by Zachary Ryan
I walked into my house, and my parents were in the living room. They were watching movies, and I just looked at them. They never asked for a son like me. They shouldn’t have gotten this horrid of a soul. It was no wonder they hadn’t supported me ever. Why would they be proud of someone like me? It was no wonder they kept the true me behind closed doors.
I didn’t say anything to them. I walked up the stairs. I didn’t want them to be worried about anything. I replayed the last time I talked to Gabe in my head over and over again. I couldn’t get out the fact that I chose my selfish nature over protecting people from him. I walked into my room and into my bathroom.
He was in the bathtub just reading a magazine. He dropped it and looked at me with a wicked smile. Gabe was never a friend of anyone’s. He wasn’t trying to make peace with people. He just wanted everyone to suffer like him.
I walked over to the cabinet and pulled out a razor. “Are you finally going to finish the job?” Gabe asked.
I took off my sweater to reveal the scar from the first attempt. “I should have stopped you. I could have protected him,” I said.
“Really? You honestly believe you would have come out? Look at all the blood on your hands.”
“Because I’ve been rejected too many times,” I said. I sat down with my back against the sink. I was sitting across from Gabe.
Gabe then looked at me. “Then you found someone that truly would accept you.” He laughed. He stood up in the bathtub. “You then got him killed,” he said.
“No, you killed him,” I screamed.
“Really?” Gabe asked. He stepped out of the bathtub and walked right in front of me. He looked at me with curious eyes. “You knew in your heart that I was going to shoot up the school,” he said.
“I thought it was just a fantasy,” I said. I looked away from him. “I thought you were just trying to get your frustrations out.” I knew Gabe had a lot of anger towards our school and classmates. None of them have ever been kind to Gabe, but I never thought he would have gone this far.
I moved my head back to look at him. “I believed you were a better person.” I looked him right in the eyes.
“And now, you have a dead boyfriend. We have ten people at our school that were killed because of me. You could have stopped all of it. Yes, you would have been outed, but you would have had Colby there to support you. Admit it, Lane, you’re as equally as fault as I am. Why would anyone ever want to be associated with you again.”
“I didn’t pull the trigger,” I screamed. “I didn’t make that list. I didn’t kill Colby.”
“But you didn’t stop it either. You shouldn’t be alive anymore. You don’t deserve to find any kind of happiness moving forward.” He leaned down and touched the razor. “You should make sure no one else feels pain from you being a coward,” he said.
I looked at the razor, and I thought back to Jefferson. I saw how much it killed him that Colby wasn’t here. “Colby deserved better than me. He deserved to live because he would have given so much to people.” I wiped the tears away my eyes.
Gabe grabbed my right hand. He helped move the razor to my scar. “You know damn well the world would be a better place without you.”
I looked at him. I saw how much conviction he had in his eyes. I saw how much he believed every word that was coming out of his mouth. “Really?” I asked.
He gave me a softer smile that I haven’t seen in months. “Lane, you know in your heart that no one will ever love you again once they find out the truth. Eventually, you’re going to lose Cass, Zachary, Ben, and your family. You’re a bomb that’s about to explode. Do you want anyone else to die in the blast?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”
He then added pressure to my hand. I felt the sting of the pain of the razor cutting my skin. I saw the blood start to pour out. I saw Gabe helped with gliding the razor up my wrist. I dropped the razor covered in blood. I turned to watch the blood begin to pour out my body like last time.
“Colby, I’m so sorry that I did this to you,” I said. All I could think about was how much Colby should have stayed away from me. I felt myself slowly begin to slip into darkness, and I truly believed that I didn’t deserve this life. I didn’t deserve friendships with Cass, Zachary, and Ben. I didn’t deserve the love I found with Colby, and I didn’t deserve parents that were trying to accept me. Gabe was right, I should have died the day of the shooting. I didn’t stop him because I was scared. People already didn’t love me. How the hell were they going to once they knew the truth? I felt myself being consumed by the nothingness knowing that this was to protect my loved ones from the bomb that Gabe said would soon explode.
