by Jason Parent
Father rushed into the house. Tessa stood shaking, her fear of Father compounding her anxiety. She wanted to explain what had happened, that there was good reason for her screaming, but she feared she would just be increasing the punishment to come.
Father’s eyes darted back and forth between Tessa and the fat, and now presumably dead, man. He signaled Tessa to move back, then he crouched beside the body. Holding the man’s wrist, he felt for a pulse.
Tessa sidestepped around them and slowly crept closer to the door. Selfishly, she thought only of how the man’s death had impacted her and how every slight deviation, real or imagined, that Father saw her make in his well-crafted plan would lead to more brutality—against her. She couldn’t be a part of it anymore. She had neither asked nor wanted to be a part of it. But Father would never let her stop. She’d tried once before. The scars on her back proved it.
Still, no one stood between her and the door. All I have to do is run. She had a million opportunities to run, but for some reason, she couldn’t accept even one of them.
As if by its own volition, her hand groped her hair. She tore out one of her bobby pins and dropped it to the floor.
Seeming satisfied that the man was dead, Father stood and said, “Go out to the car. I’ll be right behind you.”
As she walked toward the car, she again imagined herself running. Then, she imagined Father catching her and all the horrible things he would do after he did. She opened the door and got into the passenger seat. Someone else would have to save her. She would leave as many bread crumbs as she could to help that someone find her.
Father exited the house and hurried toward the car. He looked angry. Father never lost his temper, even if he had lost his mind. The rage in him brought out the panic in her.
She hugged the door as he got in behind the wheel. By the time he sat down, his usual disinterested expression had reappeared. The only signs of his anger were his silence and his hands balled up so tightly the knuckles flashed white.
“You left this behind,” he said in his deadpan voice. He held up the bobby pin.
Oh God. She gasped, then she clamped her mouth shut. Nothing she could say would help her.
“Looks like someone needs to be taught some discipline,” Father said, his mouth twitching as though it had tried to smile.
Tessa covered her face with her hands and cried silently. Praying for mercy or at least a quick recovery, Tessa trembled the whole way home. Maybe he’ll kill me this time. The prospect was scary at first but bittersweet, tinged by a euphoric suggestion of release. The only problem was how much pain she would have to endure before death came.
Chapter 6
The alarm clock blared incessantly, shouting in its mind-splitting, rage-invoking voice for Michael to get out of bed. His fingertips fumbled along its buttons, searching for the off switch. Finding it felt like a major victory. The noise stopped, but the alarm clock had the last laugh. Michael was awake. And he had to get ready for school.
He plucked a few crusties from the corners of his eyes as anxiety flooded in. Thoughts of Jimmy and Glenn had kept him awake most of the night. His sheets were tangled around his legs like a boa constrictor. He must have fallen asleep at some point, but he couldn’t remember when.
Maybe Sam’s right. Maybe it was only a dream.
But he didn’t believe it. He knew what he’d seen, what he’d experienced, wasn’t a dream. Glenn was going to die today, and nobody seemed interested in stopping it but him.
His rational side fought back. If it wasn’t a dream, then what was it? A premonition? A vision of the future? Michael didn’t subscribe to that psychic crap. He’d never had psychic abilities before. He wasn’t special. He hadn’t felt any different when he’d woken up that morning than he had a lifetime of mornings prior.
After crawling out of bed, he stood in front of his mirrored closet doors. The person he saw was still Michael Turcotte, plain and ordinary and inconsequential. And if he didn’t move, he was going to be late for school.
He was scared as hell, but despite his fear, a small part of him wanted to go. He needed to know whether what he had seen was real or not, if it would really happen. Curiosity never gets you anything but trouble. He sighed. By the end of the day, he would at least have answers. Whether they were the answers he wanted, he figured he would have to wait and see.
He flexed to admire his pecs in the mirror. He checked for chest hair, but his skin was as smooth as a baby’s butt. Though he was only five-eight, his weight was reasonably proportional to his height. It made no difference that he ate often and as much junk as he could get his hands on.
