The Morning Of

by S. B. Cody

  “Just right afterwards. She was in the back of an ambulance. Looked to be in shock or something.”

  “Guess it stands to reason after what happened to her. I can’t say I’m surprised. I don’t know how I would’ve reacted if I had been in that situation.”

  So why the hell am I surprised? Connor thought to himself. That look in her eye when she sat in the ambulance had been one of death. And what had he done? Nothing. For the rest of the day thoughts of Kristin and thoughts of Dennis wrestled each other for control of his mind.

  They continued to fight as he made his way home. Images of Dennis lying in a jail cell. Of Kristin lying in a hospital. They bored their way into his skull, a constant reminder of what he had and hadn’t done. Two people that he felt responsible for. Two people left to fate. Maybe there was nothing he could do for Dennis, but Kristin was just a short distance away. Off to the right he saw the hospital rising up into the sky. At the next intersection, he hung a right and headed towards it.

  Once there, he got Kristin’s room number and headed up. He chose to take the stairs, needing the time to sort out what he would say.

  Why am I even bothering? What the hell am I going to say to her? She doesn’t want to see me. With every step he had to fight the urge to take off running. Just stay the hell out of it and try to return to a normal life. What amounted to normal for him anyway.

  As he walked the hall to her room he felt as though everyone stared. His assurances to himself that no one knew him did little to assuage his fear. He knocked unevenly at the door, his fist shaking the whole time. Diane answered, her whole body hanging there like a partially deflated balloon.

  “Yes?” she said with a heavy breath.

  “Are you Kristin’s mother?” Connor asked.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Connor Sullivan. I work with Kristin at school.”

  Diane squinted and tilted her head in recognition. “Mr. Sullivan? Her mentor?”

  “Yeah. I heard about what happened, and I thought I might check in on her.”

  “That’s very sweet of you, but I don’t think she wants to see anyone.”

  “Mom,” Kristin called from inside the room. “It’s fine. Let him in.”

  Diane offered Connor what constituted a smile for her these days (but was really nothing more than a slight lengthening of her lips), and stepped aside so he could enter.

  “Hi, Mr. Sullivan,” Kristin called from her bed. Her skin lay loose and thin on her face.

  “Please. Call me Connor,” he replied taking a seat beside her.

  “Mom, will you step outside?” Kristin asked.

  “No way. I’m not leaving your side ever again,” Diane insisted.

  “Please. I’ll be fine.” Their eyes met and said all that needed saying.

  Diane turned and left the room.

  Silence persisted in there for two minutes as each thought of what to say. Connor looked over at Kristin’s wrists, eyeing the two cuts that had been closed up with stitches.

  “They weren’t deep enough,” Kristin said.

  Connor lifted his head to look at her. Her eyes were fixed on the cuts, a sense of regret in them. He wondered if it was regret for what she’d done or for what she failed to do.

  “Why’d you do this?” Connor asked.

  “It was easier.”

  “Easier? Than what?”

  “Having to wake up every day. Having to face a town that hates me.”

  “What are you talking about? Kristin, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Tell that to the person who sent me a death threat.”

  “A what?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who?”

  “I have no idea. I just got it in the mail one day. A bunch of letters clipped out of magazines and glued to the paper like a ransom note. ‘Fuck you, bitch. You let our kids die. And now you’re gonna die too.’”

  “Oh my God. Did you call the cops?”

  “No.”

  “What did your mom say?”

  “I didn’t show her either.”

  “Why not. Someone needs to know about that.”

  “Please. If it had been more than a threat they would have saved me the trouble.”

  “Kristin, why are you blaming yourself for this?”

  “I literally walked them into the line of fire.”

  “There was no way for you to know…”

  “Don’t. Don’t tell me that. You’re the hero of Stanford. You don’t know what it’s like to get your students killed.”

