Spree (YA Paranormal)

by Jonathan DeCoteau

  “I wrote and wrote when Steve died,” Mrs. Walters continued. “I can still remember that day like it was yesterday.”

  She could too. I could see her high school self standing in front of a mirror, deciding what to wear. Her biggest challenge of the day was a black blouse Steve liked and a sheik vermillion skirt she adored. The skirt won. It would prove an especially ironic choice of color.

  She was in the cafeteria for study hall when the first shots rang out. She didn’t hear them, too busy gossiping with her friends about how far she and Steve went the other night. The moment a slightly less portly Mr. Higgins came stumbling in, his science lecture notes in his hands, she could tell that something was wrong. His face was red and scrunched up, yet he was sweating as he whispered something to the study proctor. The school was going into lockdown. They wanted nothing said to the students to avoid panic. But it was too late. From the far rear window of the cafeteria Mrs. Walters, then just Lisa, saw kids running, spattered with their own blood and the blood of others. She stood there a moment, too shocked to say anything. More observant kids filmed the entire episode on their cells and were texting pictures back and forth. Within a minute the story was around the school and kids knew that something was up, that an explosion had happened by the gym and that people were hurt. It wasn’t until the photos of the kids running towards the cafeteria hallway surfaced that it became clear: students had been shot.

  “That psycho,” Paul, a buff jock and acquaintance of Lisa, called out.

  Blood stained his legs as he searched up and down to see how bad the wounds were. Parts of kids had fallen on him, but he wasn’t hurt.

  “What’s going on?” Becky, a friend of Lisa’s, asked.

  “Matt and a few other kids got him,” the kid said. “Not before he fired, though.”

  “Who fired?”

  Paul looked right at Lisa, his eyes full of hidden light.

  “Teddy Berschmire,” he said.

  “Crazy T?” Lisa asked.

  “He shot…”

  Paul couldn’t say it. Lisa just looked at him and started bawling.

  “Is he still alive?” she managed to ask.

  Paul looked down and lost his eyes to the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  This one moment, born of a demented brain, would come to define the rest of Mrs. Walters’s life. Crazy T may have been obsessed with her, but she launched an obsession of her own: to help kids in need so that they would never turn out like Crazy T did.

  How to capture all of that in a poem?

  All these years later, she sat eating steak with her husband, still alive, randomly so.

  “It must have been awful,” Mr. Walters said in response to his wife’s earlier question. “Could you pass the A-1 sauce?”

  Mrs. Walters shook her head, reached for the sauce. Her hand still shook, all these years later, as she handed her husband the condiment. Mr. Walters saw but just continued cutting into his steak. He’d heard the story before. It never ended well.

  * * *

  That night Zipper was given special orders: make sure the fields were clean for the championship game. It was an exhausting process, cleaning up anything from wrappers tossed carelessly by kids skipping out on gym class to mowing and making sure the field lines were freshly painted. But Zipper had a natural talent for making everything look just perfect.

  Zipper sat on the mower, ear buds in, zigzagging along the edge of the pavement, in a circuitous route he had memorized after months of planting explosives.

  He hit a snag; there was an explosion—a small one, but one that could’ve blown the whole school away.

  Zipper tore out his ear buds and looked around. His boss, Mr. Peterson, a fat, bald stocky man who still bore some signs of his former athleticism, rushed to the scene, beer can still in hand.

  “What the hell?” Mr. Peterson asked.

  Zipper shrugged his shoulders.

  “This piece of crap needs to get looked at,” Zipper said, pointing down at the mower.

  “I’ve never heard the thing make that noise in seven years,” Mr. Peterson said. “You must not be handling it right.”

  Mr. Peterson went over to the mower, started examining it as it ran.

  A pipe choked out some smoke, sounded a bit gruff.

  “That wasn’t the sound I heard,” Mr. Peterson said.

  “Yeah—it was worse before,” Zipper told him.

  “Let me know if it happens again,” Mr. Peterson replied.

  “Don’t you want me to stop mowing?” Zipper asked.

