I take my place on stage behind a mic, and Paige sits down at the piano.
“Let me hear it if you’re fired up for Christ tonight!” Pastor Pete says.
CHAPTER NINE
“INSIDE. NOW,” PASTOR PETE shouts. He holds open a door to one of the prayer rooms, and we all run in. I swallow the tears down my throat, my sadness replaced by fear.
The room is off the main sanctuary, one of many places where people who need prayer during a service can go for more one-on-one attention from one of the members of our Prayer Ministry. The room is simple—no windows, a small table, and four chairs. And now us. Me, Pastor Pete, Chuck, Amy, Beth, a boy named Brian who’s in Brothers In Christ, and another boy named Sam who I don’t know very well.
“Guys, help me get this table against the wall,” Pastor Pete says. They rip the chairs away and tilt the table on its side across the door, then pile the chairs against the table to make a barricade. The church has an “active shooter” emergency plan that everyone in a position of authority has to be trained on. I’m pretty sure Pastor Pete is following protocol here.
“Okay, okay,” Pastor Pete says, clearly nervous. He runs a hand through his hair. “I need everyone to line up against that wall.” He’s pointing to the same wall the door is on. “It’ll give us the best chance if anyone comes in.”
Oh god. Oh god, oh god, oh god.
Jackson. Did he have enough time to go? What if he’s still here? I pull out my phone to text him:
Hide! Shooter in the church.
But I don’t get a response before Pastor Pete sees me typing.
“Emma. Call the police,” Pastor Pete says, as he pulls out his own and dials. “Tell them we have an active shooter situation.”
“Yes, sir,” I say.
“Everyone else who has phones turn them to silent right now and stay quiet.”
They all obey.
Beth and Amy huddle together, crying. How could they not be thinking of Columbine? Of the Aurora theater shootings? Of the shooting at a local high school just before Christmas break? All stuff that happened here. Are we the next tragedy on Colorado’s list?
As my phone rings for the police, I can hear Pastor Pete on his phone, warning someone downstairs to secure the kids in the Youth Center. Then he switches off the lights, and everything goes dark.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
I can’t believe the words as they come out of my mouth. “Hello, I’m at Summit Christian Fellowship on Westlake Road in Denver? We have an active shooter in the building.”
As I’m telling them everything—where we are, where the others are, what we saw, what we heard—my phone buzzes with a text:
Holy shit. Already gone. Is this a joke? You okay?
And a little part of me, a small part, relaxes just a little bit.
Ten minutes pass. Then forty. Then an hour.
I hear nothing but the whispered prayers of the others in the room, and I can’t help wondering if all this is a punishment from God for what I did tonight.
Could you be more self-centered, Emma? Seriously. Someone died.
June died.
I try not to think about it.
Beth interrupts the silence with a whisper. “I just don’t understand why someone would do this to us. At church. I mean, all we ever do is try to help people.”
“It’s probably somebody who hates God,” Brian says. “Probably hates Christians too. Lots of people do.”
“I don’t know man,” Sam says. “I think it’s gotta be a psycho. Like that weirdo in Aurora.”
“Hey, guys,” Chuck says, a tentative grin in his voice. “How does a crazy person get out of the woods?”
“How?” Sam asks.
“They take the psycho path.”
A snort escapes my nose. It’s a dumb joke, and totally inappropriate right now, but I can’t help it. Chuck may be kind of annoying sometimes, but you can always count on him for a little comic relief.
Sam chuckles too. So does Brian.
“Okay, guys, that’s enough,” Pastor Pete whispers. “We need to stay quiet. Why don’t we spend a little time in prayer?”
We all sober up, bow our heads.
“Dear Jesus,” Pastor Pete whispers. “I thank You for keeping us safe in Your care tonight. We pray that You would cast Your protection around those who are downstairs right now. Keep Your shield over their heads and guide the police to—“
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG. Someone pounds on the door.
“Denver Police Department. Is anyone in there?”
The police hustle us out of the building, then direct us across the street where the parents are assembled in the cafeteria of Summit Christian High School. All the other kids, the kids from downstairs, are in there already. I spot Paige and Ruth and Nicolas huddling with their parents. The police must have evacuated the larger group first.
I try to look for June’s parents, but realize I wouldn’t know them if I saw them. We’ve never met. I didn’t even notice her with her dad tonight. They probably have them somewhere more private anyway.
“Emma, baby,” my mom says through tears as I crash into her arms. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
She’s not usually a hugger, but I guess tonight is different.
My dad appears at our side, looking ashen and empty. “Emma, thank God.” He hugs me tight, my mom right along with me, then says, “What happened in there? The police are saying—“
“June’s dead,” I say, feeling empty. “June’s dead.”
None of it feels real.
It takes the police two more hours to clear the building. They find nothing. No shooter, no gun, no sign that anyone broke in. Whoever it was got away. Whoever it was probably wasn’t an active shooter at all.
After the building is fully secured, we stay in the cafeteria as detectives take down our information, releasing families one by one. There are whispers everywhere that God was surely protecting us, and that’s why the killer got away. I’m not so sure that June’s death constitutes a major victory for Jesus.