Chapter Seventy-Four
Zachary
March 16th, 2019
I walked out of the school numbed to the soul. I didn’t want to believe what was happening or that he could have done it. There were police sirens and people crying everywhere. I looked around at parents demanding to see their children.
I touched my neck because I couldn’t speak. I came to school today late today because of a doctor’s appointment. I had found out I wouldn’t be able to sing to my normal abilities. I had gone to the computer lab to get a second opinion. It was quiet and then I heard the first gun shot. Then I saw him shoot someone.
I could feel myself starting to come back to reality. I could feel myself start to wake myself up. “Gabe,” I choked out.
I saw Cass curled up hugging Jarele looking stunned. She broke the hug and came running after me. She didn’t say anything. She grabbed me and squeezed me. “Thank you for making it,” she whispered in my ear.
“Gabe,” I said again. I didn’t want to process the idea that one of my best friends had killed someone.
She rubbed my back. “I know. I know. Have you heard from Ben or Lane?” she asked.
I broke the hug. “You don’t think Gabe would have killed them.”
I could see the tears begin to fall from her eyes. “I don’t know what to think. People are saying almost a dozen people are dead. People are hearing this person and that person died. I don’t know, Zachary. I don’t know.”
I saw in the corner of my eye Lane look like a damn zombie. “Lane!” I screamed. I needed to cling to the fact that my people were okay. I needed to believe that the good ones made it.
Lane looked over at us. “You guys made it,” he said, hugging both of us. “I was in the library reading a book for free period.”
I could see that he was with us physically but not with us emotionally. I saw him dart his eyes all over the place. “Have you heard from Ben?” I asked.
“Gabe told me he wouldn’t do this,” Lane said. He looked between us. “He promised me that he wouldn’t do this.”
“What are you talking about?” Cass asked.
“I caused all of this. I got all those people killed.” Lane starts shaking uncontrollably.
Cass pulled him into a hug. “You didn’t do any of this. They have to be wrong. Gabe wouldn’t do this. Gabe is good.”
I looked at her. I wanted to argue with her. I wanted to tell her that I saw Gabe shoot someone right in front of me. I saw him take someone’s life and not care. He walked over the person struggling for their life like it was a video game.
I felt the walls closing in. I felt like I was going to faint. I got a full feeling in my body, and I didn’t want it. It was too much. I wanted to go numb again. I didn’t know what was happening until Ben pulled me into a hug. I didn’t even notice he had come to join us.
“Zachary, I got you.”
I began to cry in his arms. “He killed our classmates. One of our best friends,” I said. I thought that maybe if I said it enough times that it would make sense.
“Maybe he didn’t,” Cass said.
Ben turned his head towards her. “Cass, you don’t get to be in denial about this. So many people saw the police shoot and kill him.”
“But he was our friend,” Cass said. “We would have kno
wn.”
“None of us could have seen this coming,” Ben said.
I heard someone’s phone crash to the ground. I looked up to see Lane shaking. I saw him fall to the ground and began to cry. “I did this. I did this. I did this,” he repeated over and over again.
Cass kneeled down and rubbed his back. “Lane, you can’t blame yourself. You didn’t do this. You didn’t put the gun in his hand.”
Lane opened his mouth and closed it. He stood up. “He’s gone. No, No, No. Why did he take him? I can’t be here anymore. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for all the pain I caused. I need to go.” He didn’t give us a chance to respond. He ran off before we could say anything else to him.
“What do you think he meant by that?” Cass asked. “Should we go after him?”
I didn’t notice that Ben let me go. I was so focused on Lane’s melt down. “No, he feels what we’re all feeling. Everyone one of us feels guilty for what Gabe did. They’re going to question all of us. They’re going to ask each of us if we believed he could do this.”
