Violent Ends

by Neal Shusterman

  When the door to the bathroom bangs open, I flinch. I look at the flimsy latch. I look at the stall door. If there is a gun on the other side—if there is a trigger pulled—there is no shelter. I’m a sitting duck. The doors to the open stalls bang open, one by one. Each time the whole set of stalls shakes. The latch to my hiding place rattles, shiny and crackable as a plastic tiara. A piece of it hits my cheek when the door is kicked in.

  I half fall off the toilet against the wall of the bathroom stall.

  There are two guns pointed at me.

  It’s only for a second, only until the guns see I’m completely defenseless. Then a hand reaches down and helps me up. The grip on my arm isn’t rough or tender. It’s purely professional. It never falters as it guides me to the bathroom door.

  “Shut your eyes.”

  I hear the words, but I don’t act.

  “Shut. Your. Eyes.”

  When I do, they lead me out. I keep my eyes closed. I’m completely in the dark. I see nothing. When I wobble, I borrow the strength of that hand on my arm.

  * * *

  “What’s your name, hon?” It’s the school secretary. She’s holding a clipboard.

  She doesn’t know me. She gave me a schedule the day I started, and called a student to take me to my first class and explain the maze of buildings and halls. She butchered my name every time she said it.

  “Reba Landrieu,” I say.

  She flips through the pages, makes a tick mark on a page. Then she reaches out and pats my shoulder. “Your parents are waiting. You just need to visit Jerry first; she’s an EMT. She’ll check you out.”

  Jerry is wearing blue gloves. She does a come-along-with-me wave with her fingers. “I’m just going to pat you down.” She uses the backs of her hands like the agents during airport security. “Do you have any pain? Bumps or bruises? Did you fall? No? That’s great. Can you sit here, please?”

  I sit on the footboard of a fire truck. “I’m okay,” I say.

  There is a heap of brown crumpled on the parking lot asphalt. A puddle of limp, soft stuff like an ugly bath mat. It’s the mascot’s pelt. Maybe there is blood on it. I think it might be blood—or not.

  EMT Jerry wraps a blood pressure cuff around my arm. We are both quiet while she works.

  “I’m okay,” I say.

  “Are you?” asks EMT Jerry.

  “I am. I sheltered in place,” I say.

  “Good girl,” says EMT Jerry. “Smart girl.”

  “I’m okay,” I say it again. “Nothing happened.”

  “No. Something did happen. You are safe now. You can go home. But something did happen.” Jerry hands me a sheet of paper and says, “Give this to your parents. You read it too. You don’t have to be bleeding to be hurt. Go to your parents now; they’re waiting over there.” She points at a herd of people at the far end of the parking lot.

  I do as I’m told. When I come to the sagging yellow police tape that marks the edge of the crime scene, the crowd opens for me. I duck under. Someone waves a microphone in front of me, but there’s my dad pushing it out of the way and standing between me and the world. My mom has her hands on my face. We lean together and our foreheads touch. That’s when she starts to cry.

  We walk the couple of blocks home. Dad keeps his arm around me, pulls me under his wing. I cling to the back of his coat, the wool crumpled up in my fist. It’s kind of hard to walk that way. Our paces don’t match. Our steps are jolting and slow, but neither of us lets go.

  Griz is waiting when we open the front door. I drop to my knees and hug her, bury my face against her stinking velvet ear.

  “I’ll make coffee,” says Mom.

  Dad walks to the living room. I hear the television, the background noise to life at home. A reporter is standing in front of the sign that says MIDDLEBOROUGH HIGH SCHOOL. She touches her ear and looks down at her handheld mic: “Sorry . . . It is confirmed that the shooter is dead of self-inflicted wounds. There are other casualties but no identification or details. What we know so far is that at least three students are dead; more than a dozen have been taken to local medical centers. Police are still in the process of clearing the building.”

  The scene changes to a doctor who says, “The next three days are going to be crucial for the patients in critical condition. At this point, those kids are still in surgery.”

  Then the screen shows us the school again with the emergency vehicles still parked in front. There is a crowd huddled across the street. “This is a community in shock. Grief counseling will be available tomorrow at . . .”

