Authors: Lisa McMann
Ben smiles. “That would be great.” The two hastily look elsewhere, like they’re sixth graders crushing on each other, and my heart pinches a bit—could my brother finally have found a nice boy to like?
“Thanks, Ben,” I say. “I mean it. You’re amazing for . . . well, pretty much everything.” I stand up, and Sawyer stands up with me. “I’ve got to get back if I’m going to take the lunch shift for Rowan. Let us know what’s up. We’ll see you around eight.”
Sawyer and I walk out of Ben’s dorm and across the ominous quad that haunted Sawyer’s waking hours up
until a week ago. Now it only haunts his dreams. I look over the familiar grounds, thinking about last Sunday when we stopped a couple of gun-carrying gay haters from killing eleven people. “I hope they plead guilty,” I say in a low voice.
Sawyer nods. “Yeah. I don’t exactly want to testify.”
My stomach hurts like hell at the thought.
• • •
Five things I hate about my life:
1. Apparently there’s no end to this insanity
2. The tension at home is probably giving me an ulcer
3. Spring break is over and it pretty much sucked balls
4. I just realized it’s my birthday tomorrow.
Tomorrow
. Who forgets important shit like that?
5. It’s like things aren’t funny anymore
• • •
My lunch shift is boring and slow, and Rowan, under slightly heavier surveillance after her little escapade to New York, hangs out in the dining room doing her spring break homework that she wisely waited until the last minute to do. With everything that has happened lately, I’m surprised our parents haven’t locked either of us up or gotten suspicious, but they have their own problems, and my dad mumbled something about bad things coming in threes, so I guess with that attitude, he was sort of expecting Rowan’s delinquency.
The lull gives me time to fill Rowan in, which makes her even madder than usual that she’s missing out on something. I tell her for the millionth time that this isn’t something she wants to be in on. She disagrees, and we leave it at that. At five thirty we switch out, and I sneak outside to the alley and find Sawyer waiting for me. We stop for dinner and we’re off to UC once again.
We find Ben and Trey in Ben’s room a little before eight, Ben at his desk and Trey leaning over Ben’s shoulder as he types on his computer.
I knock on the open door and poke my head in. “How many?” I ask.
“We spoke directly to twelve and left messages for the others,” Ben says.
“And you didn’t forget anyone?”
“I don’t think so. Though we didn’t bother Tori. She’s still in the hospital.”
Trey pipes up. “We asked each person we called if they could remember who else was there that night. We’re all meeting in the green room in two minutes.” He and Ben get up, lock the room, and head in that direction. Sawyer and I follow.
There’s a handful of students in the green room already. The guy who was shot in the foot walks in on crutches, and I grab him a chair to put his leg on. A girl sits in a corner of a love seat, clutching her backpack.
Ben’s roommate, Vernon, is there, sans braless girlfriend. More people straggle in over the next quiet minutes. “We should have brought refreshments,” I say under my breath.
“It’s not exactly a party,” Sawyer whispers back.
A few people look expectantly at Ben, who glances at his phone and then stands up. “It’s been a week,” he says with a small smile and a heavy sigh. “And I thought it would be a good idea to just check in with each other, you know?”
A few heads nod.
Ben asks us all to go around the room, introducing ourselves. Trey checks people off his list. I catch his eye and smile, and he smiles back.
Then Ben explains that we don’t really have a format; we’re just here to talk without any counselors or reporters around to analyze us or judge us or whatever, and I can see people relaxing. I wonder what it’s been like here.
Ben looks at the guy with crutches. “Schurman, how’s your foot?”
Schurman shakes his head and looks at the floor. “Not great.”
“What did your coach say?”
“He’s being cool, but obviously I can’t play anymore this year. I don’t know if, you know, if I’ll ever be able to run the same again. I might not be able to play.” His
voice contains no emotion, like he’s become a robot. Like his dreams for the future are over and he’s pretending to accept it. I wonder what sport he plays, but I don’t ask.
Ben presses his lips together. “I’m sorry, bro.”
Schurman shrugs and looks at the floor.
Ben turns to the girl in the love seat. “Sydney? How’s it going?”
Sydney’s face is strained. “It’s going,” she says.
“Are your parents . . . handling things?”
“They let me come back here,” Sydney says with a shrug. “It’s weird. I didn’t think . . . you know. That seeing the building, and all that yellow tape . . .”