“And we will tell him we didn’t, but he was a coward. He deserved to be killed,” Ben said.
“Ben,” Cass and I both said.
“He killed our classmates. Don’t you two see that? The kid we knew isn’t our friend. This monster lived under his skin, and we’ve all been tainted by this. Our reputation is ruined because we sat at the same damn lunch table with him. Don’t you get that?” he asked, looking at us.
“I don’t want to believe it,” Cass said. “I need to see proof. I need them to confirm it before I believe any of this. Ben, you two never got along, but I won’t tarnish our friendship with him with these thoughts.” She looked over and I saw Jarele signaling for her. I saw a hint of pain splash across her face. “I need to go! I have to make sure my parents know that I’m okay.” She walked away.
“She’s right. I need to go check in with my dad. I know he’ll be worried,” Ben said.
I grabbed his hand. “Why did he do this?” I asked Ben. Ben had always been our leader. He had always made sure that we felt secure in this group. I needed him to be the great Ben Howard right now.
“I don’t know, Zachary. I want this all to be a nightmare. I want us to all wake up tomorrow and everything will be normal. I want to truly believe that this isn’t real,” he said. He pulled me into a hug. “We have each other. We have to do this for all of us.”
He broke the hug and walked away. I stood there completely stunned because even if we made it through this hell, I wouldn’t have a normal to get back to. I grabbed my throat again, and I couldn’t speak again. I was silenced once more, and people would assume it was because of the monstrous acts of Gabe. Maybe this was a vivid nightmare. Maybe this wasn’t real. We all could wake up tomorrow and it never happened. It needed to just be a misunderstanding. All of this had to be our imagination. Please, please, please tell me this, that today wasn’t real and what I saw never happened. I was too young to feel this heartbreak. I was too young to feel this fear. I was too young to know what death could feel and look like.
Chapter Seventy-Five
Lane
My vision was blurry, but I could see that my parents were there. “Where am I?” I asked.
At the hospital, my mother quickly hugged me. “I’m here, baby.”
I looked over at my father who was also clearly distraught. He squeezed my arm. “We’re sorry.”
“For what?” I asked. I felt the pain in my wrist. It had come to the forefront of my mind. I had tried to kill myself again. I reopened the same scar, and I was praying this time that I wouldn’t survive. I wanted nothing more than to be there with Colby.
My mother let me go. My parents sat on both ends of the beds. They looked at me long and hard. They looked at each other before my mother spoke. “We have defended you on social media. We have called out our friends that have ever posted any homophobic post. I know it’s a bit too late, but we should have done it in the first place.”
I gave them a weak smile. I looked at the bandage that was wrapped around my wrist. “I want to say that this time was because of you, but it wasn’t. I did this all because of my guilt.” I paused for a moment. “But thank you for finally sticking up for me. I felt like you were ashamed of me, but maybe, I was ashamed of myself.”
“Because we created that culture for yourself. We don’t want you to ever feel ashamed. It kills us that you hate yourself that much that you would want to end your life.”
I could feel the emotions bubbling up. I knew I would cry and look like a mess. “I just miss him. He made sense of all of this. He made me believe that I was actually worthy of life,” I said.
My parents grabbed both of my hands and squeezed them. “You’ll always have a part of your heart for him, but you have so many other people that want to remind you of how much they love you,” my mother said.
I turned to look out the room. Ben, Cass, and Zachary were standing there with both relief and sadness across their faces. “They came?” I turned to my parents. “How did they know?”
My parents stood up. “This time we weren’t going to let you get away with hiding this from them. You need a support system, Lane. It’s time we were open and honest about everything. We don’t want you to drown in your guilt anymore. You have friends here that can help relieve the overwhelming emotions,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said. I didn’t realize how much it meant to me to have them here. I felt like I was stuck constantly behind closed doors with all these emotions. I wanted nothing more than for someone to know how I was feeling. I wanted to let it out instead of talking to the monster version of Gabe that I saw.
