by Terry Keys
“You do,” Mark said still laughing. “But I got you, bro.”
“Thanks for letting me have a pity party.”
Mark smiled. “Now I see why your mom got your ass seeing that shrink,” he said poking him in the ribs. “And you need to tell her everything. She can’t help you if she doesn’t know it all bro.”
“Funny man, huh? Yeah, I been pretty messed up bro. Out of all the years that I’ve known you, that may have been the smartest thing you’ve ever said,” Blaze laughed again.
“Ha. Why don’t you call the old hag right now and see if she can get you in today?”
“She definitely ain’t an old hag – she’s a stunner bro.”
“What? What’s your definition of a stunner?”
“My eyes still work jerk. My definition is the same it’s always been. And I think she may be feelin’ me too.”
“Okay. Did you throw one of those rocks at yourself? Come here and let me check your head for injuries.”
“I’m for real bro. You never know. Maybe this is how we were supposed to meet? Stranger things have happened. Remember Sandi and Mr. Pete?”
Mark shook his head. “Yeah, I remember them. But how about you let her fix that head first?” Mark said pointing to Blaze’s head.
Mark reached out to hug Blaze again. “I gotta go to work. Or I can stay here and hug you all day?
“No… get your ass out of here.”
“Call me if you need anything – anytime. Okay? And tell her everything!”
“Aight bro.”
They fist bumped and then Mark turned to walk away.
Mark climbed into his Jeep and left Blaze alone by the lake. He didn’t know what he would have done without Mark always being there for him. But it still didn’t feel like enough.
He picked up another rock and skipped it across the lake. He felt numb.
Before heading to the lake, Blaze had stopped by the house to pick up his AR-15. He walked over and popped his car trunk to retrieve it.
He opened his backpack, grabbed a magazine and pushed it hard into the weapon.
Blaze strode into the woods by the lake. He was hoping to see a raccoon, a rabbit or something that he could shoot.
He scanned the wooded area with his gun but saw nothing. Finally, about fifty yards ahead he caught the flicker of a tail. It was a squirrel. Cute little fellow.
He aimed and dropped it. Then he smiled as it fell out of the trees and crashed with a thud onto the ground below.
For the next thirty minutes Blaze went on like this. Finding varmints, shooting them down and feeling nothing.
His phone rang. It was a call from his mother. He declined it. Then she called again and he declined it again.
A minute later it buzzed, but it was a text this time.
Blaze call me. I’m worried about you. I just heard about the video. Please call me. Don’t make me come looking for you.
Maybe he’d been too hard on her. Maybe he’d blamed her for too much. She really had been trying or maybe she was just feeling guilty now. She just should have tried sooner.
When his parents divorced, they never even sat down to talk with either of them.
His parents had never fought very much. An argument here or an argument there about somethingstupid. Blaze hadn’t really understood that at first. Until he’d started dating Nikki. Then he understood. Sometimes men and women just found something stupid to fight about – so they did.
One day Blaze heard them arguing and tip-toed downstairs to catch what this stupid argument was about. Only this time it wasn’t stupid at all. This time it was different.
His dad had left a hotel room key card in his pocket and receipt to match. A receipt which would change everything. He listened as his dad confessed to sleeping with his twenty-somethingyear-old secretary. And listened as he tried to explain why. They’d drifted apart, she wasn’t taking care of herself, their sex life was nonexistent, and she only cared about the kids’ blah, blah, blah.
His mom told him for her this was unforgivable and she wanted him out. He hadn’t begged to stay. She spent the next thirty minutes torturing herself by asking about the details. Blaze went back upstairs to try and process what this meant for their family.
They’d gotten home from school the next day and there was a moving truck out front. Kevin asked what was going on and they told him they were getting a divorce. He’d asked why but they wouldn’t tell him. He stormed off to his room in tears and that was that. There was never a sit down, an explanation, hell not even a conversation. When he left he didn’t even say goodbye. Kevin had chased him down the driveway, hugging at his leg. His dad teared up, bent down and kissed him on the cheek and gently pushed him away.
He felt his phone buzz in his hand and then it began to ring. Mom just wasn’t going to let this go, was she?
He answered the phone without looking down.
“Mom, I’m fine.”
“Hello?”
It wasn’t Steph. But the voice wasn’t one that he recognized. He looked down at the number, but didn’t recognize it either.
“Who is this?”
“My name is Richard Bailey.”
Blaze didn’t know anyone by that name.
“Okay. Am I supposed to know who you are?”
“Yes. But you don’t.”
“Listen man, I don’t know who you are but I’m not buying whatever you’re selling so I’m hanging up.”
“Despite what your mother, Steph, wanted, I should have called you long before now.”
How the hell did this person know his mother? Who was this? Blaze said nothing.
