The sign on the door: “Janitor’s Closet.”
I pause in front of the door and lean back against it as other kids walk past me. The crowds in the hall are thinning out now. Only a minute or two until the bell. I lean my head back and listen. But I don’t hear any whispered voices coming from inside the closet. My intuition tells me that no one is in there. Still looking straight ahead, I put one hand behind me and try the doorknob. It should be locked, but the knob turns easily in my hand, and I hear the click of the latch as it releases. The door moves in half an inch.
The hall is empty now, so I turn and push the door open. The light is on in the closet, and there’s no one hiding inside it. Just the usual stuff you’d expect. A big, wide push mop with a long, red handle. Shelves of paper towels and toilet paper. Industrial-size cans of soap and disinfectant. And a large, black canvas bag wedged into a corner, half-hidden behind a box of paper towels. I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t seen the white-lettered word on its side. “LIFE.” The hair stands up on the back of my neck.
I look back over my shoulder. Still no one in sight. But I’m sure someone will come down this hallway any minute. I duck into the closet and shut the door behind me.
Somehow I know there’s not much time. The first thing I do is to turn the toggle in the middle of the doorknob to lock it from the inside. Which will work fine unless someone has a key. But this closet isn’t that deep, just deep enough for the door to have room to swing inward. I grab the long-handled dust mop, wedge its head against the bottom of the door, and press the handle down so that its end is crammed back against the bottom of one of the back shelves. Then I sit down on top of the handle to hold it in place, my back against the door.
Just then, someone jiggles the doorknob next to my ear and then curses.
“It’s locked,” a voice hisses.
“I’ve got the key,” another voice answers. “Remember? My stupid father has keys that will open any lock.”
I hear the jangle of a keychain, the scratch of a key being inserted. The toggle in the middle of the knob and the latch both release.
“All right!” one of the voices says in triumph. I recognize that voice. Grey Cook.
“Not so loud,” Jackson Teeter’s voice hisses back at him.
I feel the push of a body against the door. But my own weight and the wedged mop hold. The door doesn’t open, even when someone’s fleshy shoulder thuds hard against it.
A string of expletives comes from the two boys. They’re both hurling themselves against the door. But the mop handle is made of fiberglass, and it doesn’t even bend. No way are they getting in here.
“Some bloody thing must have fallen down in front of the door and jammed it,” Stump growls.
“Man,” Grey Cook whimpers, “it’s all in there. What are we gonna do?” The tone of his voice has changed. “Maybe it wasn’t a good idea. Maybe we should just—”
“Shadow!” Stump hisses. “RTK, remember.”
“Jackson, I—”
“There’s no Jackson here. Use my real name, my final name. You are Shadow, my brother, and I am . . .”
“Night,” Grey says, his voice shaking a little. “But what about all our . . . stuff. How are we going to . . . to take care of things?”
I hear a hand slap against something solid. “We got enough right here. Plus there’s the piece I hid in the crapper where we’re going to wait until Zero Hour. Right?”
“Right . . . okay.”
“RTK?”
Grey pauses.
Don’t say it, I think. Tell him it’s a crazy idea. Stop this whole thing.
But instead, Grey gives a heavy sigh.
“RTK,” he says.
I hear the sound of their feet on the tile floor as they move away. Despite their new ninja names, neither of them has learned to walk quietly. I want to jump up, burst out of here, and run. But I know I have to wait to make absolutely sure they’re gone.
Plus I have to know.
I crawl over to the corner and pull out the bag that was half-hidden there. Heavy objects shift inside it, and there’s the sound of metal hitting metal. I unzip it and look inside. I see the glint of metal and read the word “Mossberg.”
Jackson Teeter had taken more from his security guard father’s office than that ring of skeleton keys. There are two Mossberg shotguns, three .45 caliber handguns, and at least ten boxes of ammunition, as well as half a dozen deadly souvenirs that his father must have smuggled back into the country after his time in the National Guard in the Middle East. Live hand grenades.
A chill runs down my back. I just figured out the meaning of RTK.
Ready to Kill.
Chapter 17
TIME TO RUN
The hero runs into the fire.
The wise man picks up a water bucket.
—Pendetta Satu
I know I have to do something.
Breathe, I tell myself. In. And out. Then do the first thing you know is the right thing to do—keep Stump and Grey from getting this bag of weapons.
I open the closet door and look outside in both directions. I sling the heavy bag over my shoulder and leave the closet, heading away from the direction I heard the two go.
I turn the corner, and there it is. The green dumpster hasn’t been moved. I put the bag down, open the lid, and look inside. It seems full, but things have just been thrown in haphazardly. I can make room.
I shift a big piece of sheetrock to one side and push things around with my right hand. And all the time I’m doing this, I keep looking back over my shoulder. Finally there’s enough room.
I pick the bag up, lever it over the edge, and let it drop into the bottom of the dumpster. I pull plastic bags and pieces of sheetrock over it until it is completely concealed. I close the lid quietly. And as I dust my hands off, I tell myself to stop holding my breath. Look around.
