His movements are cool, but his shoulders are set high and his eyes—those unreadable hazel eyes—are unusually bloodshot. He casually scans the room, then hunches down to forge something from his beat-up backpack. Sitting on his head are dark curls vamoosing away from his plastic headphones. Right now, it is lunch. I am four tables away from his lonely one.
I don't think he sees me looking.
But I may not be looking so closely, really. Because when he pushes his chair back and it creaks harshly—and nobody still takes note of him—he apprehends everyone. Everybody in the cafeteria doesn't observe back, and in that second he begins to carry himself up with his arm still deep in his bag he looks in my direction. This is the first time I look at him in the eye, and when I do his eyes are brimming with tears, and something clicks. He tears the moment away; I am bewildered. He stands up, drops whatever he was holding back into the abyss of his backpack, zips it close, and walks to the exit as he turns his head away.
Something churns uneasily in my stomach as he strides out of my vision and out into the hallway. I heft crumbs of my lunch into my mouth and stand to throw plastic into the nearest bin. As I deposit my tray, I can't help but think of what he was reaching down for. Probably just a book, or money. But he seemed so hesitant... and angry.
So I march to the restroom to make myself more presentable for the next class—thoughts still running through me like a sickness—when there's a scream.
A scream.
It reverberates through the room—a majority of us either sits or stands still, and one scream multiplies into half a dozen. Then I think everyone can hear them now. The bloody screams flood our ears like urgent knocks against expensive wood. They rain down and through the air in a staccato beat. I am trembling in fear before I know it.
Then the first shot rings in our ears so vividly, disrupting the ice among our stances. In a syrupy second my heart thumps dangerously in my ears. I see people panic.
Another bullet cuts the air, cuts through somebody's body. Somebody's life.
I run. Jesus Christ, I run.
I dash to the door with everyone. It leads to the trellis. The guard isn't by the gate but an alarm is on. People hurry into the laboratories, the library—anywhere—while I fumble for my phone somewhere in my satchel. Just then my phone vibrates in my hand, kind of matching my distress. I take the call in the art room, falling under the teacher's table on impulse where I hear nothing but my serrated breath and the door sliding shut, just like my eyes.
"Hello?" I answer the call.
"Mel? Mel? Where are you?!" It's my friend, Krista, whose voice screams fear. I understand.
"Krista, I'm under a table. Art room. Where are you? And what the hell is happening?!" But I think I already know. And I think I already know who.
But why?
"Frigging boys restroom." A delirious laugh. A breathy pause. Stay calm, Krista. Keep it. "I'm with Reese and his friends. I think Jill is here, too. There's a psycho on the loose, Mel, and we're presuming this psycho's a friggin' student." My breath hitches. No. I begin to say something but she cuts me. "Now listen, Mel, I—"
And she's gone. Too fast.
I don't want to listen to her screams. Or Reese's. Or Jill's. So I turn my cell phone off although I could just dismiss the call, and I imagine how she must have looked like in the restroom along with her boyfriend—who I know must have been holding her tight—and Jill, who just wanted to get out of high school like most of us do. Then the image fades. I rub my palms on my jeans and dig for my inhaler.
Then I realize I should have locked the door, and now I'm in the middle of muffling a colossal cry. The art room is seriously stuffy. It's located by the garden, and there aren't much trees to obscure the view from the window. I remember how the garden looks like as I shut my eyelids close. Its beauty sits there peacefully as the student population dwindles in a massacre. The world for now is a terrible furnace, an oven, and the witch is looking for some kids to eat. To destroy. I try to recite a silent prayer, but I stumble clumsily on my own words. I've heard some pastor once say that your vocabulary doesn't matter while or when praying, but my tongue is dry, and my beliefs are in a heap of ash. I may be dizzy, and I freeze once again.
People scream by.
People come in.
Hide, hide, hide, I think. Jesus, people, hide.
We all hide. We are all one breath.
Our predator still arrives, of course. It's inevitable by now. And all I can think before I die is, Why, Robert?
Why?
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