Shooter

by Caroline Pignat

  I look back at this guy’s face, uneasy. No, it isn’t about the guns. It’s him. Maxwell. The way he holds his rifle, one eye sighting down the black barrel, taking aim at the camera.

  At me.

  Something twists in my gut as I think how this guy is loose and trigger-happy in our halls where hundreds of students and teachers hide in dark rooms. They don’t know what’s going on. Even the cops don’t. Not really. They might have his name, but they don’t have this picture. They don’t know who they’re dealing with. But I do. I’ve seen that expression before. Randy had it right before he jumped on me. A face that says: you’re gonna get it, bad.

  My stomach clenches again. Fear. That’s what that is. A sensation I haven’t felt in such a long time. Not since Randy. I thought I’d already faced the worst. Lived it. Nothing scares you, no threat or consequence works when you have already lost everything. But this guy’s cocky smirk, his dark eyes, winking as he takes aim—it says he’s serious. Something about his expression scares the crap out of me. Not for my sake, but for everyone in this building. For Izzy. For Alice and Noah. And even Xander. I feel afraid, but most of all, I feel helpless.

  And that is even worse.

  “Ohmigod!” Izzy snatches the photo from my hand and examines it closely. “Are those GUNS?!”

  Noah stops bobbing and paces around the small circuit. Hums louder. He’s obviously getting agitated by Izzy’s screeching. We all are.

  “Paintball guns,” I say.

  Her eyes go wide. “Well, they sure look real.”

  “The cops know who he is.” I try to sound calmer than I feel. Like it’s no biggie. “They’ll get him. Don’t worry.”

  Alice takes the picture from Izzy and looks closely. Her face pales. She sees his look; she feels it too.

  “He saw you, didn’t he?” She looks up at Xander. “Maxwell saw you take this picture.”

  Xander nods, but doesn’t say anything more.

  “Are you, like, totally crazy?” Izzy blurts. “It’s one thing to creep us.” She looks back at the photo and shivers. “But this guy had guns. GUNS! He saw you, Xander. And you just take his picture? Geez, he could have killed you!”

  Noah stops circling and begins slapping his head, rocking on his feet like he’s gonna start a race but changes his mind.

  Go.

  Stop.

  Go.

  Stop.

  Like a never-ending loop of false starts.

  ISABELLE

  Noah is totally spazzing out in the corner, waving his arms, flapping his hands, moaning like he’s in pain. And he’s getting worse. I glance at the stall. I could lock myself in there. I mean, the guy’s own grandfather made panic rooms for them. Obviously, he’s not safe to be around.

  Alice jumps up and I think she’s going for the stall. But instead she goes over to Noah.

  “You’re okay. Noah. You’re okay,” she says, her voice trying to stay calm. Her hands are up like she’s gentling a wild horse. “We’re going to go to the bus soon. Five minutes. Okay?”

  He tilts his head like he’s just heard a strange sound far away and he stops waving to pull at his hair. But the rocking doesn’t stop and his groaning is getting louder.

  Why doesn’t she do something? “Can’t you shut him up?”

  “You’re the one that set him off,” Hogan says to me.

  Alice picks up his broom and offers it to him. “Want to sweep, Noah?”

  But as she steps forward, instead of taking it from her, his arms explode outward and he screams.

  “YeeEEEEEEEaaargh!”

  Total freak-out. Like a tornado of fists and spit as his arms windmill around him like crazy propellers. Alice tries to step back, but there isn’t anywhere else to go. The broom wedges under the sink and Noah’s next swing catches her smack in the face, sending her staggering back, and she falls to the ground.

  SNAP!

  Ohmigod! Her arm? Her neck?

  I rush over to her. “Are you okay?”

  Noah is revving up by the second, yelling, fists flailing as he moves towards us. But before I can scream, Hogan comes barreling into him.

  HOGAN

  “Don’t think,” Coach always says, “just act. Trust your gut.” And my gut told me: Shut this guy down.

  Whatever it takes.

