Midnight Chat

by Jo Ramsey

  “It’s going to be okay,” Dad said again.

  “Yeah.” I wasn’t agreeing. Just letting him know I’d heard him. “Um, would you call the social worker instead of going to school with me tomorrow? Everyone’s going to be watching me anyway. They’ll only have more to talk about if they see you with me.”

  “I’ll think about it. I see your point.” He smiled. “I’m proud of you, in case I forgot to say it. You know you did the right thing, right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “If you hadn’t called the police, people might have died. Rob might have died.” He put his arm around me again. “This way, no one was hurt. Rob’s getting help. And you’re okay. That matters more to me than anything else. He might have hurt you too. I saw the texts.”

  “I heard you say that to Lee-Anne.” No wonder he was glad Rob was in the crisis unit. “I don’t think he would have really hurt me, but last night I wasn’t sure. That’s why the police came here, to keep him from getting to me if he tried.”

  “It’s better to be safe.” He got up. “Take it easy for the rest of today, but I really think it’ll be best if you go to school tomorrow. I’ll decide by morning whether I want to go with you or just call the school.”

  “Thanks.”

  He went back into the kitchen. I curled up and closed my eyes again. I needed to sleep.

  WHEN MY alarm woke me the next morning, my head throbbed and my eyes burned. I’d spent part of the night crying, but eventually I’d fallen asleep. My dreams had seriously sucked. Blood, guns, and dead bodies.

  I squinted to look around the room, wondering what was missing. Then I realized. No midnight chat the night before. Rob wasn’t around to chat with. The conversations that kept me awake half the night would never happen again.

  My eyes watered, which made the burning worse. Obviously more crying was out of the question. I blinked to clear the tears from my eyes. I had to go to school anyway, so it was time to stop crying and get myself together.

  I went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my eyes. It didn’t help much. Neither did looking in the mirror and seeing the dark lines under my bloodshot eyes.

  I showered quickly, not caring how clean I got, and went back to my room to get dressed. None of my clothes appealed to me. I didn’t want to stand out, which meant not dressing too nicely, but it also meant not dressing too sloppy. I finally ended up in jeans and a black-and-white T-shirt that said “Dichotomous,” the name of a local band I kind of liked. I picked up my backpack and left the room.

  In the kitchen, Dad and Olin were drinking juice and waiting for our old, slow toaster to pop up. The smell of the toast nauseated me.

  “Would you still rather have me call the social worker instead of going with you?” Dad asked.

  “Huh?” I coughed. “Um, yeah. I want to go to school alone. I’m a big girl.”

  “Yeah, you—” Olin said.

  Dad thumped him on the shoulder. “Don’t start. Mira, there’s toast. Or will be as soon as the toaster realizes I put bread in it.”

  “I’m not hungry.” A nasty taste rose in my throat. I coughed again, which only worsened the taste. “I can’t eat anything right now.”

  “You need…. Never mind.” Dad held up his glass. “Juice, at least?”

  I shook my head. Anything I put into my stomach probably would have come right back up, and I didn’t want to take the chance. “Fresh air might help me feel better. I’ll get breakfast at school.”

  “Okay.” Frowning, Dad got up and hugged me. “You’re going to be all right.”

  “Yeah.” Of course I would be all right. Why wouldn’t I be all right just because I had to face a school full of people who knew I’d stopped my best friend from trying to kill them?

  Dad was completely clueless, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him he didn’t know what he was talking about.

  I put on my shoes and headed out the door before Dad could say anything else. It was a little too early to go straight to school, but I didn’t care.

  The cool air helped my stomach but didn’t do anything for my headache. If I’d wanted to deal with the coffee shop, caffeine might have helped, but I couldn’t walk into the place this morning. People from school would probably be there. Talia almost definitely would be, and I didn’t want to face her. She’d done what I should have done, and she probably would hate me for being angry with her about it.