While I’ve been doing this, my mind has been mapping out the quickest, safest route to get to the front office—a route that won’t take me anywhere near where Stump and Grey have gone. The boys’ bathroom is just down the hall from the library, within sight of the place where Stump was pantsed and videoed. I can’t take a chance on running into them, having them stop me—or shoot me. I don’t want to spook them into putting their plan into action early.
I grab the handle of the dumpster, and the palm of my right hand starts to sting as soon as I do. I must have cut myself moving the junk. No time to stop now, though. I push against the dumpster. Its wheels creak, but it moves. I shove it ahead of me down the short hall. It pushes the two side doors open, bumps over the threshold of the door, but doesn’t stop. The light from the bright autumn day almost blinds me. A gray squirrel that had been rummaging around in some leaves piled up against the side of the building skitters away from me and the green metal monster.
I hear the doors click shut behind me. Me and the dumpster and its deadly cargo are now locked out. I still push the dumpster another twenty feet until I can shove it into a little alcove out of sight from inside the building. It’ll be safe here, for sure.
I let go of the handle and see the red smear on the green metal. I look at my right palm. Blood is starting to well out of a long line across it. It’s starting to throb, a sign that it’s a deep wound. I shake my head. I don’t have time to worry about that now. I untuck my shirt and tear a strip of cloth off the bottom of it, wrap it around my hand, and use my teeth and my other hand to knot it.
When it’s time to run, run fast.
I take off as if I’d just heard a starter’s gun. It’s a long way around to the front door, especially because my route is going to circle the long way around the right half of the building complex. Stump and Grey were headed in the direction of the left block where the labs and gyms and assembly hall and library are located.
I sprint past classroom windows and see with my peripheral vision that everything is going on as if it is a normal day, except that teachers and students are staring at me as I
dash by.
That kid is going to be in deep trouble, they’re thinking.
Then I’m at the fence. I jump, hitting it with my hands and feet, climbing, and I finally roll over the top. My shirt catches on something that scratches my chest. When I thrust my body forward, I feel a tug and hear fabric tearing. Then I’m free, somersaulting down to thud onto the hard earth on the other side.
I’m shaking as I get up. The dull ache in my hand is worse, and the strip of blue cloth wound around it has turned a glistening crimson color. I lean against the fence and take a deep breath, forcing the air back into my lungs. In. And out. I’m okay. All the running I’ve been doing every morning has prepared me for this. I take one step and then another. The weakness I felt in my knees leaves me. I cross the edge of the football field, cut through the end zone, the sacred soil of victory that a wimp like me is never supposed to touch, then I’m on the walkway that leads back around the main building. I turn the corner and see the front steps ahead of me.
The wind moves the flag overhead, and the rope clang-clang-clangs against the metal flagpole. Everything is normal. For a moment, I wonder if I’ve just been imagining things. I grab the door to pull it open. The throb of pain from my right palm as the locked door doesn’t budge reminds me just how real this all is. I hit the button to the right of the doors.
No response.
I press it again, then hold it down, hearing the distant buzzing from inside the locked double doors.
“Yes?” an irritated voice answers through the intercom.
“I’m Cody LeBeau. I’m a freshman.”
A pause. No clicking sound of the door being unlocked.
“Why are you outside the school, Mr. LeBeau?”
There’s no time for long, crazy-sounding explanations. I have to keep it simple.
“I’ve got to see the assistant principal. Mr. Mennis.”
The door locks click immediately. I push through. There’s no one sitting at the desk in front of the doors where Officer Hal usually sits. He’s the bored uniformed policeman who’s assigned to our lobby on weekday mornings, just like it is now in most of the schools since Columbine and Pearl and Red Lake and all the others. Since he works out at the gym with Uncle John, I’ve gotten to know Officer Hal. He’s probably off getting coffee. Long River’s not a place where anyone would expect serious violence.
I sprint forward toward the A.P.’s office fifty feet down the hall to the left. Someone yells, “Hey!” behind me, but I don’t look around. My right hand is so bloody now that it slips off the doorknob. I can’t turn it. I bang on the door with my fist. The door opens inward. Mr. Mennis’s huge shape looms over me like an angry bear.
“What in blue blazes—” he starts. “Son,” he says, “you’re a bloody mess.”
“Two kids,” I say, taking a deep breath. I have to stop panting and get my words out clearly. “They’re got guns.”
Mr. Mennis moves quicker than you’d expect from a man of his size. He pulls me into the office and snatches up the microphone from the speaker system beside his desk.
“Red,” he barks into the mike. “I repeat. Red. Red. Red.”
Chapter 18
LOCKDOWN
Words run faster than
the swiftest horses.
—Sensei Ni
It turns out that Long River High School is better prepared for the serious threat of school violence than I’d realized. As soon as Mr. Mennis barks the code word “red” into the mike, things happen fast.
Administrative assistants pick up telephones to contact the state and local police. I can hear doors slamming shut down the halls, even before Mr. Mennis adds the words, “Lockdown, secure your classrooms” to his urgent message.