  Dad switches to his ordinary news channel. The screen is divided into four squares, the guy in the lower-left box is talking . . .

  “Gun ownership is an important life choice.” Two of the other people start jabbering, but the guy stays calm and continues: “Look, I’m not here to engage in the gun-control debate. It doesn’t matter how I feel or how you or your viewers feel. It’s a fact that at least one hundred and twelve million Americans own guns—seventy-five million own them for defense. Making that choice, deciding to keep a gun for self-defense: it’s an important decision. Taking a life is hard. Ongoing training is vital. It’s not just target practice—it’s a question of mental preparation. A panic-stricken, unprepared human being is incredibly dangerous to themselves and others . . .”

  Did that kid feel like he was defending himself? Is that what made him dangerous? When he turned the gun on himself, was that part of the plan? Was it straight-up suicide? In the second when he put the gun to his own head, were all his other choices gone?

  Dad clicks off the television.

  Mom sits beside me on the couch and tucks my hair behind my ears. “You want some food?”

  “A shower.” I didn’t know I wanted that until I said it, but that’s what I want. I want hot water and the smell of Pure Prairie Sage Goat’s Milk Soap. I want to feel like I’m starting the day over. I want to wash the smell of fear and industrial bathroom cleaner out of my hair.

  I’ve been standing under the water for a long time when I hear a knock on my bathroom door.

  “Reba? I’m going to take Griz to the vet. Daddy’s staying here—with you. Or you can come, if you want . . .”

  “I’m okay, Momma.” I haven’t called her Momma for a long, long time. “I’m okay.”

  * * *

  I sit criss-cross on my bed with my laptop on my knees.

  I have no idea what really happened.

  “School shooting Middleborough,” I ask the search engine.

  The search engine answers, but it’s no better than the television.

  I don’t know what happened today, even after I see a picture of that boy, the one with the silky flop of hair. It’s the picture that would have been his little square in the yearbook. He’s spindly and pale—a flat-ordinary, unsmiling kid. Maybe he’s shy. Maybe the camera clicked when he wasn’t ready. Maybe it’s a mask.

  I fall into the clickhole path of the search. I click from page to page. There have been school shootings in Finland, Germany, and Brazil.

  I thought it was a special American problem. It isn’t. Not even if the guy from Brazil says, “This is like something that happens in the United States.” Does it count as a school shooting when the Taliban boards a bus and shoots three girls because they are students? Is there a big difference between shooting a six-year-old in a classroom and killing a six-year-old in a movie theater?

  The texts start at about 4:15 p.m. That’s how long it took for my friends back home to get out of school and hear what happened. I start responding: I’m OK, I’m OK, I’m OK. But then I come to the first message from someone I hardly remember. Oh yeah, Savannah B. was one of my science project partners sophomore year. I can’t remember what she looks like. I stop saying I’m okay. I stop thumbing through the texts.

  I’ve got an incoming call on my laptop. It’s Brody.

  Some nights since I’ve been here, the only thing that’s mattered is that moment when I turn on the
camera so Brody can see me and I can see Brody. He usually calls late at night—after I shower, when I’m ready for bed, that’s when Brody calls. It’s always been that way. Even when we saw each other every day, we spent hours looking at each other through our computers. The calls are the one thing that I still have.

  There’s Brody. I want to rub my face against his chest and breathe him: clean sweat, open water, and cold smoke on his skin. I want to smell his dirty fingers. But this call is too early, and it isn’t just Brody. There are four faces crowding into the range of the camera’s eye. There’s his semi-jerk friend, Gord. I will never understand the appeal of that wad. Emma’s there, because she is always stuck to Gord like a tick. The fourth person is Lily Pisanti. What the hell is Lily Pisanti doing sitting on Brody’s bed peeking over his shoulder? She isn’t our friend. She’s not even in our class.

  “Shit, Reba,” says Brody. “Damn. Tell us.”

  “What?”

  “We saw the news. That’s your school, right? Middleborough. That’s some crazy shit. What happened?”