Someone else nods. “Yeah, I don’t ever want to go back in there.”
More chime in now, and I sit quietly, watching, feeling the same things they’re all feeling, yet somehow I must keep myself distant from those things and stay focused. I know Sawyer is watching too. Looking for signs. Is anybody distracted? Looking out the window, watching a vision play out? It might be too early in the cycle—it’s only been a week.
When things quiet, Sawyer says, “I keep having weird nightmares . . . only . . .”
I look at him. So does everybody else.
“Only . . . what?” Trey asks.
“Only, they’re not about the shooting. And I’m not . . . actually . . . asleep.”
I hear a little shuffling in the room, but I keep my gaze fixed on Sawyer. When no one says anything, Ben says, “You mean like a daydream, only it’s scary?”
Sawyer looks at the floor. “I guess. But . . .” He shakes his head. “Never mind. It’s not exactly normal. Just . . . trauma, or something.”
“What happened to us isn’t exactly normal,” a girl says. “I guess we can expect weird shit to happen.”
I look at her, then back at Sawyer. “What’s your . . . daymare . . . about? You said it’s not a shooting?” I think I know where he’s going with this, and I hope I’m helping.
“No. Something completely different. It’s a . . . a truck. Crashing into a building. An explosion,” he says. “It’s, like . . .” He runs a hand over his eyes. “It’s, like, not a dream at all. It’s like . . .”
“More like a vision?” Ben asks.
Sawyer laughs weakly. “Well, I’m not—I mean, I wouldn’t say that . . . exactly . . . but . . .” He shrugs. “But yeah. I guess that’s pretty accurate.”
No one chimes in with a similar story. No one appears to be uncomfortable in his silence on the matter. No one flushes or blanches or reacts with their limbs or eyes or anything to indicate they can relate to what Sawyer just described. But they are sympathetic.
Sawyer deserves a Tony Award for that performance. Too bad there’s nothing admirable about being a fraud. It’s even less admirable when a few of the students hang back at the end of an hour of sharing, giving Sawyer the names of their therapists and urging him to call. Soon.
The truth is, we could
all probably use some therapy right now. Hell, we’re a mess.
“Well, that was good for everybody, I think,” I say later, making myself at home in Ben’s room by curling on the foot of Vernon’s bed. “I mean, we didn’t get what we needed. But at least we’ve established contact with everybody and they’ve got our phone numbers.”
“Yeah, you can’t expect somebody to come forward in front of everybody to say they’re seeing visions too,” Trey says. He sinks onto the love seat, and Ben sits next to him. Sawyer takes a desk chair.
“How many victims weren’t able to come to the meeting, Ben?” I stare at the underside of Ben’s mattress. This room smells gross, like a sack of armpits.
Ben takes the list from Trey. “There are three who have left the school completely, one still in the hospital, and one who lives here in this dorm but either couldn’t come or didn’t want to.”
Sawyer looks at me. “How are we going to handle this?”
I think about it. “Start here and work our way out to the ones who left the school, I guess. Who’s the guy in this dorm?”
“His name is Clark.”
“Should we go up and see him since we’re here? I mean, he might have avoided the meeting because he thinks he’s losing it.” I sit up and slide off the bed.
“I suppose we should,” Sawyer says. “But can we just ask him outright? I feel like a big cheat playing things like I just did in the green room.”
“Yeah. Let me take this one.” I look at Ben. “Will you show us where his room is?”
Ben’s already getting up. “Of course.”
We knock on Clark’s door, but no one answers. Ben hollers down the hallway to some guys toilet-papering the doorway to somebody else’s room. “Have you seen Clark?”
They shrug and shake their heads. One holds his finger to his lips to quiet us, and points to the toilet paper.
“Yeah, because no one else will notice what you’re doing there if we’re quiet,” Ben mutters, and I’m kind of
digging his sarcasm, which we haven’t really seen before today. He looks at us. “I don’t know what to tell you. You can hang around and wait if you want.”
I look at Trey and Sawyer, and then check the time. “We should go if we want to hit up the hospital tonight, guys.”
Sawyer nods. “Yeah. Okay, thanks, Ben. We’ll have to come back later this week.” He grabs my hand and tugs, but I want to see what Trey does. Watching my big brother have a crush is the only fun I have in my life right now.
