by Liz Crowe
“Baby, I know it’s hot. I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to go to school today. But we only have a few more days and then we get the whole summer to ourselves.”
She sighed, not really anticipating that with anything but dread. She had a waiting list as long as her arm of kids wanting to pay her for vocal coaching in the next few months. She’d chosen some who had promise and told the others she’d have to get back to them.
Her email inbox and voicemail were chock full of eager parents, offering her ungodly sums of money to move their precious snowflake of a future star up her waiting list. It was exhausting, discouraging, and top it all off, she hadn’t seen or heard from Terry since that day she’d walked out on his proposal back in November.
Partly her own fault. But that did not make it any less awful.
Christmas had been a weak, dismal affair. Lindee, Patty and Henry plus a few other friends she’d made at the school had done their best. She was lucky to have them, she knew. But the decision she’d made in the face of Terry’s earnest plea to tie herself to him forever had sealed her heart shut and covered it over with a layer of ice, leaving her numb to anything but the day to day grind. Her life soldiered on, with the music program, the ungodly decision to put on a musical this spring with the drama department, her son, eating, and sleeping.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
She dreaded the nights the most. The last night before his ill-timed proposal she’d wanted to wake in his arms so he’d stayed at her insistence. The sheer joy in his eyes, coupled with that of Cole’s the next morning when he found Terry making them all breakfast had nearly done her in. But she’d answered that by shutting him off, out of her life, completely.
If Cole asked about him once, he asked a million times. But he’d given up, or gotten distracted, once they hit winter, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and now, spring—her favorite season in her home state. But she was miserable, sleep deprived, antsy and jumpy. She had no one but herself to blame of course. Which made it that much worse.
“Call him,” Lindee had encouraged her more than once. “It’s okay. Lovers fight. The make-up sex is the best.”
“You don’t understand,” she’d insisted over and over. “I really did a number on him, in front of all his flipping trained killer friends. I’m surprised I made it out of there alive.”
“Don’t be a dolt,” Patty had said, also more than once. “From what I hear tell, he’s a mess, drinking every night, carousing, picking up women…”
“Great, thanks. That helps me a lot.”
On and on it went. Now, when it should hurt less, it hurt more. In the last four nights alone she’d composed countless text messages only to erase them in a fit of tears and cursing, sitting in her dark condo living room with her son snoozing away, her chest clenched in pain.
Plus, now she had something else to worry about. The environment at their school—a mix of long-time, farming and small town families, plus new money residents—was getting toxic, according to Kieran. They’d been subjected to countless meetings with police and other experts, called in at his request to debrief everyone and teach them how to spot an explosive situation in their rooms, along the halls, or in the cafeteria.
She should be scared. Or at least more vigilant. But she didn’t care. She felt hollowed out, cored, like an apple, bereft and miserable, and furious at herself.
When her parents had shown up to surprise her for her birthday a few weeks ago, loaded down with presents and her mother had admitted that “that boy” had gone to see them back in November, to ask permission to ask her to marry him she’d been stunned. But not terribly surprised. For a young guy, Terry was an old soul—an old fashioned soul in many ways.
“I think I like that one,” June had said, side eyeing her as they cut pieces of birthday cake.
“Great, Mama. You marry him then,” she’d quipped.
Her father had hugged her tight before he left. “That was a fine young man,” he whispered, making her squeeze her eyes shut to keep from bursting into tears. “I’m truly sorry it didn’t work out.” That was the only thing he’d said about any of it. And it hurt her more than anything anyone else had said.
But still, she didn’t reach out. And he stayed silent on his end, which told her a lot about how her reaction that day had been received.
“Ma-ma. Ma-ma,” Cole screeched kicking the back of her seat. “Hot! Tired, wanna go home.”
“Honey, please, stop.” She cranked up his favorite Disney tunes on the satellite radio as tears of exhaustion and plain old frustration rolled down her cheeks.
Her fault. All her fucking fault.
She hauled him out of the car, propelling him towards the teacher at the door of the pre-school—a happy, healthy place, this time. Not a dismal, cheap, church basement. He usually loved it, but for today. He’d woken up pissed off at the world, and had spent the hour they usually spent getting ready and eating bemoaning the lack of “Terry” in his life.
Like that helped.
“Sorry,” she said to the calm-looking teacher. “He’s in a mood. It’s the weather, I think.”
The woman nodded. “Big storms predicted for later. That should break it up.”
Mariah sighed and re-fastened her hair back off her sweaty face and neck. It had turned stifling hot, the air heavy and muggy and hard to breathe the weekend before the calendar pages flipped over to May. The sky was a swirl of orange, pink and gray, forbidding yet beautiful at the same time. It matched her mood to a T.
She parked at the school and grabbed the box of programs she’d agreed to pick up from the printers for Grease, The Musical—something she despised, but that she knew would be a good fit for a fledgling musical drama team. Sweat trickled between her shoulder blades and dripped off her temples as she wrestled the box, and her briefcase full of music appreciation final test papers to the door. Kids called out to her. She tried to respond in kind but her head was pounding as if the barometric pressure was squeezing her skull in a vise.
A couple of hours into the day, she had to admit that she might have to leave early. Her gut was roiling and her chest ached. The visions and memories of Terry were relentless, marching across her brain in an endless parade of erotic satisfaction and plain old happiness. She’d loved being with him, whether they were naked and skin to skin—as they’d been a lot—or simply making dinner, watching a movie, Cole snuggled between them, or with him showing her soccer moves as an excuse to grab her butt and hips as part of his instruction.
She sighed and lifted her heavy hair up off her neck, as she stared down at the huge stack of new tests to be graded. They had a final tech rehearsal tonight that she dreaded. All she wanted to do was go home, crawl under the covers, and call Terry. That compulsion had nearly blinded her all morning and it had only gotten worse as the day went on.
She shook her head, grabbed her cup of cold coffee, took a sip and bent to her work. After a quiet half hour, kids started filtering into the choir room, plinking at the piano and singing, warming up. The band room down the hall was full of braying, squawking noise. She laid her head down on the pile of papers, willing her head to stop its incessant drumbeat, wishing Terry were here.
A loud shout from down the hall didn’t faze her at first. It was the end of the year. Kids were restless and acting out, even the good kids. When the shout got louder, she frowned and went to her open office door, glancing down the hall first left, then right. She turned back to the left and saw something that wouldn’t compute at first. Three tall boys, two of whom she vaguely recognized, striding down the music wing hall holding what looked like huge, almost cartoonish-seeming guns
On reflex, she ducked into the music room and slammed the door shut, which got the attention of about half the kids in the room. The other half went on singing and laughing, goofing off around the piano. She watched through the small square of glass as the young men marched past the door, then stopped at the end of the hall, held up their guns and opened fire
.
***
“I don’t know, man. It’s weird. I guess I want you to know, just in case.”
Terry stared at his friend, worried about the slight pallor under his skin but at the same time he kept himself separate, unwilling to commit to this.
He had a new job now. One that paid bank, and since the Love family was letting him continue to squat in the flat over the old brewery, his expenses were minimal. Food, gas, a nominal rent, booze, and chicks. He’d bought a lot of booze for a lot of random chicks lately, thinking he’d snag one or two or three and let them fuck him out of his misery.
But by the time those not-so-fun evenings ended, he always went home alone. He didn’t want strange pussy. He wanted Mariah. He wanted to hear her voice, to touch her warm skin, to run his fingers through her mop of curly hair and kiss her. Make love to her, over and over, to make her see sense.
He’d done a dumb thing. But once Ghost had gotten him home, he’d passed out and woken determined to fix it—to reach out to her and force her to come back to him. But the days had passed, one by one, and he’d not allowed himself to do it. So it got easier to let her go.
A lie, of course. It got harder and shittier.
But he would be damned if he begged her at this point. Besides, his job kept him plenty busy. He’d spent hours working the IT department, getting them up to snuff. Then he’d gone on a few assignments for their bigger corporate clients, sorting through computer data and pinpointing employees who were skimming money and info, turning them over to their superiors. Then going home at night to drink alone, and dream of Mariah.
One side bonus: he’d been reassigned his weapons. How, he had no idea. But as part of one of the most secretive divisions of the armed forces, he’d gotten used to accepting things at face value. So he’d pocketed his beloved Beretta and his carry permit, and stored the bigger weaponry in a safe in his apartment. Unsure why or how this job justified it, but he loved the smooth, familiar curvature of the guns in his hands.
He’d gone out to the range almost every weekend, usually with Dominic Love, Kieran’s wild-ass younger brother, now head of the brewery, married and with a teenaged son from an old relationship to raise. They’d drink a beer or two and shoot for hours in silence, their companionship not requiring a ton of words.
Between that and kicking the living shit of soccer balls, he’d kept himself more or less at a mental parade rest. He’d been hanging out at an indoor sports facility that had been built to accommodate the hordes of suburban kids who had overrun his old hometown like cockroaches, bringing their Target stores, their Best Buys, their wine and quiche bistros, and their massive, indoor soccer arenas.
Which, apparently, was the problem at hand now.
“It’s toxic,” Kieran was saying, pulling him back into the conversation, as he touched the comforting bulge of the firearm under his jacket. “I’m dealing with it the only way I know how. But every day it’s like the air in the school gets heavier with…I don’t know…pissed off teenagers. And it’s not like I’m not used to those—but now it seems, heavier, more serious, somehow.”
“It’s the end of the year. Surely it’s like that every April and May?”
“Yeah, but no. This is different.”
“So what can I do about it?” He knew, but he wanted Kieran to say it for some reason.
“Be on call, I guess. Aware. If I need you I can text and you’ll know to come running?”
“Sure,” he said, casually, finishing his coffee and putting some money on the table. “No problem.”
“Thanks,” Kieran said with a glance at his phone. “Sorry to be a pain.”
Terry felt a pang of regret for being such an ass. But he had to stay distant. He couldn’t let himself get pulled back into his former life, that brief, wonderful moment he’d spent as soccer coach, as Mariah’s boyfriend and lover. To do anything else would kill him.
“You’re not,” he said, leaning forward and grabbing his friend’s arm. “I’m being a dick. Sorry.”
“I know.” Kieran smiled at him. “I mean, I know you’re a dick. That’s not new to me. I’ve known you way too long, remember? I’m sorry it didn’t work out with Mariah. I’m especially sorry since it officially cost me the best soccer coach we’ve had here in years—since you and Quentin played here.”
Terry shook his head, unwilling to talk about it and a little shaky at the mention of his dead brother. “Whatever. Listen, you text me nine-one-one I’ll know to come running, armed and ready.” He winked at his friend, still thinking the man was overreacting, but happy to do something to ease his obvious anxiety.
“Yeah, okay,” Kieran said, swiping a hand down his face. “Thanks.”
Within an hour of getting to his office, he got pulled into some kind of crisis which took another hour to sort out, thanks to somebody’s fuck up resetting the passwords overnight. Cursing and rubbing his eyes, he stared at the screen, watching the system do a full reboot at his instigation. Only he held the keys to that particular kingdom and he’d been given carte blanche to manage it however he saw fit. A lot of responsibility. But one he took pride in handling, considering how well he was being compensated for it.
As he watched the screens re-populate themselves, something made his scalp tingle. Something he’d not felt in a long time, not since his time as an Operator when his finely honed intuition had been all he had between life and death. He leaned forward, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose, and then reached for his phone, recalling his friend’s wigged out conversation that morning.
The phone had stayed quiet all morning, he thought. So all must be well.
To reassure himself, he reached into the inner pocket of his leather jacket so he could stare down at the comforting blank screen.
But his phone wasn’t in its usual place.
“Shit,” he muttered, getting up to check all the work surfaces in his office.
No phone anywhere.
Commanding the tiny blip of worry beating the base of his brain to be silent, he took a breath and walked out to his truck. The sun was blazing hot. The muggy air in late April not boding well for a comfortable summer. He wrenched the door open and reached into the console where he kept the damn thing when he was charging it.
His hand shook. His scalp tingled again. A drop of sweat hit the black screen as he touched the button to power it up.
“Fuck,” he yelped as he jumped into the seat, and roared out into the street, mentally calculating the time it would take for him to drive to the school at ninety miles an hour.
He’d seen 9-1-1, six times. When he’d tried to call back while he drove like a dozen bats out of a dozen hells he’d gotten no answer.
“Mariah,” he whispered, his jaw clenched, his brain slipping into Operator mode. “Fucking-A Kieran answer the mother fucking phone now,” he yelled so loud it made his throat hurt.
“Terry,” his friend’s voice came through at last, whispery, breathy in a way that made Terry’s gut churn. “Police are…” he stopped and coughed. “They’re on their way. Stay away. Don’t…it’s….shit.” A loud blast hit Terry’s ears and the phone went dead.
He punched it through a red light, tires squealing, horns honking all around him. When he looked down at his phone buzzing in his clenched hand, the name there made his heart nearly stop.
Mariah.
“Where are you?” he barked. “Are you safe? Behind a door? In a closet?”
“I’m in the music room with about two dozen kids,” she said, her voice calm. But he heard the tension in it, could taste her terror as if he were experiencing it himself. “They entered the building here, by the theater, that door… you know where. I think they’re in the gym now.”
“Okay, I need you to do me a favor, baby. You up for that?” He roared across a berm to avoid one of the bigger intersections and took a side road, nearly tilting his truck over on its side, not touching the brakes through a sharp curve alongside the Lucas River.
; “Yes, okay.”
“Go to the door and look down the hall. See if there are any unfriendlies…um, teenagers with weapons…in your quadrant…uh, your area. The hall. If they’ve moved away from there, I need to get to them, but I won’t, until I know you’re safe.”
“Okay. Hold on. Are you c-c-c-c-close?” Her stuttering soft voice made his pulse race like nothing ever had. “Terry?”
“I’m close, baby. Ten minutes, max.” He floored the accelerator, tearing through somebody’s tulip patch with an apology on his lips, turning the actual twenty minutes he had left closer to ten.
“I don’t see anyone,” she said. “It’s smoky though and it’s hard to breathe in the hall.” She coughed. He could hear sobbing in the background.
This centered him. This he understood. This he could fix. Hostage rescue was one of Delta Force’s prime directives. He’d trained for hours using live fire and had participated in four real hostage extractions. But he was shaking as he said, “Mariah, honey, can you lock the door? Are all the kids in your wing with you?”
“Yes. To both.”
“Good, go back inside, lock it and shove the heaviest furniture you can find in front of it. Do that now. I’m gonna enter by the other side, at the gym.”
“Terry, don’t, it’s not safe there.”
“I know. That’s why I have to go there. Barricade yourself and text me when it’s done. I’ll come for you I swear it. I won’t let you get hurt.”
“Okay. And Terry,” she said, her voice on the verge of tears. She hesitated.
“What is it? I’m almost there. I see the cops behind me, a shit ton of them. But I want to get there first. I can sort this out with a minimal loss of life but if those assholes go in guns blazing there’s no fucking telling—”
“I love you,” she said, with a sob, before she hung up.
“God damn it, move out the fuck out of my way,” he roared as he laid on his horn and drove up the side of the road past the roadblock the locals were setting up. Good, a perimeter, he thought, as his brain shifted away from Mariah and into Operator mode.