  Connor cursed himself for even coming here. He had traveled way beyond his comfort zone. And he had to admit that she was right. He didn’t have the first clue of how she felt. He began to rise out of the seat, ready to leave without another word said… And then he remembered Bradley Neuman. With that he eased back into his chair. Kristin looked over wondering why he had stayed.

  “Kristin… you know that plaque that’s in the hallway downstairs at school?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I knew that kid. Name was Brad. I had him in class my second year there. Seemed like a nice kid. Slipped under the radar though. He was just so damn quiet. And as it turns out that’s because he was depressed. At the end of the year, he killed himself. And it wasn’t until then that I recognized the warning signs. Not only that, but he asked to speak to me just days before he did it, but I had been too busy to talk. Not a day goes by that I don’t wonder what he wanted to say. Wondering if I had stuck around that it could have made a difference. But I can’t know because I didn’t do anything.”

  Kristin said nothing. She just rubbed her scars while a single tear fell to her chest.

  Connor sighed and then continued. “With this job, you’ll always have those students whom you wonder if you could’ve done more. When we take this job, we think we’re going to save the world. But pretty soon we figure out that we won’t, that we can’t. So you know what you do? You stay on the lookout for someone, anyone that you can save. And when all’s said and done, if you can say that you saved anyone, then you did more than most. You couldn’t have known what was going to happen. And the fact of the matter is that you don’t know what would have if you stayed in the room. What you do know is that twenty-three kids got out of that school safely because you took action.”

  Tears fell from her eyes. Her chest heaved up and down.

  “I hope you come back to school, Kristin. You’re pretty damn good at your job and those kids are better off with you there.” Connor stood and reached out his hand, about to hold Kristin’s, but then thought better of it and withdrew. “I hope to see you around. Bye.” He turned and walked out of the room. As soon as he opened the door, Diane stood in his way, having been there the whole time. He offered a polite nod, a smile, and then walked by her. He hoped he’d done right by Kristin. That he’d done right by anyone.

  On another floor, Julie inched her way out of the bed, wincing every time a muscle moved in her body. Each time it made her feel like her chest had been set ablaze. Brian stood alongside, ready to catch her the moment she slipped. She’d just been cleared to go home, and she was desperate to be rid of this hospital. But with as much pain as she experienced at the moment, she still felt a pang of relief that it had happened. Whatever else went down before this shitstorm came to an end, she would be able to sit on the sidelines. Because the physical pain she felt was nothing compared to the emotional exhaustion that had been inflicted on her. Unless, of course, that it ended with Terry behind bars. But she couldn’t think about that. Wouldn’t allow herself to.

  Terry himself wasn’t at the hospital to accompany his mother home as Brian had sent him ahead to make sure that the house looked good for her. Terry went around the house, trash bag in hand, picking up random crap on the ground. He came to his room where he stopped in his tracks and looked on at his dresser, thinking of what lay inside. From downstairs, Terry heard the door open and footsteps on the floor.

  “Lipt
on,” a voice called from downstairs. Terry turned at the sound and trudged down, recognizing the voice as belonging to Johnny.

  “What’s up, man?” Terry said as he came to the top of the stairs and looked down at his friend. “Come on upstairs.”

  Johnny bounded up the stairs and followed Terry into his room. “I’m sorry about your mom, man. That’s some fucked up shit.”

  “Yeah. It is,” Terry replied, his voice monotone. He picked some trash up from the floor before going over to his dresser and removing the SSPA flyer and tossing that in the bag too.

  “What the hell are you doing, man?” Johnny asked.

  “I don’t want any part of them anymore.”

  “What do you mean? What about our plans, man?”

  “What plans? You told me to get these addresses, and that we’d show up all the cops in town. Except you never bothered telling me how we would do that.” With that he withdrew the list of addresses from his pocket and ripped it to shreds, staring Johnny down the entire time.

  “Fuck you. I’ve got plans.”

  “Yeah… what are they?”

  Johnny stood there, for once not having the words.

