The Gatekeepers

by Jen Lancaster

I’m rationalizing that somehow being a part of a problem larger than just this community makes it less terrible. Less tragic. At least that’s what I tell myself.

  I’m rationalizing that in towns like mine around the country, multiple times a year, kids will acquiesce to that desperate voice inside themselves, the one that tells them they’re broken, that they can’t be fixed. That their lives are a burning building and they’re trapped on the fortieth floor, where it’s easier to jump than it is to be taken by the fire. They’ll give in to the temporary urge for a permanent solution, the urge to make it stop, for it all to be over.

  I’m rational because I’m afraid of what will happen if I’m allowed to be irrational.

  This is not okay.

  THIS IS NOT OKAY.

  If I could make it stop, I would.

  I watch Simone’s innocence slip away as she’s briefed on what that sound means, on what just happened. Her broad grin collapses in on itself, replaced with a horrified rictus. Without glancing back at her friends, she takes off across the quad, her book bag banging against her side as she plows through all the static bodies still frozen on the paths.

  Welcome to North Shore, Simone; now you’re truly one of us.

  “Please step inside the building, Signorina Goodman. Andiamo,” says Ms. DeMamp, my Italian Lit teacher. Her words are sharp, urgent. Her eyes are like two black dots in the middle of a sheet-white face, stark relief to her flashy embroidered peasant blouse.

  I start to say “The bell hasn’t—” but she’s not hearing it. She hustles me through the doorway and shoos me down the hallway. We students need to be herded like cattle into our respective classrooms by clearer heads. And in some cases, the teachers require herding, too.

  As I sit down at my desk, I want to turn to my classmates, demanding they tell me why.

  Yet I already know why, at least some version.

  The why is because whatever problems these kids have are compounded by not getting enough As in their honors classes so they can’t become neurosurgeons or litigators or tech gurus or investment bankers and make enough money to buy big houses with rolling lawns and send their kids to whatever schools starts the cycle all over again.

  I guess now the question is who.

  We’re all suddenly the residents of Panem, waiting to see which tribute is broadcasted.

  * * *

  I move like a zombie through my morning classes, through hushed hallways.

  No one knows what happened yet, but the rumors are flying. The true answer is imminent, even though we don’t want it. The teachers are the ones tasked with breaking the news. They have a form they’re supposed to read; they simply fill in the blank with the deceased’s name.

  How messed up is that?

  This happens so often the school has printed a form.

  Each of our teachers is given the slip of paper with the name to insert and they all tell us concurrently.

  So we wait.

  I should be experiencing a mounting sense of dread, a panic that causes me to sweat through my shirt, a fear so thick and bitter and heavy in my chest that I can’t pull air into my lungs.

  But I can’t feel anything.

  To feel would be to acknowledge.

  I can’t acknowledge. I won’t acknowledge. Not now. Not yet. Not until.

  Right before lunch, we’re told that Counselor Gorton is about to make a school-wide announcement this time, rather than our individual teachers.

  I steel myself.

  The loudspeaker snaps and hums as it comes to life. “North Shore students and faculty, I...” Mr. Gorton’s voice breaks as he finds the words. “I have extremely sad news about your classmate who perished this morning. The extremely sad news is...”

  He exhales so loudly that the speaker in the classroom crackles with feedback. I wince. He clears his throat and begins again.

  “Crisis stations will be located throughout the school this afternoon to provide grief counseling for those who wish to talk with one of our therapists. Information about the funeral will be provided when it is available, and students may attend with written permission from a parent or guardian.”

  We all look at each other in confusion. Did he not tell us who? Did he miss that key piece of information? Who? Who was it? We’re like a pack of owls in here, all who? Who? WHO?

  Who the fuck is he talking about?

  We hear some shuffling in the background and then the sound of a hand covering the microphone. There’s more muffled mumbling and then Vice Principal Torres takes the mic. “North Shore students and faculty, the extremely sad news is that Braden DeRocher has died. We want to...”

  Nothing he says after that registers.

  I am a vacuum. A void. A black hole.

  I glance at my phone.

  11:34 a.m. That’s when time stops.

  Collective gasps resonate throughout the whole school, sounding like someone suddenly sucked out all of the air. When the dismissal bell rings at 11:35, girls cluster together in the halls, taking turns sobbing on friends’ shoulders and consoling each other.

  Meanwhile, I don’t shed a tear.

  I’m too numb, too empty, too pissed off at the freshmen who are keening like fishwives—a lot of these girls never even met him. I know this because he’s not just my brother’s best friend, he’s mine, too. So why are these randoms weeping? What do they have to feel bad about?

  They’ve never kicked Braden out of their rooms when he lingered in their doorways, looking like he might have something to say.

  (Not because they didn’t want to hear it, but because they were busy studying for a test they had to ace or else.)

  They’ve never watched his smile fade when they told him to grow up already.

  (Not because he’d done anything wrong, but because they were hangry from too much exercise and too little food.)

  They’ve never asked him if he even had his own house to go home to.

