Drowning

by Margaret McHeyzer

  “What for?”

  If only I could tell him. “For being you.”

  He kisses my cheek, and hugs me tighter. “I can’t spend time with you today after school because Mom needs me home. She asked me to help her with some chores around the house.”

  I’m such an idiot. I thought the worst, even though Tobias has given me no reason to doubt his feelings for me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I overreacted.”

  “How about tomorrow? We can hang out tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, I’d really like that.”

  The bell sounds for the end of lunch, but we’re stuck in our tight embrace. Neither of us makes a move to leave. “Is it wrong of me to say I want to stay like this with you?” he whispers in my ear.

  “I feel the same way.” The bitterness of letting go of his body and losing his warmth saddens me. “We have to get to class.”

  He looks into in my eyes, as if he’s searching for something deeper than I’ve given him. “You’re the beautiful one, Ivy,” he says.

  Taking my hand in his, we walk to class.

  “Tobias?” I say once we’ve taken our seats.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m glad you moved here.”

  “So am I.”

  Mrs. Richards enters the classroom, and smiles. “Class. Guess what we’re doing today? We’re learning more about the human anatomy.” Everyone groans. “I’m sure you all know the basics,” she laughs. “But in the next week, we’ll be dissecting a pig. Does anyone know why we’ll be dissecting a pig?”

  Chloe raises her hand. And Mrs. Richards nods for Chloe to answer. “Because pigs are the closest to the human anatomy. And their skin has the closest composition to ours.”

  I scrunch my nose.

  “That’s right. For the rest of the week, we’ll be learning about the human body, and next Monday we’ll dissect the pig.”

  Vomit rises to the back of my throat. Yuck. Dissecting has never been my strong suit. It repulses me. Ironic, considering I cut myself.

  The lesson goes on, and I’m distracted by the beautiful man sitting next to me. My heart is quickly falling to him, and I’m liking it. Smiling to myself, I watch Mrs. Richards as she goes on about the lesson.

  The next thirty seconds transpire so quickly, I’m not even sure they happen.

  The door flings open, and Tyler Lewis is standing inside the classroom.

  There’s something angry stretching across his face. Evil rolls off him, as if he’s standing in an inferno waiting to be consumed by flames.

  Goosebumps cover my entire body.

  My mouth falls open as my eyes widen in fear.

  The gun he’s holding makes a sound. It’s loud. Deafening. Overwhelming.

  The room is silent and no other sound can be heard over the gunshots. My blood pumps loudly in my ears, and I can’t drag my eyes away from the shiny black object in his hand.

  He steps inside, and shoots again.

  The gun isn’t pointed at me, but to the front of the room.

  He walks with purpose, determined.

  Tyler opens his mouth to say something, but I’m tackled from the side. Someone throws their body on mine. Lifting my head, I watch as Tyler stalks toward the prone form of Mrs Richards at the front of the room. He keeps shooting. The gun is pointed to one target, and one target alone.

  He steps closer, standing over the body.

  “Stay down, Ivy,” Tobias whispers in my ear. I know it’s him by his aftershave. How peculiar. I never really noticed the scent of the cologne until now.

  It’s a sweet smell, with a touch of cinnamon, a comforting smell. But there’s nothing comfortable about what’s happening.

  Tyler’s deadly gaze stares at the person on the floor. His eyes are wide and full of fury.

  He lifts his pale face and looks around the classroom.

  He catches me looking at him and stares back at me.

  Tobias is breathing heavily, his body draped over mine.

  In this second, this instant, there are only two people in this room. Me and Tyler.

  “She deserved it,” Tyler says, speaking directly to me. “I can’t go to college because of her.”

  I open my mouth to say something, but Tyler opens his mouth too.

  He shoves the gun in and pulls the trigger.

  Blood and brain matter splatters out the back of his head and his body limply collapses to the floor.

  I’m not petrified. I’m not scared.

  I’m confused and lost.

  What’s happening?

  The classroom erupts in screams and wails. I get pulled up by Tobias, and he’s yelling something at me. There’s urgency to his body language. My eyes are glued to the two still bodies at the front.

