“Blake!” Miss Jennings said sharply, inhaling when she spotted him in a black leather coat that nearly swept the floor with its wide tails. The look in his eyes reminded her of the fall semester he’d spent in her class as a sophomore, sitting near the window and sharpening his colored pencils with his fingernails despite her many offers of a handheld sharpener. Their eyes locked now in the east wing—hers big and frightened; his narrowed and focused—and without another word, Elizabeth Jennings pulled her classroom door closed and locked it, dropping the blinds and shutting off the lights as she motioned for her students to duck quietly under their tables. She’d forgotten to turn off Pandora, and I’ll Be Home for Christmas filled the silent room from the speakers on her desk.
Blake Schiller paused in front of Miss Jennings’ room, his large frame outlined against the bright hallway beyond her door. The entire class held its collective breath, and Amy Underwood bit her own hand until her teeth pierced the skin, so afraid was she of making a noise that would invite Blake into the room.
His figure moved outside the door as he raised a gun and tapped it against the thick, reinforced window of room 13B. “I want Daniel Girch,” his voice boomed, the gun tapping the window again. “If Daniel is in there, I demand that you send him out now.”
Miss Jennings looked as afraid as her students felt, but her wild eyes swept the room with purpose. She took in the faces of each and every pupil in her care. No Daniel Girch. Not that she’d expected to find him there—he was in her fifth period, not her second—but just to be on the safe side, she’d checked.
“Daniel is not here, Blake,” Miss Jennings said loudly. Keeping her voice steady and firm was a balancing act that she couldn’t keep up for long, and everyone in the room knew it. “I don’t have him in class in the mornings, Blake.” She said his name again for good measure, hoping that by reminding him that they knew one another personally, she might be insuring her own safety and that of her students.
“Look him up, Jennings!” Blake Schiller demanded, banging against the window with his gun again. “If you don’t look up his class right now, I swear to God I’ll blow the door off and come after every single person in that room.”
“Blake!” Elizabeth Jennings shouted. “Don’t do that.” Her hands shook as she stood up from her crouching position near the whiteboard at the front of the room. She held a finger to her lips as she tiptoed over to her desk. “I’m looking right now,” she called in the direction of the door. The students watched one another with shock and disbelief—was Miss Jennings really going to tell some psycho where Daniel Girch was right now? Was she going to give up one kid just to save the rest of them?
To Elizabeth Jennings it was much more complicated than that. She had no doubt that Blake might bust down the door and do harm to all of them. Most of his drawings during his tenth grade year had been dark and gothic, and a few had warranted a walk down to the school psychologist’s office to find out whether his intricate drawings of decapitated babies being eaten by two-headed beasts were a cry for help or grounds for a parent meeting. So his threats now held real power for her, and she tried to steady her hand enough to move the computer mouse next to her keyboard.
But would she really look up Daniel Girch’s schedule and shout the room number for his second period through the door? She didn’t think so. Maybe she should just look up Blake instead and use her classroom phone to call the contact number for his parents. Maybe getting Mr. or Mrs. Schiller on the phone would work. But what good would that do? Her mind raced as she tried to think of a move that wouldn’t endanger anyone’s life. Sending Blake to the wrong classroom would inflame him and could potentially put everyone in that room at risk.
“Think, Liz,” she muttered to herself as she tapped at the keyboard. Amy Underwood whimpered beneath the table closest to her desk and Elizabeth looked down at her. Without realizing she’d even done it, she pulled up Daniel Girch’s profile. His dark eyes looked back at her from the center of a smooth, handsome face. He’d worn a blue shirt on picture day, and his thick, shiny brown hair fell over his forehead casually like he’d just come in from an afternoon on a boat. Daniel was a good kid—smart, kept to himself, had a few friends—but there was a tangible air of sadness about him that Elizabeth had felt keenly the year he’d taken her art class, and she’d seen it in his eyes every time she passed him in the hall and he’d nodded at her in recognition.
