So yeah, I began to lose it again, if you want to know the truth, and I can admit it now, looking back on that moment. I forced out a dragon breath until there was no more air in my lungs, trying to regulate my breathing.
“Crash, get over here,” he yells from the door as he’s peering out into the hallway.
I am not moving at this point, not hardly breathing. And that metallic taste was beginning to annoy me.
“UP FRONT. NOW!” he yells, slamming the door and going back to the laptops.
I dutifully, but very nervously, make my way to his command central.
He pushes me down into a chair, stands behind me.
Now I am staring at the laptop screens. Three screens, each with eight sections, twenty-four video images in total. Cameras in different locations of the school, inside and out. On the top left of the left-side computer, there’s the front entrance, which is empty, except for Ferguson on guard duty. Next to this video feed, another image of the front entrance, from the outside, looking down the school steps into the street, which is blanketed by police cars. And then I see the other images from the cameras, revealing all the other school entrances. And in most of the images, there are adults wearing headsets.
The bottom row of the screen shows the auditorium, and kids are filtering into it in an orderly manner, line by line, and it looks almost filled to capacity.
And then on the center laptop, I see what Burn is upset about.
The gym is filled to capacity, like the auditorium. But there is one camera that apparently is having trouble, because it keeps blinking on and off. When it blinks back on, I see that kids are quietly leaving the building through the gym entrance. And another camera shows the outside view of kids running into the street, into police barricades.
“Get on the headset,” he tells me, handing me an over-the-ear device, practically shoving it into my ear canal. “Otherwise I smoke the gym and everyone in there.”
He taps on the keyboard, and the gym camera rotates. At first I see the tops of heads, but then I see the top of the bleachers, and there is a sizable package there that Burn wants to make sure I see. It’s got a red switch, like the red switch on Burn’s belt.
I glance over to the third laptop and notice that there is an identical package in the auditorium.
“Time to get started,” he tells me.
All I can think of is that I’m still missing something, as I stare more intensely at all of the feeds. I am looking at classrooms and exits and various places where there are small detonation devices, devices that are in no way comparable to the elaborate packages that are set up in the gym and the auditorium.
“Crash, now!” he yells at me, although I have no idea what he wants.
I keep staring at the screens. No one is in any of the halls. No one is in any of the classrooms.
And it hits me that no one is any of the classrooms now because they are all in the gym or the auditorium, the two most dangerous places in the entire school.
“What the hell do you want me to do?” I ask him without turning around. I am starting to feel that electrical buzzing feeling again. It gets in the way of my ability to concentrate. And the heat coming off his body, I can feel it. Also, the metallic taste in my throat, now I think I smell it and I can’t tell if it’s coming from Burn or from me.
Through the video feed, I see Mr. Liu guarding the exit to the gym, looking directly into the camera, which goes blank and then comes back on. He is wearing an identical headset.
“Are you actually letting people out? What the fuck are you thinking, William?” Burn’s voice, over my headset, echoes his actual voice from behind me. I know exactly what Mr. Liu is thinking, because it appears that he figured out that the camera was faulty and he was carefully letting small groups escape. Burn’s voice startles him.
“One more kid gets out and you DIE,” Burn shouts. “They ALL DIE.”
I am looking down at the keyboards, wondering which of the keys detonate the explosives, knowing that Burn is preoccupied. Concentrating, like it’s a video game, there must be some on-screen clue. Is there a way for me to shut everything down? A master switch? Isn’t there always a master switch?
“Don’t touch the fucking laptops, Crash,” Burn commands, in synchronicity with my thoughts, and I’m wondering how he could possibly know. Was there some body movement that I made, that I didn’t even know that I made, that tipped him off?
Same with Mr. Liu. I watch Mr. Liu’s face on-screen as Burn reaches from behind me and doubles the size of the image. He is still staring back at us, almost full screen, as Burn leans over me, almost pressing his nose to the monitor, as if he’s examining Liu in person.
Yep, I realize, it’s Burn. He’s the one who smells like that metallic smell that I am still tasting.
