“You can put the guns down,” Daniel said, trying to find a way to stay calm even as the panic set in. “We can talk about this after we make sure Mrs. Henderson is okay.” He looked back at the broken glass next to the door, hoping that someone was helping Mrs. Henderson and that she hadn’t actually been shot.
“What do you mean?” Blake’s voice went up an octave. “What happened to Henderson?”
Daniel weighed his words. Would telling him about Mrs. Henderson put an end to Blake’s rampage? “She got shot. At least, I think she did. There’s a lot of blood.”
Blake stepped away again and started pacing. His breath came in short bursts as he pointed both of his guns at Daniel. “You mean I shot her? I shot a fucking teacher?”
Daniel lifted his shoulders in a shrug that looked more like a helpless admission that something had gone very wrong. “I’m pretty sure. The window shattered and she fell down.” He wanted Blake to know that Mrs. Henderson might be dying on the floor of her classroom as they spoke.
“Shit, Daniel. If I shot a teacher, then I’m going to prison.” Blake inhaled deeply through his nostrils, lifting the barrel of the shotgun and pointing it at Daniel’s head. “And if I accidentally killed Nick Mancini and I shot a teacher, then I might as well just end it all, huh? What do you think about that?” Blake’s eyes shone like two rocks in a riverbed beneath a wild, rushing stream.
“No. Don’t do that.” Daniel held his hands up, palms facing Blake. His stomach lurched as he thought of the amount of lead that Blake currently had at his disposal. With a twitch of the finger, bullets could puncture Daniel’s skin, crack his bones, and penetrate the soft muscle and tendon of every limb of his body. He swallowed hard.
“Blake Schiller,” came a voice from down the hall. It was a deep, commanding voice with a seriousness that stopped Blake in his tracks. “The building is surrounded. There is no way out, and we know you have no desire for this to escalate any further.”
“No desire for this to escalate?” Blake said so quietly that it sounded like a hiss. “This has already escalated.”
“I think that’s the police, man,” Daniel said, not daring to tear his eyes off Blake for fear that he’d miss the moment Blake decided whether to shoot or not. At this point, it still seemed very much up in the air.
Until it didn’t.
“Right. The police.” Blake’s whole demeanor changed. Gone were the darting eyes and uncertainty. In their place was a quiet resolve. “If I’ve got the police here to question me again and another dead body on my hands,” he lifted his chin in the direction of room 15A, “then what’s a third body? Or a fourth, if you count me?”
“Wait—what?” Daniel felt a moment of confusion pass through him as he tried to count the number of bodies Blake was leaving in his wake. Nick Mancini (although accidental) was one; Mrs. Henderson (although possibly still alive) was two; but a third body? And then Blake, too?
Before Daniel could say another word, and before the cops had rounded the corner into the hallway in front of Mrs. Henderson’s English room, Blake pulled the trigger of the pistol—just once—and the bullet sped towards Daniel’s forehead. At the last second, he turned his head sharply, and instead of a direct shot that would have pierced his frontal lobe, the bullet pushed its way into Daniel’s temporal lobe. The force of the impact caused his head to snap to the other side and his body collapsed under its own weight, crumpling to the floor like a rag doll. He was instantly unconscious.
The sound of gunfire caused the officers in the building to pick up their pace, and the drum of footsteps on linoleum pounded in Blake’s direction. The first two officers to round the corner saw him standing over Daniel’s lifeless body, gun still pointed, a look of shock on his young face. Without hesitation, the officers opened fire, ready to protect the other students in the east wing of the school.
The spray of bullets hit Blake, causing him to drop his weapons and fall to his knees. The holes in his chest, shoulders, abdomen, and neck didn’t open instantly, but when they did, blood gushed forth, spilling onto his white t-shirt and all over the floor around him. He put one palm on the ground to support his upper body, coughing up blood as he glared at the officers who had shot him. His gaze was intense and it looked like Blake had something to say, but before he could speak, his arm gave way. Within seconds, he had fallen to the ground next to Daniel, the blood from his own wounds mixing with the blood from Daniel’s skull in a dark pool on the shiny hallway floor.