“Your mother and I met almost eighteen years ago at a party. It was a college frat party. Much like the parties you kids attend today. I would imagine drinking, dancing, music. I was playing in the band that was the party’s entertainment for the evening. After our set we usually hung around to see what girls we could pick up. We danced, had some drinks – danced some more and… After that night we moved on to the next town. And I never saw or heard from her again. She called me a few months later and told me that she was pregnant. I was a little shocked but obviously we were both playing with fire by having unprotected sex. I wasn’t ready to be a father. I wasn’t ready to stop partying. We didn’t have a relationship and I didn’t even know her last name. Honestly, I could barely even remember what she looked like. Despite all of that, I was willing to quit the band and move to Kilwade. I was going to meet your mother again and try to get to know her and maybe have you know, a real relationship. But she shot that down. She’d met the man of her dreams– John Planter. It was love at first sight, she told me. They were already engaged to be married and John was going to raise our son as his own. She told me to never come around and what happened that night was a mistake. A mistake that would cause too much pain and embarrassment to John and to her family. So foolishly, I respected that. Foolishly and somewhat cowardly. Deep down a part of me was relieved. When things took off with the internet many years later, I could finally check in on you from time to time. I’d get online and search Facebook. I actually follow you on Twitter. I saw that you’re into music too – guess you know where it came from now. Look, I know this is a lot and I don’t expect a rela-”
“This is bullshit!”
Blaze trembled. He wanted to hang up the phone. But this Richard Bailey probably had better things to do than to make up some random story about being some loser-kid-on-the-brink-ofa-meltdowns father.
It explained why his dad – well John - felt the way he did about Blaze’s music, how he’d just left so easily and why he never called. For him it was freedom – a release from something he’d signed up for that he could now walk away from. A burden that he probably didn’t even realize would be so great when he’d said yes to it.
And this was just one more reason why Blaze had to go. One more scar on his wounded body. One more lie from someone who was supposed to protect him and never hurt him. More pain on his already fragile
and beaten down soul.
“Why are you calling me now after all this time? Why not just let it go? Let me be?”
“It’s been eating at me for nearly two decades. A man can’t run forever. Running takes a lot of energy. And I’m tired. I can’t sleep. I’ve suffered bouts of depression and anxiety. Do you know how many times I’ve dialed your number and never hit that call button?”
“I wish you would have left it that way.”
“I admit I’m a coward. Like I said I’ve been watching you from a distance. Saw your post about your parents splitting up-“
“So you thought you’d call a screw things up even more? Well thanks!”
Blaze disconnected the call and shoved his phone into his pocket. It buzzed then rang but he never took it back out again.
A lump rose up in his throat. It felt like the weight of the world had suddenly crashed down on him again.
He lay down in the woods alone and cried for the next hour. How could his parents have lied to him like this? His whole life had been one big lie – told again and again. Day after day.
They say the people closest to you hurt you the most. His parents well John and Steph sure did fit that bill.
He’d balled up in the fetal position. Gently he rocked back and forth trying to soothe himself. How could he ever look the same at either of them again? How could he ever love them again?
He reached up and felt around his eyes. They were puffy - swollen.
“I hate all of you!” He yelled at the top of his lungs. Then he screamed.
His scream echoed throughout the woods.
Finally he started to calm down. His eyes narrowed. The call hadn’t changed what he needed to do.
It didn’t change what he would do.
If anything it just further validated the decision that he’d already made.
No one was honest. No one was loyal.
Now to add to his shame, he was a bastard. His own parents hadn’t been honest with him. If your parents could lie straight to your face for nearly eighteen years – anyone could.
He wanted the pain – his pain - to end. He had no place here.
Chapter 20
Blaze waited for his computer to boot up. He was proud of his machine. When he turned fifteen, he and Mark had built two of them. One for each of them.
He jumped onto the internet and started researching every school shooting starting with Columbine. This way he could kill two birds with one stone – literally.
He wanted to know every detail about the event. Everything they’d done right. Everything they’d done wrong. How they got caught. If they died in a suicide or by cop exchange.
He read articles, police reports and there were even videos on YouTube. Hour after hour he crammed every detail he could into his brain. He would write nothing down. He wasn’t going to get caught. He wasn’t going to be stopped. Nothing was going to derail this.
The app to the house’s security system was open on his phone. He needed to see when his mom got home. She’d be coming to see him for sure.
He read the stories about the other school shooters. Noted the similarities in their stories. They’d all felt pressure to fit in or live up to their parents’ expectations. Or they’d been victims of bullying or sexual assault. Others had lost someone close to them or their parents had gone through a messy divorce. A few kids had gone through messy breakups. Or they’d been publicly humiliated.
Schools countered by adding security guards or metal detectors, limiting entrances and exits, or having them locked or unlocked at certain times.
There’d been a shooting at a school less than twenty miles from Kilwade two years ago. And as a result, there had been changes made to improve security.
But Blaze had something else in mind. Something that he hadn’t seen or read anywhere else.
He looked down at his phone and barely caught his mother shutting the front door behind her.
A second later and he’d cleared the cookies from his search history and hit the power button.
