Quickly but quietly I pad down the hallway and into the guest bathroom, ostensibly showering in here instead of our bathroom in an attempt not to disturb Anna.
I can never get the water temperature in here adjusted just right, but the too-hot drops cascading from the high shower head are sobering and begin to calm the raw nerves jangling just beneath my skin.
The soap and shampoo suds seem to strip away a film of smoke but are powerless against the residue of guilt that clings to me like bad karma.
As I’m rinsing the shampoo from my hair, I hear the door open.
“John?” Anna asks, whispering in an attempt not to wake Taylor in the next room.
“Yeah. Hey. I was trying not to wake you.”
“Really?” she asks, gently closing the door behind her. “Why? You always wake me. We always talk. No matter what time it is.”
“I meant until I crawled into bed beside you,” I say.
“Oh.”
“I’m almost out,” I say.
“Stay in,” she says.
In another moment, she is pulling back the curtain and stepping in with me, her naked body by far the most extraordinary thing I’ve seen all day.
I grab her, pulling her under the water with me, and kiss her hard on the mouth, hoping the massive amounts of gum I’ve been chewing for the past couple of hours will do its job.
As I kiss her, my hands move all over her body, rubbing, caressing, lingering at my favorite spots.
When we break from our kiss, breathless and intoxicated, she says, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Just seem like you might not be.”
“I am,” I say. “I’m exhausted and frustrated and feel foolish, but I’m okay.”
She takes a little step back and her eyes lock onto mine.
“I’m probably projecting,” she says. “Sorry if I am. But finding you in here like this . . . has me a little . . . Chris used to always shower in the guest bathroom downstairs before coming to bed. I realized later it was to wash the woman he had been with off of him, the scent of sex and perfume. I think finding you in here like this reminds me of that . . . has brought up some painful and embarrassing moments.”
“Oh God, Anna, I’m so, so sorry,” I say. “I had no idea.”
“How could you? You haven’t done anything wrong. I was just explaining why I’m . . . how I’m feeling.”
“I’m an insensitive idiot,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, you’re being way too hard on yourself,” she says. “You couldn’t have known.”
“I would never cheat on you,” I say. “Not ever. No matter what.”
“I know that. I wasn’t thinking you had. Truly.”
“I stayed out later than I should have,” I say. “I haven’t been helping with Taylor or John Paul like I should. I’m truly sorry.”
“Stop apologizing,” she says. “There’s no need. I’m sorry today went the way it did.”
“It could’ve been so much worse,” I say. “I’ll take a day like today over an actual school shooting any day. I just wish we could’ve caught him so we don’t have to worry about it happening when we’re not there, but that’s enough about that for tonight. I want to hear about your day.”
“The only thing I have to say is . . . You wanna make love in here or in our bedroom?”
I laugh. “You already know the answer.”
Though we’ve successfully had sex in a few showers in our time, we both agree that for all their steamy sexiness, the bed is far better for quality and quantity.
We quietly steal into our bedroom like teenagers trying not to wake their parents, and it strikes me how ironic it is that we go from kids trying not to wake our parents to parents trying not to wake our kids.
As we enter our room, the room that is of all the rooms in the world the most ours, a line of Rumi’s comes to mind. Lovers find secret places inside this violent world where they make transactions with beauty.
Our lovemaking is passionate and intense, leading me to conclude that I had just the right amount of alcohol the right amount of time ago to only enhance and not detract from our intimacy.
Afterwards, she falls asleep in my arms.
All I can think about is wriggling my arm and chest out from beneath her, slipping out of the bed, sneaking down the hallway, through the kitchen and mudroom, out the side door, and to my car and the bottle of vodka hidden there, waiting for me like a patient, secret lover.
And the only reason I just think about it instead of actually doing it is because of her earlier reaction to me being late and showering before she saw me and the old feelings of being deceived and cheated on that it reminded her of. It might be only for tonight, but there’s no way I’m sneaking out of bed and leaving her for my other lover waiting for me in the car.
286
The ugly truth is we’re infatuated with guns. Gun culture isn’t something separate from or inside American culture. American culture is gun culture.
On the morning of the rampage shooting at Potter High School I awake late with my first hangover in over a decade.
I figured I’d wake up Saturday morning paying for my sins, but I guess I hadn’t had as much to drink as I thought I had. For the rest of the weekend, during our sacred family time, I had drank very little, but last night after Johanna had been safely delivered home and everyone else was asleep I had quickly found my way to the bottom of my end-of-weekend bottle.
After a quick shower and rushing to get ready, I spend the precious few extra minutes I have with my family in the kitchen. Anna and Taylor are on one side of the table, Carla and John Paul on the other. Everyone is eating something.
Johanna, who spent the weekend with us, has returned to her mother’s, and her empty seat makes me sad.
“How’re you feeling?” Anna asks. “You had another restless night, didn’t you?”
“I’m okay,” I say. “Hope I didn’t keep you up.”