9
January 6, 1986
Take On Me
The first day back to school was snowy and cold. I walked into the halls of Westchester High expecting to see the same chipped paint on the lockers and the same graffiti on the door of the boys’ bathroom, partially covered by paint that didn’t quite mask the black Sharpie drawing of a pair of boobs. Instead, I walked through the entryway to see clean, shiny turquoise lockers lining the hallway, and the walls painted a clean off-white.
I followed the crowd through the east wing towards the gym, where I’d heard that we were getting our new schedules for second semester.
“Daniel!” A girl with a curly blonde ponytail sticking out of the side of her head waved at me from across the hall. She slammed her locker and waved again. It was Heather, Roger’s cousin.
“Hi,” I said, cutting through the stream of people in the hallway.
“Did you ever find Jenny?” Heather fell into step beside me as we walked past the brick wall that lined the hallway into the gym.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Never did.”
“Huh.” Heather took her books and slipped them into her unzipped backpack as we walked. “That sucks.”
The gym was full of people waiting in alphabetical lines. I took a spot at the end of the line marked with the sign for letters A-N and checked out the people around me. The girl in front of me was wearing a short denim skirt and a yellow sweater with a turned up collar. She turned to the girl next to her and bumped her with one elbow.
“Hey,” she said. “Did you see the new Nightmare on Elm Street?”
The girl, who was at least six inches taller than her friend in the yellow sweater, turned and looked at her with a bored stare. “Yeah, I saw it,” she said, snapping her gum. “Totally rad.”
“Daniel,” Roger said. He stepped into line beside me. “Thanks for saving my spot.”
“Anytime.” I folded my arms and glanced over at him. “I saw your cousin in the hall.”
“Yeah. Well. She goes here.” Roger shrugged. “And she’s a cheerleader, so sometimes it feels like she’s everywhere.”
I wasn’t sure what else to say, so I stared at the line ahead of us.
“Think we’ll have math together again?” Roger asked, shifting his backpack from one shoulder to the other.
I didn’t remember us having math together before, but I nodded at him anyway. “Yeah, probably.”
At the front of the line, Roger gave his name and then I gave mine. The woman behind the table sifted through a box of slips and handed us each our new schedules.
“Whatcha got first period?” Roger peered over my shoulder and scanned the pink half-slip in my hand.
I stared at the name and room number on my paper and felt the blood drain from my face. I blinked twice and looked harder. It couldn’t be—this wasn’t possible, was it? I hadn’t even thought about Westchester High’s existence prior to my time locked within its brick fortress walls. The fact that the lockers were a different color and the doors were missing the graffiti I’d grown accustomed to was one thing, but this? This was insane.
I swallowed hard and tried to clear my throat. “First period,” I said, pausing as I read and re-read the paper. “I’ve got Mrs. Henderson. Room 15A.”
“Come on in and have a seat,” Mrs. Henderson said, waving us in from the hall. “We were working on Pride and Prejudice before winter break, and we’ll pick up where we left off.”
I followed a few people into the room
and took a seat near the back. Normally I would have sat at the front, but this was uncertain terrain. I knew none of these people, and even the room looked unfamiliar to me.
“Daniel?” A girl slid into the seat next to mine and set her faded bookbag on the floor next to her chair. “How are you?”
I looked at her, hoping for some recognition. Nothing, of course. But she was pretty. Her dark hair was cut in a sharp line above her shoulders, and she wore three small silver hoops in her left ear. She licked her lips and bent over to pull an English book from her bag.
“I’m fine. How are you?”
She shrugged and set the textbook on her desk. “Most of break was really boring.”
“Oh. Right. Mine too.” I couldn’t stop myself from looking at her as she opened the book and started flipping pages. She wore a white men’s shirt buttoned up to the chin, and it was tucked into a pair of high-waisted 501s. On her feet were black Doc Marten boots, and she had silver rings on both of her forefingers.
