AN: Sorry for taking so long to update. This chapter’s short. Sorry about that too. I think next one will be a lot longer. Introducing some characters. :)

Chapter Three

lost;

When the police make it inside, the thunder stops and the screams trickle down to whimpers. Beneath tables and behind desks, they find students unfolding, bears crawling out of hibernation to find their forest timbered – caterpillars bursting from cocoons to discover they have crippled wings. They’re wide-eyed and afraid, babies being forced from the warmth of the womb.

They’re shivering as they stand on fragile legs and cling to themselves or one another. Those who heard the glass bream but were facing the other way just cowered. Those already looking to the door – like Jonah – couldn’t look away when bullets burrowed into the skin of those closest to the door. He closes his eyes and he sees it. He opens them and he sees the police blocking the way but they’re still there beside the door.

The police instruct everyone to not look down. Don’t look around. Just stare straight at them even as they help scared students crawl from the window to leave behind the bodies of the people they’ve seen every single day all year.

Jonah swallows hard to keep down his ritualistic rice cake breakfast as Leah clings to him, refusing to let go of him long enough to crawl through the window. He runs a hand up and down her back and tells her she’s okay even if he’s not sure if it’s the truth while their classmates filter past and a police man tries to coax her away.

With his fingers tangled in her hair, Jonah leans forward to whisper, “Do you remember when we were little and mom and dad would take us to the beach? And we’d hold hands when big waves came, but sometimes the water tore us apart?” She nods against him, a sob fluttering in her throat. “But then we’d come back up and I’d still be there, and you’d still be there, and then we’d get up and hold hands again? This is what this is. We’re going to let go for a little bit but I’ll still be here and we can hold hands again.”

The men around them in their deep bruise uniforms stand back and wait and watch till Leah slowly lets go and backs up to the window.

“I’m going to help you out the window now,” one of the cops says, a gentle warning. Jonah holds his breath till Leah nods and lets the man touch her arm and eases her out the window.

When it’s his turn and Leah’s pacing beneath him, Jonah swings his legs out the window, and over the shoulder of the policeman in front of him, he sees the spatters of red before he sinks to the ground and the spray disappears. As Leah’s arms, soft and warm close around the brittle sticks of his body, he’s thankful for the support, his legs trembling and wobbling like he’s trying to find his sea legs.

“I want to go home,” Leah whispers frantically as they’re herded across the lawn where buses are waiting. Directions are being shouted above their heads. Names are called out, people shouting for their friends. Reporters are camped out, rigidly standing in front of wide-eyed cameras while they recite familiar words like “Columbine” and “Virginia Tech,” places and years far enough away that it never seemed possible here and now. “Please, Jonah. I don’t want to go on those buses. I just want to go home. Can we?”

It’s the last place Jonah wants to be at the time where it’s quiet and still like the middle of an exam. Like the space right before gunshots. He starts to shiver in Adrian’s sweatshirt and the sharp pangs of panic jolt through him. Adrian. While his eyes search the sea of people shoving past them for tree-tall Adrian, Leah pulls him to the side.

It seems like they should be caught, and Jonah hopes that they are, but no one notices the twins with their hands linked – Leah hidden by her hair covering her face and Jonah thin enough to disappear.

“You drive,” Jonah orders at their car, shoving their set of keys into Leah’s hands. The keys jangle together between them with the shuddering of their hands and Jonah tries to sill his by pulling the collar of Adrian’s shirt up over his nose, hands staying buried beneath the hood as he breathes in, desperately swallowing down Adrian’s smell.

He folds himself up in the backseat while Leah starts the car and creeps away from the school. There’s the sound of sirens surrounding them and Jonah’s eyes stay wide open and staring at the close-up weave of his jeans. He doesn’t look up, doesn’t look out the window, doesn’t shut his eyes because he knows he’ll see it all again – the delicate glinting and shining of broken glass and spilled blood.

By the time they get home, the rattling of his bones has stopped, and he allows himself to blink while he crawls out of the backseat and rubs dry eyes. He looks to Leah, but her back is to him, shoulders sagging and spine curved.

“I’m going for a walk,” he says and she jumps, stopping mid-step to nod once.

“Be careful,” she says so softly it’s just a breath and he nods and turns away.

He puts himself on autopilot, not caring where he’s going or where he’ll end up. A ghost, he floats through the city, wincing at the loud sounds of honking horns and dogs barking, each one sounding like guns going off for a split second. But he doesn’t go back home and he doesn’t stop walking. He just wants to get lost.

--

The phone’s ringing as she steps inside, as shrill as screams and sirens. Leah ignores it and makes a sandwich with shivering hands, needing to do something normal, needing to fill the gaps inside her. If she stops to think for a moment, everything will rush back at her as fast as bullets, so she puts up a shield. If she does this, she doesn’t have to think or feel or remember.

The phone stops ringing and the answering machine picks up, her mother’s voice calm and business-like asking for a message and then frenzied and upset giving a message in return.

“Leah? Jonah? I saw on the news… Oh, God. Oh, God… Why aren’t you answering your cell phones? Are you… Are you all right? Please just call me back. I’m going to try to get out of work as early as I can. Just please call back.”

The message ends and Leah can’t stop her eyes from rolling as she fills herself with calmness – another carefully made sandwich. She picks apart everything wrong with that message because she never forgave her mother for never forgiving her. The fear in her voice almost sounds fake. She doesn’t call her mother back.

When her cell phone rings, she reaches into her pocket to turn it off, but a worry she wasn’t aware she had scatters. “Ruby” reads across the screen.

“Hello?” she greets and Ruby lets out a long, deep breath.

“Christ, Leah, I’ve been calling you like non-stop. Where are you?”

“Home.”

“Okay… Well, so you’re okay? Because I talked to Tiffany who was in our gym class last year? And she talked to Jenna who had been in Biology and she said that the chemistry room was… That he went to the chemistry room. Are you and Jonah okay?”

Leah sets down her sandwich and presses a hand to her belly, thinking of Jonah’s hollow cheeks and the gravity pulling down the corners of their lips. She thinks of the way that they hardly talk anymore and of the way her parents disappear to work where it’s safe from thinking and remembering – the way her mother calls and says she’ll try to get home early to make sure her kids are alive.

“Yeah,” she finally says and her voice cracks. “We’re okay.”

“Good. Have you talked to David yet?”

The urge to talk to him never came up. She pictures her boyfriend lying somewhere face down in a pool of thick blood. The urge to talk to him still doesn’t arise, buried beneath a layer of food in her stomach. Being eaten away by acid. She holds tighter to her belly.

“No. I might call him later or something.” She knows that she won’t.

“Are you sure you’re okay? You sound really…far away or something.”

Leah’s lips are dry as she bites into the bottom one. “I think I just need to go lie down or something.”

There’s sympathy woven into Ruby’s voice when she talks again, burying the gossip that hung there before. “Yeah. Yeah, you really should. Listen, if you need anything, call me. Okay? Just try to take it easy and get some rest.”

They say empty good-byes and Leah hangs up, pressing in the red button of her phone till the screen goes black and dead in her hands. She flips it over and presses at the back panel till it slides up and reveals the battery that falls into her hand a moment later. With it still in her hand, she wanders into the living room and shoves the battery beneath the cushions of the couch, desperately trying to get it lost and wishing she could crawl in and get lost with it.

End chapter.

I really don’t know how realistic this all is. I should’ve done more research. I’m very bad when it comes to doing research. Because I just…don’t really do it.

Anywho. Sorry for the wait, once again, and thanks to the few of you who are willing to read this and review. :)