“He’s in room 15A,” she shouted at the door without hesitation. “Daniel Girch has English second period.” There. It was out. If Blake had beef with Daniel, then let them handle it and keep her and her innocent students out of it. It felt…not right—not like getting the correct answer on a test—but more like the best choice out of a bunch of terrible options.
Elizabeth Jennings fell to her knees and started to weep.
3
January 1, 1986
American Teen
I put the phone to my ear as the eleven-year-old version of my mom sauntered away, doll in hand.
“Hello?” I said. I still had no idea who Roger was.
“Hey, dude. You alive?”
I didn’t recognize the voice. “Yeah, I think,” I said, glancing out at the living room where my mom was once again sitting on the couch in front of the television. “Should I be?”
“I dunno, man. After last night…maybe not.” He sounded impressed. “And you and that chick. It was pretty impressive.”
“What chick?” I scratched my head. I had no memory of doing anything that might have left me dead or with some chick.
“Jenny, dude. Wicked hot, my man.”
“I don’t know anyone named Jenny. What did we do?”
“I’m not sure—I was hoping you’d tell me,” Roger said. “You two disappeared before midnight and I was waiting for details today.”
“Sorry, wish I could help…” I was still confused enough about what was going on that I had no clue where I’d run off to with some girl named Jenny the night before.
“Maybe some hair of the dog would help jog your memory,” Roger suggested. “Wanna come over in a bit?”
“The hair of what dog?” I pulled the phone across the kitchen and opened the refrigerator to see what my grandma had inside.
“I dunno, man. You were drinking everything last night: vodka, tequila, beer…all of it!”
No wonder my stomach felt like I was at the crest of a hill on a giant roller coaster as I moved leftovers and cartons of milk around. Nothing looked good.
“Come over if your mom lets you, okay?” Roger said.
“Yeah, if my mom lets me…” I looked over at my mom sitting on the couch. Was I really supposed to ask her for permission to go over to some guy’s house? I didn’t even know where Roger lived.
“Okay, see you later.” Roger hung up the phone and I stood there for another second or two, staring at the phone on the wall.
“Honey?” my grandma called. She walked back into the kitchen with a stack of folded dish towels in her hands. “Are you going to go up and shower before breakfast?”
“I guess so,” I said. “But I thought there were pancakes.” I trailed her out into the living room.
“There are.” She stopped and turned, looking me up and down with an impatient frown. “But you know we don’t sit down to breakfast without showering.”
I definitely did not know that we didn’t sit down at the table without showering. This bizarre ritual was something that must have stopped with my grandma, as my mom almost never required that we actually sit down at the table together for a meal. And if we did, I doubt she would have cared whether I’d showered or not. In fact, most days she just left me a ten or a twenty on the kitchen counter before going out and assumed I’d walk to McDonald’s or order a pizza for myself.
“Okay, I guess I’ll go shower.” The words came out slowly as I tried to imagine where the nearest bathroom was, but then I remembered that I was actually in my own house. So of course my bathroom would still be my bat
hroom.
“Hurry up, dummy,” my mom said from the couch. “Or I’ll eat all your pancakes.”
Fifteen minutes later, I came back downstairs in the only decent outfit I could put together, but I still felt like an alien from another planet.
“Nice pants,” my mom said. I looked down at my clothes. The pile on the chair in my bedroom had yielded nothing but tshirts with weird band names and strange looking plaid shorts, so I’d perused the closet and settled on a pair of red pants that looked a little like the joggers I was used to wearing, and a short-sleeved button up shirt with an alligator on the chest.
“What do you mean?” I shoved my hands in the pockets of the pants and they made a noise like a nylon windbreaker jacket.
“Um, you look like Michael Jackson,” my mom said. “And kind of like a Poindexter.”
I glanced down at my outfit. “Why?”
“Come here.” She stood up and tossed her Barbie aside like a world-weary woman throwing a magazine onto the couch so that she could straighten her man’s bow tie. I went to her and leaned forward. “This is ridiculous,” she said in her small, young girl’s voice. “Nobody but a total dweeb would button his shirt to the top.” Her eyes rolled back in her head theatrically. “And these pants make you look like you’re about to breakdance.”
