Violent Ends

by Neal Shusterman

Now it is Morgan’s turn to look at her shoes, her cheeks pink. “It was me.”

  “Oh, man.” Caleb runs a hand up through his hair and shakes his head. “All this time I thought—well, every time I saw you and Syd in the hall or wherever, you were looking at me and laughing, so I thought—”

  “We were just being stupid about your hair.”

  “Do you hate it?”

  “Oh my God, no,” Morgan says. “I love your hair.”

  Her brown eyes meet his brown eyes and Caleb finally poses the question he has come to ask. “Will you go to homecoming with me?”

  A moment like this one lived in her daydreams for two years. She and Syd spun up elaborate fairy tales about the Middleborough winter formal in which Morgan and Caleb double-dated with Syd and whichever boy she liked at the time. In the deluxe edition, a black stretch limo was rented and a hotel room booked for after the dance. In more realistic versions, they all rode together in Caleb’s Jeep Cherokee and barely made it home in time for curfew. At least a hundred times in her imagination Morgan has kissed Caleb on her front porch while wearing her mom’s cool prom dress from 1987 and Caleb with his hair bound up in a knot.

  But now that the moment is actually here, Syd is not. Sydney’s boyfriend has a new girlfriend. And the dance she and Syd dreamed about no longer exists, discontinued for being tied so closely to the shooting. Morgan doesn’t really want to go to homecoming anyway—not even with Caleb Graham. It isn’t fair that they get to move on while Sydney Kemble was buried with her hopes and fears, dreams and secrets. How can Morgan say yes? But after what happened the last time someone asked her to a formal dance, how can she say no?

  Junior year

  “Will you go to winter formal with me?”

  The cafeteria was so loud that Morgan almost missed the question. She sized up the black-haired boy standing in front of her and wasn’t sure how to answer. Over his shoulder, Sydney was spreading out her lunch at their regular table, giving Morgan a What the heck are you doing? look. The boy’s name was Kirby and he was in her first-period World Lit class. She couldn’t remember his last name and didn’t think she had ever heard his voice—at least not directed at her.

  “I, um—” Her brain tumbled over itself trying to figure out how to handle this with grace. Kirby was kind of cute in a skinny, scruffy way. She felt shallow judging him by the way he looked, but she was drawing a blank on who his friends were or what he did for fun. Middleborough was big enough that it wasn’t unusual for classmates to be strangers, but Morgan felt weird for not knowing anything about this boy.

  Winter formal was a week away and nearly everyone she knew already had a date. Her friends were making plans for dinner before the dance, and most of them had already gone dress shopping. Morgan had been holding out hope that Caleb Graham might ask her, but was beginning to think he didn’t know she existed, even though she and Syd had gone to all of his soccer games.

  “Ask him.” Syd made it sound simple. But someone tall and blond like Sydney Kemble could get away with it—David Ackerman had said yes to Syd in a heartbeat—while Morgan would probably die of embarrassment before the words even left her mouth. What if Caleb turned her down? What if he looked at her and had no idea who she was? What if she was the Kirby? The thought made her a little sick with hopelessness.

  Kirby was still there, waiting for her answer, and in the middle of her swirling thoughts was the idea that she could say yes. Except she didn’t know Kirby. He seemed nice enough, but was nice enough? A war waged in her brain and the question grew in enormity until Morgan was surprised the whole cafeteria wasn’t waiting to hear her answer.

  “I know it’s kind of last-minute,” Kirby offered. “But I, um—I guess I was waiting for the perfect opportunity.”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

  His face didn’t collapse in bitter disappointment, but she noticed the way his smile melted into a straight line. He nodded like everything was cool. “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated, but it didn’t feel like it was enough. She almost changed her answer. If he hadn’t walked away, she might have said yes.

  “Who was that?” Syd asked as Morgan opened her lunch bag. Her dad had packed school lunches that morning, so there was no telling what she might find. Once, he gave her a tartine with onion marmalade, which she didn’t eat because she didn’t want bad breath. To her relief, it was a standard-issue ham and cheese sandwich.