  But as soon as I tackle Noah, drive him to the floor, and squeeze him tight, ready for his worst—he stops. The screaming, the thrashing—it all stops, and he relaxes into me like we’re just two dudes hugging on the bathroom floor.

  “You okay?” I ask Alice over my shoulder from where we lie.

  Izzy helps her stand. Alice seems fine, a bit shaken up, but okay. The broom handle is in two pieces on the floor.

  “Yeah,” she says, looking at her face in the mirror. “I think so.”

  “Ohmigod!” Izzy goes. “I thought you broke your neck or something!”

  I nod at the red welt on Alice’s cheek. “You’re gonna have a nice shiner there.”

  “Yeah.” She tests it with her fingertips and looks in the mirror. “Wouldn’t be the first time. No concussion, though. I should’ve known better. I was too close.” She turns and looks at Noah. But there’s no accusation, no anger, not even fear. Just softness. “It was an accident.” She looks at me, her welt angry but her eyes gentle. “Accidents happen. He didn’t mean it. That’s what counts.”

  I don’t know if she’s saying it for Noah, or if he even understands, but I do. I get it. For the first time—I hear it.

  Noah starts nuzzling the fur on my arm. If he knows he hurt Alice, he’s already forgotten. I wish I could think like him. I wish it were that easy for me.

  “I think he likes you, Hogan,” Izzy teases, like it’s a crazy thing. I guess it is, really.

  Noah rubs his face against my fur, turning his head in circles and sideways like a cat. I half expect him to start purring. It is the weirdest thing: the Hulk—school badass and loner—in a furry costume, lying on the bathroom floor, bear-hugging this retar—autistic kid. But I don’t mind it. Not at all.

  And that is even weirder.

  Click.

  “Okay, Noah.” Alice rests her hand on his. “We’re going to sit now.”

  I loosen my grip a bit, but I’m ready for him if he starts freaking again. He doesn’t. In fact, he’s like a different kid, not the twister we had in here a few seconds ago. Alice bends down and picks up the top half of the broom handle. It’s about eight inches long, but the “Noah” tag is still on it, and when he takes it and sits beside her, he seems happy enough to hold it and flick the tag back and forth and back and forth.

  Izzy smiles. “Looks like you’ve been replaced, Hogan.”

  I run my hand over the back of my head as I sit up. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  It’s out before I know it, and her smile slips off her face. She looks away.

  That wasn’t fair. I shouldn’t have said that. I mean, it was just one kiss. Not like we were dating or serious. But I thought she liked me.

  What an idiot.

  Like me? She hardly even knew me, really, and after Randy’s accident, I stopped trying. What was I thinking, anyway? Me and Isabelle Parks? We didn’t have to break up, because we were never together, not really. I just stopped returning her calls. Deleted her “u doing ok?” texts. Ignored her looks of pity. That wasn’t how I wanted her to look at me anyway, and soon enough, Izzy stopped looking at me at all.

  XANDER

  Writer’s Craft Journal

  Xander Watt

  April 4, 2016

  ASSIGNMENT: Describe an inciting incident in your life—a pivotal moment when everything changed.

  My Inciting Incident

  I work at Comic Corner part-time. Actually, it started out as a co-op placement last semester. It was Mrs. O’Neill’s idea. She knows I love comics. Especially Star Wars comics. I only ever read Star Wars until I met Maxwell Steinberg. He worked there after school and he would be coming in for his shift as I was l
eaving.

  In the beginning, I didn’t say much to him or anyone, really. There weren’t a lot of customers in the small store. The few that came in only asked me questions I could answer easily, like

  • Where can I find Deadpool #65?

  • Did my Mighty Avengers come in?

  • Where is the bathroom?

  The owner, John Banks, spent a lot of time on his computer and only asked me questions like

  • Did you put the posters up?

  • Can you move the back issues into the bins?

  • Do you want to take your break now?