  Nothing. Nothing happened to me. That’s the truth.

  “I’m okay.” I look at them. All of them are waiting for me to tell the story. I remember the way Brody’s hair felt under my hand, but I can’t touch him. I see Lily Pisanti’s hand, curled like a claw on his shoulder.

  The voices start rattling like talking heads arguing on the TV news. “Did you know that kid, the shooter?” No, Gord, I did not.

  “Was he a creeper?” Compared to you, Lily?

  “He was kind of cute, you know, with that hair . . .” WTF, Emma?

  “Look,” I say. “You’re getting pixeled. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Connection’s bad,” I say. The picture’s fine. I can hear them fine. I just don’t want to . . .

  “Hey, hey?” Brody leans forward. If we were together, I would so let him hold me. “Later. I’ll call again later,” says Brody. He leans back, and I see how Lily Pisanti is still behind him.

  I break the connection. I set the control to offline, because, really, my connection broke a while ago. I just didn’t know it.

  * * *

  I hear the garage door. I hear the clickety-tappy-tap of Griz’s toenails on the hall floor. She bumps her bone-hard head on my closed door. When I open it, she presses her face into my open hand.

  I pull on some sweats.

  I walk into the kitchen. The sound on the television is muted, but I can see it’s the same old story. A mound of pictures and flowers and flickering candles is growing around the MIDDLEBOROUGH HIGH SCHOOL sign. That’s the backdrop now for the news cameras. Then it’s the doctor at the hospital podium. The crawl at the bottom of the screen says SIX CONFIRMED DEAD. Then footage from what must have been the surveillance camera in the hall outside the gym. That terrified stampede is what I heard. Then they show us his face again and then another photo of him eating a sandwich. He’s just a guy eating a sandwich. These must be the pictures of the dead: round cheeks and long, wavy brown hair; a stretched, beauty-pageant smile full of Chiclet teeth; an older guy—must be a teacher. If I’ve seen these people before in halls or classrooms, I couldn’t tell you. None of them look familiar.

  Then it’s the talking heads. I can guess what they are saying: No one expected this . . . There were signs . . . He was on meds . . . He should have been on meds . . . He had a gun . . . a gun . . . a gun.

  “Do you want the sound up, honey?” Mom touches the clicker before I answer.

  “. . . an elementary school teacher has asked each child to bring a canned food item to school.” The talking head holds up a can of soup. “She has the kids keep the can on their desks to give them a sense of empowerment and security. If an intruder attacks, the kids are supposed to throw the cans . . .” The talking heads erupt into argument.

  I pick up a can of tomatoes that’s sitting on the counter. It doesn’t make me feel empowered or secure.

  Mom gives me a side hug and takes the can from my hand. “Dinner soon. Venison chili,” she says.

  Griz puts her nose under my hand and leans against my leg.

  “Want to go outside? Let’s go outside.” I’m doing the talking, but Griz is the one who pushes me along to the door.

  The two of us step into the twilight backyard. It’s overcast. Maybe it will rain later. The white vinyl fence panels shine, reflecting the porch light. I sit, criss-cross applesauce, on the empty deck. Griz squats beside me on her haunches. She leans against me. In the sky above, crows circle toward a big tree in the distance. Griz shakes. She smells better, but she hates a bath. Her new tags jangle. One says she lives at 22 Widgeon Way. Another proves she is operating within the law.

  In a far corner of our yard, a black-and-white cat jumps from a shed roof to the fence post.

  Under my hand, I feel the crest of tough hair rise along Griz’s spine. I hook my fingers under her collar. If she decides to go for it, my spindly fingers can’t hold her back.

  “Shush, Griz. Griz, Griz, Griz, no.” It doesn’t sound like an order, but Griz hears me. She turns away from the intruder and toward me. Unless I pull the trigger, that stupid cat is safe.

  “C’mon, Griz, let’s go have some chow.”

  Griz rumples her forehead and stands. So do I. I never take my hand away from her collar. It’s her job to protect me. It’s my job to be in control.

  ASTROTURF

  Kirby Matheson stole my life.

  There had to have been signs. Some warning. But I was too stupid to see it coming.