  (Not because they resented having him there, but because they were having their own meltdown and had hoped for some privacy.)

  If anyone cries, it should be me. Braden is my surrogate brother who annoys the crap out of me, but whom I secretly adore. But now I won’t ever have the chance to make sure he understands both parts of the equation.

  Goddamn it.

  * * *

  The boys in school react to the news with stoicism. They’re more stiff upper lip, more ashen-faced, save for Theo. He punches a locker so hard that he breaks his hand. Shatters a bunch of bones. The school nurse has me drive him to the ER. Theo will be benched with the injury for the rest of the season.

  Our mother has the nerve to be mad at him. Not Theo. I mean she’s mad at Braden for ruining Theo’s season.

  I can’t.

  I can’t.

  I can’t.

  * * *

  NSHS brings in therapists because the whole school is gutted, students and staff alike. How could anyone in Braden’s orbit not be?

  What’s so fucked-up is that this is not our first rodeo, this is not our first time around. We recognize these grief counselors when they appear in their nondescript cardigans, with their salt-and-pepper hair, toting boxes of Kleenex. We’ve even learned their names because we see them so often.

  Mrs. Callahan.

  Mr. Regillio.

  Ms. Verde.

  This visit is going to go down like every other time, where they’ll be here for a couple of days, seeking out kids who are actively mourning in the halls. They’ll hug us and implore us to feel our feelings. They’ll promise us it will get better. They’ll tell us to take all the time in the world we need to feel right again.

  Except the promise that we can take all the time we need is a tremendous lie, because they’re here for two days and then the
school expects us to move on because midterms are coming up and the deadlines for early admission applications loom, so, really, we need to pull it together and that’s not going to happen if everyone’s standing around, feeling their feelings.

  Then those grief counselors in their nondescript cardigans with their salt-and-pepper hair pack their Kleenex back into their hybrid vehicles and drive off into the sunset, like nothing ever even happened.

  Until next time.

  How can they be sent away when we’re clearly not done with them?

  I try to find out as much as I can from the counselors, but they’re so busy when they’re here. How can anyone expect three people to process two thousand students’ worth of grief in a couple of days?

  In the interim, I do what I can in peer counseling, which is never enough. I mean, the whole certification takes twenty hours, and the suicide segment was less than an hour. We’re taught to refer those with suicidal ideations, but we’re on our own when it comes to helping others deal with the aftermath.

  I guess North Shore believes we shouldn’t grieve for long, that we’re better than that. I mean, do we not breed excellence here?

  Maybe I drink too much of the Kool-Aid, because each time, I try to go along with the program. To shut down my emotions, which would consume me if I let them. Maybe the easiest thing is to just trust in our excellence or some bullshit like that. Yet if I do this now, that would mean Braden fell short of excellence, and I don’t believe that.

  Can’t believe that.

  If history is an indication, in two days from now, the memorials erected to Braden will have been removed. The counselors will be gone. All the flowers and candles, all the notes and pictures and footballs will have vanished. The administration will have been careful to make sure Braden doesn’t look like a martyr.

  (Isn’t he, though?)

  NSHS will be vehement about us remembering that even though Braden’s life is over, ours aren’t. And again, they’ll remind us that college application time is right around the corner.

  Like they do.

  Like they always fucking do.

  The driven part of me will agree that I need to keep pressing forward because Princeton awaits. Braden used to tease me all the time, saying that I wasn’t destined to be a Tiger, because I’m much more of a cougar. (Liam’s three months my junior.) Then I’ll think about everything I have coming up and the cynical part of me wonders why even bother?

  Right now, I wonder how I’m going to muster the energy for any of what’s to come.

  This time is different.

  This time is so much closer to home.

  * * *

  The two days have passed, and everything I predicted has happened. The counselors are gone. The flowers have been incinerated. The school is trying to maintain a façade of normalcy. But I can’t seem to snap back this time, to rally, to forget.

  I feel...hollow.

  Like an empty husk, the contents long since rotted away, the outside a vacant shell, a brilliant façade.

  If losing Braden hasn’t been bad enough, the press coverage is making all of this a million times harder. The reporting seems fair enough, but it’s the reactions to the stories that are devastating. It’s like, “Hey, how ’bout we take one of the worst things that ever happened to you and put it on the national news and let all kinds of viewers offer up their unfiltered opinions on shit they don’t understand?”

  People who aren’t from North Shore are being super harsh on social media, not at all sympathetic. Our teachers implore us to never read the comments, but I can’t help myself. I always hope that others have the answer, that they’ll make me understand why it happened, that the life he lived then lost was not in vain.

  They never do, though.

  These strangers, this faceless mob, they’re passing judgments based on B-roll of the makeshift memorials in front of Braden’s huge, gated house, with its rolling green lawn and driveway full of imported cars. They see pictures of this handsome kid on exotic vacations, like skiing in Gstaad in his silly cat hat, or standing on the beach in Bora Bora, six pack abs on full display, and all they can say is hashtag firstworldproblems.

  These haters make everything worse for those of us who cared about Braden.