“So,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at the kitchen where my grandma was putting pancakes on plates, “this doesn’t work?”
“Red parachute pants and a shirt that’s buttoned up to your chin?” She shot me a dubious look. “It only works for a total geek.”
“Breakfast is on the table, kids,” my grandma said, coming out of the kitchen with a tray in her hands. She set the pancakes on the table. “Oh, Daniel.” My grandma looked at my pants. “I haven’t seen you wear those in a while.”
I was eager to change the topic away from my strange fashion choices, so I pulled out a chair and sat down, my pants making that weird swish-swish noise as I did. “Where’s Gra-” I had started to ask where my grandpa was, but then realized that in this dream—or scenario, or whatever the hell this was—my grandpa would actually be my dad. “Where’s…Dad?” My throat suddenly felt dry and I picked up a glass of juice.
Before she could even answer, the front door flew open and in walked my grandfather, a man I hadn’t seen standing upright in years. Following my grandma’s death, he’d ended up in a nursing home, confined to a wheelchair after a stroke that had left him partially paralyzed. Seeing him now—tall, long-limbed, with dark hair and a full mustache—it took my breath away. I can’t even lie, more than seeing my mom as an innocent (if annoying) little girl, more than talking to the grandma who’d been gone for four years, seeing my grandpa on his feet looking full of life and vitality—that really got me.
“Hey, champ,” he said. “Nice of you to finally join us.”
I stared back at him, my fork speared through a pancake as I tried to move it from the platter to my plate. “Hey,” I said hoarsely. My grandpa was dressed in gray sweatpants and a zip-up sweatshirt. He even had a headband around his forehead like some crazed 80s jogger.
“Been out for a run,” he said, confirming my initial impression. “Nothing like a jog on a cold morning to get the blood pumping. Would have woken you up, but the word on the street was ‘Let Daniel sleep,’” he said with a wink. “Must’ve been some night you had.”
“Yeah…I was with Roger,” I said, reaching for the syrup. This was a lot of work, pretending that I knew what I was talking about and what was supposed to happen next. I felt like my brain was on overload, trying to process everything and connect the dots between the family members who were supposed to be the same but different to me, and trying to act like nothing out of the usual was happening.
“Yo, hold the door.” A guy stepped onto the porch behind my grandpa. “Lemme in out of the cold, will ya?”
I had the syrup bottle tipped over my pancakes, and the liquid slowly drowned my breakfast as I stared, open-mouthed. The guy on the porch was someone I’d seen in pictures. The guy on the porch was someone I’d never actually met. The guy on the porch was my uncle Andy.
Andy was The Guy. And by that, I mean he had everything going for him. He was tall, athletic, popular. Andy was the star of the track team and the quarterback of the football team. He had the kind of face that made girls love him and adults trust him: nice eyes, strong cheekbones, and a high forehead with a head of thick, dark hair. All the pictures I’d ever seen of him made him look like the quintessential All American guy. His death had traumatized my mom and changed the course of her life. She’d never wanted to talk much about the details, other than to say that Andy’s death had been an accident.
“Hi, Andy.” I set down the syrup and gave him an awkward wave. I was trying for nonchalance, but it was hard to pretend that I was just the kid brother of this uncle who—for my whole life—had cast a giant shadow over the family with both his greatness and his untimely death.
“Hey, dude,” Andy brushed past his father and tossed his jacket onto the couch. “You wanna have a few pancakes with all that syrup?”
My mom giggled uproariously. Her cheeky attitude towards me quickly morphed into that of a sweet, loving kid sister as she looked up at Andy with open adoration. No wonder his death had sent her into a tailspin that had lasted throughout her teenage years and over the course of my whole life. It was obvious to everyone in the room that she worshipped him.
“Oh.” I looked down at the three pancakes swimming in sticky, brown liquid on my plate. “Yeah. My bad.”