“Okay. We’re going to start on page seventy-six,” Mrs. Henderson said, turning her back to us as she picked up a piece of chalk and scrawled across the blackboard in a swift, youthful movement. This was actually my English teacher, albeit a younger, thinner, more attractive version. I could hardly recognize Mrs. Henderson, but I knew it was her. She had the same curly brown hair (only without the streaks of gray at the temples), and the same kind eyes and nice smile (only without the lines around them that I’d come to expect every time she smiled). She was about forty pounds lighter and missing the soft roundness of a middle aged woman. I’d never given much thought to her age when I was in her class in 2016, but the fact that she was here now, in Room 15A, cramming Pride and Prejudice down the throats of seniors in 1986, meant that she had to be somewhere in her twenties.
“Can anyone recall where we were with the story?” Mrs. Henderson asked, turning around and setting the chalk in the tray as she wiped her hands together to get the white powder off of them. A gold band glinted on her ring finger. I’d never seen a ring there in 2016, which made me wonder whether she was divorced. Or maybe widowed. I’d never even thought about it.
No one offered a response to her question, so she launched into an explanation of where we’d been prior to the break. I took the opportunity to look around the room as she spoke, taking in the number of glazed expressions on my classmates’ faces this early in the morning. The guy in front of me wore a blue and white striped t-shirt tucked into acid-washed jeans. His blonde hair was spiked unnaturally on one side, his high-top Reeboks perfect and white.
In the row next to mine, a girl with crispy-looking bangs and giant pink plastic hoop earrings snapped her gum. She chewed with her mouth open, staring at Mrs. Henderson. She looked supremely bored. The girl behind her tapped her on the shoulder and passed a folded up note to Crispy Bangs. She took it under one armpit like a spy taking a message, never once breaking her stride with the gum-snapping.
As I glanced around, I noticed that no one had earphones in, and that there wasn’t a single phone resting on anyone’s desk. There were books, there was notebook paper, and even a few pens or pencils. But no phones. No distractions. Sure, Crispy Bangs was busy unfolding the intricately folded note underneath her desk, but she was still staring straight ahead at Mrs. Henderson as she did it, probably absorbing at least a small percentage of whatever was going on in the book.
A redhead on the other side of me handed over a folded piece of paper. I took it with raised eyebrows. She nodded at the front of the note, which said “Read me. Answer me. Pass me on.”
Mrs. Henderson wasn’t looking in my direction, so I opened the note and read it: WINTER BREAK SURVEY!!! The first question was: “How many times did you get drunk over break?” I flicked my eyes in the direction of the redhead, but she wasn’t paying attention to me anymore. The first two people to answer the survey had written “Four,” and “Sixty-nine.” I rolled my eyes.
“I’d like to start reading aloud this morning,” Mrs. Henderson said, sliding onto a stool in the front of the room. It was the very same stool she sat on in Room 15A in 2016—it had to be. Dark wood with a leather cushion, the footrest just at the right spot for her to hook a heel on as she put her weight on the other foot on the floor, holding her book in front of her while she spoke. It was eerie, really: Mrs. Henderson’s movements and mannerisms hadn’t changed at all in thirty years. The only thing that had changed was her appearance, and even that was just the weathering of time.
Everyone around me flipped their books open reluctantly, and I noticed that most of the people in the room picked up a writing utensil of some sort and got busy jotting down notes on their notebook paper. No one made eye contact with Mrs. Henderson as she looked around for someone to kick off the reading. It was a classic avoidance tactic, and one that I knew well.
“I’ll read.” The girl next to me in the Doc Marten boots put a thin hand in the air.
“Jenny—thank you.” Mrs. Henderson gave her a relieved smile. “We’ll all follow along as you take us back into the story and remind us what Miss Bennett is up to.”
The girl next to me cleared her throat and started to read. As she did, the sound of her voice made me turn my head and look at her again. Jenny. Wait—Jenny? Could this be her? I could feel my face flush. I watched her jaw move while she spoke. Her eyes were cast down at the book, her long lashes fluttering as she blinked. She was beautiful and I knew with absolute certainty that this was her.