Somehow I’ve missed the lockdown drill those words probably call for here at Long River, but I know what it was like at the junior high I attended just outside Chicago 3TPA. The teacher immediately goes to the door of the classroom, shuts it, and turns the bolt lock. If there’s a window in the door, every person in the classroom is told to move to the back of the room and to the side. That way anyone who might look in will see only an empty class. I remember this one sixth-grade math teacher who even went so far during those drills as to have the bigger boys in the class help her push her desk across the room to shove it against the door.
Just like a fire drill, except this time everyone is told to stay in rather than to go out. People milling around in the halls, even for the brief time it takes to exit the building, make great targets. The whole idea of an exercise like this is to make sure that people don’t make themselves into targets.
Things get quiet fast. It’s not just because you have been told to be quiet. It’s a silence that descends like a dark blanket falling from the ceiling. Even if you don’t believe it’s for real, some part of you is listening for the sound that I’m afraid I may hear at any minute—the boom of a shotgun blast or the rapid tat-tat-tat of an automatic weapon.
I listen for the sound of police sirens, even though I don’t really expect to hear any yet. In real life, actual emergency response time is never in seconds, but in minutes.
Mr. Mennis puts down the mike and turns back toward me with a questioning look on his face that is just this side of tsunami-scale anger. He’s broadcasted the alert, but is the whole thing for real?
“Mr. LeBeau,” he growls, “stand up.”
He runs his hands over my body, checking to see if I have any weapons. For all he knows—despite my appearance—it might be a trick. He probably suspects me.
He grabs my left arm, probably harder than he means to. That’s when I realize that I hurt myself more than I thought. My whole left arm is just limp. When the A.P. grabs it, I hear a clicking sound in my shoulder. I gasp in pain. I think I broke my collarbone when I fell going over the fence. And that explains why I had such a hard time opening the door of his office with my right hand.
I can tell by the look on the A.P.’s face that he heard the sound from my shoulder, too. He quickly lets go of my arm and lifts his hand up, palm toward me in a gesture of apology.
“Son,” he says. ‘I’m sorry. I just have to know.”
I feel like I’m going to be sick. I swallow hard. “It’s not a joke.”
I take another breath. I can feel sweat forming on my forehead. If I’m going to say anything, I’d better get it out quick because the room is about to pull loose like a tent being hit by a high wind. It’ll start spinning any second now.
“There’s two of them. Stump—Jackson Teeter, I mean. And Grey Cook. Don’t know what they’ve got. Found most of their stuff. Guns. Hand grenades. Black bag. Hid it . . . bottom of green dumpster . . . north door of the school. Pushed it outside so they couldn’t . . . get it.”
I’m having trouble with my words. Mr. Mennis’s face is next to mine. He’s holding me up with one hand on my chest and pressing a towel against my right hand.
The round face of Officer Hal is peering down at me over the A.P.’s broad shoulder. And there’s the school nurse. I didn’t even hear either of them come into the room. I’m disappointed in myself. After all of Uncle John’s training. Letting little things like a broken collarbone and the loss of half of the blood in my body prevent me from paying attention to what’s happening around me. Nobody should be able to sneak up on an apprentice ninja.
But my ears are still working, because now I can hear the sound of sirens getting closer. They are the perfect sound effect to go with the merry-go-round that the room and everything and everyone in it have now become.
It would be easy to close my eyes right now, but there’s one more thing I have to say, even if it’s just a whisper.
“They’re in . . . the boys’ room by the librar—”
And then the merry-go-round becomes a funhouse tunnel, and I go sliding down into the darkness.
Chapter 19
RED STRIPES
Looking hard for enemies,
you may find yourself.
—Sifu
Sahn
My dad told me the story of how our men came to put red paint on their faces when they went off to battle.
Long ago, he said, there was a monster bear that threatened the people of a certain village. No one knew what to do because that bear was so powerful and it was also so stealthy. It would strike without warning and then disappear back into the forest, carrying the body of its victim with it.
One boy, though, was a keen observer and also a great listener. He figured out the pattern of the bear’s attacks. He made prayers to the Creator, giving thanks for the gifts of courage and clear thought. Then he went out alone to confront the monster before it could attack his people again. He was ready to sacrifice himself for his family, if it came to that. He knew that was the right way. He was ready to follow The Way.
Sure enough, just as he had thought, the monster bear came down the trail where the boy was waiting. He heard the bear coming and leaped out to intercept it. The two of them fought. It was a long, hard battle. After using up his arrows and his spears, finally the boy had only his knife left as the great bear closed in on him.
Even though he was just a child, that boy somehow managed to kill the monster bear. Because he was fighting to defend his people, his strength was great. But in his battle with the monster, the boy was wounded. He came back into the village to tell the people that their enemy was dead. They all saw the bloody lines on his cheeks where they had been raked by the sharp claws of the bear.
From then on, whenever men went out to fight in defense of their people, they painted their cheeks with parallel red stripes, like those claw marks made by the monster bear. They did so to honor that boy’s courage and to remind themselves that they were fighting for others.
I’ve never painted my face.
But as they waited in the boys’ bathroom near the library, Grey Cook and Jackson Teeter had painted theirs. Not to honor the courage of that long-ago boy, though. Their motives were rage and personal revenge.
The Way Page 9