“Fire your weapon,” Burn shouts at Liu over the mic and into my free ear. Stereo.
I am buzzing.
“I can’t,” says Liu.
“Then say good-bye.”
I have to do something.
“Wait” is what I scream. And I see from Mr. Liu’s face that he can hear me as well. Then the camera goes blank again, and Burn’s hands are swarming the left laptop and he brings up another image, of another explosive device in the gym. Bigger than the first one.
“You can’t be serious” is what I say.
“Shut the fuck up, Crash.”
At first, I think he might be trying to activate it and I am about to try and stop him, not knowing how, when I realize that he’s attempting to get the second gym camera to rotate.
The main camera goes back on, and it looks like Liu is finally following orders. The doors behind him are closed, and even though kids are pushing against him, he is pushing back.
“This is where you come in,” Burn tells me, tapping me on the shoulder. His finger feels like a nail gun to me, practically penetrating into my bone. I flinch.
He brings up another camera full screen, an image of the side of the building. Looking farther down the road, news trucks everywhere. This is a major fucking event. This not just Eyewitness News. This is CNN. This is “we interrupt your regularly scheduled show with this breaking news from Westchester.”
And I am smack in the middle of this.
And Burn turns to me, so we are nose to nose.
“In a second I’m connecting with Officer Kenyon. Tom Kenyon. You’ll be speaking to him on my behalf. Actually, just reading what I type. No more. No less. Can you handle that, Steven?” I feel the heat of his breath on my face and the heat from his body. I am still preoccupied with trying to figure out how to stop it all. “Can you handle that?”
“Uh-huh,” I say meekly.
“If you can’t, there will be consequences.”
Then words on the screen, as he nudges me to repeat them.
“MY NAME IS STEVEN CRASHINSKY. I AM IN THE FACULTY LOUNGE.”
I speak this into the headset, into the air, not hearing anything except silence on the other end, no response, no static; just a dead line.
And a voice finally comes back. “We know who you are. Can I speak with David?”
“IS THIS OFFICER KENYON?” I read and say.
“Yes.”
“ARE YOU THE ONLY ONE ON THIS CONNECTION?”
“No,” he says honestly after a brief hesitation. “Can I speak with David now?”
“I AM HIS MESSENGER,” I read to myself and shake my head “no way” until there is a swift poke between my ribs. Exactly between my ribs, to a soft spot that stings like a motherfucker. “I AM HIS MESSENGER,” I say, repeating the words on the screen.
“Sorry, I need to talk to David directly,” he tells me.
“WHERE’S THE PIZZA?” I just glance at Burn. Is he fucking serious?
He mouths the words silently. “Just read it, Crash.”
As I read his lips, I announce: “WHERE’S THE PIZZA?”
“On its way. Look, can you put David on? We need to speak.”
“THAT’S
NOT HOW THIS WORKS. STOP PLAYING GAMES.” I hesitate before reading the second part but catch Burn ready to strike my ribs again and I flinch again, finally reading it. “That’s him speaking, not me,” I add, then get an immediate poke through my rib cage anyways for my extra efforts.
“I understand,” said the officer, deliberately. We understood each other, which meant to me that Kenyon was trying to get me to say something else, which I wasn’t about to do.
“Can you ask Mr. Burnett when he will be ready to share his demands with us so that we can start letting people go?”
“TWO P.M. YOU ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWER. AT TWO P.M. STEVEN CRASHINSKY WILL DELIVER A SPEECH ON MY BEHALF.” I look up at Burn—what the fuck?
“Tell me again. Why are we waiting?” Officer Kenyon asks.
“FIRST, WHERE IS THE PIZZA? WE HAD A DEAL; I RELEASE TWO KIDS, YOU GET FIVE HUNDRED PIES. I LIVED UP TO MY END—WHAT ABOUT YOURS? WHERE’S YOUR GOOD FAITH, ISN’T THAT WHAT YOU ASKED ME?”