“Blaze, are you in here?” His mom said pushing open the door.
He took the headphones off and pretended to barely hear her.
“Oh, hey mom.”
Steph sat down on the bed beside him. “So, you want to talk about it?”
She really didn’t want to talk about it herself. She wouldn’t know what to say. But she knew that was her line.
“No. I’ll spare you the uncomfortable conversation.”
“Are you sure? I don’t know… maybe I could help?”
He looked at her and rolled his eyes. “I doubt it, mom. Tell me what’s the most embarrassing and humiliating thing that’s ever happened to you?”
Steph thought about it for a moment. She knew what she wanted to say but she was afraid.
“Well what happened between your dad and I was and still is pretty embarrassing. I know that you blame me for what he did and that hurts too. They’d been carrying on for over a year. I had been to John’s job at least twenty times. I knew many of his coworkers by name. They all knew about his affair. So, you can imagine that I was the ass of many of their jokes. Just the stupid-barely-got-her-GED-cafeteria lady. And to top it off, he blamed me too. Blamed my weight gain. No, I’m not a size two anymore but I’m a good person and I didn’t deserve that. So yeah, I kind of understand being embarrassed.”
He wanted to lay into her about Richard calling today. But he asked her a question and this was her moment. He decided that he would let her have it.
“I’m sorry for blaming you. Dad should have been a man about how he felt. But he was a coward.”
He gave her a hug and wiped a tear from her eye.
“I love you, mom.”
“Love you too, Blaze.”
“I’d like to be left alone now.”
She gave him a kiss on the forehead and walked out, closing the door behind her.
The computer was booting back up before the door had barely shut. Nothing was going to stop him now. He knew when and where, now he needed to start making plans.
He typed in the school’s address. After only two minutes he’d found what he was looking for. It wasn’t hard to get detailed plans of the stadium. Tomorrow he would head to the field and see what hazards lay in his way.
The chiming noise he heard was a text message on his cell phone. He unlocked it and opened the message.
I know I’m the last person that you want to hear from and this will be the last time I text you. I’m going to move on and I’m going to let you move on. If you saw the video today, then you know I walk across the screen twice. I know it’s not your fault, but I was violated too. My naked body is probably being looked at right now by some sixty-year-old pervert. I know you probably don’t care either because that’s my fault too. I’m devastated by this for both of us. Mr. Hunter said Tre will get kicked off the football team. And he may even spend a few months in jail. It doesn’t make up for what he did but it’s something. Please keep seeing your doctor Blaze. And please don’t hate me forever. Take care. Nikki.”
Thursday, August 29th
Chapter 21
Blaze counted down the minutes of his seventh period class. He knew that coming back to school meant kids would point and laugh. Many of them not even caring that he could see them. But he knew he was going to get the last laugh, so it no longer bothered him. Or at least he told himself that it didn’t.
Keep laughing you morons.
It was one hundred and three degrees, but he still wore his newly acquired black trench coat. It was his way of paying homage to what happened at Columbine. And he needed everyone to get used to seeing him wear it. That way there’d be no cause for alarm at the football game the following week.
He’d checked the schedule and Kilwade had two home games back to back. This week he would do some scouting and the next week he would fulfill his destiny.
Blaze had even worn his trench coat the day before as he trekked through the woods. He’d measured t
he distance from where he would come up from under the bleachers to the football field and set up targets where the players usually stood in the woods. More targets were added at about where the student section would be. He practiced shooting repeatedly for almost two hours.
“Blaze, can you tell me what you wrote for question number five?” Mrs. Langley asked.
“Uh, I don’t thinkI answered that one,” he responded, totally caught off guard.
She squinted at him and folded her arms.
The bell rang and everyone stood to leave.
“Blaze can you stay behind please?”
A few of the kids jeered but most of them just quietly left.
Blaze sat back down in his chair.
What now?
Mrs. Langley walked back to Blaze’s seat and sat down beside him.
“I have a really busy afternoon, Mrs. Langley.”
“Blaze, what’s going on?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your grades have taken a nose-dive the last few weeks. And in class it’s like you’re not even here. What’s up? You act like you don’t care anymore and that’s a scary thought.”
“I just got a lot going on at home is all. I’m fine.”
She shook her head. “Well you don’t seem fine and you’re grades aren’t fine either. And honestly you look like a skeleton.”
He tried not to show it on his face but in two weeks he’d be gone anyways. So, she was right. He really didn’t care about this grade or any other. And his food primarily consisted of weed and beer.
But the last thing he needed was this teacher making waves and getting him put on some damn watch list.
“I’m sorry Mrs. Langley. I’ll do better. I’m sorry. Do you have any extra credit work that I can do?”
She stared hard at him, not really believing that he was sincere. But the kid was asking for extra credit.
She sighed. “Blaze, you know that I don’t like giving out extra credit. It’s not really fair to the students that have been trying really hard.”
“I know. But I’ve never asked before, have I?”