  “Not on your life,” Mr. Peterson said. “Get these fields ready.”

  Zipper smiled, nodded, and then put his ear buds back in. He started mowing again, leaving Mr. Peterson to his beer and a cloud of dust.

  THE DAY OF THE SHOOTING: MORNING

  Chapter 10

  Steph and her friends walked in with the T-shirts she had specially made. On the back, a picture of her mom holding her. On the front, the words, in bright blood red: “Forget Fay.”

  In her first position class, the students were already buzzing.

  Mr. Higgins knew something big was going on, as he managed to get two phones from the kids in the first ten minutes of class. Teens were never that sloppy with their phones. Something was up.

  Then Steph walked in, not even flinching as she headed to her seat.

  A group of kids murmurred, looking from their old Bunsen burners to the shirt.

  “Steph,” Mr. Higgins said. “Come here.”

  Steph marched up to Mr. Higgins’s desk, making no effort at concealment.

  “We’re all happy you’re back,” Mr. Higgins said. “None of us know what you’re going through. But that shirt—”

  “I have the right to wear this shirt,” Steph said.

  Her voice didn’t quiver in the slightest; she’d clearly rehearsed the conversation many times in her head.

  “Even if you do—” Mr. Higgins said.

  “I do,” Steph insisted.

  “Does having a right make it right?” Mr. Higgins inquired.

  “Did Fay have the right to kill my mom?” Steph asked in reply.

  Mr. Higgins took a breath and examined the angry young girl before him. The class was deathly silent, listening, pretending to fool with the burners.

  “Fay,” Mr. Higgins pleaded.

  “I’m not taking off this shirt.”

  Steph stood there, inflexible.

  “Why don’t you go talk to Mrs. Cowell?” Mr. Higgins suggested. “You’ll feel better.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Steph said. “And talking isn’t going to make anything better.”

  Her aura was so full of vibrant reds, so wounded, so angry.

  “The back of the shirt is so beautiful,” Mr. Higgins said. “Your mother would be so proud. Why—”

  “Don’t speak of my mother.”

  “Please, Steph,” Mr. Higgins pleaded. “That shirt’s hurting some of Fay’s friends.”

  “Good. Those alcoholics deserve it.”

  “Steph, please change shirts.”

  “No.”

  “I can’t have you wearing that shirt in this class,” Mr. Higgins said. “It’s hurting your friends.”

  “To hell with them. They weren’t even at the funeral. They’re not my friends,” Steph said.

  Mr. Higgins picked up the phone and dialed down to Mrs. Cowell. His only words: “Please come immediately.”

  I sensed from his aura that this was the only time in thirty years he’d ever uttered those words.

  “Really?” Steph challenged. “You’re going to force me out over this?”

  “No one’s forcing you out,” Mr. Higgins said.

  Mrs. Cowell heard, said she’d be on her way. Mr. Higgins hung up the phone.

  “If you force me to leave, if you force me to take off this shirt, I will sue,” Steph said. “You’re obstructing my education, Mr. Higgins, and that I can’t have.”

  Ste
ph wore a bitter smirk on her face as she spoke the words.

  Mr. Higgins scratched his beard, as if that was somehow the appropriate response. Words failed him.

  Steph stared deeply into him, before turning to the class.

  “She killed my mother,” she said to the students. “I won’t let you pretend she was some kind of a saint. She was a selfish, slutty, nasty drunk, and I’m paying the price for it. So is her mother and her boyfriend and so is everyone else who hung out with her.”

  The kids turned from their thirty-year-old Bunsen burners, certain that this experiment was much more interesting than the one they were conducting. No one said a word, though. Their auras were all over the place, retreating as much as possible from the flaming red sun that was Steph’s aura.

  “No one’s denying that you’re paying a price you shouldn’t have to,” Mrs. Cowell said.

  She had appeared in the doorway mid-speech, took to watching the exploding teenager before her eyes.

  “I’m not leaving,” Steph said. “You can’t make me go. You can’t ignore this!”