Trey smiles at Ben. “Yeah, thanks. I, um, I left my jacket in your room . . .”
I squelch a grin and Sawyer squeezes my hand, probably hoping I’ll behave. “We’ll go to the hospital and see if Tori is up to having visitors,” Sawyer says. “Meet you at the car in thirty minutes? I’m parked on Fifty-Seventh, in front of the bookstore.”
Trey waves in acknowledgment.
Sawyer drapes his arm over my shoulders and we walk down to the quad and then out to the street toward the hospital. When we get outside in the dark, he twirls my hair around his finger and smiles at me. “Five bucks says they’re making out in Ben’s room.”
“Dogs, I hope so,” I mutter. I lift my chin and we kiss while we’re walking, and I feel like even though everything is such a mess, I can actually handle it because Sawyer’s here with me.
Tori is awake. It’s the
first time she’s had her eyes open when we’ve visited her. She doesn’t know who we are, but her mom explains and introduces us—we’ve talked to her a few times before.
Tori’s face is unmarred from the shooting. Her dark brown skin is flawless and beautiful. Her hair—a gorgeous mess of tiny black braids—undisturbed. Only her guts were ripped up, and the shreds sewn together. She still has tubes going into her arm—pain meds and antibiotics, her mom says.
My mind flashes to the music room again. The black-and-white checkerboard floor streaked with red. Tori looking dazed, lying against the wall, holding her hand to her stomach as blood poured out between her
fingers. . . . Gah. She was the most seriously hurt. I grab the back of a chair as a wave of nausea rides over me. Half the time I feel like I’m still in shock. Like one day, when this is all over, I really will need to be committed.
It feels awkward, us knowing her but her not remembering us. I’m thankful for her mother, who has heard the story no doubt countless times by now from Ben, from us, from others who have visited.
My cell phone vibrates in my jeans pocket, but I ignore it and focus on Tori. “How are you feeling?”
“Terrible,” Tori says in a soft voice. “Mostly terrible.” She looks at her mom. “Sorry. I’m tired of saying I’m fine.”
Tori’s mom shrugs and smiles. “Nothing wrong with telling the truth,” she says lightly. She turns to us. “It’s been very difficult.”
“I’m sure it has,” I say. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
“So am I.” Her bottom lip trembles the slightest bit. “It sucks.”
I reach out and rest my hand on her forearm, and she lets me keep it there. “I’m really sorry. What else is happening? Are you having any nightmares . . . or anything?”
Sawyer leans in. “Jules and I have had some really weird side effects. Just mind tricks, I guess. The psychologist says it’s normal.”
Tori narrows her eyes at the ceiling. “Nightmares, sure. I think the pain meds are messing with me.”
I glance at Sawyer, and I can tell we’re wondering the same thing. “Every once in a while Sawyer was seeing a . . . like a vision, I guess. Right?”
“It really helped me to talk about it, though,” Sawyer says.
My phone vibrates again in my pocket. Tori doesn’t respond.
“So do you want to talk about it or anything?” I ask, trying not to sound odd about it.
“Not really,” Tori says. She looks out her window, frowns, and looks away.
Sawyer sits up straight. “Okay, well, is there anything you need? Any homework or stuff from your dorm or whatever?”
She looks at us like the weird strangers we are. “No. My roommate is handling that kind of stuff.” She yawns. “And I’m really tired now, so . . .”
Tori’s mother stands up on cue. “Thank you both for coming by to visit,” she says.
Sawyer and I stand too, somewhat reluctantly. “Sure,” I say. I spy a notepad and pen by the bed and ask, “Is it okay if I give you my phone number in case you ever want to talk?”
“Sure,” Tori says, but there’s no enthusiasm behind it.
I write my name and number on the notepad and sigh inwardly. “Okay. Well. I guess—”
Suddenly there’s a flurry of activity outside the room. I turn to look. Trey is running down the hallway toward us like a total lunatic, something he would never do under normal circumstances. I spring to my feet.
“Jules,” he calls out in a way that makes my heart clench. He sees me and lunges into the room, face flushed and breath ragged. Tori’s eyes widen in fear and Tori’s mom rushes over to stand between Trey and her daughter as a nurse comes running in to see what’s happening.
“Who are you?” Tori’s mom demands.
“What’s going on?” the nurse asks.
“He’s my brother,” I say, grabbing his arm. “Trey, what’s wrong?”