151 Days

by John Goode

  And there it was. The first time I thought it to myself.

  I had killed Kelly.

  Sure, I wasn’t there loading the gun or putting it in his mouth, but as plain as day, I was the reason he was dead. Me. I had done that. And there was nothing I could do to take that back. So instead of arguing or trying to convince him of anything, I turned and scurried out of the library like any good monster does when confronted by the hero. I just turned and ran as fast as I could.

  I can’t tell you where I ran or for how long. All I know was, the next thing I remember was being in my room with the gun in my lap. It was night, and I had no real memory of how I got there. I just knew it was where I had ended up. All paths led here eventually. There wasn’t anything I could do about it. I could fight and kick and scream, but I was a horrible person, and I needed to die.

  It really couldn’t get any plainer than that.

  I sat in the dark and began listing the reasons I should die in my head. Like water bursting from a dam, they just came rushing to me, one after another after another. With the echoes of all my failures racking up in my brain, I tried to find a reason I should live.

  The silence was overwhelming.

  Days passed, and every time I came up for air, I found myself sitting on my bed looking at that gun. Sometimes I saw Kelly standing at the edge of my bed, his unblinking eyes telling me to do it. Sometimes it was Kyle and his burning hatred of me asking who would even care. After a while I couldn’t tell the difference between them.

  That weekend I ignored calls from Sammy as my sorrow began to darken into something else. Where did Kyle get off treating me like that? When did he get elected king of the gays? Kelly was an asshole, and what I did was wrong, sure, but Kyle wasn’t his friend, so why should he care? As Saturday turned to Sunday, the darkness began to warm and became a rage as my emotions began to simmer. Kyle was just as guilty as I was. What did he do to make Kelly’s life better? I had done what I did out of defense, and it may have been the wrong thing, but Kyle didn’t have a right to punish me.

  I was the only one who got to hate me.

  None of this would have happened without Kyle’s bullshit. If he and Brad had never gotten together, this whole thing wouldn’t have happened. I’d still be on my way to college and out of here, and Kelly could still be alive, being the dick he was. My life was over just as much as Kelly’s, if not worse. Kelly was gone. The pain was over.

  Mine was just beginning.

  What this town needed was a wake-up call. They needed to know that Kyle wasn’t the golden child they all thought. He didn’t have the answers, and his hands were as bloody as mine. Of course, no one would listen to me. Why should they? I was just a loser in a long line of losers in Foster, and they would just ignore me. What I needed was a spectacle, a show. I needed something spectacular to grab them by the balls and make them pay attention. And once they were looking my way, I could say my piece, and they’d know the truth.

  And in the end, should someone die?

  The only answer was yes.

  That Monday I showered and got dressed with a new vigor I hadn’t possessed in forever. It was the first few minutes of my last day on Earth, and somehow that knowledge was liberating. This was my last shower, the last time I was going to brush my teeth. It made everything seem… I don’t know. More important? Less stressful? Nostalgic? I don’t know what the word was, but it was different, and I liked it.

  I put the gun in my messenger bag and walked out of my house for the last time.

  Life is different when you walk with a gun on you. People cease to be people and are just potential targets. No one is a threat because you know you can just blow their head off if you want to. Maybe that was it. Maybe this was what being a god felt like. Every person I let walk by was a person I let live because I had death in my hand, and there was nothing they could have done about it. For the first time in my life, I walked down First Street not afraid for my life.

  As I walked onto campus, I went over my plan in my head. I would go into Kyle’s precious meeting, point my gun at him, and get him to admit that he was just as guilty as I was. Once he did that, I would put the gun in my mouth and pull the trigger.

  My place in Foster High history would be sealed.

  I smoked half a pack waiting for lunch and his meeting to start. What was the worst that could happen? I could die of lung cancer? That made me laugh, a little too loud since people walking by gave me a scowl. My hand twitched toward my bag before I stopped myself. I had a part to play. I couldn’t waste it on random assholes. Though that did give me a thought.

  Surely Kyle wasn’t the only person who needed an attitude change in this school.

  What if there was a way I could get him to admit what he had done, tie him up or something, and then go poke my head in some classrooms. Kelly’s friends were just as bad as he was. Making them pay would be funny.

  And then it came to me. What I should do became perfectly clear.

  I needed to get Kyle to admit his shit, and then I needed him to see he had made the wrong choice. In one move I could get him to see the greatest mistake he had made was not picking me, and I could do it in one fell swoop.

  I’d make him watch Brad beg me not to kill him right in front of Kyle’s eyes.

  A huge smile spread across my face as I settled on my course of action. The lunch bell rang, and I watched people begin to file into the library. I waited until they closed the door before I got up and took a deep breath. Looking around, I realized this was the last time I was going to see this school.

  Good.

  I put my hand in my bag and walked into the library.

  The moment Kyle saw me, he got up and began walking toward me aggressively. He had that look again, like he was going to hit me. I tried to pull the gun from my bag, but it got stuck. Kyle kept coming, screaming something at me as I struggled to get the gun free. He kept getting closer, and I felt fear clamp down as I yanked the gun free and pointed it at him.