  “What happened?” I ask in a daze.

  “We have to go!”

  My head is telling me to look for a way to help, but Tobias is pulling me out of the classroom.

  My feet won’t cooperate though. They’re stuck. They won’t move. It’s in that second I hear it.

  The sirens in the distance, coming closer. As if I snapped out of it, I break free of Tobias’s grip and run toward the front of the room.

  Tyler is dead, laying on the floor face down, but blood and brain matter are splattered behind him and pooling beneath him.

  Mrs. Richards breathing is rapid, but also shallow.

  Kneeling beside her, I do what I’ve seen in the movies. I apply pressure to a bullet hole I can see that is oozing blood. “It’s going to be okay,” I say to her, trying to calm the shaking of my voice.

  “Ivy…” she mumbles.

  The life inside her is quickly fading. I can see it.

  She reaches up to grab my hand, squeezing. Her grasp is weak, and I know she’s about to die.

  “Just hold on. The ambulance is on its way. Fight it, don’t close your eyes, don’t close your eyes!”

  “Tell my family I love…” Her eyes glass over, and her chest collapses from the lack of air.

  “Tobias!” I scream. He’s beside me within a second. “Do you know first aid?” He shakes his head. “Put pressure here.” I grab his hands and apply strength to where I was pushing down. I place two fingers to the side of her neck, feeling for a pulse. I’m not getting anything, but I’m not trusting my lack of experience to find it either.

  “What are you doing?” Tobias asks as his bloodied hands maintain pressure.

  “Trying to find her pulse, but I can’t.”

  “She’s dead, Ivy,” he whispers in shock. “She’s dead.”

  “No! No she isn’t!” I yell at him. “She can’t die.” I remember something I watched years ago about breathing into her mouth. “Tilt the head back,” I say to myself. Like a movie playing in my head, I remember the YouTube video I watched which had the paramedic pinch the nose and breathe into the person’s mouth. I can’t remember how often. What if I kill her? What if what I do doesn’t help, but kills her?

  “Ivy,” Tobias barks at me, forcing me out of my mind and into the present. It’s all I need to pinch her nose, and breathe into her mouth.

  I swing my head to the side, listen for breathing, and watch for any movement in her chest. There’s nothing.

  It feels like hours have passed, but I’m sure it’s only been a split second.

  “One-two-three-four-five.” I halt my chest compressions to breathe into her mouth again, then check her chest. God, I hope I’m doing this right.

  Her chest is still. “Come on!” I yell at her.

  But her pupils remain dilated with a glazed cloudiness covering them.

  In my heart, I know she’s passed away. But… this can’t be it for her. This can’t be the end of her life. Dying because of someone who’s lost their mind.

  “Miss… Miss… we need to move you,” the voice is deep and strong. Two powerful hands grab me from the waist and lift me effortlessly. “Are you hurt?” the man in the uniform asks me.

  Blankly I stare at him.
<
br />   “Take her,” he yells at someone behind me before kneeling on the floor and taking over CPR on Mrs. Richards.

  “What’s your name?” a woman with a gentle voice and kind eyes asks me. She’s an older person, maybe in her forties. Her hair has a streak of gray in her dark hair, making her look like Cruella De Ville. “Come, let’s go outside. Can you walk?” She takes me by the upper arm and leads me out to the corridor. I keep staring behind me. Two people are working on Mrs. Richards. “What’s your name?” she asks me again once we’re out of the classroom.

  I look around me. People are everywhere. There’s a heaviness in the corridor, and a sense of urgency as people are going in and out of the classroom. “Did I kill her?” I ask the woman standing in front of me.

  “No, sweetheart. You didn’t. You were trying to save her.”

  “But she’s dead, isn’t she?” I ask. My voice is shaky, but my body is strangely calm and composed.

  “Yes, she’s passed away.” There’s yelling, crying, and other loud noises. I want to cover my ears, but I don’t.

  I look down at my hands, and they’re covered in blood. My clothes have the distinct red splotches all over them. “I tried to save her.” My hands are shaking as I stare at the crimson red coating my pale skin. “I feel nothing.” But my hands are shaking in clear defiance of the denials whirling around inside my head.