Ben, Cass, and Zachary walked into the room while my parents walked out to give us some space. I didn’t expect Ben to rush over to me and give me a hug. “I’m so sorry for what I did. I shouldn’t have given into Chet. I should have accepted that I didn’t have the life I had anymore,” he said.
I accepted his hug, and I honestly didn’t hold anything against him. I understood that we all wanted to protect the darkest parts of ourselves. I broke the hug. “Ben, I forgive you. It’s not like you aren’t the first person to do this.”
“But I exposed you to the whole school,” he said.
I looked at them, and I knew I needed to tell the truth. I couldn’t keep it to myself anymore. My dad was right. I had them here for when I felt like I was drowning. “The night before the shooting, I went to Gabe’s house. I found a piece of paper of people he wanted to hurt. I quickly thought he would shoot up the school, but I didn’t want to believe it.” I turned to Cass. “This was Gabe we were talking about. He wouldn’t do this,” I said.
I turned to Zachary. “But I guess I was wrong. I told him that I would tell someone. He then pulled out his phone, and he had a photo of Colby and I kissing after a football match. I don’t know how he took it, but it doesn’t matter.” I turned to Ben. “He told me that if I said anything to anyone that he would show the picture to the whole school, so I kept quiet, and he killed ten people. Those ten people’s deaths are on me including Colby’s.”
“It’s not your fault,” Zachary said. I tried to argue with her, but she kept my mouth shut. “Gabe had decided way before you what he was going to do. He had decided that he would kill those before you came into the situation. He had some backups, and he blackmailed you. You were terrified to come out, and he knew that. He knew you would back down, but that’s not your fault.”
“But I shouldn’t have been a coward,” I said.
“I haven’t told you that I lost all my money. I work at a bar in the city to pay for my father and me. My parents are getting a divorce,” Ben said. “We all are terrified of the truth.”
“My dad’s a raging alcoholic and my mom’s an unemotional bitch,” Cass said. She smiled at me. “And Jarele was cheating on me with Angela,” she said. She turned to Ben. “But I’m still with him because I don’t want to be alone.”
“The reason that I�
�m not part of the play isn’t because I thought I was too big for it. I can’t sing anymore. I had surgery during winter break, and I don’t have the ability to hit the notes that I could before,” Zachary said.
I looked at the three of them. “Why are you telling me all of this?” I asked.
“Because we want you to understand that we get it. We’ve done terrible things to keep our secrets hidden,” Zachary said.
“And we almost lost you to keep those secrets safe,” Cass said.
“We don’t want to lose anyone else,” Ben said. It was still a little surreal to see Ben actually have some emotion, but it was something beautiful if you ask me. I looked around at the group, and I had a soft smile on my face. I knew that my guilt wouldn’t suddenly go away, but right now, I had a life preserve that was willing to bring me back to the ship of sanity. I knew there were sharks ready to attack underneath me, but it felt relaxing to go along with the waves for now.
Chapter Seventy-Six
Zachary
I walked into my house and saw my mother standing there. She ran toward me and pulled me into a hug. “We thought something happened to you when we went to the musical and you weren’t performing.” I needed this hug from my mom. I had been strong around Lane, but I saw him in that hospital bed, and I needed to break down. “Mom, he tried to kill himself. Lane thought his life didn’t matter anymore,” I said, between broken sobs.
She rubbed my back. “It’s going to be okay, Zachary. He’s getting the help he needs, and you will be there for him. He is lucky to have a good friend like you,” she said.
I broke the hug. I wiped a tear. “I’m just really exhausted. I just didn’t know he had this much hurt inside of his heart. He blames himself for what Gabe did, and he felt like no one could ever love him.”
“Depression isn’t something to play around with. You have all these dark thoughts” She looked at me. “Are you going to be able to perform tomorrow and Sunday for the musical? I know that Lane will be on your mind, but this is your last performance of your high school career,” she said.
