Okay, I'm so sorry about that cliffhanger. I know it was killing y'all, and I would feel the same if I wasn't the one writing this story. I tried to get this chapter out as soon as possible, so here it is. Enjoy. Luv, Giz.
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Chpt. 10: Black Wednesday
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"Listen to the sound of my head pounding, wish that it was make believe…" - Saving Jane, "Happy"
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What was that noise? Was that a gun?
Where am I? Where'd Maya go?
Why is everything so dark? What the heck is going on?
Wait- are those sirens? I wonder what happened…
I hope no one's hurt…
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Rob heard the gunshot all the way from his dorm room. He had stayed in bed one more day to see if his symptoms were on their way to clearing up, but he had promised Kori he would go see the school nurse if it lasted another full twenty-four hours. Now, as he sat propped up in the twin bed, he wished it was a promise he had made earlier.
At the sound of a gun, he literally bolted up in bed, all the covers thrown aside. It wasn't a noise he oftentimes heard at school, but he knew enough to tell it wasn't a good sign. Somebody had been shot at. Maybe somebody had even been shot. Exciting, yes, but not good in any way.
Rob groped around under his bed for his cell phone. If that really had been a gun, then the whole school would be filled with complete pandemonium, and no one would hear a cell phone go off. Now, who to call?
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"Okay, this section isn't in your notes, so I'll be passing out a packet. Do not lose it. I don't have any cop – BAM!"
That was how it happened in Mrs. Casper's second period Geometry class. It had been almost five minutes, but the whole thing rang clear in Gar's head. A gun had been fired somewhere, and the school had gone into lock-down mode. Now, as Gar huddled next to Terra under their desks in this silent, dark classroom, he feared not for his life, but for another.
Raven's still in the hallway, he had said to Terra, and later to Mrs. Casper, who wouldn't let anyone leave to make sure their two missing classmates were alright. He had protested, but his teacher wouldn't budge. They were in here for good until there was a sign that it was alright to get up and move around.
"She's fine," Terra was insisting now in a near-silent whisper from where she kneeled to Gar's left. She reached out her hand and took Gar's in her own, but Gar's face stayed adamant and unmoving.
Then, Terra's cell phone rang.
The sudden Star Wars interlude was a nice break from the state of worry and confusion, but the bursts of laughter and sighs of relief were soon silenced by Mrs. Casper.
"Terra," the woman said out loud from where she was crouched under one of the empty desks up front, "contrary to popular belief, cell phone rules still apply under emergency circumstances."
"M'am," Terra responded quietly after checking the Caller ID. It was Rob. "It's one of my friends. He had to stay in his dorm today because he's sick. He's just calling to make sure we're all-"
"Call him back when we get the 'okay' from whoever's out there handling this, alright?" Mrs. Casper's eyes showed some emotion Terra and Gar had never seen in the face of a teacher. It was fear. Pure, unbridled fear. A student, possibly a student of hers, had pulled a gun on another. What teacher wouldn't be afraid at a time like this?
The "okay" they were waiting for came about three minutes later. Somewhere in those minutes, they had heard sirens pulling up in front of the building, and policemen were shouting somewhere in the building. Gar couldn't make out what they were saying. He was concentrating too hard on the matter at hand; he had to get out of here.
As soon as the door opened up and a policeman walked in, the class broke loose, and Gar made his escape, followed closely by Terra, who was still clutching her cell phone in her shaking hand.
Gar flew up the third floor stairwell, ignoring the cries of Mrs. Casper and the policeman; he was positive the gunshot had come from above, and that fact was what scared him so badly. Raven's locker was upstairs.
As soon as he reached the top of the stairs, he knew. He saw all he needed to piece together what had happened. The ambulance guys were all crowding around a gurney that they were loading into the emergency elevator at the end of the hallway.
"You don't need to be here," someone said as Gar pushed through the crowd of EMT workers. "No students allowed." But Gar kept pushing until, finally, he broke through the circle and got a good look at the body lying limply on the gurney.
The violet hair cascading over the edge of it was all he saw before he was shoved back into the hallway, where Terra was standing, her blue eyes welling up with tears. There was a clatter as the blonde's cell phone dropped to floor.
"That was…" Terra sort of choked on her words, but Gar knew what she was saying.
