“Over here,” I try to shout. It comes out as more of a hoarse croak. “Help me!”
47
Victims
The paramedics have wrapped me in a crinkly foil space-blanket, with a thick woolen blanket around that. Every time I move, one or other of the blankets slips and the paramedic sitting next to me wraps me up again. He is determined that I shouldn’t get cold.
L.J. has been similarly wrapped up, but he has the added accessory of white plastic strips, like computer cable ties, wrapped tightly around his wrists. And he is guarded by unsympathetic police officers, rather than a kindly paramedic.
I don’t feel cold. Wet, yes, but not cold. I feel sore. The side of my face throbs where L.J. hit me with the rifle butt, and I can feel a tender, swollen lump on my jaw. My throat and eyes burn, and my hand (now buried in an ice-pack) is aching. I feel a little shaky and weak with relief and unbelievably – given the hubbub going on around me – sleepy. The surge of adrenalin which served me so well in the pool has drained from my body, leaving me feeling hollow and limp. I peer into the massive first aid box standing open next to me. There are latex gloves, face masks, saline drips, burn dressing and bandages, but nothing … sweet. This suddenly seems like such a glaring omission that I need to tell the paramedic so.
“You guys really ought to keep donuts in your kits. And ice-cream.”
“You’re hungry?” he asks me.
“Kinda,” I admit.
“I think I’ve got …” He rummages through the pockets of his jacket, fishes out a half-empty packet of M&M’s.
“Bless you,” I say fervently as he hands them over. I tip the entire remainder of the packet into my mouth and bite down, cracking the hard, round balls of sweetness between my teeth. Nothing in my life has ever tasted this good, I swear it. Within minutes, I’m feeling stronger.
I stand up, and the heavy woolen blanket slides to the floor. My knees wobble for a moment, then steady. Lieutenant Bedley, who has been hovering nearby waiting to be given the all-clear by the paramedics to question me, approaches. She is shorter than me, has wispy blonde hair and a tired, severe face.
“I have some questions for you,” she says.
“Yeah, but first we need to free Luke.”
“Luke?”
“Yeah, Luke. He’s a student here. He and Juliet are still in one of the classrooms.”
“Juliet?”
“I know, right?”
“I mean, who is she – another student?”
“Oh, right. Yes. She’s Luke’s girlfriend – only, I’m beginning to think she isn’t really. Hope has returned,” I confide in her. I’m feeling a little drunk from the sugar-rush. And now that I know I’m safe, I’m feeling really anxious to see Luke.
“I wouldn’t worry – it’s Sloane, right? They’ve probably left by now. Everyone evacuated the building.”
“Not so. Luke couldn’t leave, he was handcuffed.”
“To Juliet?”
“No, to the pipe.”
“The perpetrator,” she consults a small, leather-backed notebook, “L.J. Hamel, he handcuffed Luke to a pipe in a classroom?”
“No – I did that.”
Lt. Bedley stands straighter, suddenly looks less tired and more severe.
“You and L.J. did this together?”
“No! No. He told you he took me hostage, didn’t he? Look, it’s a long story, and I’ll be happy to give you all the details, as soon as I’ve freed Luke.”
“You stay right where you are. I have not yet ruled you out as a potential perp. Just tell me what room these students are in and I’ll send officers to check it out. We have no reports of any injuries, but I’m not taking any chances.”
I’m deeply thankful no-one was hurt. Even L.J. is uninjured. I look over at him. His massive form is bent over itself, his small head in his big hands. He didn’t deserve the hand life dealt him. But nor did Luke – or me, either, come to think of it. And I do think of it, standing here beside the pool, with police officers and medics milling around me.
I think of all the victims and the bullies and the pain and the death, stretching back and back. Who bullied L.J.’s stepfather, to make him so harsh? And what had been done to that person? We’re all victims of victims of victims, each of us scarred by life. What makes one person swallow their pain or turn it back on themselves, and another decide to take it out on the world? It’s a mystery to me. Would my mom know, if she was here to ask? Does anyone know? Luke is right about one thing – there is already too much death and pain in the world. It’s time to focus on life and love.
I step around Lt. Bedley and walk away, toward the gymnasium and the hallways beyond. I’m a woman on a mission (I can almost hear Sienna humming the theme tune), and my destination is room 33. But Lt. Bedley is having none of it. She grabs me and swings me around. Her hand is hovering over the pistol holstered on her belt.
“That’s it!” I say, seizing her hand and flinging it off my arm. “That’s e-nough! I’m the victim here. I’ve been pushed, pulled and dragged through the school, shoved in the shoulder, bashed on the jaw, threatened with a rifle and half-drowned. I’m tired and sore and still hungry, dammit! Now there are still two students stuck in a classroom in this school. And I am going to free Luke – you can do what you like with Juliet. Now either shoot me where I stand – or let me go.”