Jackson has been texting all night. But with 911 on the line, there wasn’t a chance to text him back. The first chance I get, I sneak into the bathroom to send off a quick text, but as soon as I turn on my phone, it dies. I’ve been using it all night, and the battery is empty.
After that, I mostly just try to help my mom keep things under control. It’s she who takes charge, not my dad—making sure kids are able to contact their parents, calling in helpers from the congregation to bring coffee and donuts for everyone, getting a list for the police of every kid and adult chaperone who had been there that night. I’ve never seen my dad look so useless. He’s usually such a commanding presence, but I guess you never expect something like this to happen to your congregation.
Finally, the detectives make their way to me. With my parents obligated to stay anyway, I’m the last kid they talk to. Everyone else is gone.
“Hey there,” the woman says. She’s square shaped, like a Popsicle, with a stout middle and skinny legs. “I’m Detective Shonda Boyer.”
“Emma Grant.”
“Looks like you’re missing an earring, Miss Grant.”
My hand reflexively reaches for my empty lobe. “Oh, yeah. I must have lost it somewhere.”
“That’s a shame. Mind if I ask you a few questions?”
I go through the basic events of the night, telling her everything I can remember about how we found June.
“And then we saw she’d been shot,” I say.
“Did you hear a shot at any time during the night?”
“No, ma’am,” I say. “It was really loud downstairs, and the sanctuary is kind of far away from everything else.”
“Mmm hmmm. And do you know of anyone who had a reason to hurt her?”
“I don’t. I’m sorry. She was—she was a really sweet girl.”
“Okay. Can you tell me the last time you saw June alive?”
“I’m not su
re. I know I saw her when we were changing after the Purity Ball, which was just before nine, but after that I can’t remember, I’m sorry.”
“Okay, thanks.” She says, flipping her pad closed. “Oh, one last question.”
“Yeah?”
“You guys weren’t planning to go swimming later, were you?”
“Swimming? No.”
“And you hadn’t gone swimming earlier in the evening? After the Purity Ball?”
“No, why?”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s probably nothing. Thank you for your time, Miss. You’ve been very helpful. We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions.”
CHAPTER TEN
I DREAM OF A crow pecking at my bones and startle awake. There’s a tapping at my window, not a dream but real. Someone’s there. My heart stops for the moment it takes to realize who it is: Jackson?
I leap out of bed and cross the room to open my window. And there he is, hovering on the roof that juts out below my window, his dark hair messy from the breeze. How he got up there, I do not know. He’s never done that before, never been here before.
“What are you doing?” I say, still groggy. “You can’t be here. My parents—“
“You weren’t answering your phone. I’ve been going crazy.” He leaps through the window sill and crushes me against his chest, his muscle-heavy arms burying me there. As soon as I feel his touch, I relax and collapse into it, wrapping my arms around him too. He takes my face in both his hands and kisses me. I taste cigarettes on his breath, and a minty cover-up that’s too weak to fool anyone. He’s been smoking again, which I thought he’d given up months ago.
“Jesus, Emma. You should have called,” he says. “They aren’t saying anything on the news. Just that a girl was killed. Not when. Not how. Nothing. I didn’t know—fuck.”
“I saw her,” I say, June’s image flashing in my mind, the flowers on her sundress soaked in red. “I knew her.”
And for the first time it hits me that it’s all real. The whole, awful mess is real.
June is gone.
I tuck my face into his bulk and cry while he holds me, even though it feels wrong for me to cry. It feels unfair that I can cry and she can’t. It feels selfish. It feels like I don’t have the right to do it, that I wasn’t close enough to her to cry like this, that I’m a tagalong to her pain, a footnote in her whole life.
How many tears are we allowed when we know someone who dies? Is there a right amount, a ration, a sliding scale based on how much we loved them? If so, I don’t deserve any at all.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Jackson says. “I’m so sorry.”
I’m sorry too. For everything, June. I’m so sorry I wasn’t better to you. Nicer. I’m sorry your life wasn’t longer. I’m sorry you didn’t get a chance to do all the things you wanted to do. I’m sorry I didn’t even know what those things were. But mostly, I’m sorry I wasn’t there, not really, not when you needed me.
It’s moments like this that I wish there was a God. No one understands this, how much I wish it was all true. How much I long for it in the sad moments, and the happy ones too. Losing the idea of God was like breaking up with the most incredible man you’ve ever met. It wasn’t some boring teenage rebellion. It was devastating.
I wish there was a God so bad right now. But there isn’t. Praying would be a lie, a betrayal of myself and everything I’ve discovered. So instead of talking to God, I let myself cry.
When I’ve finished crying, at least for now, I leave Jackson in my room and tiptoe down the hall to make sure my parents are still asleep. Thankfully, I can hear the rumble of my dad snoring behind their door, punctuated by my mom’s gentle wheeze. Sure they’re asleep, I make my way back to my bedroom, locking the door behind me.
Jackson wanders, taking everything in. Everything suddenly looks so dumb: my cheerleading trophies, the worn stuffed tomato on my bed from when I was a baby, the shelf full of Bibles—one for every birthday, and the verses taped to my mirror that I haven’t yet taken down.