"Yeah," he said softly. "It was." And then, for several minutes after that, Gar held onto Terra as she cried freely. The girl didn't stop crying even when the wave of students appeared, unable to be restrained by teachers any longer. And when Vick and Kori appeared moments later, wide-eyed and blinking like newborns, they all knew, and the four of them cried together, there in the third floor hallway.
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At first, Rob was angry; he was stuck here, wondering what had happened, and in the meantime, Terra was reckless enough to just let her phone ring without picking it up. However, the anger soon turned to concern, and finally to a feeling of complete stupidity; of course Terra hadn't picked up her cell phone. The whole school was probably in lockdown! A gun had gone off, for Pete's sake!
Grimacing at the headache that appeared when he pulled himself out of bed, Rob made his way to the window. The dorm room window offered a panoramic side view of the main building of the school, including a full shot of the front parking lot, where, to Rob's surprise, an ambulance and several police cruisers were parked in front of the school entrance. One cruiser started up and drove off, followed by the others, until only the ambulance and one police car remained. Rob was squinting, trying to catch a glance at the body sprawled across the gurney now being carried into the ambulance, but at that moment, his cell phone went off.
Rob fumbled for the phone, and when he at last found it, the Caller ID read "Terra". Finally.
"Hello?" Rob felt his heart skip a beat or two when he heard that Terra was crying.
"Rob?" she blubbered.
"Terra?" Rob answered. "What happened? Is everyone alright?" Terra only cried harder.
"Tell me where you are," Rob said suddenly. "I'll come find you and-"
"No," Terra said between sobs. "We're coming to your dorm. See you in a minute." The connection went dead, and Rob was left staring at the floor.
By the time he made his way back to the window, the ambulance had already driven away, followed by the police cruiser. Rob had just sat down in the desk chair, feeling exhausted and exasperated, when there was a knock on the dorm door. Before Rob could open his mouth, the said door flew open, and in came Vick, followed by Gar, who had his arm around a weeping Terra. Kori, looking dazed and pondering, came in last. Raven wasn't with them.
She must be behind them somewhere, Rob convinced himself, but no one else showed up.
The foursome sat down in various places. Rob offered Terra the desk chair and went to sit beside Kori on Vick's neatly-kept bed. However, even when he put his arm around his girlfriend's shoulder, there was no response. Kori just stared at the carpet, unblinking.
"What happened?" Rob finally took the liberty to ask. "Where's Raven?" he added, though he felt as though the answer might be right in front of him, in Vick's solemn silence, in Kori's empty stare, in Gar's slumped shoulders, and in Terra's endless tears.
"Well?" Rob urged when there was no answer. "What the heck is going on?" Only he didn't say "heck".
"Raven's been shot," Gar said simply, not making eye contact with anyone. His words, though the truth, only made Terra break into more tears. Feeling as though he was providing no comfort to Kori, Rob stood up and moved to where the blonde girl was sitting. He kneeled beside Terra, wrapping his long arms around her shaking body, and she cried into his neck.
"I can't believe it…" Rob said softly, peering out the window to where the ambulance had been only moments before.
"Who did it?" he asked, tearing his gaze from the window.
"No one would tell us," Vick said, his voice solemn and emotionless.
"It was Maya," Gar accused suddenly. "I know it was. It had to be. She's the only person I can think of who hates Rae enough to… to…" Rob marveled at the difference between the reactions of the four people in front of him. While Terra was sobbing her heart out and Kori had cut herself off from everyone, the guys were just angry and convicting. Gar's eyes conveyed an emotion that Rob had never seen the boy show before. It was understandable for him to feel such hatred, though. Raven was his girlfriend.
The others left Rob after a few minutes, so that he could get dressed. He did so numbly, with wide, unseeing eyes.
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There was good news, and there was bad news, the group of five soon learned.
The good news was that Raven was alive; Maya had shot her in the shoulder, right below her collarbone, so nothing important was damaged. She would have to wear a sling for a few weeks, but her teachers would find a way to get class-notes to her.
The bad news, on the other hand, was something that Gar discovered later that evening. Gar, Terra, and Vick had been allowed to drive down to the local hospital, where Raven had been taken; Kori had a major Government test to study for, and Rob still had a temperature of a hundred and one. Rob had suggested that they could sneak him in, but the fever was actually sort of apparent; he had a glazed look in his eyes, like perhaps he was about to start talking to one of his other personalities.