  “No one’s trying to ignore you, honey,” Mrs. Cowell said.

  “Up yours! What do you know?!” Steph asked. “Is it you going to bed every night crying?”

  “No, it’s not,” Mrs. Cowell said.

  “Then shut up,” Steph said. “Don’t tell me what to feel.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Mrs. Cowell said. “You have every right to feel how you’re feeling.”

  “I don’t need patronizing.”

  “I’m not patronizing; I’m agreeing,” Mrs. Cowell said. “I don’t know how you feel. Can you tell me?”

  “What for?”

  “To feel better.”

  “I can never feel better, not after this,” Steph said. “Why can’t you people just mind your own business?”

  “You are our business,” Mrs. Cowell said. “We care about you, Steph. We want to help.”

  “Well, you can’t.”

  “Can you let us try?”

  Steph took a step back, hardened her eyes.

  “I know what you’re trying to do. It won’t work. This shirt isn’t coming off,” Steph said. “And I will not leave this room.”

  Steph sat down, staging a one-girl sit-in to make her point.

  “Okay. Fair enough,” Mrs. Cowell said.

  Mrs. Cowell, old as she looked, came in, sat down right next to Steph.

  “We’ll talk here,” Mrs. Cowell said.

  “I don’t want to talk,” Steph said.

  “Then we’ll just sit,” Mrs Cowell said.

  “Why?!” Steph asked.

  Her voice sounded more like a whimper than an outcry.

  “Because we want to be here for you,” Mrs. Cowell said. “All of us.”

  Mr. Higgins’s entire class, starting with Alex, came and sat down by Steph. Alex hugged Steph, gently, like he might a sister. Steph pulled away, though her eyes had a reddish tinge from forcing back the tears. The other students sat around Steph, reaching out, grabbing a hand, patting a shoulder, calling out her name in encouragement. Finally, Mr. Higgins came. Far too big for the circle, he teetered, then sat in the doorway.

  “Someone has to be the anchor,” he said.

  It was a stupid comment, out of place, without meaning, but the portly man trying to find room for a seat and barely fitting in the doorway gave the kids a laugh they sorely needed.

  “I can’t take off the shirt, not yet,” Steph said after the laughter died down.

  “Then keep it on,” Mr. Higgins said. “Until you’re ready.”

  Mr. Higgins knew he’d receive phone calls from parents over his words, but he didn’t interfere. He just sat there. His entire class did, until Steph was able to get up, wipe the dirt off the back of her jeans, and walk out at the bell, as if nothing, and everything, had happened.

  * * *

  John Chatterly to the office, the intercom sounded out.

  It was unusual to hear Zipper’s real name, and I’d never once heard it over the intercom in all my years at Burgundy Hill High.

  Zipper never heard his name called either.

  He jolted in his seat near the end of Mrs. Walters’s English class.

  The class heard Mrs. Walters’s poem after sharing one of their own. It was entitled “Lost Colors.”

  She had compared Steve and all of her friends to different colors from the rainbow. Corny, yes, but a more peaceful way of presenting what she had to say to already traumatized kids.

  Zipper stood up in the middle of the poem, putting on his backpack right when Mrs. Walters said something like:

  To lose a friend young

  is to lose a color

  Never before painted

  A life never breaking from the clouds

  Zipper stood there, looking at Mrs. Walters, and she looked back.

  “I have to go,” Zipper said.

  “You won’t need your backpack,” Mrs. Walters told him.

  “Five minutes left of class,” Zipper said.

  “Go ahead,” Mrs. Walters replied.

  She turned her attention back to her poem, back to the ghosts of twelve years ago.

  Zipper began sweating heavily. He walked briskly, thinking back to last night, to his painting of the soccer lines, to the explosive that detonated, that could’ve ignited others and blown him up with the entire field. I read deeper into his aura. He wondered how he could be sure everything was set, how he could be sure the school kids would truly get blown away as his little legs carried him to the office door. He wondered what, exactly, the administration knew.

  The moment Zipper stepped in the office, Mr. Buckley, the principal, stood waiting for him, a cop to his right.

  Zipper’s aura leapt; the Takers around him swirled in animosity. He did all he could not to go for his gun.

  “John,” Mr. Buckley said, calling him over.

  Zipper stepped right up to the counter, still sweating.

  “I have a message for you, John,” Mr. Buckley said.

  He handed Zipper a paper from Mr. Peterson.

  “Need you out right at 2:30 to paint the fields again. Let Mr. Buckley know if you can stay.”

  “What happened?” John asked.

  He kept his eyes on the cop.

  “A few kids trespassed last night,” Mr. Buckley said. “They damaged some of the lines. I sent Mr. Peterson to fix the fields, but he asked me to hand you a note.”

  Zipper breathed heavily, then calmed himself.

  “I can stay,” he said to Mr. Buckley.

  “Thanks, John. I’ll let Mr. Peterson know,” Mr. Buckley said. “One more thing. Was anyone on the fields when you left?”

  Zipper shook his head.

  “Thanks,” Mr. Buckley said. “You can go back to class now.”

  Zipper turned and left.

  As Zipper walked down the hall, the quiet of class time was interrupted again.

  Tom Harrington to the office, the intercom said.

  Tom came right down, passing Zipper in the hall as he walked in.

  Zipper smirked. Tom caught the smile.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Cop’s waiting,” Zipper told him. “Better walk in a straight line.”

  Tom fought to think of a put down, but he was too nervous.

  “They’ll still let me play,” was all he could think of to say.

  He’d be right.

  * * *

  I still felt the party alive in the air.

  The Taker in me could feel the loss of control.

  I’d been blinded by Steph’s rage, but the party was nearly as intense.

  Not a week after my death, my friends threw a kegger right in the middle of the fields where they said they’d be champions in no time at all.

  “For Fay,” Tom screamed, standing on the top of his red Ford F-150 as he skidded around the fields.

  I shook my head as Alex hung back, drinking just enough to be bitter.

  Sue
was there, swinging her hips provocatively, acting like the party girl I always strove to be.

  How stupid she looked, like some dumb, desperate girl who couldn’t get a real guy interested any other way.

  How sad, I thought, reliving the moments in Tom’s aura as he stepped through the office door. I’m not dead a week and already these drunks throw a party.

  The night was sacred to partiers; nothing ever interfered with the pre-game festivities.

  “Just don’t get behind the wheel,” a drunken Tom joked.

  “I bet you,” Sue said, staggering closer. “I bet you I can drive drunk better than Fay. I can hold my liquor.”

  Tom signaled his friends; one, Bus, a big linebacker, threw her the keys.

  “Prove it,” Tom said.

  “Tom,” Alex called out drunkenly. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Winning some money. Fifty says you can’t do it.”

  “Make it a hundred and you’ve got a bet,” Sue said.

  Tom nodded.

  Sue got in, barely put her hands on the wheel as the tires screeched over the fresh field paint and she sped into the goal post.

  Lights in the houses just opposite the fields went on. Tom called out a swear, pulled Sue from the wheel. She was giggling as the kids got in and Tom sped off.

  I sensed all those thoughts in Tom’s aura, yet, looking right at the cop, Officer Deriega, Tom said: “No. I know nothing of last night.”

  “Mr. Harold across the street said he saw you,” Officer Deriega insisted. “He took down the plates.”

  “Well, he was wrong,” Tom said.

  “You were out last night, weren’t you?” Officer Deriega asked.

  “I know my rights; I want a lawyer,” Tom said.

  The principal smirked. “No one’s accusing you of anything,” he said. “We just want the truth.”

  “I let a friend borrow my car,” Tom said. “I trusted her.”

  A few minutes later, the intercom called out again.

  Sue Preston to the office.

  I shook my head. I just knew she’d take the heat for her sometime lover.

  “I have half a mind to cancel the game,” Mr. Buckley said as he waited for Sue to arrive.