Now I am reading more slowly, trying not to mess up a word, which, I don’t have to tell you, is almost impossible, given the pressure I was under, even as I realize that the two students Burn is referring to are Jamie and Christina and that he had planned to release them all along. He was just fucking with me all that time.
“Tell him the pizza is coming. You just don’t put together five hundred pizza pies. We had to order them. Tell him we need him to release more kids as a show of good faith.”
“YOU ALREADY GOT YOUR WISH. WE BOTH KNOW ABOUT THE KIDS IN THE GYM. IF ANYONE ELSE LEAVES, EVERYONE DIES.” Again, I felt compelled to add that these were Burn’s words, not mine, which I said and as soon as I said, I get a slap across the head and instantly more words on the screen:
“AND THE MEMORIAL. WHAT ABOUT THE MEMORIAL FOR MY SISTER? NOT JUST A PLAQUE, BUT A STATUE IN FRONT OF THE BUILDING.” I recite these lines as carefully as possible, even as my mind puts the pieces together.
I somehow need to tell Kenyon what I know. And I have to figure out how to do it, because they have to know. I mean, I didn’t know it with certainty, but close enough so that there’s every probability that I am right about what’s really going on. And if I am right about what’s really going on, we’re all fucked because whatever anyone thinks the siege might be about, it’s not. It’s not about a list of demands or anything else that Burn might claim it was about.
I need to totally concentrate. I need to know if I can trust what I’m thinking about. What I know for sure is, Burn always has a plan for everything. But in this case, there are so many variables that any one of them could go wrong, too many, and almost all the kids in the school are in the most dangerous areas in case something does go wrong, and what that means is, if something, anything goes wrong, it doesn’t mean one kid dead, it means hundreds.
Which means Burn couldn’t have been committed to this big of an act without thinking about every possible outcome. Not with his genius mind. And even in my not-so-genius mind, I understood that every possible outcome was bad, some worse than others. I hear Jacob’s voice in my head, like whenever I used to present him with some incredible idea for a new business. He’d listen, then ask, “What’s my exit strategy? What’s my exit strategy?” And while I never had one, Burn would.
Well, Burn would ordinarily have one . . . unless there was no exit strategy. Unless his exit strategy was to join his sister and take everyone with him.
And there it was, the piece of the puzzle I was missing.
Fuckme. Fuck us all.
On one hand, he could blame it on the kids, if they continued to escape. Part of the deal, no one gets in, no one gets out. Yet the gym door was not sealed, and Mr. Liu, the guy he had in place there, was, at five foot four inches, the least intimidating, most accommodating adult at our school, other than Mrs. Terrigano and Ms. Kaushal, both of whom were in the faculty lounge with me.
On the other hand, there are the cops. They have to be thinking about when to make their move. Sooner or later, they would figure out a way to get everyone out, or so they would think.
I had no choice. Burn left me with no alternative.
I blurt out, as loud as can be: “It’s not about the demands, don’t believe him. There are explosives in the gym and the . . .”
I don’t think I actually get the last word out, which would have been “auditorium,” because Burn is on his feet and his gun is out and before I could turn to see what he was doing, the handle makes contact with my skull, steel against bone, feeling more like a baseball bat than a gun.
And for a second, it was no big deal. For that first second only. But then the pain rockets through me like a volcano going off in my brain. I had a concussion in eighth grade during football practice. So I know what a concussion feels like. And this bang on my head, this feels like a concussion.
“Get up.” His next command, and that’s when I notice that I am not in the chair anymore; I am down on the floor, not remembering how I got there.
I try to stand; I can hardly focus, much less stand, but that doesn’t stop him, because he grabs my arm and starts to drag me from the front of the room. “Did you think you were helping by telling him about the explosives? Well, did you?”
And I’m not answering, trying to gather my strength, still waiting for the concussive effects to pass. Painfully dizzy. I need to vomit.
He calls over two women, Mrs. Muchnick and Ms. Kaushal, and they help me back into my seat as I stumble toward it. And I step backward, not ready to give up just yet, but my equilibrium is shot to hell.