"Can't you drive faster?" Gar urged as he wriggled impatiently in the passenger seat of Vick's SUV.
"Do you want me to get us all killed?" Vick replied for the second time since they'd gotten in the vehicle. "Driving is harder than it looks." He demonstrated this fact by swiveling around in his seat to see Terra, who was perched on the middle-seat behind Vick and Gar.
"You doing alright?" Vick asked Terra. The girl nodded in response and went back to staring out the window tranquilly.
They arrived at the hospital exactly nine minutes later, flushed and hurried. Vick was close to experiencing road rage. He pushed open the lobby door dramatically, and led the way to the front desk; Terra and Gar followed suite, minus the drama. The receptionist gave them Raven's room number, and the trek began. With the help of a friendly doctor and a brief psychic blast from Terra, they found the room in a record time of eleven minutes (they had gotten horribly lost and ended up walking into the employee cafeteria, which was filled with pasty, scrub-bearing people reading medical journals and the like). However, there was no sign of them begin let into the room right away, from the looks of it, or rather from the sound of it.
"I'm her guardian," a woman inside the room was saying in a shrill voice. "I can take her if I want to!"
"M'am," said a male voice (probably a doctor). "I'm sorry, but we need to keep her hospitalized at least until she wakes up."
"And how long will that be?" The woman sounded spiteful, yet her voice was also on the edge of concern.
"There is no way to tell, m'am," the doctor said.
With a flurry of emotion and disgust, the door flew open, and a woman burst out. She was short, 5'5'' at tallest, and looked to be in her late 30s or early 40s. Her hair had a pixie-cut and was dyed blonde, by the looks of the darker roots, and she wore worn-looking jeans, a USC Alumni sweatshirt, and black Crocs. She looked tired, judging by the bags beneath her green eyes, but her eyebrows went straight up when she saw the three teenagers standing outside the door.
"I'm guessing you all are Raven's friends?" she asked wearily.
"Yeah," Vick answered authoritatively. "I'm Vick, this is Terra, and this is Gar."
Gar smiled hesitantly. "I'm, uh, actually Raven's boyfriend. It's nice to meet you."
"Finally, the girl gets a boyfriend." The woman laughed warmly. "I'm Raven's adoptive mother," she said. "You can call me Maggie." The mood lightened up for a moment, but it went back down when Maggie noticed Terra gazing at the hospital room door, a distant look in her blue eyes.
"Is she okay?" Vick asked slowly.
"She's asleep," Maggie replied. "There isn't anything to worry about, though, according to the doctors. But that's my little girl in there. She just got shot, for heaven's sake! I'm going to worry. It's natural; it's a mother's instinct." Gar could tell already that he was going to like this woman
"That's why I want to take her out of school and bring her home," Maggie continued.
I spoke too soon, Gar thought with an inward sigh.
"I don't like the thought of her going to school away from home any longer," Maggie was saying. "I'm sorry," she added quickly, seeing Terra, Gar, and Vick's crestfallen faces. "It's what I have to do."
Terra looked at her feet, tapping her toes against the tile floors. "So… she wouldn't be coming back to Gotham Prep, like, ever?" Gar and Vick could almost see the tiny tears welling up in Terra's eyes.
"I'm not sure." Maggie sank down into a chair next to the door. Her hand went straight to her temple. "I'll think about it while she's asleep."
The door cracked open, and the doctor poked his graying head out. Maggie looked up hopefully, but the man wasn't looking at her.
"You three can come in and see her, if you would like," he said, opening the door wider so that Vick, Gar, and Terra could squeeze in. The door closed behind them, leaving Maggie alone in the desolate hallway.
The room was about as big as a Gotham Prep dorm room, only without three of the beds and the desk and the bookshelf. There was a white bed and some institutional-looking chairs, and a beeping machine. Lying against the white pillows, her violet hair spreading like a halo around her small face, was Raven. She looked paler than usual, Gar noted.
Pale as death, he thought poetically, but he immediately tried to push the words back out of his mind.
