by Seth Fishman
“Who’s that one?” she whispers to me.
“I met him last night. Didn’t you see him?”
She smiles knowingly at my tone of voice, and I roll my eyes. How quickly do the worries of the world disappear when there’s a new boy involved?
“What’s his name?”
I shrug. “I don’t know . . .”
Rob leans over me and whispers to the new kid. “Hey, newbie, what’s your name?”
I try to sink into my chair to distance myself from Rob, but the new kid glances at me anyway, a hint of a frown on his face, causing the scar on his chin to flare white again.
“Brayden,” he says, giving a small wave that jiggles the yellow band on his wrist. “I’m Brayden.”
“Cool,” Rob says, and then leans back in his seat, not offering his name or ours. He tugs his sideburn again and leaves it to us. Typical Rob.
• • •
Just then, a door near the front of the stage opens, and out come the professors. All of them. The procession is odd, like we’re in some sort of dictatorial regime, because they seem to march to preappointed spots around the room. Mr. Banner is there; he takes a place at the end of our aisle and shoots Jo a smile and a wink.
Dean Griffin steps onto the stage and in front of the podium, a single piece of wood with the school’s emblem, a mountain lion, carved into its face. We at Westbrook are fond of carving things from single pieces of wood.
The dean taps the microphone, sending feedback through the speakers, and my head reacts like a tuning fork just went off in my ear. I squeeze my eyes shut, and when they open, the place is still. It’s the gravity in his voice that gets my attention.
“Students of Westbrook, for the moment, we are not fully apprised as to why we were asked to sound the siren.”
Jo’s forehead wrinkles and she looks at her father, who shrugs, clearly thinking his natural gas story had been true. There’s a release of breath in the room; now that there’s nothing to be reported, everyone can stop caring. As if to emphasize the point, Eric, the guy who mooned me in the pool, raises his arms and goes, “Wooo hooo!” and everyone laughs, but the dean shouts so loud spittle flies from his mouth and past the podium, almost to me.
“SILENCE!”
The place settles, curious more than scared. But there’s a growing tension here—it’s palpable—and a good chunk of the student body feels it.
“Silence, I say,” he continues. “You don’t seem to understand the severity of the situation. I wonder about the merits of full disclosure, but I’ll not have your parents assuming we did anything but. We have been, for reasons currently unknown to me and the faculty, ordered by the military to shut down campus activity and classes. I have no news from Fenton, and am not entirely sure whether they are under the same restrictions we are, but I have been informed by several faculty members that our phones and internets are down.” There are some snickers at his obvious lack of modern web understanding, and the dean pauses long enough for them to settle. I imagine him thinking, Maybe it’s just as well. Let them think there’s nothing wrong; this might be easier. He steels himself for what must be the really bad news. “This means that, for the time being, no one is to leave the school grounds and we are to place ourselves in voluntary lockdown.” There’s a huge swelling uproar from the crowd. Today is Friday, and half the class probably has trips planned to Vail or Aspen and their families’ winter condos. You’d think by the level of indignation that we’ve been told to eat mud or something. No one gives a crap about what’s really going on, but told they can’t go skiing, suddenly they think the teachers are fascists. A few kids ball up paper and toss it toward the stage. One hits Rob on the head. He flicks his hair out of his eyes and settles lower into his seat.
“So they are always like this.”
I see that Brayden has moved to the seat next to me during the chaos. He’s leaning in, a small grin on his face, conspiratorial. It’s funny how much you can see when you’re close to someone. I can’t help but notice the beauty mark under his left eyelid, like a counter to the scar on his jawline. Or the fact that his lips are moist, not dry like most boys’ during the winter. Or that his hair is long enough to reveal the beginnings of a cowlick. The small bits that make him a whole. Maybe I should be hungover more often, if this is how observant I am. Ugh, what if he’s the same way? What if he can smell my barf breath?
“Who, the teachers?” I ask him, confused. I can feel Jo tense next to me, straining to hear what we’re saying. Rob’s less subtle and swings his head down to listen.
“The students. Don’t you remember our chat last night?”
I remember him getting kicked out of Odessa’s party. Things going sour for him just like he predicted. “They only get this way when you take away the gifts Mommy and Daddy bought.” Of course, this kid doesn’t live here, so he’s from somewhere else—he’s probably rich himself, and I’m putting my size-six shoe all up in my mouth.
“I call mine Mum and Dada.”
I can’t help it and let out a burst of laughter, which, I must say, is worth the jackknife to my headache.
“Miss Kish!” The dean’s shout finally bursts through the noise of protesting students. “From them, yes, I get it. But from you? What if your father is in danger? What if you were in danger and your father had no way of knowing? And yet you laugh! All of you laugh!”
The place goes silent, everyone staring at me, and the wave of fear and embarrassment hits me at the same time. I can’t breathe, and I double over in shame, which makes my head and stomach hurt and matters much worse. He’s just making an example of me to the other students, but he’s right. The siren went off here, but Dad seemed to know what was going on. And here I am, ignoring both my father and the dean, laughing in their faces. I try to stand, and Mr. Banner comes over and helps me. I can see him scowling at the dean. He takes me out a side door into the cold and scoops up some snow and gives it to me to suck on, an odd gesture that somehow is exactly what I need and probably wouldn’t have been done by any other teacher. Jo’s there, and so is Rob, but not Brayden. Won’t ever be speaking to him again.