He mock-combed his short hair by running his palm over the top from back to forehead, smoothing it against his scalp. Not bothering to shower, he pulled a black polo over his head and paired it with some dark jeans. After donning mismatched socks—both were white, he justified—and his black Airwalks, Michael left the comparable comfort of his foster home for the cold, damp morning.
During the mile walk to school—he didn’t care for the classmate interaction that taking the bus often entailed—he kept an eye out for Jimmy, but he didn’t spot him. He waited by one of the entrances as long as he could, hoping he would catch Jimmy on his way in. Eventually, he was forced to follow the rest of the cattle to roll call.
As soon as the bell signaled the end of homeroom, he hustled back into the hallway. No Jimmy. He was beginning to wonder if his friend had skipped school.
His morning classes came and went. Michael spent every free moment searching for his friend. He checked Jimmy’s usual classes and anywhere he thought Jimmy could be hiding: the locker room by the track, the library, the audio-visual room. He was becoming more certain that Jimmy had decided to take the day off. Perhaps there would be no Columbine reenactment after all. Michael prayed he was right, even if it did mean his “vision” was nothing more than a hallucination.
I still have lunch to find him. No one skips lunch. Even killers have to eat.
Lunch passed without Jimmy making an appearance. He has to be out today. If he were here, I would have seen him by now. Relaxing a little, he wolfed down his three-dollar cheeseburger and tater tots and guzzled two cartons of milk. He snuck out of the cafeteria before his lunch hour was over so he could rush back to the west corridor. If anything were going to happen, it would happen there. Michael would be ready. He would stop Jimmy from making the worst mistake of his life and perhaps begrudgingly save Glenn in the process. He wondered if it would buy him a pass from future abuse.
The west corridor was silent, upperclassmen somberly attending classes in session around him, lowerclassmen still at lunch. Michael spun the dial of his combination lock as though someone’s life depended on his haste. He grabbed the books he needed for the afternoon and shoved them into his backpack. Before shutting the locker, he caught a glimpse of himself in a small mirror inside the door. His lack of sleep showed in the dark half circles under his eyes. He suddenly realized that in his absentminded preparation for school, he had put on the same shirt he’d been wearing in his vision.
He cursed himself for the oversight, as if changing shirts could have changed what was to come. Slamming his locker shut in disgust, Michael turned to face a still empty, quiet hallway. He glanced at his watch: 12:49 p.m. His solitude was coming to an end.
Less than a minute later, an obnoxious fire alarm-like bell rang, signaling the end of the classes that had begun at noon. The hallway filled with hurried footsteps and hundreds of voices, each one competing to be heard over the others. Their simultaneous existences made them one, producing an indistinguishable, constant murmur that resembled static. To Michael, it was like a blanket, easy to get lost in and easy to hide under. Too many fishes crowded into a small pond, easy for a small fish like him to go unnoticed, the way he usually liked it.
But not today. Today, he needed to be noticed, if not by Jimmy,
then by Glenn. Finding Jimmy was obviously preferable. But spotting Glenn was considerably less difficult.
Upperclassmen shuffled out of their classrooms like zombies, their high school lectures apparently sucking the vigor from their muscles and the consciousness from their minds. Glenn was first out of the classroom nearest Michael, a startling revelation he made sure to ingrain into memory. Glenn continued down the hallway, thankfully without noticing him, and stopped near a water fountain to speak to a girl Michael didn’t know. Glenn then walked with the girl to the sixth or seventh locker past the fountain, where they talked for a moment. When the girl left, Michael hoped Glenn would follow her.
But Glenn stayed and opened his locker. He turned the lock one click at a time, seemingly without a care in the world. The seconds passed painfully slow for Michael as he watched Glenn maneuver books and fix his hair in a mirror. He supposed he should pardon Glenn’s loitering. The senior scumbag couldn’t know what Michael knew: that Glenn had only a few minutes left to live.