Raven was asleep, like the doctor had said. Her chest rose and fell with a tenth of the speed of her friend's hearts. Gar wondered vaguely if she knew what was going on, or if she was feeling as peaceful as she looked right now.
Terra rushed over to the bedside so fast that it looked as though the sheets would dislodge themselves and become airborne, while Gar sauntered over and sat by Raven's other side; Vick preferred to watch from the foot of the bed, his gaze soft and caring.
"You'd better be okay, you hear?" Terra muttered with a weak smile. She put her hand down on Raven's unmoving arm.
"She'll be fine," the doctor assured from his position by the door. "Trust me." Terra was comforted by this, and it showed in her pleased smile. She let go of Raven's arm and sat back in her chair.
They were kicked out ten minutes later, and when the three entered the hallway, Maggie was still sitting there. She offered a weak smile and rearranged herself in her chair.
"If you come back tomorrow," she said, "I'll have my answer. I'll be staying here all night."
"Okay," answered Vick as he steered Gar and Terra towards the elevator.
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That night, Gar couldn't sleep. He tossed and turned until hours after Vick and Rob had drifted off, but no matter how motionless he was and how long he kept his eyes closed, Gar couldn't make himself fall asleep. He finally dozed off around 2:00, listening to his iPod. Even then, he had a dream that the Kraken ate his homework, and when he went inside the creature to find it, Henry VIII was sitting there, eating Funyuns and watching the infomercial channel on a Teletubby's stomach-television screen-thing. Gar went insane and split open the Teletubby's head with a bo-staff, and then The Manfunk showed up and tried to suspend Gar for violence.
Even in the midst of tragedy, Gar's mind was capable of it's same old peculiarity.
Breakfast was almost completely lost to the infamous Awkward Silence. Not one of the five present had had anything resembling a refreshing sleep, besides Rob, who was still fever-ridden. He was going to the nurse today, rather than to class, but he felt as though his friends needed him there at breakfast, to fill the silence if not anything else.
"Pass the napkins," Terra mumbled at one point, after sloshing Dr. Pepper onto the table, but that was pretty much the extent of the conversation.
Even band that afternoon was depressing and dreary. While older members offered sympathetic smiles or words of encouragement, or in some cases anger-induced threats upon the name of Maya Parrish, the sixth and seventh graders scurried around with hushed, gossiping voices, all the while throwing wide-eyed looks at Gar and Terra.
"My parents are coming for me this afternoon," Anna Kole reported with red-rimmed eyes towards the end of the period. "They don't want me here until they're sure everything is safe again." Sadly, this was the cry of many a Gotham Prep Viking; a few parents had come to retrieve their child within twelve hours of the shooting, and others had been arriving all day.
"I told my mom that if she came to get me I wouldn't go," Fizzy said defiantly. "Maya was just one case of teen insanity. It's not like the whole student population is about to start pulling out guns and murdering everybody, right?"
"If I talked to my dad like that," said Terra, "he would throw me out into the street. I mean, given that he were to have time to call and check up on me anyways." When Fizzy and Anna shot her quizzical looks, Terra added, "He's a working-type dad. He's never home."
Gar remained silent. Truthfully, he had no idea what Hannah would do if her talked back to her. She had called last night, just to make sure Gar was okay; he told her he was fine, but he left out the part where his girlfriend had been shot and was in the hospital in a deep sleep.
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Fortunately, the "deep sleep" part didn't last much longer; Gar and Terra were called to the office at the end of seventh period to receive news that Raven had woken up no less than an hour before. She was still tired, and the doctors were still fixing up her arm, but at least she was awake. Gar was so ecstatic that he threw his arms around Terra right there in front of Ms. Becerra, the lady who worked the desk in the school office. In fact, he was so happy he could have hugged Ms. Becerra as well, right then and there.
Countering the good fortune, however, Gar and Terra had extra band practice for their halftime show the next night (They needed to find a decent-enough snare drummer to temporarily replace Raven), and they couldn't go down to the hospital right away. Instead, Kori and Vick went by themselves, and Gar and Terra arranged a ride with Scott Russell, the hot, streaking guy from band.
"Thanks for the ride," Gar called to Scott an hour later as he and Terra were let off in front of the hospital. They could see Vick's SUV parked in the visitors' lot, underneath the shade of a large tree.