“Your what?”
“You know, like ‘I screwed up.’” I picked up my fork and dragged it through the syrup. “It’s my bad.”
“Kind of like with that outfit,” Andy teased, pulling out the chair next to me as he took in my red parachute pants. “You going on the Victory Tour?”
“Huh?” His nearness was throwing me. Seeing my dead grandma had been one thing; I’d at least known her when she was alive. But my uncle Andy had never been a living, breathing human being for me, and having his arm next to mine on the table was almost mind-blowing. He was so close that I could feel the heat off his skin.
“The Jackson Five, dude. You look like you’re going on the Victory Tour.”
My mom laughed again and slapped her knee for emphasis. I glared at her across the table. I should have known she was never going to be on my side. I’d been nothing more than a pain in her butt since the day I was born, so why would it be any different if I was her older brother instead of her son? My simple existence clearly annoyed the crap out of her.
“I couldn’t find any jeans that didn’t come up to my chin,” I said, taking a bite of my pancake. My grandpa put one foot up on the stairs and leaned forward to touch his toes like he was stretching his hamstrings.
“Well, the breakdancing pants were clearly a better choice then,” Andy said. My grandma passed him the platter of pancakes. “And buttoning that shirt all the way up to your Adam’s apple is really helping, too.”
I couldn’t understand what the big deal was about my outfit, but from Andy and my mom’s reactions it was clear that I’d messed up. While everyone focused on breakfast, I reached up slowly and undid the top button with one hand.
“Where were you last night, Andrew?” my grandma asked. She handed him the pot of coffee and watched as he poured it into a ceramic mug that was covered with flowers.
“Mom,” Andy said. “I was out.”
From the tension in my grandma’s look, I gathered that Andy’s whereabouts were a frequent and unpopular topic of conversation.
“I was at Roger’s,” I offered, trying to cover for Andy. Somehow, even though I didn’t know him, I desperately wanted to gain his approval.
“We know you were at Roger’s,” Andy said. “Where else would you be?”
“Yeah, it’s not like you have a girlfriend,” my mom said with an evil grin.
From the corner of my eye, I watched Andy eat his breakf
ast. I admired his strong biceps and the easy way he tossed his napkin across the table at his sister and made her laugh. The whole scene was like the perfect family having breakfast together, and I wondered how I never knew that my mom had grown up with a life like this. It was so different than the one she and I lived in this very same house.
“Your mom and I thought we’d drive into the city today for something to do. You kids want to come?” my grandpa asked, putting his other foot up on the stairs and stretching his hamstring again.
“I need to sleep,” Andy said around a mouthful of pancakes. “Last night was long.”
My grandma’s face twitched as she imagined what kind of mischief her son was up to on New Year’s Eve, but I watched as she wisely kept her thoughts and questions to herself.
“I want to go!” my mom shouted, jumping up from her chair.
“How about you, Daniel?” my grandma asked.
“I think I’m going to Roger’s. But I don’t know.”
“Well, decide what you’re doing, honey.” She stood up and started clearing away plates and dishes from the table. “We’ll probably leave around noon. We thought we might have a look at the tree in Rockefeller Center before they take it down. We could eat dinner in the city if you guys want to.”
I took my plate into the kitchen and then went back up to my bedroom to investigate a little more. I’d gotten as far as the closet and the poster and the Tears For Fears cassette, but I knew there had to be more clues about this Daniel and his life in 1986 just waiting to be discovered. My mom turned on the television again as I wandered up the stairs. The sound of some show on Nickelodeon trailed after me.
In the safety of the bedroom I dropped to my hands and knees and looked under the bed: nothing but game cartridges, a single red and white Jordan 1 basketball shoe, and a Westchester High School yearbook from 1984. A sense of unease washed over me as I slid the yearbook out and flipped through the pages. Everyone in the photos had seriously ugly hair: the girls wore fluffy bangs and perms, and the guys had loose waves falling over their foreheads.
If You Were Here Page 2