Should I warn him? Michael wanted to, but he wasn’t too proud to admit he was afraid of Glenn. Jimmy would be appearing soon. If Michael could stop his friend before he even got close to his prey, Glenn would never be the wiser. He leaned his back against his locker and waited, unable to keep his foot from tapping as he watched for Jimmy.
The next five minutes were almost unbearable. He glanced at his watch incessantly, the time ticking by as though it had lost interest in its immortality. Finally, after Michael had checked his watch a twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth time, it read, “12:56 p.m.”
Like a sign of the apocalypse, Nancy Pettigrew strolled toward him. As she passed, she flashed him a smile, just as she had done in his vision. And she’s wearing the same fuzzy blue sweater. He was too distracted by the fact it proved his vision was true to appreciate the way Nancy looked in it.
Unlike in his vision, Michael didn’t blush. Nancy was the last person he wanted to see or, perhaps, the second to last. Given how her face contorted into a look of disgust, she must have seen the revulsion that festered within him at the sight of her. She huffed and hustled by more quickly than he’d envisioned. He had no time to explain that his queasiness had nothing to do with her. If his vision was accurate, and he no longer had any reason to doubt it, Jimmy was near.
I’m not prepared for this. He began to panic. He paced and turned, paced and turned. What am I going to do? What am I going to do? How could I have been so stupid? He had no plan, no idea how he would stop Jimmy from doing the unthinkable. And the gun? What was he supposed to do about the gun?
Bullying was one thing, but Jimmy must have felt the fear of something worse to bring a gun to school. He didn’t strike Michael as crazy. No, he’ll listen. He has to. He started to believe he could convince Jimmy not to shoot Glenn. If he couldn’t, he would have to overpower Jimmy. Every scenario that crossed Michael’s mind ended with one or more people being shot. Glenn no longer seemed worth the risk. He reminded himself that Glenn wasn’t the one he was really trying to save.
Through the mass of students cluttering the hallway, he caught a glimpse of Jimmy’s messy auburn hair coming toward him. As Jimmy neared, Michael could make out his clothing. Jimmy wore the same frumpy sweatshirt and wrinkled jeans from Michael’s vision. Likewise, Jimmy’s hands were buried in the sweatshirt’s giant front pocket. Michael didn’t have to guess what was in there with them.
“Jimmy?” Michael called. His voice squeaked even though he was trying to sound normal. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
Jimmy passed within two feet of him but never averted his gaze or acknowledged him. He pressed forward, a blank-faced and tunnel-visioned killer, his mind clearly on the task he had set for himself.
Michael stepped into his friend’s path. “Jimmy?”
Jimmy gave no sign of slowing.
Michael began backpedaling at a pace equal to Jimmy’s. “Don’t do it, Jimmy,” he said, skipping the small talk.
Jimmy grunted. His eyes were fixed somewhere past Michael, no doubt homing in on his target. Walking backward in front of a boy hell-bent on murder, Michael supposed he should have been happy Jimmy paid him little attention. But it got him nowhere in his efforts to stop the crime. Still, a grunt was better than nothing.
“Jimmy!” he shouted loud enough to make heads turn.
Jimmy’s trance was broken. Finally, his charge halted, and he gazed at Michael with hate-filled eyes.
Most of the eavesdropping busybodies quickly returned to their own conversations, his outburst deemed less important than the latest clique gossip that generally didn’t pertain to him. Michael avoided the social class structure of high school. In fact, he avoided high school and its students wherever possible. In doing so, he ironically placed himself in the “invisible” grouping, a sometimes lonely place to be. At least he wasn’t an outcast. People had to notice someone for that, and once they did, school got a whole lot tougher. Being lonely was better than being bullied.
Yet for some reason, he was going way out of his way for a bully and his victim, the latter vying for a role reversal. The disdain oozing from Jimmy made Michael want to shrink inside himself. Again, he felt like a villain for trying to play the hero, a part he’d never wanted but that was thrust upon him by foresight.
“Hey, Mike,” Jimmy said, his voice low and menacing. “I can’t talk right now. I’m going to be late for class.”