Gar held his breath and squeezed Terra's hand as the two made their way up to Raven's room (in only eight minutes, this time). When they got there, the door was propped open with a chair, which Terra promptly tripped over.
"The door won't stay open on its own," said a familiar voice, and Gar turned his head from where Terra was nursing her bruised knee.
"Raven," he breathed. Raven was sitting up against a small mountain range of white pillows. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and her face nearly blended in with the bedding.
"Hi," she answered with a smile. For the first time, Gar noticed the other people in the room: Vick was seated in a chair next to the bedside, Maggie was standing up by the window, and Kori was sitting Indian-style at the foot of the hospital bed, leaning over Raven's feet with a bottle of nail polish.
"Kori's giving me a French pedicure," Raven joked, motioning to the madness going on at the foot of her bed. "I tried to resist, but you know Kori. She just never gives up."
"Hey, Rae!" Terra had at last managed to get up off the floor, and was coming to rest alongside Kori.
Them moment of silence that followed was like an unspoken request between the posse of five. "Maggie," Raven said. "Could you give us some time alone, please?"
"Sure," the woman answered. She looked tired, but relieved. "I'll be down by the drink machine." She pulled a dollar bill from her jeans pocket and left through the partially open door. Terra noticed that she didn't trip over the chair.
"I'm so glad you're okay," Gar said as soon as Maggie's footsteps faded out to normal hospital ambiance, "but I can't help wondering, why-"
"Why did Maya shoot me?" Raven finished bluntly. "It's a long story."
"We have time," Vick said quickly. "After all, if it concerns you, it concerns us."
Raven seemed to be considering it for a moment, and a meaningful look from Gar urged her on to finally speak. "I think Maya was jealous," she recounted, choosing her words carefully. "I think she was jealous of me because I have so many things she doesn't: I have a great group of friends who don't compete or anything, I have a boyfriend who loves me," Raven threw another look at Gar, who blushed, "and my life isn't complicated from gossip and money and all that stuff. I mean, if you all can understand…" Raven looked down and tried to focus on the tiny white tip of her pinkie-toenail.
"She was just so used to everyone loving her," Vick related, "that she couldn't take there being someone who had something she didn't."
"Yeah," Raven replied. Then, mustering up all her nerve, she turned to Gar. "She was jealous of me because of you," Raven said slowly. "You're like, the only guy in our grade who doesn't love her, so she was out to change that."
"Oh yeah," joked Gar. "I'm so sure than killing my girlfriend will make me fall in love with Maya."
"She was willing to do anything," Raven said, shaking her head. "She was a pretty messed up girl-"
"-And she's in court for attempted murder now," Vick interrupted. "We can forget about her." He looked Raven full the face, and she sighed, biting her bottom lip.
"I guess we can," she agreed, settling back into her mound of cushions. The seconds ticked by, slowing turning into another long silence. Thankfully, it was broken as soon as it had come.
"What did your.. your…" Gar didn't know what to call Maggie. "What did Maggie decide about school? Are you staying?" He felt a sweat build up at his scalp in anticipation of her answer.
Raven nodded. "I'm staying," she said, and Gar's heart swelled with relief. "We talked it over not long after I woke up, and I convinced her to let me stay here."
"Sweet!" Gar yelped, and he started to throw his arms around his girlfriend. However, she warded him off with a bony elbow.
"Remember the shoulder," Raven growled, but her grouchy voice subsided into seldom-heard giggling. "Now, who wants to be a dear and buy me a Coke?"
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So there was chapter ten.
Just a side note, the name "Black Wednesday" comes from a song by Cold that I really like, called "Black Sunday", which I felt fit the mood of this chapter.
As of now, I haven't started on chapter eleven at all, so it might take a while. I'm introducing the character of Jenny, who is based on Jinx. However, as I like the Jinx of later episodes much better, I'm starting off with Jenny being nice.
As you might have collected from the setting of this chapter, the Gotham Prep school year is nearing midterms. I was planning on making this story continue through first semester, and have a sequel cover the rest of the year, but I realized that as Teen Titans is kind of dying out, not many people would really want to find any new stories. Instead, I'll just make this one go all the way to June, as long as all of y'all stay around to read it, okay?
Luv, Giz