  “Kirby something,” Morgan said. “He just asked me to formal.”

  Her eyes tracked Kirby across the cafeteria to a table where he dropped into a seat, shaking his head. A girl at the table patted his back and Morgan suffered another pang of guilt for saying no, especially when she looked at the table where some of the soccer players were sitting and watched Caleb laugh at some highly animated story Lauren Hamby was telling. She envied Lauren’s ability to drop in on any table and be instantly adored, but even more, she envied that Lauren had Caleb’s undivided attention.

  Syd groaned. “Please tell me you did not say yes.”

  “Don’t be like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like Kirby is an outcast or something. He might be really nice.”

  “What does that even mean?” Syd pointed her plastic fork in Kirby’s direction. “Who does he hang out with? What does he do for fun? What kind of music does he like? What’s his favorite movie? Do you have anything in common? These are the things you should be asking yourself, Morgan. Nice means nothing.”

  “Maybe I would have found all that out if I said yes.”

  Syd rolled her eyes. “Look, I’m not trying to be a bitch, but do you see yourself kissing him at the end of the night?”

  Morgan looked again at Kirby—eating lunch in silence while his friends laughed and talked—and shook her head. “I guess not.”

  That night after dinner, she unearthed her yearbooks from a box in the back of her closet and scoured the pages until she found him. Kirby Matheson. His dark hair fell past his eyebrows in his freshman class picture and a subtle bulge behind his unsmiling mouth suggested he wore braces. On one of the marching band pages she discovered a candid shot of a smiling Kirby, dressed in his uniform, which proved Morgan’s braces theory correct. By his sophomore portrait, his orthodontia had been replaced by the hint of a smile. The activities listed below his name—office aide, marching band—did nothing to help color in a more complete picture.

  She sat cross-legged on the closet floor as her dad came into the room, still wearing his L’Aigre Doux chef’s whites and weird clogs. “Your mom said you were pretty quiet at dinner tonight. Everything okay?”

  “This guy asked me to formal today.” Morgan put the yearbook aside. “I feel kind of bad for saying no.”

  “Were you mean to him?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, so.” He scratched his head just above his ear and Morgan noticed that a few more strands of gray had started to show. He always joked that working in kitchens should have given him a whole headful already. “Did you want to go to the dance with him?”

  “No.”

  “Then don’t sweat it, mija.” He bent over and kissed the top of her head. She caught a whiff of cooking oil and onions, the distinct scent of her dad. It should have been gross, but after so many years the scent was familiar and comforting. “He’ll get over it.”

  Despite her dad’s advice, Morgan became hyperaware of Kirby Matheson as the week progressed. She had gone two and a half years without seeing him, but now he was everywhere. She passed him near the portables on her way to soccer practice on Wednesday and stood two places behind him in the lunch line on Thursday. And when Carah Matheson gave him a dollar, Morgan felt so stupid that she hadn’t made the connection between them sooner. She avoided making eye contact with Kirby, but she couldn’t help wondering if he was going to winter formal with some other girl. She imagined him feeling smug that Morgan didn’t have a date. She wished he had never asked because now she felt th
is weird responsibility to him, to acknowledge him, to include him. By Friday morning, when Syd’s lime-green Beetle pulled into the driveway before school, Morgan was sick of herself and sick of obsessing over a stupid school dance.

  Syd handed her a to-go cup of coffee from the coffeehouse near downtown as Morgan slid into the passenger seat. The girls were dressed to match in their soccer jerseys—number eight for Sydney Kemble and number two for Morgan Castro—with thick blue ribbons tied in their hair. They were both secretly thrilled that they’d each been assigned one of Clint Dempsey’s numbers. He was one of their favorite players from the U.S. men’s national team.

  “We’re going to be late.”

  “It’s pep rally day, so whatever.” Syd waved her cup at Morgan as she drove. “Listen, I’ve been thinking—I know for a fact that Caleb hasn’t asked anyone to formal, so you are going to ask him.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Of course you can, because you have absolutely nothing to lose.”