  “Are you hurt?”

  I should be feeling something, anything. But my mind is blank, and my body is indifferent. “Am I normal?” I ask the woman who’s trying to get me to talk to her. “I feel nothing,” I openly admit.

  She narrows her eyes at me, and looks down to my hands. “What’s your name?”

  “Her name’s Ivy,” Tobias says as he throws his arms around me and squeezes me tightly in a hug. “Are you okay?” he asks as he kisses the side of my face.

  “She’s dead,” I whisper.

  “You did everything you could to help her.”

  “Her eyes, they were looking at me. She was looking at me. I could’ve saved her.”

  “No, you couldn’t. She was dead the moment Tyler entered the classroom,” Tobias softly says.

  “Ivy,” the woman’s kind, though stern, voice drags me away from Tobias. It’s almost like I’d forgotten she was there. “Are you hurt?”

  “No.” I step away from Tobias’s hug and look down at myself in case I missed an injury. “I’m okay.” Lifting my hands in front of me, I stare at them. “This isn’t my blood.” Reality sinks in. Blood is on my hands. “This isn’t my blood,” I say again with panic rising rapidly, along with my voice.

  Suddenly, I feel sick. My body begins to tremble, my throat constricts and my knees are going to give out.

  “I’m going to vomit,” I yell as I run down the corridor toward the bathroom. But I don’t make it. I lean against a locker and vomit right there, in front of everyone. My throat burns and my stomach roils with the need to vomit again. With a powerful force, more vomit rips through me and lands on the tiled floor.

  Collapsing to my knees, I bury my face in my hands. But the rusty stench of blood invades my nose, and makes me retch with a promise of more vomit to come.

  “It’s okay, Ivy,” the kind woman says as she kneels beside me.

  But nothing is okay. “I killed her.” I bury my face in my hands, and try my hardest to close off the toxic smells of blood and vomit. Because it’s not my blood. I can deal with it if it’s my blood, but it’s not. “I have her blood on me.” I cry again.

  “Ivy.” Tobias grabs me by the shoulders and lifts me like I’m a rag doll. He pulls me away from the stench of my vomit, and moves my hands down from my face. “You didn’t do this.” He grabs my face between his hands, but the rich red is coating his hands, too. I pull his hands away and notice the blood has dried, and is beginning to flake off of his hands. “Tell me Tyler didn’t hurt you?” Tobias begs. His eyes are red and filled with tears. “Please… talk to me.”

  I can barely think straight. “She’s dead,” are the only words I can manage. But the tears start, and appear to have no off button. “She’s dead,” I wail as I collapse; but this time, Tobias reaches out to catch me.

  He crushes me to his chest and we both sink to the floor and I sob uncontrollably.

  “Ivy, we need to get you out of here,” the woman with the kind eyes says to me.

  Turning my head to the side, I look at her through heavy tears. “Okay,” I stammer, still barely able to comprehend what’s happened.

  “We’ll go together,” Tobias says. He lifts me and doesn’t let go of me as we head down the hallway and out of the blue double doors.

  “My name’s Amber, and we’re going over to one of the ambulances. Okay?” she asks me.

  I nod my head, unable to form a coherent sentence.

  “When we get there, we’re going to check you out, make sure you’re not injured. Okay?”

  Again, I nod my head.

  “The police will want to talk with you both, too.”

  Nod.

  “They’ll want to talk to both of you separately.”

  “No!” I yell as I cling onto Tobias.

  “I’m not leaving her,” Tobias says tightening his arms around me.

  “I’ll stay with her, and make sure she’s okay.”

  “I’m not leaving her,” Tobias says again with more vigor and assertion to his voice. “Where she goes, I’m going with her.”

  Amber looks between us both, and smiles. “We’ll do what we can,” she finally says. I don’t know what that means, and truthfully, I don’t care.

  When we get outside, there’s an array of marked cars clustered together, only feet away from the front entrance. There are a number of ambulances, police cars, and even two fire trucks here. I don’t know how long it’s been since Tyler came into the classroom and started shooting.

  It could’ve been minutes or hours.

