by Ann Braden
“So, what’s all this about a gun?” He says it so slowly that it’s like he’s narrating the documentary about the Civil War that Ms. Rochambeau had us watch.
“There were gunshots heard in the school parking lot after school today.”
“You wait,” Frank says, just as slow. I can almost hear the documentary’s mournful violin background music start up. He leans forward. “They’re all going to get their panties in a bunch and start blaming guns like they’re the devil incarnate, just like they did at those public hearings a year ago. They’ll be knocking down our door trying to take ours away before you know it.”
He sinks back down into his recliner and keeps glaring at me like I’m the one showing up to steal his old .22 rifle. “They don’t know anything about guns, but they sure like to act like they do. Like they know everything about everything.” Frank pulls out a new strand of cinnamon floss and yanks it free. “They think we’re too stupid to take care of ourselves.” He settles back in to floss his teeth and watch another history documentary. “Just try to come and get it,” he mumbles to no one in particular. “Just try.”
That doesn’t make me feel any better.
CHAPTER 16
On my way to the bus stop the next morning, I see Silas coming out of his trailer.
“Hey,” I call as he comes down the steps.
He doesn’t answer. He just climbs over the mountain of snow left by the snowplow. When he hits the road, he keeps his head down, his camo trucker hat pulled way farther down than normal.
“Silas?” I ask. “Are you okay?”
No answer. It’s like he switched into mute mode early.
He walks right past me like he doesn’t even see me.
Fuchsia doesn’t have a mute mode. She appears next to my locker before I’ve even gotten to the second number of my locker combination.
“Ugh,” she says, leaning against a locker. She sighs. She rolls her eyes.
I take off my jacket. “Did you hear what happened after school yesterday?”
She sighs again.
I glare into my locker, but the words I’m supposed to say slip out anyway. “What’s wrong?”
“I had the worst asthma attack last night.”
And I was a couple hundred feet away from a shooter, but does she care about that? I start shoving my jacket into my locker.
She sighs a third time. I keep trying to squish my jacket in.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I almost had to go to the emergency room. It was horrible.” Fuchsia stares up at the ceiling. “I can still feel it in my chest. It’s like it’s ready to tighten up any second to stop me from breathing.”
“Why are you even at school then?”
She glares at me. “I’m on my way to the nurse to make sure she has my inhaler like I’m supposed to, and what’s wrong with you?”
I shake my head. “Maybe the inhaler will help,” I mutter. Because you need loads of help.
Fuchsia snorts as she pushes herself back up. “Yeah right.” She starts heading for the nurse. “Thanks for the support,” she calls.
When I was five we rented a room in a house with chickens in the backyard, and entering homeroom is like walking through that flock of chickens as they pecked all over the place to get every possible bit of corn. Except instead of corn it’s any bit of detail or rumor or possibility of what might have happened yesterday afternoon in the parking lot.
Mr. Bontaff is nowhere to be seen.
Brendan Farley is pacing around in the front of the room. “It was three separate shots, and one of those bullets went right by my head! I swear I heard it zing past me.”
“Where were they coming from?” Matt is leaning up against the whiteboard. “They didn’t say on the news report last night. Did you see the gun?”
Brendan doesn’t stop pacing. “No, but there were plenty of places someone could have been hiding in the parking lot.”
“Who else was there?” Calvin Umbatoor asks.
“There was a car whose window got shot out, but I don’t know whose it was. It drove away as soon as it happened, and I don’t blame them.” Brendan stops his pacing. “You know who I think was the shooter?”
Calvin looks up. “Who?”
I try to make my way to a seat in the back.
Brendan’s voice is loud enough for the whole homeroom to hear. “Silas Fletcher.”
I freeze.
“I mean, he never talks, right?” Brendan continues. “He could totally be one of those mass murderers that you hear about when they interview the neighbors and they’re like ‘Oh, he was always quiet. Never thought he’d do something like this.’”
So being quiet is suddenly the same as being a school shooter?