Burn follows after them, to make absolutely sure that I am put into my seat. Connelly attempts to assist me and Burn whacks him down like he was a mole in that whack-a-mole game at the arcade. Connelly goes down. Slinks back to his chair. Head down on the table.
Good dog.
“They’re fucking with us,” Burn announces to the group.
Us? I don’t say this out loud. But who was us?
“They’ve hacked into the security system. Well, after I hacked into the security system. They hacked back,” he says. “I was giving them very limited access. Just what I wanted them to see. Now they can see everything. So I’m shutting it down now.”
Ms. Kaushal goes to the back of the room, returns with a roll of paper towels, handing them to me, motioning for me to use them, which makes no sense until I see that my desk is covered in blood. She unrolls a wad and presses it against my temple, pulls my hand over hers to support it. I feel the slickness of my own blood oozing through the wad of towels.
“Do you understand what that means?” he asked us all, but no one, including me, had any clue. “It means that Steven Crashinsky may have killed us all with his failure to comply with instructions.”
How was this my fault? I’m about to ask, but I do not have the strength to argue.
What was the point anyways?
Then he turns to Muchnick and Kaushal.
“Leave him alone. Go back to your seats. Let’s continue.”
Continue? I am confused. Beyond confused. Disoriented.
As if on command, Joanne Muchnick chimes in. “Before you got here, Steven, David was asking us to tell him about his sister. She was my student. In fact, most of us in the room had her in our classes, or knew Roxanne very well.”
Was this for real?
“She was a beautiful soul,” said Ms. Terrigano. “A real free spirit and independent thinker.”
I needed to close my eyes and I gave in to the feeling for a minute, but the world was spinning too much in there. I had to concentrate, get Burn to stop. So, as I listened to Ms. Muchnick talk, I closed my eyes again and concentrated like I had never concentrated before in my entire life and, in my mind, asked Roxanne, wherever she was, for help. I asked, if she could hear me wherever she was, was there a way to save her brother and the rest of us? All I asked for was a sign, if somehow she could give me one, then I would know. Not gonna lie, I have asked for signs from her before, signs that she was somehow there in some form,
and there were times when I even thought she could hear me, but of course I never got any proof of any sort whatsoever. So just one sign now could change everything. Maybe she had been holding off because she knew there would be this one time when it really, really mattered.
And I opened my eyes and looked around with a completely open-minded perspective. Mrs. Muchnick was still going on about this after-school thing with Roxanne, and there was absolutely nothing to prove that I had reached her.
Because, I had to face it, there was nothing to reach. It was just me, not willing to let her go all this time.
I looked back at the clock on the wall. 12:22.
And Burn was back to his laptops again.
And Mrs. Muchnick goes back to her stories about Roxanne.
She goes on for a while, and when she’s done, Burn gives Connelly the nod, and it’s his turn to tell a Roxanne story. And I’m thinking, this is the way he wants to go out, hearing about his sister, which is why he chose the people he did.
Which may have been the real reason why I’m here.
“What do you remember about my sister, Ed?” Burn asks, using Connelly’s first name as an expression of contempt.
“I remember a girl with a most unusual gift. She was insightful and funny and had a nasty mouth, if you want to know the truth, Mr. Burnett.”
“Go on,” David said, leaning back in his chair.
“We had this assignment. You may know the one, Mr. Crashinsky. Find three songs that are related in theme and do an essay comparing and contrasting the songs, considering them as poetry.”
OK, we had this assignment like two weeks before, and I had no idea when it was due. Fuckme, I thought for a second, knowing that I was not getting that assignment in on time. Not that it mattered, at this point.
“Go on,” Burn says, fiddling with his laptop.
“And the theme she picked was remarkably sad, break-up songs, but not just normal break-up songs, incredibly personal break-up songs. And her essay was so wonderfully constructed, so beautifully written and so deeply emotional, that I simply could not comprehend how a seventeen-year-old girl could have understood the poetry behind those songs as well as she did. I must confess that it brought a tear to my eye when I read it. Mr. Burnett, your sister was a hell of a writer.”
Crash and Burn Page 48