  Except Syd was wrong. The truth was that as long as Morgan didn’t know exactly how Caleb felt about her, there was a possibility he might like her back someday. If he turned her down for the dance, both her crush and that possibility would die. Morgan would be left with a big empty space where her crush used to be, and she couldn’t bear the thought of that. She knew she was being ridiculous and that even best friends don’t always understand. “I just—I’ll think about it.”

  The student parking lot was nearly full when the Beetle came to a stop in a space near the back. First bell had already rung, and they were later than normal stragglers, but Syd was right—with the pep rally underway no one would notice them sneak in late.

  “Don’t think about it, Morgan. Do it. Ask him. Promise me.”

  “Okay.” Morgan didn’t bother to cross her fingers behind her back as she and Syd weaved their way between parked cars toward campus. She would look for a loophole later. “I promise.”

  They were cutting between J Building and the cafeteria when Morgan heard a sharp pop, like the report of a gun. Her neighborhood was not as violent as it was when her dad was her age—before gentrification, as they liked to call it in the Middleborough newspaper—but once in a while gunshots could still be heard coming from the south edge of Little Mexico. As they neared the gym, the sounds from inside spilled out. The band was playing the school fight song to kick off the pep rally.

  Morgan and Syd reached the building at the same time as Kirby Matheson. Morgan barely had time to register how strange it was that their paths were crossing yet again when she saw the gun.

  She was knocked off her feet by the force of a bullet slamming into her shoulder. The pain was searing and she felt like she had been hit by a baseball bat. Kirby looked down and their eyes locked for a beat, the gun in his hand still pointed at her.

  And then he went inside.

  Morgan crawled to Sydney, wetting her palms and knees in the puddle of her best friend’s blood. The front of Syd’s jersey was stained, the circles inside the number eight filled in red. Her blue eyes were open to the sky overhead, but as Morgan collapsed beside her, she couldn’t tell if Syd was breathing. Blood dripped down Morgan’s arm from the wound in her shoulder and the edges of her world grew fuzzy and dark.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she said against Syd’s hair. Morgan smelled Sydney’s melon shampoo mixed with blood scented like a handful of old pennies, and the blue ribbon rubbed softly against her cheek. “Stay with me, okay? You have to be here when we get our scholarship letters, Syd. And I’m going to ask Caleb to winter formal, remember? I promise.”

  Senior year

  Morgan is haunted by the way Kirby looked at her after he shot her best friend. Did he kill Sydney as a punishment? Did he spare Morgan’s life so she would never forget? Or did he simply decide she wasn’t worth a second bullet?

  She is haunted by the memory of Sydney Kemble’s soft yellow hair against her lips, the feel of her blood on Morgan’s skin. Syd died in her arms in the grass outside the gym, just a few feet from where Morgan stands now. Would Sydney still be alive if they’d made it into the gym? Or if Morgan had given Kirby a chance?

  She is haunted by her own inability to move forward. Her therapist suggested she do her senior year at St. Luke’s Academy, the Catholic school on the other side of town. Some students transferred there, others to East Monroe, after the shooting because using the gym where their classmates were murdered, where Kirby Matheson took his own life, was too painful. Morgan’s parents can’t afford the tuition at St. Luke’s and she doesn’t want to put them in debt when the ghosts of Middleborough follow her everywhere.

  Death was the terrible epicenter of the shooting, but the aftershocks rippled out far and wide. He robbed Middleborough of its sense of security. Planted seeds of fear. Erased a long-standing high school tradition, replacing it with a day that can never be erased from history. He changed everything and Morgan doesn’t know how to set her life right again.

  She feels like a mechanical girl, wound up in the morning and ticking her way through the days, but she remembers the girl she used to be. One who liked going to the farmer’s market with her family on Saturday mornings. One who believed buying new socks at the beginning of each season and touching the Jozy Altidore poster in her gym locker would bring her good luck on the soccer field. One who had a ridiculously huge crush on the boy standing right in front of her now, looking as unbearably cute as ever, asking her to go to a dance with him.