  But I couldn’t face a day of school with my head hurting so badly. If Talia or anyone else from school was at the coffee shop, I would have to deal with it.

  Of course, when I went into the shop, Talia was at the counter. I almost turned around and left, but right now, coffee was more important than anything else. I got in line behind her.

  She smiled at me over her shoulder. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” I didn’t smile back.

  The counterperson asked what Talia wanted, and Talia ordered my usual coffee along with hers. I started to argue, but I wasn’t about to turn down free coffee. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” Talia hesitated. “Can we walk to school together? I want to talk to you.”

  I didn’t want to hear what she might say about Rob. I couldn’t talk about him yet. Especially not when the entire day was probably going to be filled with questions and comments about him. But if I let Talia have her say, I would at least feel like I was paying her back for my coffee.

  Once we had our drinks, Talia and I headed to school. Walking with her felt so right it was weird. Even though we’d only broken up a few days earlier, I’d believed I’d moved on. Apparently not.

  “Are you going to keep hating me?” she asked.

  “Huh?” That wasn’t what I’d expected to hear. “I don’t hate you. You were right about Rob. I should have gone with you to Mrs. Reynolds.”

  “It wouldn’t have changed anything.” She bit her lip. “Mrs. Reynolds talked to him, and he still did what he did. We had an assembly yesterday, and the school sent out a robocall and e-mails to parents, so everyone knows a student threatened to shoot people at the high school. No one said it was Rob, but everyone guessed. Some dimwits thought you were in on it too, but Ms. Cramer said someone called the police about the threats, so most people figured you were the one who called.”

  “Great.” That meant I would be in for even more questions and comments than I’d anticipated. Maybe I should have stayed home again, except Dad probably wouldn’t have let me.

  “Did he threaten you too?” she asked.

  I shook my head. The police had told me not to give details to anyone while they were still investigating, so all I could say was, “He told me his plans and I called the police. I’m not allowed to tell you anything else.”

  “I get it,” she said. “Anyway, I wish Mrs. Reynolds had actually done something. You broke up with me for going behind Rob’s back, and it didn’t even do any good.”

  “I broke up with you because you went behind his back and mine.” I took another sip of coffee. “He’s my best friend. I trusted you, and he trusted me. You had no right to betray our trust. That’s why I broke up with you.”

  My voice was getting louder, so I forced myself to stop talking. Other people were walking nearby. They didn’t need to overhear us.

  “I was your girlfriend,” Talia said slowly. “Shouldn’t that have made me at least as important as Rob? I get why you were pissed off, but couldn’t you have talked to me instead of choosing him over me?”

  I opened my mouth and closed it again. I didn’t know how to answer her. No one in my life was more important than anyone else, only important in different ways. The problem was, Rob hadn’t done anything to Talia, but she’d done something to him. It wasn’t about importance. It was about her actions.

  “He isn’t more important than you,” I said finally. “And I didn’t choose him over you. I told you I’d take care of it, and you didn’t give me a chance.”

  “I was afraid something would happen before you got around to a
sking him to talk to her.” Talia glanced around. “I was worried about him. About you too. I mean, look what happened. It could have been like that kid in Wyoming on Friday. People like Rob—”

  “Like Rob?” This time I was definitely yelling, and I didn’t care. “That kid wasn’t anything like Rob. Rob’s been hurting for a long time, and no one did anything about it. Even when you talked to Mrs. Reynolds, she didn’t do anything. Rob didn’t know how to make it all stop, and now he’s locked up because I betrayed him just like you did!”

  “I’m screwing this up so bad.” She sighed and stopped walking. “Mira, I’m on your side. And Rob’s. You didn’t betray him. You did what you had to do, and it was the right thing. I don’t mean he should be locked up. He isn’t a bad person, but he has problems. You’ve said so yourself.”

  “I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have told you or anyone else anything.”