  “That’s what I thought. For all I know, you were going to get a bunch of pizzas delivered to them. You’re all fucking talk.”

  “What changed?”

  “My mom getting shot. That’s what.”

  “Hey, some racist asshole shot her. Not us.”

  “Yeah, but one inch is all that separated her from a hole in the ground. And I don’t want any part of something that could finish the job.” Terry turned away, having nothing else to say on the subject. “I got to keep cleaning. I’ll see ya later, man.”With an aura of protest, Johnny turned and left. The moment he did, Terry didn’t give him another thought. An hour later, when Julie arrived home, inching her way into the house, Terry stood there waiting. Brian came in after her, pleased to see that his son had exceeded his expectations about cleaning the house. From floor to ceiling, the place looked spotless. For a moment, he would have even sworn that it sparkled like out of a cartoon. His eyes were soon drawn away from the house as he saw what sat in Terry’s arms. Terry held a vase of flowers. Brian hadn’t expected this from his son, and looked on at Julie’s reaction.

  Julie could hardly process all that she took in. Ever since the shooting, Julie kept expecting to wake up from the most horrible, and most vivid of nightmares. The scene that she saw in front of her now brought everything snapping back to reality in the most wondrous of ways. Her face turned up into the biggest smile before her eyes collapsed into tears. Brian and Terry were at her side to make sure she hadn’t hurt herself.

  “I’m fine. I’m fine,” she assured them. “This is all just so amazing. Thank you, both.”

  “Let’s go get you laid down,” Terry said as he led his mother over to the couch which he had turned into a makeshift bed for her. They got her settled, and Terry set the flowers on the side table.

  “No. Put them on the coffee table. I want to look at them,” she said. She watched her son as he did so, and looking up at him she saw what had been missing from him for so long now. In his eyes, she could see the little boy that she had raised. The child that would run after her if she left the room. And with that, she found the relief that she’d been looking for. She knew at that moment that Terry couldn’t have done those awful things at the school. And maybe, just maybe, she hadn’t failed as a parent after all.

  33

  Dennis had just spent his first night in the county jail. The bed and pillow they offered provided a bit more comfort than what he had gotten at the Stanford Police Department, but not much. The slop that got piled on his tray for breakfast made him long for the school lunches. With every step that he took, his head would wobble around as he noted where everyone was. He felt convinced that someone would jump him at any moment. In his mind, there existed little difference between here and an actual prison. After that he sat around in his cell willing himself to think about anything but what awaited him. It proved fruitless as he had been told that he’d end up in front of a judge any day.

  He had been in there for about an hour when a guard came around to say that he had a visitor. The guard led him to the visitors’ room. The walls had been painted a dull white and were lined with tables and chairs up and down the length of the room. At a table towards the back of the room he saw his mother sitting. Despite her best efforts, she still looked haggard. She had pulled her frizzy hair back in a ponytail. She wore a nice blouse, but the wrinkles made it clear that it hadn’t been ironed. Her lipstick was smeared around the edges. When she saw her son, a bittersweet smile came onto her face. A man in a suit sat next to her. A loosened tie hung around his neck. A briefcase sat on the table in front of him where he shuffled papers around.

  As he approached the table, his mother stood and opened her arms for a hug, but a shake of the head from a guard dissuaded her of the notion. She lowered them, looked down in embarrassment, and went back to her seat. Dennis slumped down, the chair hard and rigid. He attempted to readjust a couple times before deciding comfort wouldn’t come.

  “Hi, honey,” his mother said with a tone of uncertainty. “How are you?”

  “I don’t know,” Dennis answered.

  “This is Mr. Dillon,” she said, pointing to the man in the suit. “He’s going to be your lawyer.” He didn’t look up at all. He still moved around papers, his briefcase filled with about a dozen different files.

  “How are you paying for him?” Dennis asked.

  “He’s a public defender.” Dennis’s heart sank at the sound of that. How much good could this man actually do for him? He could almost see the signature on his death certificate now.