Michael glanced around, scanning for prying ears. The hallway traffic flowed around them as if they were rocks jutting out of a river. No one seemed to care about them or their conversation.
Michael leaned close to Jimmy. “I know what’s in your pocket.”
“What? How?” Jimmy’s expression revealed his nervousness at having been discovered, but it quickly transformed into one of anger. It wasn’t the fleeting kind, either; Jimmy looked pissed, his rage continuing to mount. His scowl resembled a snarling dog’s.
I’m making things worse. I’ve got to calm him down, or the janitors will be mopping up two dead bodies at the end of the school day.
“Get out of my way,” Jimmy said through clenched teeth.
He grabbed Jimmy by his left arm. “I can’t let you do it.”
Jimmy tore his arm free while pulling his other hand from his pocket. He pointed a gun at Michael’s forehead.
Don’t piss yourself. Die with dignity. Maybe you’ll get a nice memorial in the yearbook.
Michael heard the gasps of astonished students, then dead silence. He was surprised by what he didn’t hear: screams and the sound of running feet. Unable to tear his gaze from the dark circular cavern where the bringer of his oblivion dwelled, Michael couldn’t see a thing happening around him. Jimmy’s finger rested on the trigger.
This was not my best idea. Michael’s body began to ache, yearning for a release from its frozen posture. He was afraid, but not nearly as afraid as he thought he should have been. After all, his life was in the hands of a boy he’d already witnessed murder another student, even if it was all just some sick, unavoidable prophecy. Michael knew what Jimmy was capable of, and with that gun pointed in his face, there wasn’t a damn thing he could do. Having drawn the gun, Jimmy wouldn’t be stopped. There was no going back.
Jimmy drew back his arm and batted Michael against the ear with the side of his pistol. Michael heard a crunch, the sound of cartilage breaking, and the hallway blurred. Michael fell, half from the impact and half from the loss of balance caused by the ringing in his ear.
By the time Michael shook off his daze and stood, Jimmy was approaching Glenn with his gun raised high. Why weren’t they all running? Why wouldn’t anyone help? The thought crossed his mind that it was all just some twisted form of entertainment to them. Students filled the hallway, watching like gawkers at a car crash. No one did anything to stop Jimmy, not even Glenn. The stupid bully didn’t even have enough sense to get the hell out
of there.
Seeing the gun coming toward them made the students at least get out of the line of fire. They pressed against the lockers on each side of the hall. The pistol cut its way to Glenn like a transport cart inside a crowded airport as Jimmy zeroed in on his prey.
“You don’t have the—” Glenn was interrupted when his face exploded.
He fell to the floor. A mass of blood and torn flesh remained where his right eye and nose had once been.
As Mr. Wilfork tackled Jimmy, Michael stared at Glenn’s lifeless body. All emotion left him, shock and disbelief succumbing to emptiness. I tried to tell them. That small consolation was all he had. At least he could say he told them so.
Chapter 7
For the next few days, Michael spent most of his time locked inside his bedroom. He had no desire to see anyone, least of all his foster parents. They hadn’t tried to console him or even to understand him. Instead, they treated him like a visitor who overstayed his welcome. Every time he walked by them, they would stand as still as portraits in a haunted house, their beady eyes following him wherever he went.
“We should call Father Preston again,” Helen had said after Michael climbed the stairs to his bedroom the evening after the shooting. She obviously thought him out of earshot.
“Honey,” Greg replied, “the priest already told us what to look for. We took that boy in, gave him a home. He’s our responsibility now. We can’t just give him back.”
“But Greg, that Rodrigues boy… he died. Michael knew that would happen. What if he caused it? What if he’s dangerous?”
What if I’m dangerous? Michael had heard enough. It made his stomach turn how Helen and Greg didn’t fear the bully or the shooter but their own ward. For a second, he had wondered how they could think so little of him, but the moment passed quickly. After all, they weren’t his first foster parents, and they certainly weren’t his real parents. He’d retreated to his room and come out only to eat.