  Who loved him.

  But never told him.

  * * *

  I feel like I’ve been cauterized, like my ability to experience emotions has been burned closed. In a bout of self-protection, an attempt to keep myself from falling apart entirely, I’ve sealed off that which allows me to feel, to staunch the metaphorical bleeding, to protect what’s left.

  I can’t make sense of this.

  I have to know why.

  I have to figure out exactly why.

  If I can determine this, if I can get to the bottom of why, maybe I can pass along the word. I can stop this from happening again and Braden’s name will be the last entry on a long, tragic list. So now is the time to be rational. To be diligent. I fight every instinct that’s telling me to lie facedown on my bed and sob for the next week.

  Month.

  Year.

  I rally against all the impulses that make me want to pick up his favorite hoodie, which he left in my room the last night we talked, and cling to it like a child with her security blanket.

  How can he be gone when his stupid sweatshirt is still in my bedroom?

  I need to piece together whatever clues Braden’s left, for my brother and for me. Theo is falling apart, so I need to be strong for both of us. I need to be academic about my approach. Systematic.

  From a logical standpoint, everyone who knew Braden liked Braden. Everyone. There was no bullying, no exclusion, no intentional isolation, none of that stuff you read about in the warning pamphlets that the grief counselors strew around campus like so much confetti in the days that always follow. Braden wasn’t like Rudolph in the Christmas songs, you know? He wasn’t just invited to join in all the reindeer games; he was the chief instigator. He started the campus-wide snowball fight last winter that got so huge, the North Shore PD had to break it up...but not before they tossed a few as well.

  He came up with the junior class prank, too, convincing us to steal every fork in the cafeteria before school let out for summer and leave them at a designated drop point. He had them welded into one giant fork, which he deposited in the middle of the quad on the last day of class, along with a sign that read GET THE FORK OUT, SENIORS. No one knew he was the mastermind until it was over, because he communicated with the student body with anonymous InstaChats using codename Monsieur Fourchette. He didn’t even tell Theo or me.

  I guess he kept more hidden than we realized.

  Braden is—no, goddamn it, I must stop that—was the nicest guy. Goofy. He loved to make us laugh, except he never said “love,” he’d only say “heart,” as in, “I totally heart the new Chainsmokers’ song.” He’d go out of his way to make us wince with his terrible puns. And he wasn’t afraid to be the butt of the joke. He used to wear a knit cap with a cat’s face embroidered on the front, complete with ears that stuck off the top and a tail hanging down the back. People couldn’t help but smile when they saw this huge linebacker cruising around the halls in a little girl’s Hello Kitty hat.

  His hoodie catches my eye and I pick it up for the first time since...

  Since then.

  As I do, a pink cat hat, complete with tail, falls onto the floor.

  My heart starts pounding so hard that it feels like it’s trying to escape from my throat, and my knees go weak. I have to clamp my hands in my armpits to keep myself from picking up the hat and inhaling his essence—clean cotton and ocean breeze and wintergreen Tic Tac.

  I practically run to the other side of the room, as though his Hello Kitty hat is a horcrux, full of dark magic, a cursed object. But, logical
ly, what kind of spell could a bit of yarn cast?

  The worst has already happened.

  I curl up on the padded window bench, pressing myself against the cold glass, as far from Braden’s hat as I can get. I decide to double down on my efforts to understand why this happened. That’s the only way through.

  I need to be smart. I need to muster all my resources.

  Braden was smart. Mostly honors classes, with a couple of APs as well. And a talented athlete, so gifted, so nimble for his size. The Knights have been crushing it this season, thanks to him. He’s had scouts sniffing around since ninth grade, so he absolutely could have played in college and maybe even beyond. He had so many options.

  Was he hit too much, too hard on the field? Had he suffered a head injury? That doesn’t make sense; he was far more likely to be the one knocking down opponents.

  This doesn’t add up. This dog won’t hunt.

  In my mind, in anyone’s mind, really, Braden was not motivated to kill himself, even though Theo says no one really knows what’s happening inside someone’s mind.

  Were there clues? Did we miss them?

  Was there a reason Braden was always at our house instead of his own? I’d just assumed he’d had more fun with us than without. The few times we hung out at his place, his parents seemed cool and laid-back, more like pals than parents. He never complained about them; he rarely even mentioned them.

  Theo and I have talked about his home life again and again for the past few days and we’re coming up with nothing, no triggers there. Is it possible he was mad at his parents? But how? They were barely ever around. In fact, Theo and I once joked about being jealous that his folks weren’t overly invested in his success.

  Braden laughed right along with us.

  He laughed all the time.

  But what if all that good humor was the brave face he put on while something unspeakable raged inside him? The bitch of it is, I’ll never get to ask him now.

  I should have and I didn’t and I can’t forgive myself for that.

  Theo’s been suggesting his death was a freak accident. When I first heard the desperate pull of the train’s horn that morning, that insistent shriek that sent shivers down my spine, the worst sound in the world, I’d hoped it was an accident.