  “Okay, well, you did.” She moved to the edge of the sidewalk and motioned for me to move as well so a group of people could pass us. “Besides, if you hadn’t said anything, he might have been standing here with a gun this morning. You didn’t do anything wrong, and neither did I. We tried to help him. And you saved people, Mira. Do you understand that? People might have died if you hadn’t called the police.”

  Her voice cracked, and tears rolled down her face. I’d never seen Talia cry about anything before.

  “Maybe he wouldn’t have done anything,” I said softly.

  “Maybe. Isn’t it better that we don’t have to find out?” She drank some of her coffee. “Look, I know you don’t trust me right now. I hope you’ll get over it, but even if you don’t, can we at least try to be friends? Right now I feel like we’re enemies, and I hate it.”

  “We aren’t enemies.” I didn’t know what we were anymore. Definitely not girlfriends. But I didn’t want her out of my life. Now that I didn’t have Rob, Talia was the only person I could really talk to. “Yeah. Friends, I guess. It’s going to take time for me to trust you again, though.”

  “I know. I’ll prove you can.” She hesitated. “Um, did you hear anything about Rob? Or are you not supposed to tell me that either? I promise I won’t tell anyone else anything.”

  I probably shouldn’t have told her anything more, but the way gossip spread around this stupid town, someone would find out anyway. At least Talia wouldn’t be the one spreading it. I didn’t trust her completely, but she never broke promises.

  “Lee-Anne called my dad yesterday,” I said. “Rob’s in a crisis unit or something. Dad said they don’t know how long he’s going to be there.” She didn’t need to know exactly where Rob was. That wasn’t anyone’s business.

  “So he’s getting help?” Talia started walking again, and I followed. “I’m glad. Like I said, I don’t think he’s a bad person. I never did. He just has problems. If someone helps him, maybe things will be better for him.”

  “Maybe.”

  She looked thoughtful. “Didn’t you say his parents don’t believe he needs help? They kept telling him he was just whining, didn’t they?”

  I nodded. “I don’t think they have a choice this time. Someone probably told them he had to be hospitalized because of what he did.”

  “It’s pretty bad.” She paused. “Craig and Seth weren’t in school yesterday either. I’m pretty sure they’re not coming back. Eileen said they’re getting expelled. Her dad’s on the school board, so he knows what’s going on.”

  “They should be expelled. They shouldn’t have been allowed to come back from suspension.” If the frigging school had done more to protect Rob, he wouldn’t have gone as far as he had. He would be walking with us right now, or I would be walking with him instead of Talia, and everything would be normal.

  His arrest was my fault. I was the one who’d called the police on him. But the things people had done to him that led up to him sending me those texts Sunday night were their fault. Everyone else had let Rob down. I was the only one who’d tried to hold him together. I just wasn’t strong enough by myself.

  “They were only suspended,” Talia said. “The school had to let them come back. But if someone had told Rob they were back, maybe he would have been able to stay away from them, and then he wouldn’t have gotten so upset.”

  “It wasn’t only because of them.” I probably wasn’t supposed to tell her about the threats Rob had received either, but I didn’t see why not. “Someone sent him a couple of messages online Saturday. Whoever it was said they were going after him on Monday. What Craig and Seth did was bad enough, but I think the messages were why Rob snapped.”

  “It’s a guessing game. We don’t have any way to know.”

  “Exactly.” I finished the last of my coffee. “So let’s stop trying to guess. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  “Okay.”

  As we turned the last corner before the school, Jack and Allan stepped in front of us. I tensed. I wasn’t in the mood for any BS, and they probably weren’t there to tell me to have a good day.

  They weren’t there to harass me either, as it turned out. “Hey, Mira, good job,” Jack said.

  His voice shook a little, and he glanced around as if he was afraid to look at me. Allan stared at the ground and didn’t say a word.

  “Um, thanks.” I narrowed my eyes. “You know why it happened, right?”