“And,” Brendan says, “it was just a couple weeks ago that he got in trouble for having a gun in the parking lot. And right in that very same corner of the parking lot. I mean, it’s obvious.”
Because he was going hunting! For bobcats! Where you’re supposed to be quiet!
Calvin is on his feet. “You know, he’s always been weird. I don’t trust him at all.”
Matt is leaning against the whiteboard, silent. At least he’s not jumping on board like Calvin is.
But then he slowly nods his head. “I can totally see him turning on someone out of the blue like that.”
What is wrong with these people? Doesn’t Brendan remember that it was right after he teased Silas for crying in fifth grade that Silas stopped talking? I was there, and it was obvious. Doesn’t he get it that if someone lines up people to place bets on your “time-to-cry” you might decide to zip your real self up and not come out again?
And just because he yanked that zipper up doesn’t mean that three years later he’s going to turn around and start shooting at people. Even if they’re the people who bullied him before.
Right?
I mean, he was all weird and mute this morning, but that doesn’t mean anything.
Right?
“Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Have a seat.” I turn to see Mr. Bontaff in the doorway. “We have something we need to talk about.”
I hustle to a seat in the back and keep my head down. If Mr. Bontaff is about to say that Silas Fletcher was the shooter yesterday I don’t want to see him do it. Maybe I can block my ears and pretend nothing happened at all.
“You may or may not be aware of the events that occurred in the parking lot yesterday afternoon … ” begins Mr. Bontaff, who then proceeds to tell us even less than we already know. To make things even worse, he encourages people who may know something about the event to come forward and speak with the administration—and says that your identity will be protected if you do.
Brendan already has his hand up.
He might as well be holding a torch in one hand and a pitchfork in the other.
The whole rest of the school day is like that. By lunchtime, the entire seventh grade class is obsessed with the idea that Silas was the shooter. Even the girls at the lunch table are talking about it. And they’re nothing like Brendan Farley and Matt Hubbard, who always act like they know what’s going on. They tuck their heads and don’t get involved. Like when those public hearings about guns happened last year, their families were nowhere to be seen—even though they were the ones that probably should have been right in the middle of it, since their families hunt and they aren’t terrified of guns like some of the other kids.
By the first period after lunch nobody even has to be convinced anymore. They’ve all moved on to talking about when he’s going to get called down to the principal’s office or making plans for how they’ll take him down if he tries to go all Call of Duty on them. I heard that a couple of girls started crying and refused to be in the same room as Silas during English class.
The only part of the day that’s about something different is when Ms. Rochambeau pulls me aside after social studies. “I want to make sure you’re still planning to go to tomorrow’s debate club,” she says.
She keeps on talking. “And this time I want you to come ready to speak up. I think your viewpoint is going to be particularly valuable.”
I swallow. Speaking up is a different story.
The next day, most of the debate club kids are already in their seats when I ease myself into the chair next to Lydia, who’s back to drawing cats. Matt is leaning over another table, but when Ms. Rochambeau calls everyone to attention, he quickly takes his seat.
“As you know, we ran out of time on Monday, and we weren’t able to vote on a topic,” she says. “I’ve decided to choose it myself, but I think you’ll agree we don’t have any other option.” She turns to write on the board.
Resolved: The right to own a gun is part of what it means to be an American.
No one says anything at first. Not even the eighth grade boy who had fifty different ideas for topics two days ago.
Lydia has stopped drawing cats. “I can sure argue against that, but we’ll have to argue for that, too?”
Ms. Rochambeau crosses her arms. “That is the point.”
No one says much as Ms. Rochambeau points to a list of websites up on the board. “These will have relevant statistics and ideas for talking points to help you get started. You’ll be working in your table groups to prepare, and then tomorrow I’ll be selecting one person from each table to take part in our mock debate.
There are three laptops at our table already, and Matt pulls one of them over toward him. “I’ll check out the Center for Disease Control first. You guys should start with the others, so we can share notes.”
I’m still frozen in place from Ms. Rochambeau’s words. She wouldn’t choose me to be in the mock debate, would she? I sneak a peek at her, leaning over one of the eighth grade boy’s notebooks and pointing out “a few gaps in the logic here.”
She totally would.
I look around, starting to panic. Lydia has pushed a laptop over to me, and I open it, but I can feel my octopus skin turning all agitated and red. I quickly type in the web address for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms that’s listed on the board.
“Oh my gosh,” Matt says, staring at his screen. “Look at how many more people die because of guns in the US compared to the rest of the world. It’s like we’re living in a war zone.”
I try to stay in control of my breathing. I peer over at his screen. There’s a bunch of bar graphs, but I don’t want to take the time to figure out what each bar means because I just want to say, “Oh yeah, you’re so right.”
And I do.
Matt nods and starts writing things in his notebook.
I’ve found my way to the Firearms Frequently Asked Questions part of the site, but it’s ten pages long, is super duper detailed about stuff I’ve never heard of, and doesn’t have any cool graphs like Matt found.
But Matt is copying stuff down into his notebook like a madman, so I pick an FAQ at random and just start copying its answer down. At least I’ll have something. I do my best to ignore the fact that my leg is starting to go all jittery.
I’m halfway through writing out the question: Is there a way for a prohibited person to restore his or her right to receive or possess firearms or ammunition?—when Lydia interrupts.
“I mean, this whole thing is ridiculous,” she explodes. “Look at the pictures of these kids who’ve been killed. If we’d been in that parking lot at the wrong time, we could have been pictures on this website. It could have been our parents talking about how we were always being kind to other people and worked hard and all that. I can’t believe we’re going to have to argue both sides of this. No one should have guns.”
Is she serious? What about the nice girls at the lunch table whose families hunt?
“Yeah,” Matt says, copying one of the bar graphs into his notebook, “it’s like arguing both sides of a resolution about how puppies should or shouldn’t be put to death. One side is right, and the other is evil.”
I sit on my hand because it’s started to shake, too.
Lydia rubs her forehead. “I just don’t get why when it comes to guns our country is like, ‘Oh yeah, take that thing that’s used to kill people and do whatever you want with it.’”
“Well, except for the laws against murder and stuff,” I blurt out.
Lydia doesn’t take her eyes off her laptop screen. “Come on. If people didn’t have guns in the first place, we’d be way better off.”
I loved going hunting. Would Silas be better off if his family didn’t have guns? He wouldn’t be in this mess, but then he wouldn’t get to go bobcat hunting with his dad either. And if someone is going to be miserable every school day, they shouldn’t have to lose the one thing that makes them happy.
I eye Lydia. She probably wants me to keep my mouth shut, but isn’t the whole point of debate club to argue? Ms. Rochambeau even told me to speak up, right?
I touch my shoulder to be close to my octopus tattoo and imagine my tentacles reaching out to cover Lydia’s notebook and suck up some of its confidence. I take a deep breath. “Except most people with guns aren’t using them to kill people,” I say. “Don’t you think it’s a little drastic to—”
Lydia snaps at me. “Are you for real? Drastic? Don’t you think it’s a little drastic for people to die because of guns?”
I feel my mouth drop open, but before I have time to think of anything to say in response—anything about responsible gun owners or about how the deer population would be through the roof if it wasn’t for hunters, Lydia’s eyes fall on my camo jacket that’s lying next to my chair. Her lips purse and her face goes stiff. “Oh, I get it,” she says slowly. “You’re one of them.”
One of them? One of who?
Then, suddenly, those words “Your viewpoint is going to be particularly valuable” take on a whole new meaning. I’m supposed to be the evil one.
And maybe I am. Maybe Silas is, too. Maybe he really did shoot at someone in the parking lot. And I’m the one who told him he better keep hunting.
I look at Matt, but he isn’t paying any attention. Instead, he’s busy copying something down from the computer. “Seven kids killed by guns in this country every single day,” he’s muttering. “I might be able to find some bizarre way to argue for this resolution if I have to but … ” He stares at what he’s just written. “Anyone who really agrees with it either is as dumb as a rock or a straight-up monster.”
