Dismantling Evan (43 page)

Dad taught me origami when I was younger. I hadn’t done it in a long time, but I wanted to try, leave something for you. I sat on the ground and folded and creased the paper in the dark with only the moonlight being my guide. I think it turned out beautiful.

I knew I had to get a gun and I knew where Asher’s dad kept them. I remember Mr. Vega telling us to stay out of the under-the-stairs closet when we were little. I snuck in the back door. Mr. and Mrs. Vega were talking to Asher. I could hear their voices carrying from upstairs. As quiet as I could, I went into the under the stairs closet, grabbed the first gun I saw and ran. Asher yelled my name, so I guess I wasn’t as quiet as I thought I was. He looked so scared, afraid of me. I don’t remember what happened next. I think I might have had another seizure.

Next thing I knew I was at Lia’s, walking back and forth in front of her house. I couldn’t go to her front door, I was kind of confused... I mean I didn’t know why I went there. As soon as she walked out and I saw the bruise on the side of her face and the worry in her eyes, I knew why I had come. She asked me why I was here. I didn’t tell her, I just asked her if she was okay. I needed to know that she was because even though I tried, I couldn’t protect her today. They hit me too hard and too much. When she said she was then tried to talk more, I couldn’t handle it. I knew she would try to stop me from doing what I need to do. Everything went fuzzy again after that, another seizure I think.

I was back in the work shed. Don’t remember getting back, but somehow I did.

When I saw the flashing lights and heard the deep voices of the police talking on their walkie-talkies, I figured you had called about me. I’m not mad. I know you were just worried. I watched them hop my fence into the wooded area behind the house. I knew they were going to look in here. I wasn’t going to let them find me though. I need to do this, not just for me, but for Brody, Lia, Nikki, Ash, you and everyone else that feels like us. I haven’t been able to protect you all like you have with me. Doing this...it is me fighting back for us. I need to make them see what they are doing when they nag and pick and laugh and hit and hurt others.

I guess I hid well enough, I crawled under the cabinets below the countertop, tucked my backpack in with me, when I heard the cops in your yard. I was sure they were going to come in and look around, but they didn’t. They didn’t even look under the cabinet. They just shined their light around then closed the door. I guess I was lucky.

Anyway, it is early and I am going to leave now. I am going to go through the woods. There is a spot I can cut through to get to the back of the high school. I left this here for you because I knew you would find it after.

I took these pictures over the last couple of days. Remember when I told you I was going to capture the souls and find the good and ugly? These are them. You will read my apology in my journal entry, but I will say it here. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I had snuck into your shed last night and the night before to develop these. I wanted to have the ready to show you today, hoping that you would see what I see in them. But, my plans have changed. I still wanted to leave them for you. You will know what to do with them after everything.

Many people will have questions, especially why I will do what I am going to do. This is where all of the answers should be. At some point, I want you to share the journal entries with Mom and Brody, Ash, Nikki, and Lia, my Ophelia.

I have said this before, I think in one of my journal entries. I wish Dad would have known you Evan. He would have really liked you.

Tell everyone I love them.

-G.F

THE DOCTOR AT THE HOSPITAL told me that seeing Brody struggle to get the gun from Gavin, then hearing the gun go off, I most likely fainted and had trouble being revived because of the anxiety I was feeling. I think everyone thought I was shot, that is why I wasn’t responding, but I wasn’t. The police originally thought Brody was the shooter and took him into custody. Gavin was taken in a separate patrol car, but later transferred to an ambulance.

I separate the pictures from Gavin’s journal entries, splaying them out on the counter in front of me. These were the souls he captured;

Spencer Morietti sitting in the cafeteria smiling like he owns the world known as Braxton Springs Football.

Mr. Thompson sitting at his desk, grading papers, taken from the doorway of his classroom.

Asher lifting Nikki up into his arms and her wrapping her arms tightly around his neck.

Deputy Ralph standing in the courtyard, arms folded, smiling for the camera.

Lia sitting in the courtyard, eyes downcast seeming to study the lines of pinky flesh adorning her fair skin.

Celine O’Keefe leaning against her locker typing some discrete message into her phone, pretty as a peacock in her cheerleading uniform.

Brody working on his mustang, sitting on a metal chair in what looks like a car shop. He is resting his elbows on his legs, letting his hands, dirty from car grease, hang freely. He is grinning, that same grin that makes me fall more and more in love with him.

Chad Schuster appearing to talk in seriousness with two sophomores, Ernie and Justin.

His mother, Sarah Ferguson, smiling charmingly as if Gavin told her he was going to take her picture and she wanted it to be nice for him.

The moon; the first image Gavin ever took with my camera. I remember that night, Gavin, Brody, and I.

Finally, a picture of Gavin’s father dressed in his army fatigues.

Gavin wanted to capture the good and the ugly of his subjects and I can honestly say that he succeeded in his mission.

Today is the first day back to school for everyone. Christmas break was only two weeks away when the shooting happened, so school shut down immediately. Students were escorted by police and SWAT teams to a nearby office building where parents were collecting them. Tears, frustration, joy, and anger were emotionally and orally demonstrated by students and parents alike and the news captured it all.

Finals never happened.

The door knob turns and the door creaks. Brody appears on the other side. “Hey.”

He’s wearing a brown leather jacket, jeans and his work boots.

“Hey.”