“Well,” Carla says tilting John’s bottle up a bit, “this little one let me have the best night of sleep I’ve had since he arrived.”
“That was very nice of you, little man,” I say, bending down to kiss his forehead. “Very, very thoughtful of you. Yes it was.”
“I slept good too,” Taylor says. “And I let you and Mommy sleep all night too, didn’t I?”
“You sure did, big girl,” I say, making my way over to her and, to her delight, lavishing her with excessive hugs and kisses—if hugs and kisses could be given in excess.
“Which direction are you headed in?” Anna asks. “St. Joe or Pottersville?”
“Reggie, good, generous soul that she is, is giving me another day at PHS,” I say. “We’re gonna do some follow-up with our suspects and make a plan for going forward.”
“Take an extra close look at Mason Nickols and Dakota Emanuel,” Carla says. “They come into the diner sometimes late at night when they finish up over at Sal’s. That’s two sick, creepy, psycho . . .” she glances at Taylor, “. . . so and so’s.”
“Mommy, what’s a so and so?” Taylor asks.
“It’s not good,” Anna says.
“We are,” I say to Carla. “They are at the top of our list. You ever hear them say anything about the school or the other students?”
She nods. “All the time. They’re world-class haters. And not just of the other students. I’ve heard them use the N-word about Tyrese and all kind of sexist . . . stuff about the new art teacher that tends bar nights at The Oasis. Others too. They hate all the coaches and jocks. Even the janitor. I truly believe they’re . . . evil.”
“Any other kids ever come in acting like that or anyone else you’d suspect of something like this?”
She nods. “There are a couple of kids that fit the . . . type or whatever, but . . . I don’t know their names. I could probably pick them out of a yearbook.”
“Then I’ll bring one home tonight,” I say. “Thank you.”
“It’s no
problem, dude, just don’t let them be shootin’ up my school.”
287
I cannot stop hearing the sounds of guns and explosives as I walk down my hallway. I cannot unsee my classmates being carried out on stretchers heading to the hospital or the morgue. I cannot unsee the bodies on the hallway and classroom floors.
Potter High School.
7:55 A.M.
First bell rings.
Students leaving the commons for their first class, lumbering up and around the halls like a slow-moving herd of zombies.
8:00 A.M.
First period begins.
The commons and main hallways now empty, appearing suddenly and inexplicably abandoned, eerily quiet after being so busy and noisy moments before.
8:07 A.M.
First shots fired or first explosions detonated. Later there will be debate about which.
Tyrese on the radio. “Were those gunshots?”
Kim and LeAnn rushing out of their offices.
“Go look at the monitors and radio me where he is,” Kim says, withdrawing her weapon. “And tell Tyrese to put the school on lockdown. Go. Hurry.”
As LeAnn enters the back door to the main office, Kim runs through the commons, gun drawn, head moving about, scanning, searching, scouring.
Kim pulling her sheriff’s department radio, calling dispatch. “Active shooter at Potter High School. I repeat, active shooter at Potter High School. SRO in pursuit.”
Alarms blaring.
Tyrese on the intercom, telling teachers there’s an active shooter situation, the school’s on lockdown, it’s not a drill.
More shots.
Explosions.
Smoke.
Fire.
Loud, concussive bangs rattling the school, raining down debris.
The explosions rocking the building make the earlier shots sound smaller somehow—popguns by comparison, or Fourth of July firecrackers.
The big bangs of the bombs are deafening, jarring, overwhelming.
The high school has become a combat zone.
“Where are they?” Kim says into her school radio.
“Can’t see,” LeAnn says, studying the monitor of the security camera feeds. “Too much smoke. Okay wait. I see you. Oh God, be careful Kim. I can’t . . . I can’t tell where they are. They could be right around you.”
More explosions.
“Shit,” LeAnn says. “Explosions have taken out three of our cameras.”
“Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me?” Kim says.
“Damnit, make that four. I’m going blind up here.”
“Just find them,” Kim says. “Look for any movement at all, even whirls in the smoke.”
Next to LeAnn, Tyrese is studying the monitor.
“Anything?” she asks him.
“Kim, this is Tyrese, use extreme precaution. Backup is on the way.”
Tyrese wonders if he should have said caution instead of precaution, but the thought is gone as quickly as it came when he sees the shooter in one of the small squares on the bottom of the large monitor.
“There,” he yells.
He points to the feed, LeAnn leaning in, glancing down, seeing the figure not believing what she’s seeing.
The gunman is wearing what could be considered the school shooter’s uniform—long black duster, the collar up, black boots, black fatigues, black gloves, a black military-style cap—but with one significant addition. Unlike in any previous school rampage shootings, this time the shooter is wearing a mask.
288
We as students can’t understand why it’s so much harder to get a driver’s license or a job or a pet or an old clunker car than it is to buy semiautomatic weapons.
“Kim, Kim,” LeAnn yells into the radio. “He’s coming up behind you.”