I guess shooting an unarmed and near-hysterical teenager is against the rules, because Lt. Bedley calls over two SWAT team members armed with automatic weapons and says to me, “You take us to this room where the two kids are, and we’ll take it from there.”
“Fine,” I say. Whatever it takes to get back to Luke.
We make an odd procession. There’s one storm-trooper up front, me following on like a queen, dragging my gold space-blanket like a royal train behind me, and Miss Congeniality sticking to my side like a good suspicious cop should. The other storm-trooper brings up the rear. As we make our way through the deserted school, they check classrooms and storerooms and hallways, and keep a running commentary of our movements through their two-way radios. There is a distant metallic banging which grows louder as we walk down the hallway.
Finally, we arrive at room 33. The banging is coming from inside.
48
Drowning
“Here we are,” I announce to Lt. Bedley and the armed escort.
I take a step towards the classroom door, but Lt. Bedley clamps an arm around my waist to hold me back. She pulls me to one side of the door and nods at her men. One of them takes up position on the other side of the door, his weapon raised. The other, who I now see is carrying a heavy-looking metal battering ram, backs up a few steps and looks set to storm the door.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I say.
I reach out a hand and turn the door handle. The door swings open and the two storm-troopers charge in, shouting and aiming their weapons to the accompaniment of shrill screams from within. Ah, Juliet.
A minute later, one of the men emerges and gives Bedley the all-clear. Before she can stop me, I pull away from her, dart into the room and look into Byron’s corner.
Luke is still there, hanging from the radiator pipe. His mouth is open and his eyes staring wide. My gaze fixes on his chest where a terrible blossom of blood stains his shirt. My heart stops.
“Sloane! Oh, thank God.” It’s Luke. Luke is speaking. He’s alive!
“He shot you?” My heart starts beating again, and anger surges up to replace panic. “He shot you?”
“No, he shot at the desk – I think to scare me. But a piece of wood flew up and hit me in the chest. He points to the desk beside him, where a four-inch splinter of bloodied wood lies. “It didn’t go in deep, but I shouldn’t have pulled it out because it’s bleeding like a mother.”
My eyes scan him carefully, looking for other injuries. He has Mr. Perkel’s new red fire-extinguisher held clumsily in his left hand. He must have been smashing it repeatedly against the spot where the handcuffs are
hooked on a pipe coupling – trying to break the cuffs or perhaps the pipe – because his manacled right hand is bleeding and swollen.
Juliet is curled up on the floor against the wall, hugging her knees and still sniveling. I’m amazed she hasn’t dehydrated herself yet.
But Luke is alive, he’s okay.
“Luke.” It’s all I can say. My throat is swollen closed – worse than when I was in the teargas. “Luke.”
Paying no attention to the protests of the Loot and her men, I walk over to him and softly pull back his shirt to check the flesh beneath. A small hole is still trickling blood.
“Oh, Luke.”
“I’m okay,” he says. “Really I am. I’m just so relieved you’re safe. I thought you were … But you’re okay!”
“Of course I am. I’m a survivor. You know that.”
I throw my arms around him and hug him – long and hard, ignoring the shooting pains this sets off in my hand, uncaring of the sudden silence from Juliet. (Now she stops crying, outrage trumping shock.) The fire extinguisher falls to the ground with a solid clunk, and Luke’s free arm embraces me tightly.
“Sloane,” he whispers over and over again above my head.
When at last we break apart, my shirt is blotched red where I pressed against him. Luke looks down at me.
“Your face,” he says, horrified, but he’s not talking about my scar. He softly touches the swollen side where L.J. hit me. Luke doesn’t see the scar on my face; perhaps he never did. He saw the scars on the inside. We were equally damaged, me and him.
“I was a fool, Sloane. I’m sorry. I am. I was just so mad and confused. I’ve had my head up my ass for so long, I couldn’t see clearly.”
I can’t say anything, but I can feel that I’m grinning like a fool. My chest feels like a tight band has fallen off it. It feels light and open, like I can breathe deeply for the first time in over a year.
The Lieutenant’s men, obviously more used to action than love scenes, look to her for guidance.
“You, stand guard outside, just in case,” she instructs one of them, then tells the other, “Go find some bolt-cutters or master-keys or something, so we can get the cuffs off. And bring back a paramedic – this boy needs some medical attention. Are you injured, honey?” She bends down to examine Juliet.
“I-I’m okay,” says Juliet. “Do you have a Kleenex?”
I glance quickly at her. Her face is glazed with tears and, I’m delighted to see, boogers. She doesn’t look nearly as pretty right now as she normally does. The Lieutenant looks stumped for a moment, then she stoically holds out a uniformed sleeve to Juliet. After a moment’s hesitation, Juliet wipes her nose on it. I have an urge to laugh, but I guess Juliet has an urge to talk because she begins spilling her guts to Bedley, telling her everything that happened since we heard the first shot.