Brody was released once the statements were taken from Nikki, Ash, and Lia, and the staff that were struggling to get the gun from Gavin.

He comes up behind me and looks over my shoulder at the pictures, and kisses the top of my head. “You going to take them in today to Nikki?”

I nod and look back at Brody. “Yeah, before we go visit Gav.”

Initially, Gavin was handcuffed and put in a patrol car separate from Brody’s. When he confessed that we was going to shoot himself, the officers took him to the hospital for evaluation; the same hospital I was taken to. Once Mrs. Ferguson got to the hospital with Mom and Dad, she told them everything about Gavin’s mental history. They kept him on suicide watch at the hospital until they could have him taken to Austin Lakes Hospital, an inpatient, psychiatric facility. Gavin wasn’t allowed visitors until Christmas Eve. The doctors told Mrs. Ferguson that they would aim to get him on a regime with counseling as well as medication that will allow him to come home, but they weren’t firm on when he could leave. Until then, the visits from family and friends would remain frequent. Christmas didn’t really happen for the Fergusons, or any of our families.

The entire community was devastated and shaken. Statements and questioning carried on for a while. Those statements spurred more investigation into the attack on Lia and Gavin the day before the shooting, which in turn spurred more investigations into the statements Nikki, Lia, Brody, and Asher made involving Celine, Spencer, and Chad’s constant attacks and bullying of us. It turned out that Celine, Spencer, and Chad weren’t so untouchable after all.

BRODY LOOKS BACK AT THE pictures, then sighs before kissing my temple and whispering, “We have to get going. I’m going to warm up the car.”

“Okay,” I say as Brody walks out the door.

I put the journal back into the folder and place it in a cabinet.

I showed it to Brody the day I found it, two days after everything happened. He broke down in my arms in right here in the work shed. We showed Mrs. Ferguson. Mom and Dad were there too. After we read it, we all sat there holding each other, crying. It was then that Brody and Mrs. Ferguson told us they had made a decision about moving. They said they weren’t going to leave a place that had always been home to them. They weren’t going to let what has happened make them leave.

I collect the pictures, place them in my backpack, and close the door to the work shed behind me.

As we get closer to the school, students are walking slower than usual, more aware than usual. Some parents are walking by their sides, escorting them onto campus for the first time after the shooting.

Asher, Nikki, and Lia are leaning against the Jeep when we pull into the space next to them. The five of us walk together onto campus. We might be getting a few looks from students and parents, but they don’t say anything. They are too aware of what has happened now to say anything, really.

In Gavin’s letter, he said I would know what to do with the pictures. Two weeks ago, Brody and I got Ash, Nikki, and Lia together and showed them the journal entries and pictures. It moved them through a gamut of emotions, just at it had done to us. I told Nikki that we needed to run these pictures as a piece in the paper. She agreed and said we could write the article that would be paired with it. We approached the newspaper sponsors about it and they didn’t receive it well. They said we were honoring someone that had victimized so many the day he brought a gun to school.

We let it settle for a couple of days, then went back and told them that it isn’t an act of honor, but a memorial to remind us of what led up to the complete dismantlement of our community. Nikki put her spin on it to by adding, “The shooter was just as much a victim in the many years leading up to the horrific event that, thank God, didn’t end any lives... this time. We as the students need to remember what led to this and be vigilant in remembering to not let this happen again.”

I swear, she is going to be a lawyer someday.

Cautiously they agreed to let us run it with a clause that they would read and approve it before it ran. They let us onto campus on the last week of the holiday to format the layout and get the approved paper off to press.

Nikki turns on the light to the lab and five stacks of bound newspapers set on the table in front of us. Each of us take a stack and start delivering the papers to every classroom on campus.

As I walk through the halls, students buzz around, some talk in clusters, others are silent. I hand a stack of newspapers to a teacher standing in the hallway I am walking.

I DID COME CLEAN ABOUT my “condition”, the depression part anyway, not the bipolar. I told Nikki, Lia, and Ash separately from Brody. I told them about the problems I had at my old school and the medication I am taking. They reacted just as I expected; normal and accepting. I told Brody last because I needed to tell him alone. He reminded me that he already knew but I told him that I needed to tell him anyway. I told him more than I told the others. I told him about my life in San Francisco, about being invisible, about coming here and wanting to continue to be invisible among everyone; fly below the social status radar.

He told me that it would have never been possible. He said that I am too bold to have remained invisible. I have never been called bold in my life, so I guess I had changed a lot since San Francisco, maybe grown up a little too.

I PASS OUT TWO MORE stacks to the teachers further down the hallway.

I know this fresh awareness will fade. Normalcy will fill in the empty spaces that tragedy split apart. Life continues after events like this and that is okay because by nature, life is unstable all the time. It only takes one trigger to dismantle it. When Gav was dismantled we were all dismantled with him. Maybe I was dismantling the entire time though. Dismantling from the moment I met Gavin and Brody Ferguson in front of my house.

I hand Mr. Thompson a stack of papers, then walk on to the next classroom.

The trigger doesn’t have to happen though. There can be a constant in the instability. We can be the compassionate stranger that befriends the odd loner no one wants to be around. We can be the friend that carries the stability in the chaos and flaws even if that very friend is flawed herself. The new kid in town, that is a little depressed and somewhat mercurial, can be accepted and loved by an unlikely band of friends.