“Don’t worry about the dean, Mia,” Mr. Banner says. He’s got one hand on my shoulder, and he crouches in front of me, forcing me to look him in the eye. “Nothing’s going on at the Cave. Nothing’s going to be a problem here, either, okay? Griffin is just a testy old—”
“But why is the army here, then?” My voice doesn’t feel like my own. It’s weak and sad and soft, and it dribbles from my mouth like spit. I don’t know why I’m all worked up, but the sirens are still going, and I can’t help but think of Mrs. Applebaum and the way she looked. Dean Griffin said lockdown, but what does that mean?
I can hear the dean’s voice through the brick wall. Now he’s telling us that class is canceled but will resume on Sunday to make up for it. We’ll have Saturday off, but are not allowed to leave campus for any reason. The crowd is none too pleased. There’s some shouting, then loud applause from the student body, and a couple seconds later, the door bursts open and a senior, Devin Harris, strides purposefully out. A large group of his friends are close behind, cheering him on. A few of the teachers from the room try to impede their progress, but there are just too many kids. Devin gets to his Mercedes SLS and hops in, and so do a couple of his friends, who immediately roll down their windows and lean halfway out, cheering and raising their hands and sticking out their tongues. One even does a mock Taylor Swift “heart” gesture, and the crowd cheers.
Devin spins his tires and peels out, fishtailing on purpose in the snow, drawing an even larger cheer from the crowd. The whole student body must be outside now. The dean is near the door, watching with disdain. I turn around, looking for Brayden, but can’t spot him. And then I feel ashamed to have shifted my thoughts so quickly from my father to him. I grab Jo’s arm, and we watch the boys together. Rob leans in, sticks his head
between the two of ours and rests his chin on my shoulder. I guess it’s that easy. Just get in a car and drive away. I don’t have one, of course, but Rob has an old 4Runner, and I’m sure we could take that. Dad said to go through the woods, but it would be so much faster by car.
“They’re idiots, you know?” Rob says, his voice so close it echoes in my head.
“Yeah,” I respond automatically, though maybe they aren’t. For the moment, I don’t feel the need to participate in Rob’s perpetual negativity.
Devin has reached the end of the parking lot and zooms down the long entrance to the school, a small tree-lined road that runs three-quarters of a mile before it hits the campus’s surrounding brick wall. Beyond the entrance is a roundabout that leads to the nearest county road, but you can’t see it, as there is a row of pine trees in front of the towering wall, so that from this far away, the border of the school looks like a forest. The only drivable way in and out of the school is through the front gate, a wrought-iron fence, intricately shaped and perpetually open. We all watch Devin and crew streak for freedom as if we were in a movie theater at the closing credits, except when Devin hits the roundabout beyond our view, something must’ve gone wrong. At first we can hear him honking, long impatient hand-on-horn honks. Then there’s a series of loud pops that echo harshly around the mountains, and the whole school, all assembled in front of me, ducks involuntarily.
We hear Devin’s tires screech again—he’s taken the roundabout in a full circle and is suddenly bursting back toward campus and into view, going way faster than before. The hood is riddled with bullet holes, but not the windshield, and some absurd part of me says, at least they weren’t trying to hit the students. The car bounces and swerves and then, in one twist, he can’t control the wheels and no amount of winter-driving experience can save him. The car plunges into one of the enormous oaks lining the road, about fifty yards out, and one of his friends, a stupid kid named Will, a nationally ranked welterweight wrestler, shoots through the front window and lands in a clump in a snowdrift.
The students erupt. Dozens begin running toward the car, but just as many mill about, screaming. Another clump scatters in all directions, heading to the dorms or into the auditorium. Jo’s dad shouts, “Holy crap, stop!” and tries to physically prevent some of the kids from moving toward the wreck. I take off for the car, though, because I have to know what’s stopped them and why. Without a glance, I know Jo’s right next to me. I’m running hard, feeling the slick of half-salted ice on the concrete beneath my feet, and I hear Rob calling for us to slow down. He was never much of a runner.
I feel my body burst with adrenaline, my fear pushing me even faster, my mouth filling with a weird need to spit. There’s a surreal moment as I run, as I get closer to the car, where I feel my body slip into itself the way it does when I swim. When my legs move at a rhythm and my breathing is even and I know I’m performing as well as I can. At those times in the pool, I go on autopilot and get lost. My mind wanders now, doing a quick lap of the crazy of the past two days. First the reporter, then Rory, then the lockdown and now this. How can they shoot at a kid? Suddenly Dad’s tone of voice on the phone makes sense; something’s going on here that’s very, very real. I try not to think about how the school’s exit is blocked, how I missed my chance. I should have listened to him. I should have believed. I should have left. I can’t help wondering if we’re fucked. The worst part of it is, if Dad’s right, if everyone would have been okay if I had just left, then all of this is my fault.
