Shattered

“ Look,” Sam held up his hands, slowly. “ You aren’t gonna get anything out of threatening us. The police are out there, remember? Put the gun down, Chuck.”

I watched as Chuck lowered the shotgun and wiped his sweaty palms on his camo jeans. A damp fragment of hair—bright red hair—had fallen across his face. He brushed it away impatiently.

“ Alright,” Sam said. He was surprisingly calm—I had expected him to be huddled in the corner, rocking himself in a cradle, not playing the hero. That’s a role that I should have stepped up to, but it’s not so easy, you know? It’s not like the movies, where the kids know they’ll be okay. It’s easier said than done.

“ Alright,” Sam repeated. “ Now, you’re gonna want a phone, right? To call the police and make your demands—”

“ Shut up!” Chuck screamed, his gun swinging wildly. “ Shut your fuckin’ mouth, nigger!”

The rest of us recoiled from the tone of his voice, as if he’d opened fire. It was terrifying. He was totally off his rocker, Crazy Chuck, and what was worse, old Sam was about to die—I could feel it.

But Sam was playing it smart. He had ducked his head submissively, raising his hands and backing slowly to where the rest of us were waiting.

“ All of yinse, stupid fuckin’ niggers!” Chuck roared. Just to put us back in our place.

We weren’t black, any of us, except for Dave, who was good and dying at our feet. Chuck had shot him about ten minutes ago when the kid had tried to plead for his life. The spray from the gun had ripped open Dave’s stomach, and he had been lying there like broken glass, conscious, bleeding away for ten minutes. Ten goddamn minutes, and not a single cry of pain. He knew that what was left of his shattered life depended on his invisibility to Chuck Duffleman.

I wanted to help Dave, but I couldn’t. Not when Chuck was watching all of us, crowded in the back of Smith’s history room like a bunch of pent-up sheep.

When he first came in, Chuck had shot the teacher immediately—old Marshall Smith, God rest his soul. Marsh had been a sweet guy, chain smoked like a fiend, but he had been funny and so damn alive, you know? Now he was a bleeding corpse behind his desk. I could see his wrinkled hand—it had fallen into sight. It was lying in a huge pool of blood. The thought of old Marshall Smith being dead—his head blown apart—made me sick in the stomach.

Chuck was over at the phone now, ripping it right out of the wall. His eyes were raving mad. “ Don’t let the fuckers trace me, lil’ rat bastards. Niggers, all of ‘em. All of ‘em!”
He came running over, the barrel of his shotgun in our faces. We screamed; I felt Regina’s hand clamp over my arm in a vise. Everyone was trying to hide behind everyone else, which made for a frantic free-for-all wrestle.

“ Give me a phone!” Chuck screamed. “ A phone! A PHONE!”

Ritchie was closest to him, and it was clear that Chuck was screaming at him. Why Ritchie? I don’t know.

Ritchie had a cell phone, of course. We all did. So he gave his to Chuck, held it straight out with a trembling hand, and Chuck grabbed it with his sweaty fingers.

“ Can they trace it?” the redneck demanded. “ Can they? Can the fuckers trace this?”

None of our brains were working. Could they trace the phone? Did it make a goddamn difference? The police were all around the school, weren’t they?

Chuck may have been worried that they would know what room he was in, but I don’t think that was the case. I think Chuck Duffleman’s brain had shut off, just like ours, and he was panicking and remembering little things from the movies, like how the police always trace the calls, and how the SWAT team comes running in with machine guns and smoke and grenades.

“ They can’t trace it,” Sam said, finally. “ You’re safe.”

Thank God for Sam. I was about ready to shit myself—hell, I smelled someone’s shit nearby—and here he was, being all calm and heroic, talking to the madman. I wasn’t envious one bit. I didn’t want to play the hero.

Chucky was talking on Ritchie’s phone. His back was turned slightly to us—not so much that he couldn’t see us, but enough for one of us to make a move, if we had the nerve.

None of us had the nerve.

“…yeah. YEAH. Put me through to them,” Chuck was snarling. “ And don’t try to trace this number, ya bitch, ya little whore, because I’ll know, and I’ll kill one of ‘em. I got six of ‘em with me, and I can make it five real easy, bitch, ya hear?”