  “No one thought he would get that upset.” Jack cleared his throat. “We were assholes. All of us. We didn’t know. I mean, it’s been going on for years, and he never acted like he would totally lose his shit over it. We didn’t know how bad he felt.”

  “You didn’t know?” Talia handed me her cup and stepped forward, so close to Jack she was almost touching him. “You seriously didn’t frigging know beating up a guy and calling him names every single goddamn day might push him over the edge? You’re right. You were assholes!”

  I stared at her. Talia had a temper, but I’d never seen her like this.

  I expected Jack to yell back at her. That was the kind of guy he usually was. Instead, he looked away and fidgeted with the bottom of the flannel shirt he wore over his T-shirt. “We didn’t know,” he mumbled.

  Allan finally looked at me. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Stopping him.” He bit his lip. “We were probably at the top of his list. We deserved to be, anyway.”

  “She doesn’t want to talk about it.” Talia took my arm. “Come on, Mira. You don’t need these guys in your face. They’d better leave you alone. Them and all of their buddies.”

  I let her pull me past the guys. All the way into the school building, she stayed right beside me, glaring at anyone who even glanced in our direction.

  Talia stuck with me through first block, but today we had different classes second block. She walked me to the classroom. “Don’t let anyone give you a hard time.”

  “I don’t think anyone’s going to.” Since we had walked into the building, most people had acted as if they didn’t even see me. No one had spoken to me at all.

  “Good. I’ll see you at lunch.”

  I went into the room and barely had a chance to sit down before the intercom phone on the wall buzzed. The teacher picked it up and listened for a moment, then said, “Mira, they need you in the office, please. You’ll probably be back before the end of class, but take your stuff just in case.”

  “Um, okay.” I forced myself to breathe. This probably wasn’t anything good. I stood and gathered my books, then headed off to meet what might be my doom.

  I’d forgotten Dad was going to call the social worker. She met me at the office door and brought me into her small office in the back corridor between the administrators’ offices and guidance.

  “How are you doing today, Mira?” she asked as she closed her door. “I spoke with your father, and he said you might need to talk a little about what happened this weekend.”

  I shrugged. “My best friend said he was going to shoot people. Including me if I told anyone.
I told someone anyway. Now he’s in the hospital and people here are acting like I’m either invisible or terrifying.”

  “When we informed the students yesterday about what had happened, no one really knew how to react.” She sat at her desk and motioned for me to take the chair beside her. “It isn’t an easy situation to handle, and I’m sure it’s much harder for you. I want you to know you can come down to see me any time you need to. You don’t need permission. I’ll make sure your teachers are aware I’ve told you this so you won’t get in trouble for leaving class. We want to make sure you’re all right.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have said anything yesterday.” I paused. “Everyone knows you were talking about me and Rob. Talia says you didn’t give any names, but people figured it out.”

  She nodded. “We knew that was a possibility, but we had to inform the students and parents about the threats. Has anyone said anything to you this morning? Have you received any phone calls or e-mails or anything since yesterday?”

  “Jack and Allan thanked me.” That still kind of boggled my mind. “No one else is saying anything, and I haven’t gotten anything online. Talia’s kind of being my bodyguard, I guess. She hasn’t let anyone get near me all morning.”

  She smiled. “Sounds like a good friend.”

  “She is.” I hesitated. “I should have been. To Rob, I mean. If I’d been a better friend, he wouldn’t have done this.”

  “You aren’t responsible for him,” she said firmly. “As school staff, we should have done more to help, and the people who were bullying him shouldn’t have been doing it. Even if we ‘should’ for the rest of our lives, it won’t change what happened, so let’s look at the positives. You were a good friend. You tried to help him and you saved a lot of lives, including his.” She crossed one leg over the other. “He’s alive and getting help because you made the choice to do something instead of ignoring his threats.”

  “I guess.” I couldn’t really wrap my head around it. She was right. Rob had said he would kill himself after he shot other people. I still had trouble believing I’d done the right thing, but I must have. Everyone was still alive.