“Where?” Kim asks.
“He’s— Wait. Where’d he go?”
The dark, disquieting figure is gone.
LeAnn turns to Tyrese. “Where’d he go?”
“It looks like he went into the library,” Tyrese says. “But I can’t tell for sure. He’s definitely behind you back this direction—between you and the hallway that leads back down to the commons.”
“Okay,” Kim says. “Who is it?”
“We’re not sure,” LeAnn says.
“He’s wearing a mask,” Tyrese says.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind?”
“It’s a . . . It’s just a blank white mask.”
LeAnn shivers as she thinks about the cold, expressionless, anonymous white mask and the sheer impersonal terror that can be projected onto the cruel, uncaring canvas of its blankness. It’s a mask of absence, a face that has stared into the abyss and seen the crippling void of nothingness, the emotionless, expressionless face responding to a godless universe devoid of love and meaning.
“How many are there?” Kim asks. “Is it just the one?”
“That’s all we’ve seen so far,” LeAnn says, “but it’s really hard to see. Please be careful. Or better yet come . . . back down here with us and wait for backup.”
289
Our school is splattered with our blood. What level of callousness and self-involvement and simple inhumane not giving a fuck is required for you not to stop everything you’re doing and work together to make sure this never happens at another high school ever again?
Potter High School library.
8:07 A.M.
“Was that gunfire?” Mrs. Lewis the librarian asks. “That sounded like gunfire.”
“Sounded like firecrackers to me,” Slow Stevie says.
“Everyone, get down,” Mrs. Lewis says. “Just in case. Get under the tables.”
Before the students are on the floor—especially Slow Stevie—Principal Monroe is on the intercom telling them there’s an active shooter in the school.
This makes Slow Stevie move a little faster. But only a little. And it’s not like he’ll be able to fit under one of the tables anyway.
The library, which is located in the center of the circular main building of the school, has four entrances—each consisting of double glass doors with glass sidelights around them.
Locking down the library is futile. Still, Mrs. Lewis intends to try. Or at least she did until the explosions begin.
“Stay down,” she yells to the fifteen or so students in what is sometimes referred to as the media center.
She yells it from where she cowers behind the counter.
Semi-automatic rifle fire. Louder. Closer.
Glass shattering.
The glass doors to Mrs. Lewis’s right, the first set on the south side of the school, are being shot to shit.
Students screaming.
Alarms blaring.
Someone crying.
From her hidden position beneath the main counter where she mostly stands all day, Mrs. Lewis can’t see anything that’s going on. She can only hear it.
She can hear the rounds ricocheting around the room. She can hear doors slamming and people screaming. She can hear glass shards falling like heavy rain or light hail on the library floor. And she can hear someone crying—maybe more than one person—but she can’t make out if the sobs are cries of fear or pain.
She wants to crawl around the counter and check on the students or at least yell to ask if they’re all right, but she’s too scared to do either. She doesn’t want to be, but she is.
Mrs. Lewis doesn’t want the kids in her care to die, but more than that she doesn’t want to die herself.
If she’s completely honest, she knew deep down that this would be the way she’d react if ever put in this situation. She had just never fathomed she’d ever be put in this situation.
Mrs. Lewis hears what sounds like the way her father and other old-timers around these parts used to thump watermelons to check to see if they were ripe.
More screams.
“Motherfucker,” Slow Stevie yells. “Son of a . . . motherfucker.”
Somebody yells, “Slow Stevie’s shot.”
“Are you okay?” someone else yells.
“Somebody help Slow Stevie,” someone else yells.
More screams. More crying. More gunshots. More explosions.
Mrs. Lewis thinks that Potter High School sounds like an urban war zone. It’s not a thought she’d ever imagined she’d think, but here she is crouched behind the library counter thinking that very thing.
290
It seems like a bad dream. It is, isn’t it? A nightmare we’re going to wake up from soon. It can’t be something that really happened in the real world, can it? That can’t be real blood. Those can’t be the actual dead bodies of kids. It can’t be that our reality is worse than any nightmare we could have, can it?
The classroom doors of Potter High School can only be locked from the outside with a key.
During a lockdown each teacher has to open his or her door far enough to reach out, insert and turn the key with one hand while holding the handle still with the other, then pull it closed.
When coach and athletic director and Social Studies teacher Ace Bowman had asked why this was at a faculty meeting last year where lockdown procedures were being discussed, he was told it was to prevent a student from being able to lock the door from the inside and barricade himself in the room in a hostage situation.
The answer wasn’t satisfactory to Ace but he didn’t say anything at the time.
Right about now he’s really wishing he had.
His first-period remedial Social Studies class is small—something he’s always glad for, but never so much as at this moment.
When the gunshots and explosions begin, Ace stands and quietly and calmly instructs his students to get inside his office.
His office, like all the offices in all the classrooms, is essentially a large wooden box built in the front corner of the room.
True Crime Fiction Page 114
