared who was standing rigidly by our table, his backpack slung over one shoulder, a vacant look in his eyes as he stared at a spot on the floor. I walked over to him, wrapped my arms around his waist and hugged him. His arms slid around mine as he rested his chin on the top of my head, his body slacking against mine.

“It was a bomb threat that turned out to be nothing but a prank,” I told him, because I figured the peace of mind would help.

“Great,” he said tightly.

I looked up at him. “
It is great. What’s wrong?”

He shook his head.
“Everything. This is exactly what I was talking about – the fear. Cass, you don’t know what it’s like, because you can’t remember–”

“Hey, that’s not my fault,” I protested.

“I’m not saying that,” he said in that quiet, calm way of his. “Truthfully, I don’t want you to remember everything. I’m grateful every day that you don’t know what it was like watching people die all around you. The sounds you heard the night of the fireworks, just imagine the visual images that go with them. I can’t get those images out of my head for anything.”

I squeezed him tighter around the waist, hoping to bring him some comfort, but I knew there wasn’t a lot I could do.

“You should talk to Marley,” I suggested.

“Why?” he asked, looking down at me.

I wasn’t sure he was Marley’s biggest fan. Even though she seemed to have been making Scott fairly happy over the past week, we hadn’t talked about it, but I wasn’t sure Jared trusted her.

“Because she knows what it’s like. She saw her boyfriend get killed when he was trying to protect her. She’d be dead if it wasn’t for Aiden.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I remember that. She screamed, and the gunman was charging toward her. I saw that guy, Aiden, step out from behind the cash register, and the gunman put a bullet in his chest like it was nothing. I closed my eyes after that, so sure I was going to die too, and then I must have blacked out. The next thing I remember was waking up after being in surgery.”

“She has the same memories. Seriously, it might help to talk to her.”

He looked down at me with sympathetic eyes. “I’m sorry that she lost him. I really am, but I don’t think I can talk to her. Trust me when I say that I’ve talked to my therapist about this for the past six months, and it’s only gotten marginally easier to deal with everything. I don’t want to rehash it again. I just want my life back. That’s all I want.”

I nodded, knowing exactly how he felt. “Me too,” I said softly.
“More than anything I want to be a normal college student with my only concerns centering around which frat party I’m going to this weekend. I want to hang out with my sorority sisters and be silly and not worry that every loud noise is someone with a gun. Jared, you said you’re afraid all the time, but you’re not the only one. Even though I can’t pinpoint why I’m afraid all the time, I still feel it. Do you think I want to live in the town I grew up in, with my parents and go to community college? Hell no. I just want things to go back to the way they were – more than anything.”