She must have said something to appease him, because he relaxed for a second. There was silence on the phone; they must have been connecting him to the negotiator outside. None of us spoke, but I looked around, and everyone’s face was a mask of tension. It was like we were watching the Apocalypse, the end of the world, that’s how intense we all looked.

Sam was trying to be stoic, but I took one look into those blue eyes and I knew that he didn’t have a clue—not one goddamn clue—about what to do. Ritchie was standing beside him, tall and skinny and blonde, somehow more in control of himself, more tuned in to his environment. I trusted him more than Sam, even though Sam was kind of our unelected leader.

Then there was Holden. He was another skinny bastard, but real thin, with the sharpest tongue you can imagine. He was usually cynical and sarcastic. He always had something really smart-assy to say about any situation. Sometimes I loved him for it; sometimes I hated him for it. Today he didn’t have anything smart-assy to say. People were dead. People who we had been close to. And we might be dead as well, soon enough. Holden just kept his mouth shut, and good riddance, I say.

The rest of them, Regina and Amber, were huddled together and whimpering. They had the most incredible names, really exotic, the kind you’d imagine only on strippers. But these ladies weren’t stripper-material. They were nice, down-to-earth girls. Unfortunately, right now they were kind of braindead, and that pissed me off. People were always giving me a hard time because I kid around about women, kind of chauvinistically, if you want to know the truth, but there’s nothing quite like a hot situation to bring out a girl’s true colors. These two didn’t have a plan. They were goddamn braindead! They would just expect us to come up with something. They didn’t care about being heroes—heroines. Whatever the fuck it is.

Dave was moaning at our feet. He was dying, fast. I wanted to help, but I couldn’t get the nerve to make a move in front of Chuck.

Funny thing is, I want to be a doctor when I grew up, you know? Can you believe that? I have all this compassion to help other people, and I can’t bend over to help one of my best friends as he’s dying right in front of me.

That kind of sickened me.

So I did it. I crouched down, right in front of Chuck, right in front of everyone. I pretended like I didn’t care if Chuck shot me, even though I did care. A whole lot.

Dave was pale from losing so much blood. I mean, his lips were kind of bluish and his skin was all balmy, and I thought that he was going to bleed to death on me. There sure was a lot of blood around him.

Chuck hadn’t moved an inch; he was still waiting on the phone. He saw me, but didn’t seem to care. I noticed that he had another gun, a pistol, tucked into his belt, right beneath that absurd ammo belt on his chest.

I felt for Dave’s pulse and found it to be really weak. The kid’s eyes were distant and sort of fluttering. His chest was bleeding a lot, but I was afraid to remove his shirt to look where he had been hit. It was a cotton shirt, and I thought that if I ripped it away, it would tear out the clots on the wounds or something. So what I did instead was ask Holden for his shirt—he was wearing an undershirt—but Holden didn’t seem to hear me. His black eyes were locked on Chuck, analyzing and chewing over the situation.

Ritchie heard me, though. He crouched down next to me and, with the others watching, helped me press his pullover to Dave’s chest.

Ritchie looked at me and murmured, “ Do we put pressure on it?”

“ I don’t know,” I whispered, and that was the truth. “ He’s losing a lot of blood, so I guess we need to stop the bleeding. The shotgun hit him from far away, so he probably just got sprayed with pellets or something. A bunch of little wounds.”

I wasn’t a hunter, or a gunman, and I don’t pretend to know jack shit about shotguns. I know what I’ve seen in the movies—that a blast from point-blank range can disintegrate a zombie’s head. But I know that a shotgun doesn’t work like a typical gun. It doesn’t shoot one bullet. It sprays a bunch of little parts at high velocity. That’s why it’s devastating in close range, but not so devastating from far away.

“ Leave that lil’ goddamn nigger alone.”

Chuck had wandered over, phone still in hand, and was watching me and Ritchie as we stooped over the body of our friend. The shotgun hung limply in his hands, and the fire had gone out of his eyes. He seemed to be sane enough to talk to.

“ Please,” I said. I faltered. Then: “ Let’s get him outside. He needs help.”

“ And what?” Chuck spat a huge wad at the ground. He seemed unsure of himself. “ They take ‘im to the fuckin hospital an’ he lays there an’ gets free surgery an’ sucks up all muh money and tax dollars? Lil’ bastard gonna suck the system dry, layin in that goddamn hospital, while I work muh goddamn ass off payin taxes.” He was getting riled up now; the gun was beginning to sniff the air like a bloodhound. “ Lil’ fuckin bastard. Suckin up all the welfare. Well, fuck ‘em. Fuck ‘em niggers, all of ‘em!”