  So, I was free to do what I like best: organize comics. I am very good at organizing things and I know how to handle a comic book correctly. Mrs. O’Neill also thought it would be a good job for me because it would help me with small talk.

  small talk

  /’smɔl,tɔk/

  noun: polite conversation about unimportant things

  I don’t get small talk. It’s basically people asking other people silly questions. It’s talking about things you don’t really care about with people you don’t really care about. It doesn’t make sense. Why would I care if some stranger at the bus stop thinks it’s a nice day?

  But it didn’t matter much, because there was not a lot of small talk at Comic Corner. And I liked that just fine.

  I noticed a few things the first time I saw Maxwell Steinberg standing at the counter sorting the new stock. First, he was about the same size as me. Second, he had a neat T-shirt with nine heroes on it, all Marvel, not DC. And last, the blue strip on his name tag had only three letters: MAX.

  Maybe there was not enough space on the punch tape to spell the full name. But, no. Mine had ALEXANDER and that was nine letters long.

  I pointed at his tag. “Isn’t your name Maxwell?”

  He looked at me funny. “Only my dad calls me that. And my teachers. And they’re all assholes.”

  I considered his logic. If anyone using his real name was therefore an asshole, did that mean they were assholes because they used his name, or that typically all assholes use that name? And why do we call assholes “assholes,” anyway? Because, anatomically speaking, an anus serves a very important purpose.

  “Why are you staring at me?” he asked. I hadn’t realized I was staring.

  “Everyone needs an asshole,” I finally said, “biologically speaking.”

  He shrugged. But he didn’t walk away like most people did when I tried small talk.

  “So, do you like the name Al-ex-an-der?” The way he said it, I decided that I did not.

  “My preference is irrelevant,” I said. “It’s my name.”

  He laughed. If there was a joke, once again I’d missed it. Then he grabbed a stack of new comics and headed to the X-Men section. I followed. He moved down the New Releases shelf quickly placing his comics, one after another, in exactly the right places. I realized that he’d organized them first at the desk. By series. Then alphabetically. Then by issue.

  I liked that.

  “Anyone can change their name,” he pointed at a few of the characters on the covers. “Cyclops, Iceman, Beast, Wolverine. All these characters did.”

  I hadn’t realized that before. But, come to think of it, he was right.

  “How about Al?” he said. “Or Alex?”

  I shook my head. “That’s my grandfather’s name.”

  When he was finished with his comics, he peeled the blue strip from my name tag and ripped off a third of it. I was going to walk away, like Mrs. O’Neill said I should when I feel anxious. He’d just wrecked my name tag, and John Banks would not like it if I asked him to make another one. I had already asked because the letters were not spaced evenly and John Banks had said no.

  But Max only threw part of the strip in the garbage. The other two thirds he stuck back on my name tag.

  XANDER.

  “There,” he said. “How about that…Xander?”

  I let the word bounce around in my head. Xander. Xan-DER. XAN-der.

  I liked it. And I don’t usually like change. But this was different. This was more like editing. Like what my English teacher said we should do. It was concise. Better. I smiled at Max.

  Then he took a red Sharpie out of his back pocket. He traced over the X in my name and drew a circle around it. He didn’t say anything else. But I knew. We were X-Men, me and Max—maX and Xander.

  And I wondered if that meant we might be friends, too.

  ALICE

  A head injury. A gash on my leg. A black eye. Today is not my day. Not Noah’s, either. He retreats into his mute aftermath, typical of his meltdowns, but the calm won’t last long. The trigger is still there. He is still stuck in this room. It’s only a matter of time before there’s another outburst. A worse one.

  He rolls his hat down over his eyes and taps his head against the stall. Yes, he has to get out of here.

  Soon.

  “I don’t think Noah can last much longer in here,” I admit.

  “Me neither,” Isabelle complains.

  I look at the door, considering other options. “I could run with him. Maybe down the back stairs and out the side door.”

  “I dunno,” Hogan says.

  “Do you think it’s just a prank?” Isabelle asks. “I mean, this guy Maxwell, do you think he’s just trying to scare us? Or is he, like…totally crazy?”

  Hogan stands and walks to the far corner just under the tiny window. He jumps up the wall and, after a few tries, manages to grab the ledge of the window well. Slowly he drags himself up to peek outside.