“Nice place,” he says. “Is that your own bathroom?”
A fresh wave of embarrassment washes over me. Everyone in his family shares a single bathroom, but our house has one for every bedroom, plus two more. It’s too much for just three people, and the thought of how wasteful it is makes me cringe.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Fancy,” he says, but there’s a hint of disapproval in his voice. He’d probably use the words “bourgeois” or “McMansion” to describe my house. I would if I were him.
“Are you hungry? Or thirsty or anything? I can sneak down to the kitchen.”
“No. I’m good. I just want to know what happened last night.”
We sit on my bed, and I tell him everything.
“I thought they might have caught you inside the church,” I say. “That’s why I ran up there in the first place.”
“I think they almost did. I was about out the door when I heard all this noise, somebody screaming. I thought you guys were playing a game or something. I had to hide behind that statue of the angel.”
“You did?”
“But then it sounded like a whole bunch of people were headed my way, so I just ran.”
“It was you.” I say, realizing, my throat tight. “When you left. Everybody thought it was an active shooter, but it was just you trying to get out of there.”
“They thought I—?“
“Thank god you made it out.” I hate it when I say “thank god,” but it’s a hard habit to break. “That could have been—oh my god Jackson—that could have been bad.”
He looks up at me, fear behind his eyes because of his record, because of going to juvie last year. It wasn’t for anything really bad, just shoplifting and a couple fights, but compared to the kids at church, he’d look like a psychopath.
“Please tell me no one saw you,” I say.
“I don’t think so. Jesus, I don’t know,” he says. “Did anyone say they did?”
“Not that I heard. No one in my group got a good look,” I say. “Everyone was so panicked.”
“But still, my fingerprints are all over the place.”
“Along with a lot of other people’s,” I say, holding his hand tighter, trying to reassure him even though I’m not totally sure myself. “Hundreds of people went through those doors last night.”
“But I’m probably the only one of them with a record. What if the police figure out I was there? I have to talk to them.”
“And say what, exactly?”
“Don’t worry.” The tone in his voice is angry, gruff. “There were a lot of kids there. They don’t have to know you were with me.”
He stands up and heads toward the window. I follow, grabbing his hand to stop him. “You think I care about that? Because I don’t.”
The look he gives me, it almost breaks my heart. Eyes wary but a flash of hope behind them that disappears the moment I spot it. Sometimes it feels like he won’t let himself believe that anyone could love him.
“I don’t care if they know we were together. In fact, I’d prefer it,” I say. “No one else saw you there. You’d have no alibi without me. If you’re going to the police, I’m going with you.”
I release his hand and grab the jacket hanging over my desk chair. By the time I turn around, his face has softened a bit.
“I can’t let you do that, Em. What about your parents? What about New York?”
“It’s better than you getting locked up for something you didn’t do.”
He balls his hand into a hard fist and stares out the window. “I’m sorry you even have to worry about this.”
“We’ll figure it out, okay?” I say, looking into his eyes. “This isn’t going to change anything.”
“You know that’s not true,” he says. “It’ll change everything.”
I sit down on the bed again, and he joins me. I’m the one to break the silence. “Then maybe we don’t say anything.”
“I don’t know. I
don’t like that at all.”
“Someone killed June. The police are bound to find them soon, right?”
“Maybe. But what if they don’t?”
“Just hear me out, okay? You getting out before everything happened was lucky. In so many ways. The worst thing that could happen now is that they find out you were there and I tell them we were together. Why tell them if we don’t have to?”
“I don’t know, Em.”
“I’m the pastor’s daughter. It’s basically the most solid alibi you can get. Yeah, I might get expelled, but what could they really do to us? I think it’s safer, at least for now, if they don’t even know you were there at all.”
He stares into my eyes for a long moment. “Okay,” he finally says, though it still doesn’t sound like he’s totally comfortable. “If you think this is the best way to deal with it, that’s what we’ll do.”
We sit there in silence for a moment, me hoping I’m making the right decision about this. But it has to be this way. It’s just too scary to think about Jackson getting torn to shreds just because of his past. I can’t be responsible for that. He’s not the person he used to be. He deserves a second chance.
As I’m thinking, Jackson pulls something out of his pocket and hands it to me: the CD. Of course. In all the confusion of the last twenty-four hours I nearly forgot about the demo.
“I know it’s kinda stupid now, but I thought you might like a copy.”
“I do. Thank you.”
I take it, hold it in my hands. It flashes in the sunlight from the window, as bright and gleaming as our future. This is the second chance, for both of us. And I’ll do what I have to do to protect it, to protect him, to protect us both.
“I might not be able to see you for a little while,” I say. “My parents are going to be paying closer attention, there’s going to be a lot to do. Texts are okay, but I don’t want them seeing me answer any calls. So if you need to talk to me, just text or e-mail, okay? Let me figure out a time when it’s safe to call you back.”
“I hate this.”
“Me too, baby. But it’s safer for both of us this way. If we need to see each other we can meet at our spot.”
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