Luke, who has been staring only at me, staring as if he intended to memorize my features, now takes my face in his hands and bends down to kiss me. From her position on the floor behind Luke, Juliet must see this because she gasps loudly.
“Wait!” I say. “Just a sec. I need to ask you, first … what’s between you and Juliet?”
Juliet sits up straight and fixes a hard gaze on Luke.
“Sloane,” he says. His voice is gently chiding and he shakes his head as if at some foolishness.
“I saw you – when we heard the shots – I saw you turn from them straight to her, to check on her.”
“Yeah,” Juliet pipes up. “Me.”
“Look, can we save this for later? I need to find out exactly what happened here, get some straight answers,” says Bedley, sounding tetchy.
I ignore the interruption. I also need to find out what happened here and get some answers.
“Luke, your first instinct was to turn to her,” I accuse.
“No, my first instinct, my automatic reflex, was to check on you. I was looking at you, Sloane. But you were looking out the window into the hallway – in the direction of the shots – and didn’t see me.”
Oh. “But then you hid her in the closet – you made sure she was safe.”
“There wouldn’t have been enough room for both you and me, and I wanted to stick with you. I didn’t want you out of my sight. Besides, I figured she wouldn’t handle a crisis well, so it was better for all of us if she was out of the way.”
“Well!” says Juliet angrily. She looks ready to give him a piece of her mind, but I couldn’t be less interested in anything she might have to say.
“Um, can you give us a minute here,” I ask the Loot.
She narrows her eyes at me and opens her mouth as if to say something sharp and official.
“You have to get all our statements. Couldn’t you start with hers? Please?” I give her a pleading look.
She looks from me to Luke and back again, and something almost like a smile flickers momentarily across her severe face. Unlikely as it seems, I guess Lt. Bedley was once young and in love. She gently guides Juliet to the other side of the room and, once they sit down on a couple of chairs, Juliet begins babbling again.
I crouch down and, in front of Luke’s amazed eyes, remove my sneaker and shake out the small key, holding it up for him to see.
“May I?”
“You didn’t swallow it?”
“Are you kidding me? Do you know what damage something like this could do to your insides? I’d like to keep whatever organs remain, thank you very much.”
I unlock the cuff from his battered wrist. The handcuffs clank back against the pipe, dangling uselessly, and Luke sags into a chair, pulling me onto his lap. I cradle his wounded hand gently in mine. I feel safe, alive, home. I don’t want to break the peace between us, but there are some things that need saying and some that need asking.
“Why did you do it, Luke? I mean, Juliet?” I ask him softly.
“I thought she’d piss you off the most.”
I punch him – not too hard – on the shoulder at that. “She did.”
“I was hurt. I felt like you could have trusted me, been honest with me.”
“I should’ve, I know. I’m sorry, Luke. I just didn’t want to ruin … us.” I motion a hand between him and me.
“It was awesome, wasn’t it?”
“It was.” I smile up at him, searching his eyes.
“I hurt pretty bad when it all blew to smithereens. I wanted to hate you, hated that I could only miss you. I guess I thought I could use Juliet to get over you, or at least to get back at you, but I was only kidding myself. I just wound up feeling guilty for using her. It wasn’t fair. I shouldn’t have hooked up with her when I didn’t care for her.”
I guess Juliet must have been keeping an ear on our conversation, because at that she starts bawling again, loudly.
I hear, as though from a distance, Lt. Bedley ask Juliet a question about what she thinks might have set off L.J. Good. Let her try to answer that one. I turn in Luke’s arms so that I can look directly into his eyes.
“Luke, won’t it always be between us – Andrew, I mean, and the accident?”
“I guess,” he says and my heart starts closing up again, tight and heavy.
“We can’t change what happened. But what’s between us doesn’t have to keep us apart. It can connect us. We’re together in this. We both lost someone we love that day, and we both found someone to love afterwards.”
“Andrew …”
“Andrew was a really good guy. If he was here – and, I don’t know … sometimes I think he is – then he would tell me to stop pissing away my life and to get on with living. And with loving. And I’m sure your mom would want the same for you.”
I can only nod.
“I love you, Sloane. It’s that complicated, and it’s that simple.”
I stare up into his eyes, searching their green and golden depths. The truth is burning in them. It ignites a fire in me – a steady flame in my core that burns away my doubt. He traces his fingers down my cheeks, over my lip
s.
I’m aware of the fire and his touch, and also of a sudden silence from the other side of the room. Our audience must be watching again. I hear Juliet sniff indignantly and Lt. Bedley clear her throat, but I hold up a silencing hand toward them.
There’s one more thing I have to say.
“And I love you, Luke.”
And one more thing I have to do.
I lift my lips up to his and my fingers wrap themselves in that soft V of hair behind his neck. His arms close around me and draw me into him.
I’m done fighting. I surrender.
I let go and jump off into the depths of what I can’t stop and can’t control. And although I’m sinking, falling into him, it’s a different, a delicious kind of drowning. And I am fully, beautifully alive.
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