My first instinct was to put my hand to my pocket and feel for my phone, which of course wasn’t there, and even if it was, it wouldn’t have done me any good. I wanted to text someone—Roger, maybe—and tell him that I’d found her. Or she’d found me. Or we’d been forced back together by fate. She turned her head slightly to the right as she moved onto the next page, tucking her hair behind one ear with her long fingers.
I turned back to the survey. Question number two was, “Did you make out with any strangers? If so, how did it happen?” I rolled my eyes again, although technically I’d be answering “yes” to this question if I bothered to take part in the survey. I mean, Jenny—while a living, breathing girl sitting on my right—was still kind of a stranger. And by all accounts we’d definitely made out over break.
Question three said, “If you answered yes to question two, did you end up liking him/her? Do they know???” The survey was dumb, but it was still kind of amusing. I scratched my chin and considered answering it. I don’t think I’d ever had a note passed to me in class, not even in middle school. And I’d definitely never taken part in a survey like this.
I picked up the pen on my desk and scribbled under the first question: “Just once, I think.” Who knew? Maybe I’d been drunk the entire break? Maybe this 1986 Daniel was a partier who liked to knock back a few cold ones with the boys. But the Daniel I knew and loved—the real me—would have said zero. I’d seen my own mom drunk enough times to know that it wasn’t for me.
Under question two I wrote, “Yeah, I made out with a girl at a party. I was drunk (see question one), so I have no idea how it happened.” That was truthful.
And below question three I wrote: “Yes. I ended up liking her even more when I saw her after the party. But I’ve only said two words to her, so I don’t think she knows.”
I cut my eyes towards Jenny again as she read aloud from the book, then folded up the paper and passed it to the girl behind me. I didn’t look back to see whether she read it or answered it, and I wasn’t even sure I’d passed it to the right person. It was only first period, and things already seemed kind of complicated in 1986. Was the survey the equivalent of a group text where you overshared every thought in your head? And was I supposed to include everyone around me in this group text on paper, or just specific people? I had no clue.
I spaced out for the rest of class as Jenny read paragraph after paragraph, her mouth moving as she got into the story. No one but me seemed to notice or care what a good reader she was, and it t
ook all the willpower I could find to stop staring at her and to look at the pages of my own book in front of me.
When the bell finally rang, everyone gathered their things (no lining up early, no waiting at the door as they did in all of my classes), and I stayed in my seat, hoping Jenny would look over at me again. Instead, she slid her textbook back in her bag, put the strap over one shoulder, and walked directly out of the room. I followed her with my eyes.
So this was Jenny. I’d finally found her.
10
December 16, 2016
Une Barque sur L’ocean (A Boat on the Ocean)
“White male victim. Age eighteen, gunshot wound to the temple.” The siren on top of the ambulance wailed as it raced through the streets towards the hospital. Daniel was strapped to a stretcher in the back, his face pale and bloodied, a white blanket pulled up to his chest and tucked in around him to keep him warm and fend off the shock. A paramedic held an oxygen mask to Daniel’s face and looked intently at the information on the machine that monitored his vitals.
“We’re five minutes out,” said the EMT behind the wheel. She picked up her radio and called ahead to the hospital to report the ambulance’s whereabouts.
“Oxygen level is dropping. So is heart rate.” A second paramedic jotted something on a clipboard as he placed one hand on Daniel’s arm.
Daniel could feel it. He could hear everything that was going on around him, and he could feel the warm hand of the paramedic through the scratchy white blanket. Even with his eyes closed and his brain unconscious, the scene in the ambulance played out in his mind’s eye as if he were watching a movie on the screen behind his own eyes. In fact, the angle Daniel saw it from was above; out of body, as if he were simply viewing a scene where an 18-year-old boy has been shot and is being rushed to the ER, and not as if it were actually his own lifeless body on a stretcher.
If You Were Here Page 6