  My heart stopped as it spit out three bullets.

  Oh my God, what had I done?

  KYLE

  SO MOVIES are mostly crap.

  I say that because they show you all this stuff, and in your mind, you think you’ve seen it and would be ready for it in real life. Like a car crash. You see them all the time, and you think, well, that guy just got the one cut they always get on their forehead. He stumbled out and chased the bad guy for, like, fifteen blocks. How bad could it hurt?

  Car crashes fucking hurt.

  Another lie? Guns.

  You see guys shooting them all one-handed, jumping across the room, and the noise is all pop-pop. Fucking pop-pop. You know what they could do if they wanted to make it like real life? In the movie theater, they could come up behind you and light a firecracker and stick it in your ear so it goes off when the gun fires. That is the only way you can get the deafening roar that shakes you to your very bones when the gun goes off. Your whole body jerks away from the sound, because it is literally the loudest thing you’ve ever not heard.

  As for one-handed shooting like it’s nothing?

  Jeremy was firing a Glock 33 semiautomatic pistol. The bullet leaves the barrel traveling roughly around 900 feet per second and can stop a grown man in his tracks. I didn’t hear the bullet because I was instantly deaf in that ear, but there was a rush of hot air past my cheek, and I stumbled backward, falling to the ground. Another shot went off right on top of the first, and I could see out of the corner of my eye that shot was as random as the first one. We all froze as Jeremy stood there, his hand over his head, with a smoking gun in his hand. There was an endless second of silence followed by complete and utter chaos around us.

  People started screaming and running, and I saw Mrs. Axeworthy scramble toward the back wall. Everything sounded like it was underwater, and I realized it was because I was deaf in one ear. There was this very surreal moment where it felt like a dream. Everyone was moving in slow motion, and the sound kept c
oming in and out of focus.

  Jeremy fired the gun again over his head.

  “Stop moving!” he screamed at them. To me it sounded like a speech coming from a broken speaker, but I understood his meaning well enough.

  People stopped moving, and I couldn’t hear a thing for what, to me, felt like a long time.

  And then I saw lights flashing by the library door and a low buzzing from above, and it hit me. Mrs. Axeworthy just hit the school lockdown signal. Jeremy swung around toward her, and all I could see was his gun. It’s like he was just a mass of nothing holding a gun in his hand, and it was now pointed at her. I huddled on the floor, everything in my mind telling me to stay down and away from him. Don’t move; don’t speak; just lay here and hope he ignores me.

  He was going to shoot Mrs. Axeworthy. Who was here because of me. All these people were here because of me. In fact, Jeremy was here shooting because of me.

  I slowly began to stand up.

  “Don’t,” I said to him, trying to sound as not-pissing-my-pants as I could. He looked over at me, and I felt my legs wobble. “This isn’t about them. This is about you and me.”

  I don’t know if that was the right thing to say or not, but it certainly got a reaction from him. He grabbed my arm and looked over to Axeworthy. “Turn that damn thing off.”

  “I can’t. It can only be cleared from the office.” If she was lying, then I never wanted to play poker against her, because she seemed 1,000 percent truthful.

  “Get out of here while you can,” I said to him quietly. “Just run before the police show up.”

  He gave me a wild-eyed look, like he hadn’t even thought about the cops. “Does that signal at the police station too?” Axeworthy nodded. I could hear him cussing under his breath as he tried to figure out what to do next.

  “Just run,” I whispered, watching the barrel of his gun the entire time. “You haven’t done anything yet.”

  “You really think they’re just going to let me go?” He looked manic as he shook me. “You aren’t that stupid.”

  I wasn’t. I was just afraid.

  “Everyone, get in the reading room,” he ordered. There were only six people total, counting the three people who showed up to the meeting. None of them moved until he pointed the gun at them, and then they flinched their way to the room. “Take out your cell phones.” Before they could even comply, he screamed, “Don’t lie and say you don’t have one. Give me the fucking phones!”

  People dropped their cell phones to the ground as they filed into the room.

  He knew what he was doing. The reading room had no windows or phone. Once inside, the only way to communicate with the outside world would be through this door. Mrs. Axeworthy stopped and looked at Jeremy. “You don’t need to do this.”

  His face contorted through about fifteen different looks from shock to sorrow before he raged at her, “Get your ass in the room.”

  She looked over at me, and I just gave her a small smile.

  He slammed the door and took a few steps back. “Okay, grab that shelf and push it in front of the door.” It took me a second to realize he was talking to me.

  “What, me? No. I’m not locking them in there.”

  He walked toward me, the black circle of his gun staring at me like it was the Eye of Sauron. “Move the fucking shelf. Now.”

  Sighing, I put my shoulder against the bookshelf and began to push it in front of the reading room door. It took some doing, but I found that having a gun pointed at you gave you access to previously unheard-of reserves of strength. Once it was in place, I looked back at him, almost out of breath. “So now what? You shoot me?”

  I saw his eyes move across the room, and I knew he had no idea what was next.

  “I’m not going to shoot you,” he informed me, pulling me over toward the front doors. “Grab those magazine racks and put them in front of the doors.”