  “What is going on in your brain?” Caleb’s voice brings her back to reality, and when his fingers touch her cheek, Morgan realizes another tear has escaped.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I just—I feel like I’ve been in a fog since the shooting. How are we supposed to go on? How do we play and sing and dance when Syd will never get to do any of those things again?”

  “I don’t know.” Caleb shrugs. “I guess we just decide we’re not going to let a fucked-up kid with a gun choose how we live.”

  Kirby Matheson’s sister walks past, holding hands with Bobby Avalos. She smiles at him the same way she smiled last year when he gave her a plush black Lab as an invitation to the winter formal. Carah looks happy, and anger licks up inside Morgan like a flame. Guilt snuffs out the anger when she reminds herself that Carah was a victim too. She lost her brother long before the day of the shooting. Carah deserves to be happy.

  So why is it so difficult for Morgan to accept the same kind of happiness for herself? Why can’t she decide that a fucked-up kid with a gun is no longer allowed to decide her future?

  Morgan reaches across the space that separates her from Caleb, takes hold of the front of his T-shirt, and pulls him toward her. She has never been so bold, done something so impulsive, but she can’t help thinking that Sydney would approve. Caleb’s lips are, at first, confused as she presses her mouth against his, but then Morgan feels the warmth of his hands on her back and the subtle tilt of his head that turns the touch of their lips into a kiss. Her arms encircle his neck and she dares herself to sink her fingers into his hair.

  Oh my God, Syd, she thinks. I am touching glory.

  The laughter that wells up from inside her vibrates against Caleb’s mouth and when he pulls back, he looks more surprised than she’s ever seen him. And a little dazed. “I didn’t expect that,” he says.

  She smiles. “Neither did I.”

  “So, um—was that an answer?” Caleb slides his fingers between hers, their palms pressed together. Holding his hand feels every bit as good as she imagined, and she pushes back against the small voice that says it shouldn’t. “Will you go to homecoming with me?”

  She pushes back against her promise to Sydney too.

  The world is irrevocably changed, torn and patched, but for the first time since her best friend died, Morgan feels awakened. She is not ready for pep rallies or school dances, but she might just be ready to be happy, to find a new place for herself in this changed world. Tomorrow she will ask the socce
r coach if she can rejoin the team. Tomorrow she will go to the farmer’s market with her family. She’ll ask Caleb to come with her.

  But right now she says the word she needs to say because in this new world she can’t be afraid to say it.

  “No.”

  POP

  Last week, Katelyn had strep throat. That’s all Mark can think, lying crammed into the space between two bleachers. She missed three days of school, and he brought her soup and tea and her homework. He’d give anything for her to be home in bed today instead.

  He squeezes his eyes shut and hopes so deep that it hurts that she hadn’t slipped in without him noticing. She’d never responded to his text about meeting up—sitting together. Maybe she’d ditched the pep rally and gone to Starbucks. Maybe she wasn’t one of the ones he’d seen . . . Maybe she wasn’t . . .

  The thought makes him gag, and he struggles to stay still. Quiet. Wishes it were a normal morning, that they were meeting at his locker. But then they’d pulled so much crap with Kirby’s locker this year. What if that’s what made him snap? What if Mark had caused this? The thought of that makes Mark even sicker. It had all started so innocently . . .

  * * *

  “What’s up with the Pop-Tarts?” Katelyn had asked one day, just a couple of weeks into the school year. It was right before first period, and Kirby had just slammed his locker door and slouched down the hall, his backpack dangling from one shoulder.

  “What Pop-Tarts?” Mark asked, shoving his trig textbook into his bag. He’d forgotten to take it home, which meant he hadn’t done the assignment, which meant he was already behind. And he did not want to get grounded. It wasn’t that long until the winter formal, and he would die if he couldn’t take Katelyn.

  “You seriously haven’t noticed?” Katelyn’s blue eyes were even wider than usual. Something about her—her hair, or maybe her lip gloss—smelled like strawberry, and it made him want to sneak her out to the unused shed behind the football field and pretend first period didn’t exist. “Every morning!”