I'd reached this place where I didn't give a shit. Not like I used to. Trying to fit in, have friends, a girlfriend, fuck that. Screw them. They made a fool of me. I could feel the paint and the feathers drying and I thought of that final scene in "Carrie," and I wished for powers like that. Powers to lock the doors and start the fires and then everyone would burn with what they did to me. They'd all burn.
And it all faded, it was all background noise. The points and the laughs, the mean and vindictive faces in the halls, outside by the tables, on the stairs. They were all fading to insignificance. It was clear to me that I would never fit in, could never fit in. It was clear to me what I'd have to do.
They wanted to take me down. Well, they'd see. They'd see who'd go down. I'd take them all with me. Every last one of them.
Do you know this silence that is almost pristine? Like snow? Like the first light on a clear morning? Silence that is deafening, silence that is so loud you can almost see it? It was like that when I went home. Everything was taking on the tones of sepia, of something viewed through a stained glass window. I walked and I could hear things breathing around me. The edges of things had a yellow taint. It was the paint on my glasses.
I got my father's gun, it was in a wooden box in his desk in his study. I lifted it out of the box and felt the weight of it, felt its rightness in my hand. I would do what had to be done. I couldn't live like this anymore. I had to blow it all away.
Inside the school, everyone laughing. Laughing at me. I'd show them. I'd show them what it was like not to belong. I'd teach them to laugh. How would they like to try and fit in with a gaping hole in their head? A femur blown away? Brains splattered all over their stupid lockers? How would they like that? When I was done they'd never laugh again.
I walked into the study hall and saw Paige. Paige hated me because of Terry. I loved Terry. What happened to her was an accident. Paige couldn't see that. No. Not perfect popular Paige. It was her and everyone like her that had been fucking things up for me my whole life. If people would just give me a chance, like they do with everyone else, if people weren't such eager little sheep ready to follow people like Paige wherever they were lead then maybe I would have had a chance. I started to raise the gun under my coat with a shaking hand, ready to blow her into oblivion. Then she put her head down and looked at me with her blue/green eyes and then she started to speak.
"That wasn't fair," she was saying, "they shouldn't have done that to you," she said, and I blinked at her. I lowered the gun she couldn't see. Maybe I was wrong about her. Maybe she did understand that things weren't fair for me, that no one was willing to understand, to be nice, all they wanted to do was mock me and make me miserable and beat me up and throw me into dumpsters and humiliate me.
"I'm, I'm sorry about what happened to Terry," I said, the words stuck to the roof of my mouth. She nodded and went back to her little pack of friends, snarling dogs. I walked out of the study hall and felt shaky. Maybe this wasn't what I should do. I mean, if someone like Paige could see my side, then maybe there was hope. Maybe there was just a little glimmer, a tiny ray. I could go home, put the gun back in the box, take a few days off, regroup. Things could be okay.
I went to the bathroom, cleaned my face, the water cool and soothing. Maybe things could be okay. I went into a stall, trying to breathe. I held my breath when I heard the door bang open and I heard the voices. Jay and Spinner. I hated them. They, they were so vile. So contemptuous. First of all, they were stupid. Second, they derived such joy from torturing me.
"Can you believe it? Jimmy masterminded the whole thing," Jay said.
"Uh, yeah," Spinner said, and then Jay spoke again.
"I mean, we needed a man on the inside or it never would have worked. He threw those easy sports questions so Rick would be up there in the lightening round. It was genius,"
"Yeah, genius. Jimmy's awesome," Spinner said, and I heard them laugh and troop out, I heard the bang of the door against the wall.
Darkness. Do you know this darkness? It is the complete darkness when you think that maybe things could be okay and then you wake up and realize that they will never be okay. It is because of people like Jay and Spinner and especially Jimmy. People pretend to be your friend only to screw you over just so it will hurt more. Twisting the knife. Et tu, Jimmy?