  “Hi, Dennis,” Mr. Dillon said, finally closing his briefcase, having apparently found the correct file. “Okay, so I just got the file on you from the police this morning. I haven’t been able to go through it all, but I did do a quick review of the evidence they’ve compiled. The good news is that most of the evidence against you is circumstantial at best. The drawings, the story, the book. It doesn’t do much for them. Your journal, they’ll use to try to establish motive but thankfully there’s nothing too damning in there.”

  “Uh-huh,” Dennis said, trying to follow along. Mr. Dillon rattled all of this off, making it hard to hear every word.

  “Bad news is that this floor plan they found in your trunk is quite damning. So unless you have a credible explanation for how and why it was there, there isn’t much we can do with this.”

  “How can they pin that on me? None of what’s written is even in my handwriting.”

  “Doesn’t matter. They’ll just say the other shooter wrote it and then gave it to you.”

  “So what do we do?” Dennis asked.

  Mr. Dillon sighed, looked at Ms. Clements and then back to Dennis. “Our best course of action is to try to cut a deal with the district attorney.”

  “Cut a deal? What does that mean?” Ms. Clements asked.

  “Well, first thing you need to do is tell the police who the other shooter was. That will go a long way towards earning you some goodwill with the DA.”

  “I can’t tell them something I don’t know! I didn’t do anything!” Dennis protested. His mother buried her head in her arms and cried.

  Mr. Dillon was afraid of this. The ones that insisted upon their innocence made for the worst clients. “I’m going to be frank with you here, Dennis. If we actually went to trial with this, I don’t see a situation where we win. And with twenty-eight people dead… thank God you’re still a minor or else they’d be asking for the death penalty.”

  Ms. Clements shot her head up at that, a look of utter terror on her face. “The what?” she said, praying that she had misheard him.

  Mr. Dillon ignored her questions and continued talking to Dennis. “If you cooperate with them, I can work with them. Get you favorable conditions. And if it is a case of you being forced into something, maybe… MAYBE… y
ou see the outside world again someday. But that is the absolute best we can hope for. Otherwise you are looking at a deep, dark hole for the rest of your life. Do you understand?”

  Ms. Clements sprang from her seat and took off towards the bathroom with her hand clamped around her mouth. Dennis sat there looking at Mr. Dillon, studying his eyes. The hint of doubt he’d seen in his mother’s eyes had been bad enough, but these eyes didn’t even have that. Dillon thought he had done it, and Dennis wouldn’t be able to persuade him otherwise.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Dennis told him.

  “Well, then we have an uphill battle ahead for us. So we are going to have to dig up something pretty damn convincing. Because I honestly don’t know how we win this.”

  34

  Connor sat at his desk with a pile of student journals sitting beside him. School ended an hour ago, but here he sat nonetheless. He had fallen way behind in grading these and was now paying the price. He had just gotten to the writing prompt that he’d asked the students to do the morning of the shooting, and some of what he read made him wish for a lobotomy.

  I don’t no how id define evil. I guess it could be the absence of empahty. I dont think the vigils are evil though. They kinda pussies.

  As he read, Connor could feel a headache coming on, but he powered through, marking each one and throwing it in a separate pile. He eyed what he still had left and could have sworn that it had gotten even bigger than when he started. He continued this way, eventually stumbling upon Dennis’s. He held it in his hand not even sure what to do with it. He had managed to get through most of the day without thinking about him, but now it all came rushing back.

  Not much point in grading this, Connor thought to himself, feeling inclined to just throw the thing in the trash. He couldn’t help but think about what might have been in here. Dennis would have written this right before the shooting went down. The thought was chilling, but Connor’s sense of morbid curiosity insisted that he take a look. He flipped through the pages. He shuddered about what he might find. If Dennis really had done what they were saying, maybe he’d gone on and on about his plans, and once again Connor would be left thinking of all that he missed. Instead, he saw something much different when he got to the one from that morning and began to read: