Time Bomb

by Joelle Charbonneau

  “Yeah.” Z nodded and looked down at Frankie. “Sure. Feel free to help me tear the hell out of this school. You seem to like it fine, but it never did anything for me.”

  Frankie climbed up onto the table and wrapped one of the wires around his hand, then pulled as hard as he could. Damn. The wire barely moved.

  “Here, Diana, we also found a couple more small extension cords,” Rashid said behind him. “If you braid the cords with the twine and any wire Z and Frankie get, it might be strong enough to lower Kaitlin down after we finish with the stretcher.”

  “Looks like we have to break this place apart faster if we’re going to help with Rashid’s plan,” Frankie said as Z yanked down on the light fixture and sent it crashing to the table, pulling several feet of wire with it.

  “I . . .” Z tugged the wires. “Hate . . .” Z pulled again. “This . . . school.” He leaned his whole weight into it and almost crashed to the floor as more wire came free.

  Frankie wiped his forehead with the back of his hand “Wow, you really do hate this school. Guess that’s why you aren’t ever here. If your parents decide to crack down, let me know. I could use another offensive tackle to protect me.”

  Z wiped his palms against his shorts. “Well, my father died in a car accident when I was two, so I’m thinking he’s not going to be cracking down on my studies anytime soon. My mom was pretty good at keeping me in line, but the last couple of years, she didn’t have a lot of time to dedicate to it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well.” Z panted. “It’s kind of hard to focus on driving your son to school and watching him do his homework when you’re strapped to a hospital bed, busy trying to keep cancer from killing you.” He looked at Frankie and shrugged. “Guess you didn’t expect that, did you?”

  No. No, he didn’t.

  He tried to come up with something to say, but words failed him as he stood on the chemistry desk, looking at the guy who everyone knew liked to cut class and cause trouble.

  “Did your mother’s treatment work?” Rashid quietly asked from the middle of the room.

  Z glanced toward Rashid, who was kneeling next to a grid of metal strips he was fastening together with wire and twine. Z’s hands squeezed the wires he was holding so hard that Frankie was amazed they didn’t cut into his flesh. And he felt the answer to Rashid’s question before Z said just as quietly, “She trusted the doctors, who said they were going to beat the cancer. She trusted me when I said I would never let anything happen to her. She died three weeks ago.”

  “Man, I’m sorry,” Frankie said, thinking about his own parents. They told him how to act and why and what kind of person he should be. He hated how they got angry whenever he questioned going to youth group or tried to take a class they thought was pointless. They wanted their son to be the best—the most successful. But as much as he hated what they wanted for him and expected from him and how he had to push things he might want to the side . . . “I can’t imagine—”

  “No, you can’t.” Z hopped desks, grabbed another fluorescent light, and screamed as he yanked down on it.

  The voice on the radio faded, then came back up to full, static-filled volume as Z threw his weight into taking down the light.

  Ceiling tiles around the light area cracked. Dust and splinters fell from above as something gave in the ceiling. Cas screamed, and Frankie rushed forward as Z fell flat on his back onto the chemistry table.

  “Are you okay?” Frankie asked as Cas and Tad appeared on either side of him.

  Z looked up at the colorful wires snaking down from the ceiling and coughed. “You’re right, Tad. The wire is really strong.” He coughed again, and Frankie put his hand on Z’s back as Z struggled to sit up. When he was seated on the table, he looked up at the ceiling and asked, “How much more of it do you guys need?”

  Rashid looked down at the braiding Diana was working on and the stretcher he and Tad were creating and smiled. “How much more can you get?”

  “I guess we’ll find out.” Frankie grinned back. “But it might help if someone found something we can cut these with.”

  “Let me do that,” Cas said as Rashid started to get up. “I want to do something to help.”

  She winced and swayed once she was on her feet. Even if they built the strongest rope ladder in history, Frankie wasn’t sure how she’d be able to use it when she was weak and had only one usable arm.

  As Z grabbed a fistful of wires and tugged them another foot or so out of the ceiling, Frankie stepped toward the window to see what was happening. The radio was cutting in and out while the announcer gave the weather report and said they would be talking to an FBI spokesman in a few minutes.

  It was hard to tell what was going on outside. There were ambulances and fire trucks and people in uniforms and with FBI jackets huddled together.

  “Do you think there really are more bombs ready to go off?”

  “They must think that there are, or the firefighters would be here rescuing us by now,” Diana said.

  “I don’t get it.” Tad frowned. “I mean, if you’re pissed off enough to blow up a school, why not just blow it up all at once? Why do it piece by piece?”

  “It’s dramatic,” Frankie admitted.

  “It sucks,” Z snapped.

  “Frankie’s right. And I’m betting the bomber is waiting for another rescue attempt before setting off any remaining charges,” Diana said. “Killing a whole bunch of people at the very end of whatever this is would make a pretty strong statement.”

  “Killing more people would make a statement?” Cas stared at Diana. “That makes no sense. None of this makes any sense.”

  “The higher the body count, the bigger the story. And the more they’ll talk about the person who caused the tragedy and the reason behind it, instead of the people who died in the tragedy itself,” Diana said. “Haven’t you ever noticed that one person getting shot gets covered for an hour or maybe a day, but if there are lots of people killed at once, the media runs stories for weeks? The killers’ pictures are plastered on the news day and night, and experts talk about who they are and analyze why they did what they did. And if the killers get away with it, the story becomes even bigger. Congress and the Senate hold hearings. Anyone who plans something like this has to do it in a big way, or it gets forgotten.”

  “And if the victims are rich and white and their fathers are important, the story is even bigger,” Tad added. “Right, Diana?”

  “I didn’t create this system,” she said stiffly. “The only way a person can make a real difference is to know the rules of the game and use them to win.”

  “I respect that,” Frankie said. It was one of the things he and Diana were in step on. The desire to reach the goal, even if it made no sense to anyone else. Winning came in a lot of forms, depending on a person’s perspective. And when you were a winner, you had to recognize when something was a losing move and change course before it took you out of the game.

  Cas crossed the room and handed a pair of scissors to Z. Rashid put his head down and got back to work on the stretcher. The radio crackled.

  “If we’re lucky, it’ll start raining any minute,” Frankie said, breaking the silence. “That could put out the remaining fires and screw up any other bombs so they won’t go off.”

  “Hands up of anyone here who actually feels lucky.” Z looked slowly at each one of them. “Because my luck is pure crap, and Kaitlin has—” His eyes softened. “Well, she had the bad luck of insisting on being my friend when I told her I didn’t need one. She tried to save me from myself, and now she’s the one who needs saving because she was sure she could talk me out of making another bad choice. Yeah, no luck on my end. How about you guys?”

  Tad looked at Frankie and kept his hands at his side. Diana looked toward the back corner of the room.

  Frankie shrugged and raised his hand. Then he smiled. “A building exploded, and I’m not dead. I’d rate that as lucky. How about you, Rashid?”

 
Rashid looked away from Kaitlin and put his arm up with a nod. “Living with my family’s disappointment is better than not being alive at all.”

  Frankie looked over at Cas, who had taken a seat on one of the stools and was looking down at the ground. “Cas? Feeling lucky to be alive?”

  Cas lifted her eyes and shook her head. “Actually, no. Everything would be easier if I was dead.”

  1:34 p.m.

  Cas

  — Chapter 40 —

  “YOU DON’T MEAN THAT,” Frankie said, staring at her. Just over an hour ago, Cas would never have dreamed that Frankie Ochoa would look at her with such intense concern. Only he was wrong, because she meant every word. She still remembered the way the gun felt in her hands.

  The metal had been cool. The weight almost comforting in the promise that the gun could do what nothing else had been able to. Make it all go away.

  She wanted to look away, but instead she forced herself to meet Frankie’s eyes. “I shouldn’t. I know I should feel lucky to be alive, but as much as I want to, I don’t. Not entirely.”

  “Yeah,” Z said quietly. “Me too. It’s hard to feel lucky to be alive when you still might die and you’re not sure if living is any better.” Z looked over at the girl who hadn’t opened her eyes in far too long. Kaitlin was quiet. Still. “If it weren’t for Kaitlin, I might have run toward the explosion. And even then, I still thought about it.”

  “So you’re a coward.” Diana looked at him as if daring him to fight. When he didn’t, she added, “Killing yourself is taking the easy way out. That’s what cowards do.”

  “Anything that permanent seems like a pretty hard choice to me,” Frankie said. “That’s probably why I’ve never considered doing it.”

  Of course he didn’t understand. He was talented and popular—exactly what Cas’s father wished she could be.

  “Never?” Z turned to Frankie. “Not once?”

  “No. Of course not.” Frankie crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t like feeling depressed. I work my way out of it.”

  “Depression isn’t like root beer. It’s not as if you either like it or you don’t.” Z shook his head. “Sometimes you feel the world caving in piece by piece, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone who gives a damn that you’re slowly being crushed. You’re telling me your life is so perfect that you’ve never felt that way?”

  Falling apart, piece by little piece. Yes. That was exactly how she felt. Each day another pebble chipped off—almost too insignificant to notice, until one day the rest of the rock broke away because there was nothing underneath to help it stand.

  “There’s always someone around or another choice you can make,” Frankie said.

  “No, there isn’t.”

  Frankie turned back toward her.

  “Sure, you can always turn to someone.” She swallowed hard and shook her head, wishing she hadn’t said anything but knowing she couldn’t stop now. “But that doesn’t always mean they can help. It’s hard for someone to help when they think the person standing in front of them is weak and broken and needs to have their life taken over.”

  “Anyone who is thinking about committing suicide is weak, and when you tell someone you are thinking about killing yourself, you most certainly are broken,” Diana said.

  “Most really broken people don’t know they are broken,” Rashid said.

  Cas turned to look at the guy who had been working quietly on the floor. He was so unassuming, it was easy to forget he was there. The guy was a real hero. He’d saved Kaitlin’s life and was helping to get them out of there. By any definition, Rashid was a leader. He should be the center of attention. And yet Cas thought of Frankie as the leader, and maybe even Z, because of how they pushed themselves forward.

  Rashid met Cas’s eyes with a steady gaze, “Those who are the most damaged don’t ever admit they need help. It takes strength to admit that you want something to change, and it takes even more courage and strength to try to change it.”

  “But what if you’ve tried to change things and nothing is different?” Cas wrapped her good arm around herself.

  “Then you try something else. Isn’t that why we’re all in this room together right now?” Rashid said. “We could have stayed where we were when the bombs went off and given up. Instead we’re still working to get out. We’re building a stretcher that we don’t know will work and making ropes that could give way beneath us. But we’re doing it anyway because fighting to live is hard. It’s supposed to be. Giving up is the easy part.”

  “How do you know?” The hollowness inside Cas threated to overwhelm her. “Have you ever woken up in the morning and the idea of getting out of bed made you want to scream and never stop screaming? Have you ever had your parents pretend to reward you by taking you shopping for clothes they think will make you more popular because to them that’s going to make it all better, or had your father take you to a shrink who tells you that you want to be unhappy and that you are imagining all of your problems?”

  “Maybe your shrink is right,” Diana said. “Could it be you’re making problems bigger than they are because you want people to pay attention to you. Sometimes the only way to get people to pay attention is to force them to—”

  “You think I’m making problems bigger than they are?” Cas pressed a shaky hand to her stomach. “Maybe I wanted attention so bad that I let one girl slam me into a locker and then push me to the ground. Maybe I even wanted two of her friends to hold me down while she kicked me in the chest and the stomach and told the others to help her. Maybe it’s my fault I can’t remember what happened after that because she kicked me so hard, I hit the back of my head against the floor and blacked out.”

  Cas remembered waking up in fear. Fear of the sadness in her mother’s eyes as she told Cas she was going to be okay and fear of the way her father screamed at anyone who would listen about how he wouldn’t take what happened to his daughter lying down. He wanted people arrested. He was going to sue, because his daughter was going to be scarred for life. People were going to pay.

  Frankie walked over to her. He put his arm around her shoulder, and tears sprang to her eyes. “You lost a lot of blood, Cas,” Frankie said quietly to her. “You should sit down and rest.”

  “I don’t want to sit down.” Cas shook off his arm. She didn’t want to be pathetic. She didn’t want to be the one who was so weak that people naturally assumed she needed their protection. “I’m tired of people telling me to take it easy or to let things go because I’m just creating drama to get attention.” She looked at Diana, standing not far from the window. Cas swiped at a tear and swallowed down the others burning her throat and asked, “Was it okay for a girl and her friends to hate me because I wasn’t part of their crowd and I didn’t dress like them? Or how about you tell me exactly how it was my fault that the most popular girl in school decided that I was the person anonymously posting pictures of her boyfriend and suggesting he should break up with her?”

  Diana never looked away, and she didn’t speak. She just stood there—still as a stone, like everyone else in the room. Cas stood just as still, even though everything inside was racing.

  For a second, the only sounds in the room were the muted shouting coming from the rescue workers outside, the chopping sound of a helicopter, and the siding-company commercial playing on the radio station.

  “You were bullied.” Tad finally broke the silence.

  “Bullied.” Bitter laughter bubbled through the tears. “God, I hate that word.”

  “. . . path through the field house after a fifth device was uncovered and disarmed and removed. Officials . . . believe there is . . . another device, which is why they are . . . additional precautions to ensure . . . as . . . fire . . .”

  Tad clicked off the radio. “The batteries are dying. We can turn it back on in a few minutes, once we’re ready to try out the stretcher and the ropes.”

  Because then they’d need to know if it was necessary to risk their lives on a two-
story drop. If there was another bomb in the building, Cas knew the answer would be yes. And then what would happen to her?

  “Why don’t you like the word?” Frankie asked quietly.

  “Why?” Cas blinked and looked at the guy who had helped her get this far. A high school god—someone who would never understand what it was like to look in the mirror and wish that you were completely different. “Bullied is too easy a word. My father uses that word all the time. So does my shrink.”

  “I still don’t get what the problem is,” Frankie said. “It’s just a word.”

  Cas winced as she shifted her injured arm and was glad for the pain, because it was better to focus on that than on the ache growing in her heart. “Have you ever been bullied?”

  It was a dumb question, because he was the football captain. He was popular. If anything, he was probably the one who did the bullying.

  But he surprised her by saying, “Yeah.”

  “How?”

  “How?”

  “How were you bullied?” she asked. “What happened to you?”

  Frankie shoved his hands in the pockets of his shorts and shrugged. “Usual sports stuff. Someone put mayonnaise in my helmet and spray starch in my jockstrap. That kind of thing.”

  “How about you?” Cas asked, turning toward Tad. “Have you been bullied?”

  “I’ve had guys bigger than me shove me in the halls and say stupid crap online to me. It’s the way things go. Everyone goes through it.”

  “Has everyone been beaten up while other kids videoed what was happening and posted it online instead of going to get help?” Sweat trickled down her cheek. The memory played over and over in her head. “Has everyone had to change schools because once you went back, the same people who broke your ribs were threatening to do the same thing to anyone who was your friend so any friends you had suddenly found new places in the lunchroom to sit and new people to walk home with? Have you been beaten so badly you felt like you were going to die, only to realize how much easier life would have been if you had?”