My mind was blank. Or just buzzing, not thought but a buzzing like bees. Fuck them. Screw them. They'd hurt like I hurt. They'd see just how far you can push a man. They'd regret every shove into lockers and every punch and every time they threw me into the dumpster and every mean look and unkind word. They'd regret it all.
There was Jimmy by his locker, and he arranged his face into the lying fake friend he was. Lies came out of his mouth, I couldn't even listen. I stood there perfectly still and I raised the gun and in slow motion he turned from me and started to run. It was syrupy slow motion, time had stretched, like those people on T.V. who are running at half the speed and the word comes out of their mouth thick and grotesque, "Hhhhhhellllllllooooooooooooo,"
The sound of the gun speeded up time again, and Jimmy went down like a sack in the hallway, and the blood began to spread, and I turned away and walked down another hall. There were a lot more of them to teach a lesson to.
Down another hallway I saw Emma and Toby. I didn't know where I was in the school. I'd lost all sense of direction. Those two, though, they had pretended to be my friends when all along they were planning it with Jimmy. They wanted to humiliate me more than Jay had, more than Spinner had, more than Paige and Alex. They were worse, the two faced liars. They had to pay. I raised my gun at them. Then I saw Sean.
I had no particular feeling toward Sean. I couldn't remember him ever doing anything to me but that was probably because he just never got the chance. He would. In time they all would. He tried to talk me down, and for a second everything trembled in the air. I could see the ions moving. What he said, was saying, it almost made sense. He said it wasn't too late, but he didn't know about Jimmy lying dead in the hallway. He didn't know about the blood that followed me.
"Give me the gun," he said, his eyes pleading. It was lying again. He was only pretending to be my friend. I pointed it at him.
"I already shot someone," I told him, and prepared to pull the trigger. He leapt at me, grabbed my arm with the gun so it pointed straight up at the ceiling. He squeezed my wrist so hard I dropped the gun and it fell to the floor, all that weight of it. All the power powerless. He kicked it away and it scattered down the hallway, and I could hear Toby and Emma crying as it went past them.
"Take it!" he shouted at them, "get it out of here!"
One of them picked it up and carried it away, and I felt myself gripped in a headlock, unable to get away. I struggled, pushing against him but it was useless.
"Don't even try it," he whispered to me, and I was tempted to just be still. What did it matter?
"Call the police, 911, get an ambulance," he told Emma and Toby, who were whimpering like puppies. They listened to him, trotting off to call the authorities.
I wanted to get away from him, but the headlock wasn't just your average one. It was some wrestling move. He was strong, and every time I struggled he countered it, every time I twisted he pulled so I went nowhere, and finally I did stop. I just stayed in his grip and I felt like he wasn't so much upset with me or what I had done, he was just the one to stop it. Like it was a play, he was playing the hero and I was the villain. We stayed there, alone, the hallway filled with the light of late afternoon. There were distant screams and pounding feet and shouts of direction, gruff voices of police and EMT's. But we were alone.
Then it was shattered. I saw the police boots, black and leather and sturdy, like this person could trample through jungles, through the Andes, through cities like Los Angeles and New York.
"Okay," a gruff voice said, and Sean's grip tightened, "we've got him,"
I didn't want to leave Sean, I felt absurdly safe with him. But Sean was moving away and these police that surrounded me were shouting directions but I couldn't follow. Nothing was getting through the roar in my head.
"Get on the ground, now!" It was a shout and it got through. I didn't think it was the first time he had said it. I started to lower myself to the ground but then I was shoved and fell flat on the floor, the smooth polished surface of the hallway. My arms were wrenched behind my back and handcuffed tightly, already I could feel the ache in my shoulders. Then I was pulled to my feet and brought outside, a police officer on either side of me. Outside, things looked almost ordinary, except for the ambulance that was racing away. Things looked calm, except for the cars that were trying to pour down the street. But they hadn't let the other kids leave the school yet, and I could see their worried faces in the windows, I could feel their fingers pointing at me.