  All I know is Mrs. Richards is dead, and I still have her blood on my hands.

  “Can you get up here?” a young paramedic asks as he holds his hand out to help me up in the back of the ambulance.

  “I’ll do it,” Tobias snaps. Holding my hips, he helps me up and I step onto the small steps.

  I sit on the gurney. Amber places a blanket around my shoulders and Tobias sits beside me. The paramedic looks between Tobias and me before turning to call someone else over.

  Within a few seconds, Amber has left the back of the ambulance, and a police officer has taken her place while the paramedic shines a light in our eyes and checks us over.

  “I’m Deputy Michaels, with the sheriff’s department. You’re Ivy and Tobias?” he asks.

  I nod and Tobias answers for us both, “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me what happened?” The deputy has a small black book and a pen and is writing everything down.

  “We were in class…” I begin saying. My brain is playing a movie of those few seconds on repeat. The look in Tyler’s eyes. “T… T… Tyler slammed the door open.” My voice breaks, barely able to get Tyler’s name out. “He was angry.”

  “How do you know? Did he say anything?”

  More tears fall from my eyes. “He said something after he… shot Mrs. Richards.”

  “What did he say?” Both Tobias and the police officer ask in unison.

  “He said…” I take a few deep breaths. My body is trembling now, and the tears are spilling uncontrollably. “He said… ‘she deserved it. I can’t go to college because of her.’” I swallow back the lump in my throat, but my tears keep running down my cheeks. I’m ugly crying. My nose is dripping, and my chest is shallowly rising and falling. This is a screwed-up mess.

  “Ivy!” I hear from afar. Looking up, I see my Dad break through the yellow tape and run toward me.

  “Daddy!” I yell, jump out of the ambulance, and run to him.

  He crushes me to his body, and I hug him tightly. I don’t want to let him go.

  “Are you okay, baby? Did he hurt you
?”

  “I’m okay.” I sniff back the tears. “He didn’t hurt me.”

  “You have blood on your hands. Are you sure you’re not hurt?” Dad pulls back and keeps turning my hands over in his. His eyes are everywhere. studying every part of me.

  “Sir,” Tobias interrupts us.

  “Tobias, were you there?” Dad looks at Tobias and answers his own question. “It looks like you were.”

  “Sir, I couldn’t stop him,” Tobias says with a croaky voice. “But I made sure Ivy was protected.”

  “He threw himself on me.” I move to hold Tobias’s hand.

  Dad’s eyes travel between the both of us, finally locking on where we’re connected. “You shielded my daughter?” Dad asks.

  “Of course. I’d do anything to protect her. I love her.”

  I turn to face Tobias; his words jumble in my head. Did I hear right? Did he say what I think he did?

  “Thank you.” My Dad holds his hand out to Tobias, who takes it and shakes it. “If you hadn’t, I don’t know what could’ve happened.”

  “Ivy, Tobias, I need to ask you more questions while it’s still fresh in your mind,” Deputy Michaels says. “Sir, you’re Ivy’s father?” Dad nods his head. “Please, this way.” He leads us back to the ambulance Tobias and I were in.

  “I thought you said you’re not hurt?” Dad asks me.

  “The paramedic is just checking them over,” Michaels explains.

  Dad nods his head and follows us back to the ambulance.

  Once we’re sitting on the gurney, Deputy Michaels resumes his questions while the paramedic checks us over.

  Michaels asks us to remember everything that happened in the classroom from the time we sat in our seats until after the shooting.

  I sit quietly for a few moments as Tobias recalls the event from his perspective. He heard most of what I heard, but he didn’t see what I saw.

  He was laying on top of me, shielding me from any bullet that Tyler might have shot over toward me. When Tobias finishes talking, Michael asks me what I saw and heard.

  And the movie begins in my head again.

  Tyler’s angry face will be etched into my memory until the day I die. “He only wanted to hurt Mrs. Richards.” I wipe a tear away as my breath catches in my chest. “He looked me straight in the eyes. He had no intention of hurting anyone else, just her.” A sob heaves out of my throat and I can barely contain my rapidly racing pulse.