  Every time I see him I remember. Like now. He’s just standing there, his arms hanging at his sides like he doesn’t know what to do. All I can see is how he looked when he showed up and took over the life I was supposed to have.

  “Table for four?” Nicole asks, menus in hand, already leading the way to the Mathesons’ usual table.

  Kirby blinks twice, and then says, “Uh, no, just me. But . . .” He looks around the restaurant and then quickly away from where they usually sit. “Can I sit on that side?” he asks, pointing toward the original part of the restaurant, from when it was just a counter and a few tables.

  “Sure. How about over here?” she asks, leading him to one of the smaller booths near the windows, across from the counter. “Ray will be right with you.”

  Technically, it’s Maria’s turn. But she won’t care. Not for a kid by himself, and not tonight. Another night, or a family, any of the usual good tippers, and Maria would be swooping in, my station or not. Emilio says she’s earned the right, having been here from week one. I think he’s just afraid to argue with her. Federico isn’t, but Emilio is in charge of the front of the house. Federico rules the kitchen.

  Tonight Maria’s leaning over the counter, flipping through a catalog, occasionally glancing up to check, and then pass on, most of the tables. She barely spares Kirby a glance.

  There’s a picture on Mom’s dresser of me and her and Dad. It was taken at a school picnic the year before Dad left, when I was still oblivious to what was coming. Mom and I are looking at the camera, smiling. I’m holding some stupid award thing I got at the picnic. Dad’s looking off to the left, like he’s already plotting his escape.

  And there is Kirby, lurking behind Dad, like even then he was waiting to walk in and take over my life. He’s out of focus and blurry, but it’s him. I only noticed he was there a few years ago—the last time Mom and I moved, when I was unpacking the odds and ends boxes—and since then, I haven’t been able to get the image out of my head. Like if I had looked at it when it was taken, really looked at it, I would have had some hint of what was coming.

  I remember being sure that when Dad got home from his business trip, we’d get a dog.

  He’d been weird, he and Mom both. Whispering loudly in their room. Having those conversations over my head that I didn’t understand. The morning he left for his trip, they stopped talking when I came into the kitchen for breakfast.

  I was sure it was because they were finally getting me a dog. I
’d wanted a little brother, or even a sister. When I whined for too long, Mom said they got the kid they wanted the first time. I knew even then that was bullshit, but I understood I should stop asking. They’d already gotten me a new bike. We’d gone to Disneyland when I was seven. But I was eight then, and Dad had always said we could get a dog when I was older. So it had to be a dog.

  I was sure that was it. The big secret. Somehow I knew Dad wasn’t really on another business trip. So he had to be picking out our dog.

  When Mom started packing stuff up in my room, talking about poor kids who didn’t have toys, and wouldn’t it be nice to give them some of my old ones, I thought it was some kind of test to make sure I was ready for the responsibility of a dog. I put everything in the donate box and then started stacking stuff beside it, which made Mom cry. I thought she was proud, because I was being so responsible and generous and so ready for a dog.

  The sign went up on the front lawn the same week Mom and Dad sat me down and explained that while they both loved me very much, they didn’t love each other anymore. More Dad than Mom with the not loving, from the way Mom looked when he said it.

  Dad left that night. I was even too stupid to realize he didn’t take any bags or anything with him because he’d already moved all his stuff. At least all the stuff he wanted.

  Mom and I would have to move soon too.

  But the leaves turned and it got cold and we were still there. We unpacked some of the boxes, but Mom put them in the basement for later.

  On Christmas morning we had cinnamon rolls and sausages and chocolate milk—all the things we liked and Dad didn’t.

  Mom got a job, we adjusted to a new schedule, the sign remained out front, and we stayed there, without Dad. It worked.

  Then the sign changed, and Mom started packing for real. We were really moving this time. Dad kept promising to help with the packing and the moving, but like with promised trips and movies and treats, he never showed up. We were still moving stuff by the carload to our dinky new apartment across town when they showed up.

  The Mathesons, though I didn’t know their name then. I didn’t know any of them then, except for Kirby.