  “What do you see?” I ask, as he hangs by one hand to open the latch. The glass is too dirty to see through but as the window tilts forward, he peers through the opening underneath.

  Hogan pauses for a second, then drops to the ground. “Nothing, really. Just a few cop cars.” He brushes his hands off on his fur. “But I think we oughta sit tight until Wilson says it’s clear.”

  I know he saw something but I don’t press him. Whatever it was is bad enough that he doesn’t want to mention it.

  I don’t blame him. I’ve read enough about school shootings to know that if this isn’t a prank, this Maxwell probably has a plan. Maybe even a list. Xander might be on it. Isabelle, for sure.

  But I don’t tell them that.

  ISABELLE

  BRI: Update. There’s a second shooter!

  IZZY: WTF? TWO?!

  BRI: They said they could see another person with a gun on the atrium video, but it’s not clear who.

  He bolted before it showed his face.

  IZZY: Do they know where he went?

  BRI: They think he’s hiding.

  No sign of him since the atrium but I heard Maxwell is still setting off firecrackers, keeping the police away.

  IZZY: Ya. We heard some. I thought it was gunshots.

  BRI: Might be. They said he has a gun.

  IZZY: So that second guy, he could be anywhere. He could be anyone.

  XANDER

  November 5, 2015

  Social Autopsy #69

  Event: X-Men Secrets

  Today Max asked me to help him with a secret. At first, I thought it was for John Banks’ birthday. Maybe even a Dairy Queen cake—but I was hoping not the kind with chunky bits. I don’t like things in my ice cream.

  Turns out the secret wasn’t cake—but it was something much better. Max told me to meet him by the school dumpster at 9:30 p.m. and to bring my camera. Most importantly, he made me promise not to tell anyone, beause it wasn’t just a secret. It was a secret mission.

  I’ve read all the X-Men comics. They’re my new favorites. But I still wasn’t sure what to wear for a secret mission. A cape? A utility belt? A black unitard? Max never said. The only thing I could find was Grandpa Alex’s old wraparound sunglasses.

  Mom was at work. It was easy to sneak out. I wasn’t sure why Max wanted to meet at the school. Everything was closed. And why did he need my camera? I wore my black T-shirt and jeans. My Cyc
lops glasses. It was so dark with them on, I had to pop out the lenses just to see. I took one of my X-Men stickers and stuck it on the arm of the glasses. A big red X in a circle.

  Max laughed when I met him at the dumpster.

  “Nice glasses—they belong to Grandpa Alex?”

  How did he know?

  I wondered if Max had empathic powers, too. I noticed he was not wearing glasses or a utility belt. Just a backpack. But maybe he was more like Wolverine. Maybe his mutant powers only came out when he most needed them.

  Mr. Dean, the janitor, exited through the back door and headed for his Honda Civic. He must have been on evenings that week because I had not seen him cleaning up after lunch with Noah Waters the past few days. After he drove away, Max ran for the door. I thought it was locked, but Max had rigged up a little magnet that swung down when the door opened and wedged in to keep it from locking shut.

  “You made that?” I asked. He smiled.

  Yes, Max was very smart. I wanted to see how it worked, but he pulled me through the doors into the dark hallway.

  I knew we were not supposed to be in there. But I couldn’t leave now. Being with Max there in the darkness was like living a panel in a comic, not just reading them. I had to keep going to find out what came next.

  I followed him down the dark corridors and up the three flights of stairs to Mr. Quigley’s lab. I had Biology with Mr. Quigley during period 1. Mr. Quigley wore glasses and smelled like cigarettes. He was old and not very interested in teaching us anything other than what was on his next test. At the start of the year, I’d asked a lot questions. I like to know things. How things work. Why. Where he got his facts. I also wanted to tell him what I knew about the subjects. Mr. Quigley did not like my questions or my help. I think he also needs stronger glasses because after a week or two, when he moved me to the back of the class, I don’t think he could see me raising my hand. Luckily, I have an excellent memory. I remembered everything he told us and everything I read in the textbook. Otherwise, I would be failing.