Right.
I kick my camo jacket farther under my chair.
So, dumb rock or monster. It’s good to know I have options.
CHAPTER 17
I’m too angry to talk to Ms. Rochambeau during the ride to Bryce and Aurora’s bus stop. Of all issues to pick, did it really have to be this one? Where’s our innocent discussion about the effectiveness of speed limits? Where are the pie-eating contests?
Since my mom doesn’t work today because of Hector’s nine-month checkup at the doctor, Bryce and Aurora are getting off at the bus stop near the entrance to the trailer park, and I have Ms. Rochambeau stop there.
“Right here?” she says, looking around. “I see … ” She trails off, and before she can hide it I see the pity on her face. And those are the trailers with nice potted plants and decorative walkway lights that she’s looking at. I get out of the car as quickly as I can, and mumble “thanks” as I go—but she doesn’t drive away.
She’s still sitting there parked on the side of the road when Bryce and Aurora’s bus pulls up. She’s not looking down at her phone either, she’s watching. Maybe it’s not in a judgy way, but why wouldn’t it be?
I can feel her eyes on us as Bryce and then Aurora start spilling down the bus steps. Suddenly all I can see is their gray-tinged clothes that smell like Frank’s cigarette smoke and their ratty hair that never got combed in the morning. If the other kids at their school haven’t yet decided that they must either be dumb as a rock or a monster, then it’s just a matter of time.
As s
oon as Bryce hits the ground, he starts kicking at ice chunks. Kick. An ice chunk goes spinning into the bus’s wheel. Kick. An ice chunk sails into the street. Kick.
“Come on, Bryce. You need to be on the sidewalk.”
I help Aurora jump down the last step off the bus, and she suctions herself onto me.
Future octopus.
Bryce is still on the edge of the road, kicking whatever he can kick.
“Bryce! Come on!”
Kick. Kick. Kick.
Ms. Rochambeau is still watching us.
“Let’s go home and get you a snack.”
“NO!”
“You’ve got to get out of the street.”
“NO!”
“Okay. I get it. You had a bad day, but—”
“Stupid!”
I pry Aurora off my leg, but since we don’t have Hector with us that means she instantly wants to be picked up. I hoist her up onto my hip and start walking away from the trailer park. “We’re going to the Cumberland Farms,” I call back to Bryce. “You better come, too, if you want some Easy Cheese.”
I walk on without looking back. At least at first. When I peek half a minute later, Bryce is shuffling along behind us.
Only then does Ms. Rochambeau finally drive away. Guess she’s seen enough. Except that when she passes us, she does something I’m not expecting.
She gives me a thumbs-up.
A thumbs-up.
Which actually feels even better than Easy Cheese tastes.
At Cumberland Farms, I slip the Easy Cheese can into my coat pocket when Aurora and Bryce are distracted by the frosted donuts near the hot dogs. Then I pick up a roll of toilet paper, because we’re almost out, and I pay the cashier for that. I don’t want Bryce and Aurora to think you’re not supposed to pay for things—unless you really can’t.
On the walk home from the Cumberland Farms, Bryce is more like his normal self. He insists on holding Aurora’s hand and helping her around a patch of black ice. He doesn’t do it in a bossy way either. The anticipation of Easy Cheese creates its own miracles.
When we get home to the trailer, Lenny is closed off in his bedroom instead of at work, and Frank says something about him being sick. So, I herd my screaming monkeys into our bedroom for our Easy Cheese picnic to keep them from waking him up if he’s sleeping, and we have a happy, whispering time making an Easy Cheese A for Aurora and an Easy Cheese B for Bryce and an Easy Cheese H for Hector and an Easy Cheese Z for Zoey. And an Easy Cheese E for Easy Cheese. But it doesn’t last. Bryce wants to make an S for Stupid, and then things get worse from there. They yell at each other. They yell at me. They yell at the bedroom lamp because they don’t like its shape.