I was worried that he was going to shoot Dave again, to finish him off. I could tell that Ritchie was thinking the same thing, because he was slowly edging away from Dave, and so I started to move aside. Then I realized that if we moved, we would be inviting Chuck to shoot Dave, wouldn’t we? I mean, it would be like an open invitation: here’s the target, finish him off!

So I sat where I was, and I watched Chuck’s shotgun, and I saw the spittle and tobacco juice flying from Chuck’s lips, and I wondered when in God’s name did he have time to put a dip in?

But before things could escalate any further, Chuck’s eyes widened. He spun away, listening intently to the phone.

“…naw. How’d ya know my name?”

He was angry, but I could tell it was forced anger. Beneath it was fear and insecurity.

“ Y’all watchin me with cameras?” he shouted to the phone. He glanced at the windows, then yelled to us, “ Pull down ‘em fuckin blinds. Get ‘em down, now!”

We moved immediately, but there was a lot of hesitation when we neared the windows. We were afraid that the snipers out there would think that one of us was the gunman, and maybe we would get shot by accident. That kind of stuff happens in situations like these, you know? Civilian casualties. Disastrous.

“ PULL ‘EM DOWN!” Chuck screamed, and we found our feet real fast.

While I was at the window, I tried to be as obvious as possible. I glanced out, and I could see the police parked one hundred yards away behind a bunch of barricades. There was a hell of a lot of them, and federal agents, too. I wasn’t sure if any of them were watching us with binoculars, but I tried to make hand signals, just in case. I held up one finger right in front of my chest, where Chuck couldn’t see. Then I made my hand into a gun and pretended to fire. I was hoping to tell them that there was only one shooter, or even that one person was wounded.

Like I said, I don’t know if anyone was even watching.

Two minutes later the room was dark, cut off from the afternoon sun. There were fluorescent lights on the ceiling, but Chuck had turned them off. As if we wanted to conceal ourselves now, after we’d shown the police exactly what room we were in.

Chuck was talking up a storm with his negotiator. The man must have been doing a great job, because Crazy Chuck had calmed down a bit.

“…an’ I want a helicopter to land in the parkin lot. It’s gonna pick us up, and there ain’t gonna be no godamn snipers, ya hear? I see a sniper, and I’ll kill ‘em. Don’t try your luck. An’ another thing—the guy flyin the chopper better be safe. No tricks. He goes where I tell him, or I’ll kill these fuckin kids, alright? An’ don’t think I won’t shoot ‘em, cuz I’ve killed a bunch of ‘em already. All over the fuckin’ school. Pam, bam, they all dead, ya hear? Ya fuckin’ hear me?”

I glanced at Sam, wondering if he had a plan. He was looking around at all of us, and he nodded cryptically at me. I had no goddamn clue why he did that—to give me reassurance? To allay my fears?

Holden was useless. He wouldn’t be a hero; I was certain of that. He was too smart and too careful to endanger his life. He wasn’t very reckless, that Holden. Neither were the two girls. They wouldn’t try anything unless we did it ourselves, and then they would follow. I don’t blame them, though, because I wanted to do the same.

I wondered if Ritchie had some sort of plan. He was a shrewd kid, Ritchie, and he read a lot of books. He had a lot of common sense and a lot of common knowledge. He was one of those kids who was always struggling to tread the fine line between wittiness and arrogance—it’s really a fine line. A person can try to be witty, quoting books and referencing historical figures, but if he does it too much, other people may start to think he’s arrogant. But that wasn’t not a huge problem for Ritchie, because he was a charming kid, and he could usually spin any situation in his favor.

And quite frankly, I didn’t give a shit if Ritchie was arrogant. Right then, I wanted to know if he had a plan.

“ What do you think?” he asked me, quietly.

“ We have to play it by ear,” I said. “ He’s got another gun on him, so don’t do something stupid if, you know, he stops to reload or something.”

“ Dave needs help,” said Regina.

No shit.

Holden spoke. “ Nothing we can do to help him now.”

“ We’ve got to think about getting out,” Sam said. “Then we can send back help to-”

There was a deafening explosion, and then Sam was gone, blown back against the wall. His pink polo shirt was flayed, gushing out blood, and his blue eyes were roaming wildly, and his mouth was opening and closing, and he was bleeding wildly as he slid down the wall. A bright red streak glistened on the wall, right down to where he landed. There was blood, a tremendous amount everywhere, just dumping out of him.

“ Think I’m not serious now, ya fuckin’ nigger?” Chuck screamed to the phone. “ I just killed one of ‘em, ya stupid kief! Ya don’t think I got guts, huh? Ya don’t believe me? I can kill any of ‘em.”

We were in shock. We were screaming like lunatics, I’m sure. But I couldn’t hear much. I could hear Regina’s voice, though, shrieking so loudly that I was going deaf, and I knew, I was absolutely certain, that Chuck would kill her. She had the most goddamn obnoxious screech, and even though the rest of us were screaming, her voice stuck out like a sore thumb.

I don’t know why I became obsessed with her screaming. All I know is that I didn’t want that shotgun to go off again, so I spun around and grabbed her and clamped my hand down really hard over her mouth. I kind of slapped her face. Her eyes got really wide, and her hands clawed at me, but I held on.

That may have saved her life. Chuck was busy shouting on the phone, but at least now he could hear his own voice, and he wouldn’t have to blow Regina’s head off.

It took us a long time to calm down. We kind of sat there in shock, listening to Crazy Chuck on the phone, with our eyes glued to Sam’s body.

He was dead. There was no mistaking it.

XXXXXXXXXXX

The rest of the story gets kind of blurry. Things went downhill fast after Sam died. I don’t know why it hit me so hard. I mean, I had already lost a lot of friends, like poor Dave. But there was something about seeing someone die in front of you, watching the spark of life fly out of them, that really shook me up. I wanted to cry. I couldn’t believe how much Sam was bleeding. Even though he was dead, his whole soul seemed to be pouring out onto the floor of that room.

And beside him, old Marshall Smith was dead.

And beside me, Dave was dying, so very quickly.

And Chuck Duffleman, Crazy Chuck, didn’t give a damn. Not a single passing care that he was playing God, that he was destroying lives, families, and worlds.

I was frustrated, furious and speechless, that someone so incredible dumb and ignorant, some redneck piece of shit out of the trailer park, some mentally unhinged jackass with a hunting license—this idiot was holding us all hostage. He was calling the shots. He wascontrolling our fate. He was ruling over the world like Caesar, and his word meant life or death.

Chuck Duffleman. I’m going to kill you, you rotten bastard.

I’m decided not to bullshit myself: I wasn’t a pacifist anymore.

“ Hey,” I whispered to Regina. “ You need to keep quiet, alright? Lower your voice, or you’re gonna annoy him.”

My hand was wet with her tears, but I felt it was safe enough to uncover her mouth. I could hear Amber’s muffled sobs and saw her face buried in Ritchie’s shoulder. He had the right idea, keeping her quiet like that. Our survival depended on how unobtrusive we could be.

Chuck had hung up the phone, and he was doing laps around the room like a nervous dog. The negotiator must have refused his request for a helicopter, because Chucky looked angry. He looked like that psychotic horror doll, the thing from Child’s Play, with his flaming red hair and freckled face and raving lunatic eyes.

Since our spokesman, our leader, had been shot in cold blood, none of us had the courage to talk to Chuck. None of us knew Chuck personally—that was a good thing. We were trying to hide in the anonymity of our relationship with him. I mean, he had no good reason to single any of us out, so it improved our odds of survival if he picked random targets. One in five. Twenty percent. Right?

“ Shit.”

I said it aloud, because it was running through my head in huge, bold letters. A thought had just crossed my mind: Holden and I were both funny looking, in a bad way. Holden had a very dark complexion and sunken eyes; his facial features were gaunt. At best he looked Jewish, which was his family’s religion, even though he was an atheist himself. At worst he looked Middle Eastern—he’d heard the slurs a few times before. He was dark enough to pass off for Pakistani or something, I suppose.

And what about me? I’m Romanian, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was my big nose. I looked Jewish. I’d heard it before from some dumbass at a high school assembly—he asked me some stupid question about Hanukkah, and I gave him the a scathing response, ending with “ at least that’s what the priest from my church told me.”

So Holden and I looked like minorities. Would that make Chuck want to shoot us? What happened the next time the crazy bastard lost his head? Surely he wasn’t gonna waste away either of the girls—not that they were gorgeous, but they were pretty, and weak enough to control. And he wouldn’t shoot the blond-haired, blue-eyed Ritchie. Hell, I wouldn’t shoot Ritchie when I could kill off an ugly bastard like myself.

“ What?” Holden whispered.

“ What’s up?” Ritchie raised an eyebrow.

I shook my head. “ Nothing, man. Just…” I glanced at Sam. “ Well, nothing.”

Chuck was on the phone, again, with the negotiator. The man must have been asking questions about the shooting. I could nearly hear his voice over the phone, asking if anyone had gotten hurt; who was it?

“ Yeah, I don’t know.” Chuck was trying to sound menacing. He looked at Sam’s body, then at us, then away. “ I don’t know his goddamn name. I warned you. I fuckin warned you, didn’t I? Didn’t I? Didn’t I say not to test me? You git me that fuckin helicopter, and I’ll let the rest go. Ain’t no one gotta end up like this dead fuck unless they have to.”

Regina had stopped crying. That was good. I gave her shoulder a little squeeze. Then Holden said, in a very low voice, that the SWAT would be in the building now. Once a hostage had been killed, the cavalry always came rushing in.

Too bad he said it aloud, because Chuck overheard him, and the kid went batshit crazy with fear.

That got on my nerves like I couldn’t imagine. Crazy Chuck was worried about his life, because he knew that he was past the point of no return. He had murdered enough people that the police would shoot him on sight. He was scared to die, yet here he was, killing off the rest of us. And we were innocent.

“ We’re movin’ out of here,” Chuck said. “ Get to the door.”

“ Where are we going?” Amber asked.

The question surprised me. I didn’t expect her to be so bold.

“ We’re trapped like fuckin rats,” Chuck said. “ Get over here, we’re leaving.”

We filed past him, pausing at the door. He held up the shotgun, like a madman farmer herding his flock of sheep to the slaughter. The hallway could be filled with SWAT, and Chuck would use us like a shield, and the crossfire would annihilate us.

Holden was the first one out. His eyes swept both directions very subtly. Then he stepped aside for the rest of us.

“ Left,” Chuck muttered, his sweaty fear coating the back of my neck. “ Get to the fuckin library.”

Brilliant. If there was one ideal place in this school for a gunman to hold hostages, it was the library. It was smack in the center of the school, away from all the outside windows and snipers, with only one entrance, and plenty of bookshelves for cover if things got hot. It had two square courtyards on either side, but both were completely encompassed by the building.

I realized that a police sniper could still get a shot, real easily. All he had to do was fire from one of the classroom windows directly across from the library—there was nothing but two layers of windows to stop his bullet from its mark.

Maybe they’d try it.

So we were on the move, rustling through the eerie silence of the halls. There were two bodies down at the far bend, but we couldn’t see who they were, and we were had to veer to the right to reach the library.

We were walking down the central hall of the school now, flanked by huge windows that looked out into the brick courtyard and in to the library. At the extreme end of the corridor—probably a hundred twenty yards away—was one of the entrances to the school. Outside was a flurry of activity and flashing lights.

Was the SWAT team really inside?

Chuck had taken the lead, now that it was safe. He was shoulder to shoulder with Holden and me, but his back was mostly turned to the rest of the group.

I felt a hand on my shirt, pulling gently backwards. I didn’t make a sound, because I knew that it was Ritchie, telling me that they were going to try and slip out now, with Chuck’s backside facing them and all. Ritchie had a lot of balls to make a move like that, but I didn’t blame him. Now was the ideal time to run.

My own chances were slim to none. Any smooth retreat would be noticed immediately by Chuck.

So I cupped my right hand, and keeping it hidden beside my leg, I waved my four fingers backwards, telling them to beat it. I didn’t dare take a look back to see, though. Nothing to draw Chuck’s attention away from the library door, from the safety of our new home.

Luck would require about ten seconds for them to fall back, quietly, and slip out around the corner and make a dash for the doors. If Chuck noticed them any sooner, they might still make it around the corner, but they’d never reach the exits at the far end of the hall without being ripped apart by the shotgun.

All this visualization of the escape was running through my head at hyper-speed, in virtual microseconds, and then I heard Chuck say:

“ Alright, y’all get the hell inside and lay on the-”

My heart was thundering, choking me, and I felt nauseous from the adrenalin surge in my gut. A raw, carnal fear clawed at my chest, even before I heard the rest from Chuck, even before I knew that it was all over.

“ What the fuck-”

Followed by the roar of the shotgun, and me screaming, and me spinning around, and watching as Amber’s body hit the floor, right before the corner, right before she could reach safety, and no sign of Ritchie or Regina, and then I was running, and the shotgun was empty or something because I heard a loud click, and then I was at the edge of the corridor, and I think Holden was flying close behind me, and there was the loud, ugly thunder and lightning of a handgun, and Crazy Chucky was screaming at us, absolutely ballistic bat-shit crazy, and something hot brushed my calf, and I was tearing around the corner, running at high speed towards the far door, and I couldn’t hear Holden anymore, and Chucky was coming fast, way too fast, and I would never reach the exit because he had chosen to follow me, goddamnit, so I dove into an open classroom.

Holden’s been shot, I knew, and I didn’t think any more about it, because Chuck was coming straight at the door, and I had to jump him before I lost my nerve. I didn’t even think about the fact that I was his last hostage, and that he would need me for negotiating with the police. I only knew that I had to get the jump on him.

Where the hell are the police?

That was my last thought, my last jolt of rage and terror, before Chuck came running inside the room.

I was on the front side of the entrance, close to the blackboard, so I should have surprised him. But I moved much too soon. He had slowed down in the doorway, just long enough to take in his surroundings, and at that point I had chosen to reveal myself.

His pistol fired, straight at my gut, and I somehow tried to brace myself by lifting my knee and holding out my hands, as if I was blocking a kick. I didn’t feel anything, but I hesitated for a half second, to see if he’d shoot again. He was hesitating too, waiting to see if I had been hit, so I threw myself into him. I punched him once, real hard across the jaw, and then my nose smashed into his face, and blinding pain flooded my vision.

I could hardly see straight, but I was grunting and wrestling for the gun. The piece was firing in every direction, and one of the bullets must have hit Chuck in the leg or something because he screamed, “ Fuckin NIGGER!” at the top of his lungs.

The only thing I felt was fear. It wasn’t like a movie or a bestseller, where the main character is either consumed by rage or numbed beyond feeling. Numb? Hell, I’d been choking on adrenaline the past five minutes. I’d never felt so alive, so vulnerable, as I did at that moment, locked in a fight with Chuck, anticipating the pain of getting shot with each ear-splitting report.

Then it happened, and I was hit somewhere in the midriff, and the gun was empty. I let go of Chuck and tethered back into the room, groping myself desperately and gazing with horror at my bloodied hands.

No, no, no.

I didn’t feel any pain. None at all. But a shot to the stomach was mortal, I knew.

“ I’ll kill you!” Chuck cried out. He was lumbering to his feet, and his camouflage pants were soaked with blood. From his boot he was struggling to loosen the biggest goddamn hunting knife I’d ever seen.

“ Fuck you!” I was sobbing. I was going to die, and I knew that I hadn’t been religious the past few years. I wish I had been, because I was scared now of dying, and all those glamorous martyrdom fantasies that teenagers have—all the bullshit about dying to defend your friends or your cause—seemed so childish and naïve to me. Life was the greatest cause, and no one was stupid enough to want to die for anything.

“ Oh God, I’m sorry Sam.” My voice was cracking. “ I’m sorry Holden. Dave. God, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mom, Dad…”

That just about killed me right there—thinking of my mom and dad, their anguished faces hovering over my coffin, at my funeral. I couldn’t deal with it.

Chuck was oblivious to everything. He had that knife, and a look of murderous rage in his eyes, and he was staggering right at me. I didn’t even think about fighting him, not about any of those maneuvers I had learned in twelve years of karate. I didn’t think about it, because I had been hit by a bullet, and I was dying already.

His shadow fell on me, and my hand moved on its own accord to grab his arm—it was my body’s instinct for survival—and he was pushing the blade right toward my heart. He was strong, with all that weight bearing down on me, and that tobacco spittle dripping down on my face from his leering lips. Strangled cries of terror burst from my mouth, like little yippee shrieks, but I didn’t feel ashamed. The only people who can die stoically, wordlessly, are those people who are ready to die. And I wasn’t one of them.

The knife cut into me, and I felt the sharp prick, and vile and vomit rose to the back of my throat. I pushed out the point, but then I angled it awkwardly downwards, and it sheared through my chest and buried itself to the hilt in my thigh.

This time I screamed.

I screamed like a maniac.

And when Chuck tore out the blade like a knife in jelly, my voice disappeared entirely. I couldn’t see straight, but I was sure that he was going to cut my throat.

“ You don’t understand,” he rasped. “ You…you,” he was crying too, but he was committed to the act, and it had to be done.

I felt the pressure against my throat, and knew that he was gonna do it soon, before he lost the nerve. My hands were shoving him away, but he was like granite stone, and I couldn’t move him one inch.

“ Let me…” I begged. I had no air to breathe. I was crying so hard. “ Let me live!”

“ No,” he said. “ No, no, no, no.”

Then there was pressure on my throat, and a hailstorm of gunfire. I could feel the impact of every bullet in the blade; it quivered and stroked the edges of my jugular like a bow on a living violin. I heard a gasp escape his lip, amplified by the hollow thud of the bullets on his back, and the ricochet of shots on the metal ledges of the room. I felt the spray of blood down my cheek, and tasted its saltiness on my tongue. I felt the knife fall away from my throat, and his dead weight come crashing down on me.

Voices were approaching—loud, furious shouting. Hands were prying Chuck’s body off me, and a man was screaming, “ Are you alright, kid?”

I nodded. My leg hurt like hell. I wasn’t overwhelmed by the fact that I was alive—that was a minor emotion compared to the agony in my thigh. The pain was unbelievable.

“ We’ll get you a medic, son. Hang tight.”

XXXXXXXXXXXX

That’s about all I remember, to be honest. There was a guy who looked like SWAT to me, but he introduced himself as the medic and gave me a shot of morphine or something, which numbed me up nicely. Then they sedated me again and strapped me to a stretcher and hauled me outside to an ambulance.

I fell asleep on the way to the hospital. When I woke up, twenty hours later, a woman-doctor told me that they had just finished stitching up my leg, and I would be able to walk and everything, but I might have a limp for a while, and I would need physical therapy. The bullet to my stomach wasn’t as mortal as I had thought, either—it only grazed my hip bone.

I asked about my friends, and she told me that Dave and Sam hadn’t made it. Dave had still been alive, miraculously, when the medics got to him, but he died on the stretcher coming out of the school. Sam, on the other hand, had been killed nearly instantly, when a few shotgun fragments had destroyed his aorta.

Ritchie and Regina were unscathed and currently with Amber, who was in the same hospital and being treated for minor wounds from the shotgun. The most serious issue was one of her kidneys, but the damage was reparable. Ritchie and Regina had wanted to come see me, but the doctors wouldn’t let them. The police wanted to interview them first, to get their stories. And I needed rest.
“ What about Holden?” I asked.

The doctor hesitated, just for a moment. Then she tried to deliver the news as coldly and professionally as she had done for Dave and Sam.

“ Holden’s in critical condition. He was shot three times in the back. One of the bullets shattered his spine. He also suffered serious damage to his liver and his kidneys.”

“ Can you help him?”

She frowned. “ His heart stopped on the way to the hospital. So did his breathing. He’s living on a machine now.”

“ So, what, he’s in a coma?” I asked.

She nodded. “ I’m sorry. His body is shutting down. He won’t make it.”

That upset me, more than you would ever believe. You don’t realize how close you are to someone, even a kid who you thought you hated, until you hear that they’re dying. It’s the worst feeling in the world. The absence would be felt immediately—I’d miss his sarcasm, our witty little exchanges, our mocking of school, our weekends hanging out. All that stuff.

Kind of hard to forget about it when suddenly it’s all you have to remember a person by.

XXXXXX

Holden didn’t believe in God, or heaven. His parents gave him a beautiful funeral despite all that. I was there, just like I was at Dave’s funeral, and Sam’s funeral. So were Ritchie and Regina and Amber. So was the whole town. It was heartbreaking enough to watch those coffins go down into the ground, to know who was inside, who that person had been before the spark of life had abandoned them. Makes a kid think a lot about his own mortality.

We’re vulnerable, aren’t we? We’re as fragile as glass. It doesn’t take much to shatter us, and then it’s all over. You can’t glue broken glass back together.

But that’s life, isn’t it? It’s as precious as glass.