I walked around the corner, down the hall, all the lockers, and I wasn't paying particular attention. I shouldn't have even been in school that day, I was still sick, my head felt like a helium balloon, my ears were plugged up, my nose was stuffy, I was hot, I just wanted to sleep. But Joey was pissing me off. I'd rather be here, falling asleep in class and not eating lunch and feeling my stomach twist with the nausea, I'd rather do that than be home.
Joey was so infuriating. The business was failing, bills were piling up, so he was bailing. He was gonna sell the house. Whatever. But he could at least get a good price for it, he could at least try. But he wouldn't. He wouldn't try and he wouldn't listen and when I tried to help, tried to get Sydney involved because she could help, he bites my head off. So fine. I'd just go to school and try to forget it all.
So I was in a daze, and I should have taken Tylenol because I had this fever and I felt wilted. I leaned against a cool locker and tried to feel better. I wanted to curl up on the cool floor, the dusty floor. So sick. I didn't get sick that often, really, but when I did it was serious. It was days and days of fever and puking and my head feeling like a balloon, like it could just float away.
I turned the corner and if I had been feeling better I might have been more aware. I might have noticed people running, the panicked look on their faces. I might have heard the panic, sensed it somehow. But I didn't. I wasn't paying attention. Part of it comes from thinking that nothing bad could happen here. This was school. School had always been safe. Not everywhere had always been safe for me, but school always had been. There was order in school. There were checks and balances. There weren't angry fathers with the leather belt wrapped up in one fist. There weren't dying mothers, their skin as white and delicate as paper. None of the bad things had ever followed me here, so I just didn't expect it.
I turned the corner and I couldn't believe my eyes. That strange feeling had never happened before. The visual information was registering, it was coming through my optic nerves and into my brain, but I didn't believe it. Jimmy was on his knees, this look on his face, a combination of pain and horror and disbelief all his own, and then he fell, and then I saw the blood spreading from his back to the floor, this spreading pool of dark red blood.
Blood looks strange in large amounts. I was used to seeing the blood from scraped knees and elbows, the blood from bloody noses, the occasional head laceration, but not blood like this. Not blood that would spread in a pool. I just stared down at him, sure that he was dead, and I knew that he had been shot. Shot by who? I couldn't think of who it might be, but I knew about Columbine. A school shooting. But that had seemed like one of those American things, it was so violent there. Gangs and guns and red necks and bullied kids and office shootings. Most of that happened in the United States and I just expected it to stay there.
I heard people running, and wherever the shooter or shooters had gone, I didn't see them. In this moment they didn't matter, although I guess they could have shot me just as easily. I gasped, I was making sounds but they weren't words. I couldn't seem to make words, all I could do was suck in air and spit it out in harsh breaths. I put my school bag down and stared at him, afraid to go to him, afraid he was dying, afraid of making things worse. Finally a word escaped my frozen vocal chords.
"J-Jimmy," I said, the stutter coming back. I licked my lips and thought crazily about the stuttering thing. I stuttered. It was pretty well under control now, ever since my dad died, really. But if I got upset enough it would come back. I could remember my dad standing over me, that look in his eyes, and I had screwed up somehow. He'd stand over me with that belt or his fist and I'd stutter out an apology, an apology that never worked. I could still here it, my voice caught in a groove, a record sticking, 'D-dad, I'm suh-s-sorry, p-please, dad…'
I didn't move, my book bag laying at my feet, my eyes wide, my mouth an O. Jimmy. Oh my god. Was he dead? Dying? He was breathing, I could see that. I didn't know what to do, and I thought of all the things I didn't know. A nurse or a doctor would have shot into action, their training taking over. My dad would have known what to do. He would have been able to prevent important arteries from spilling all of their blood onto the hallway floor, mixing with the dust. My dad could have saved him. All I could do was stand there like an idiot, stand and stare.
I was still just staring at him, listening as his breathing changed to a kind of gurgling raggedness. Police swept into the hall, dressed in these full out swat team suits, guns drawn back, and behind them ambulance workers ran toward Jimmy, plastic IV bags filled with fluids in their hands, and they started to work on him. I stood and stared until someone noticed me, not the ambulance people. They were totally focused on Jimmy. It was one of the swat team guys who noticed me. He had a square jaw and small eyes, a crew cut. He looked like he was in his mid to late twenties.
"Hey, kid," he said, and I jerked my gaze toward him.
"Are you hurt?" he said, and I didn't think so. No. I was fine. Sick, but fine. I shook my head no, that I was okay. He came toward me and I flinched away. This had become surreal. Danger was around me again. I closed my eyes and felt like I did hiding in my closet while my parents fought. I was squeezing my eyes shut listening to the screams and the bangs.
"C'mon," he said, taking me by the arm and steering me toward the door. I walked by Jimmy, and I saw that he was hooked up to an IV and that he had a plastic mask over his nose and mouth, and his eyes were shut. He was still breathing, but for how long now? He could die. People died all the time. My mother died. My father died. It made sense that my friends could die. There was no reason why not.
"Go on," he said, lightly shoving me toward the front doors. I walked slowly toward the doors, the sunshine bright just outside of them. Beyond the shell shocked teachers I saw Joey, his bald head gleaming in the sunshine, and he was craning his neck to see into the school, he was struggling against one of the male teachers, telling him that his kid was in there. I felt oddly touched. His kid. My parents were dead. It was nice that I could still be somebody's kid.
"Craig!" he yelled, seeing me, and I walked past the teachers toward Joey. He threw himself into me, squeezing me in a huge bear hug. I felt crushed, like I couldn't breathe.
"Are you okay?" he said, and were there tears in his eyes? He was running his hand lightly over my arms and chest and stomach to be sure there were no bullet holes.
"Yeah, but Jimmy…" I started to say, and he was hugging me again, a little more certain that I had been spared. I pulled away from his hug this time, trying to tell him about Jimmy.
"Jimmy's been shot," I said, and I saw a funny kind of concern in his eyes. He was concerned, yes, but in the way you might be over a soap opera character. It was concern that didn't cost you anything. He only really cared about one kid at this school, I saw in his eyes. That kid was me.