A few kids are already sprinting back to the school through the snow, to get the campus doctor in residence—of course Westbrook has a state-of-the-art medical facility, but only I know that Dr. Seymore is in the dean’s office—and a few others are calling 911, only to remember that their cell phones are useless. Other teachers are running around too, herding students, hustling our way. They look as lost and confused as we are.
The car is smoking, though I can’t tell if it’s from the tree smashed into its hull or the bullet holes. Lots of them, strafed across the front. Will is moving—at least he was lucky enough to land in the soft snowdrift—but Devin isn’t, and neither is the other kid, someone I don’t know, though I’ve seen him around. You see everyone around.
A lot of kids are crying, and a couple are starting to pull Devin and the unnamed one out of the car, but I shout, “No, don’t move them. Not yet!” I get closer and push someone out of the way. Devin had his seat belt on, thank God, and he’s breathing. There’s a huge gash on his forehead from a piece of glass, but the now-deflated airbag seems to have saved him. There’s a bruise and a series of cuts on his neck from where the seat belt dug in. I take his pulse, and he seems okay, so I look in the back. The other kid, the one I don’t know, he’s bent awkwardly on the seat, too high, his head way back and resting in a hole in the rear window, a crater that left a web of cracks through the remainder of the glass. There’s blood dripping down, pooling on the back windshield wiper. I pull off my jacket and put it to the wound on his head.
Jo and Rob are off to the side, looking at me with a mix of whoa and what the heck are you doing? But my father taught me basic first aid, and rule number one is to apply pressure, so I have no problem sitting here until the doctor comes. It’s not like I’m performing surgery myself. Speaking of, I look up, and there he is, Dr. Seymore, hurrying in his white coat, camouflaged against the snow. To my right there’s a crowd around Will, but through them I can see Brayden on his knees, cradling Will’s head, keeping it straight. He looks at me, then down at Will and back to me, and smiles, like he’s saying, check out this little coincidence, that we both happened to find two injured bodies in need of head holding.
Then Dr. Seymore is at the car, looking in at Devin and quickly realizing, like I did, that there’s nothing to be done for him at the moment and he’s probably just unconscious. He turns his attention to me and the boy I’m holding on to, nodding in quick assessment.
“Good,” he says. He turns and shouts at a few of the bigger boys, including Jimmy. “You guys, get over here and help me move him.” Dr. Seymore takes my place, and I step back, letting them work.
At this moment, there’s a loud screech and everything freezes. At the end of the driveway, the gates of Westbrook are being dragged closed. What’s worse is that the men doing it, soldiers, carry guns and are covered head to toe in white hazmat suits. No one makes a move toward the gate to stop them. They snap the gate shut and walk away, like ghosts.
I find myself standing apart from it all, blood on my shirt and all over my jacket, which I hold in a ball in front of me. I lift the jacket to my nose on impulse and take a whiff, and it really does smell like iron. The blood coagulates on my knuckles before my eyes. This kid’s blood. Mr. Banner takes my arm, and he and Jo walk me to the dorm. I search for Rob and see him alone in the field, waving his huge cell phone in the air, searching for service. Mr. Banner looks weird, like he’s aged from all the stress of the past two minutes. I swear his hair is grayer, and longer, and when we get to the door, he coughs like my grandfather used to, the kind of coughs where we cringed and flinched and tried to ignore the rattling in his throat.
Mr. Banner gags and then dry heaves into the snow. I try to be concerned for Jo’s father but have to battle my own stomach, which never likes the sound of another person’s upchuck.
“Ugh, I’m sorry, Mia. How gross. And after you were so amazing back there, I can’t even stand the sight of blood. Listen, go take a shower, get some rest. We’ll handle this.” He looks at his daughter. “Take care of her, okay? Take care of yourself.” He gives her a big hug. And while they embrace, I can hear him whisper, “Don’t leave your room.”
His voice sends shivers down my body, and when I pull away and head toward the dorm, everything goes slow and bright. My body still aches from last night, a migraine on the verge, but adrenaline is dashing through me so hard I’m considering turning off and heading to
ward the pool. Maybe laps would help and I can focus on them to take my mind off whatever this is. I’m afraid. Somehow my dad had an inkling about what’s going on. Maybe he has access to military broadcasts. But he’s locked behind double steel doors, and it sounds like he’s not going to come and get me. And I’m here, when I should be gone. I swallow hard, take a breath. That could have been me. If I’d gotten in the car and tried to drive out of here, that could have been me. My fingers tingle, the cold starting to seep in. Dad had said everyone would be safe if I left. And I could have left out the gates and on foot through the woods. But how could that have changed anything? Devin would still have hopped in his car. They’d still have tried to get away.
Rob’s joined us, his teeth chattering in the cold. He’s a little baby, I realize. We all are. I take Jo’s hand and then Rob’s, and they both squeeze mine, but it’s hard to feel comfort when there are students running and crying and screaming in confusion all around us. We get to the dorm entrance, and Rob turns and takes a picture of the wreckage on his phone. I give him a look.