  So now I was effectively locking myself in there too.

  As I pushed, I kept talking. “So if you aren’t going to shoot me, why did you shoot at me?”

  He ran a hand through his hair, and it was obvious he was pretty close to the edge. “You came at me. What the hell did you expect me to do?”

  “Not have a gun?” I answered, pushing the rack until it covered the main doorway in. It wasn’t a great barricade, but there was no way in or out without pushing it out of the way, and I had a feeling I wasn’t going to get that much time.

  “The gun wasn’t for you,” he said, walking behind the desk, taking all the phones off the hook.

  “Then who was it for?” I asked, trying not to sound sarcastic because I believe that guns don’t react all that well to snark. You ever see anyone mouth off to a gun and come out better for it? I rest my case.

  “It was for me,” he answered, way too casually to be a lie. He saw my mouth open in surprise. “Oh please. What do you care if I live or die? Weren’t you the one screaming for me to get out of here a few minutes ago?”

  He had a point. An ugly, hard-to-swallow point that had a hidden razor blade inside it, but a point nonetheless.

  “Oh, nothing to say?” he asked, kicking some chairs in front of the back fire exit. Again, if someone was to charge in through there, they would have to take precious time to clear the chairs and tables away from the door. “It’s funny how holding a gun suddenly gets you newfound respect.”

  “It’s called fear, Jeremy. Not respect. Don’t mistake the two.”

  See? That was snarky, and the gun wasn’t happy with me. I know because it came rushing at me, held by a furious Jeremy. “I don’t fucking care what it’s called. I have this in my hand, and you pay attention to me. That’s all I care about.”

  I said nothing and tried not to flinch away from him.

  “See? Instant respect—just add gun.” He jumped up on the counter, and we waited in silence.

  After a few minutes, we could hear police in the distance. “I guess we’re in it now,” he said quietly.

  This was insane. I mean, of course it was insane. I was sitting in a library with a guy with a gun pointed at me, but I mean, it was crazier than that. “What are you trying to do, Jeremy?” He looked over to me. “I mean, what’s your endgame here? What stops this?”

  In less than a second he broke down, and his face grimaced into pain, and it looked like he was going to burst out crying. He put the gun to the side of his head and pushed it like he was trying to force it through the bone and flesh. “I just fucking want it to end.”

  I reached out to him, out of instinct because he seemed in pain.

  He jerked back, almost falling off the desk, pointing the gun at me. “Fuck off.”

  Needless to say, I did indeed fuck right the hell off.

  “Don’t pretend to like me now that I have your life in my hands,” he warned me. “I can see through that shit.”

  I have no idea what happened next. I would blame it on some kind of aneurysm or possibly just plain old stupidity, but however it came to be, it happened.

  I just stopped being afraid.

  Like a switch, it just went away, and I was just tired. So he could shoot me. So I could die there. If it happened, it happened, but I just didn’t care anymore. At least, not enough to be afraid of it.

  “I was reaching out to comfort you because you looked like you were hurting, not because I like you. And if you’re going to shoot me, then fucking do it. But stop waving that thing in my face to make a point.” I went over and sat down in a chair. “So I ask again, what’s the endgame here? What do you want?”

  He jumped off the counter and came at me, gun first, of course.

  “You think I won’t shoot you?”

  I shrugged. “I think I can’t stop you from shooting me. So what’s the point?”

  He continued to wave that thing at me for several seconds. “I will do it.”

  I nodded. “I believe you.”

  “Don’t think I won’t.”

  “I won’t.”

 
“Good.”

  He lowered the gun and sat down across from me.

  “Jeremy, what do you want?” I asked after a few seconds.

  He put his head down on the table. “I don’t know anymore.”

  I looked at the gun and wondered if I could take it away from him, but it seemed like a dumb idea. “Do you want to, I don’t know, talk about it?”

  He looked up at me, and we just stared at each other for a few seconds, saying nothing.

  And then we both burst out laughing.

  Through tears I croaked out “I’m sorry, that was a little too after-school special.”

  He was trying to catch his breath, he was laughing so much. It was weird because I couldn’t recall ever seeing him laugh before. That thought alone depressed the shit out of me.

  “What did Kelly do to you?” I asked out of the blue.

  He wiped his eyes as his laughter evaporated suddenly. I saw his hand tighten on the gun and mentally berated myself for ruining the moment. “Lots of people have done lots of things to me,” he said darkly. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Did you come to kill them?”

  He looked up at me, his face pale from the suggestion. “What? No. You think I came here to shoot up the school or something?”

  I looked down at the gun and back to him and just nodded.

  When he looked down at the gun, he seemed surprised, as if seeing it truly for the first time. “Oh God, what did I do?”

  Seeing a crack in his armor, I dove in.

  “Nothing yet,” I assured him quickly. “You haven’t done a thing yet, Jeremy. There’s still time to make this right.” He was crying now, and I felt like I was losing him. “No one is hurt, and no one needs to be. This can be fixed.”

  He looked up me, anguish etched across his face like a tribal tattoo. “Is that what you told Kelly?”

  If he had pulled the trigger, it wouldn’t have hurt as much as those words did.