That's Not What Happened

by Kody Keplinger

  “A limo, huh?” Denny said, a big grin spreading across his round face. “Is it one of those hot-tub limos?”

  “I don’t think so.” Amber giggled, and I couldn’t tell if she actually thought Denny was funny or if she was flirting with him. “Just a regular limo.”

  “Too bad,” he said. “But I’m in.”

  “Oh, and obviously you guys are invited, too,” Amber said, looking over at Miles and me. “If you’re going to prom, I mean. Are you?”

  Miles peered at me over the top of his book, a bushy eyebrow raised. “Are we?” he asked.

  “I … uh …”

  I was still trying to formulate the words for some sort of answer when I felt something hit me in the back of the head. It didn’t hurt. Just a light tap. I reached up and touched my hair, but I felt nothing there. When I turned around, I noticed a group of juniors at another table. They had their heads together, conversing in low voices, and occasionally one would look up and glare at me.

  Ashley’s younger sister, Tara Chambers, was one of them.

  I shook it off and turned back to Miles. “About prom. I still don’t—”

  It happened again. Another small, but annoying, tap on the back of my head. This time, when I turned around, I noticed one of the juniors, a boy with red hair and glasses, was holding a tiny object in his hand, his arm pulled back like he was about to pitch a baseball in my direction. He dropped his arm when he saw me looking, and I noticed the small tray of Tater Tots on the table in front of him.

  “Is that kid … throwing Tater Tots at me?” I asked Miles, feeling kind of baffled.

  It’s not that bullying isn’t a problem at VCHS. It definitely is. Most people even seem to think that was the motive behind the massacre, though I always hate that narrative. In part because, even if the shooter was bullied, it certainly wasn’t by me or Sarah or several of the other victims. And I’d argue that the minute he opened fire, he became the ultimate school bully, so hearing people assume that he was tormented as some sort of excuse for what he did just infuriates me.

  My point is that VCHS has the same sort of bullying issues any other high school does, but Tater Tot throwing still seemed so bizarrely juvenile.

  Miles slammed his book shut and turned to look at the table behind me. “What the hell?” he asked, raising his voice a bit above his usual mumble so they could hear him.

  “Hell is exactly where she’s going,” the redheaded kid said, tossing another Tater Tot at me. This one bounced off my shoulder. Next to him, I saw Tara nod.

  There was a flicker of a shadow in Miles’s eyes, and he started to stand up. I grabbed his arm and held it tight. “Leave it,” I whispered, my words almost pleading. “It’s not worth your getting in trouble.”

  VCHS had a zero-tolerance policy for violence since the shooting. And as much as part of me wanted to see Miles punch Tater Tot kid in the face, a much larger part of me couldn’t stand the idea of my friend being expelled so close to graduation.

  Miles stayed tense, like a cat ready to pounce, but he didn’t leave his seat. Instead, he just glared at the kid behind me. Which, I guess, was enough to scare the redhead off from throwing any more food in my direction.

  “What’s their problem?” Denny asked.

  “They go to my church,” Amber said, her voice low as she gestured to Tara and the redheaded boy. “And, um … our preacher may have mentioned Lee this past Sunday.”

  “Virgil County Baptist?” I guessed.

  She nodded. “Yeah. He … he said you’ve been telling stories about Sarah McHale. Said something about how it’s the devil working through you, and how we need to remember Sarah’s devotion to her faith.”

  “Did he instruct you all to throw food at me?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” she said. “He did say we should pray for you, though.”

  “How nice of him,” Miles muttered.

  “You don’t sound like you believed him,” Denny noted.

  “Well.” Amber tugged on a lock of her shiny hair and turned big hazel eyes on me. “Honestly? I always believed the Sarah story. I didn’t really know Sarah, but … she was so nice. And always at church. And it seemed more likely than what that Kellie girl said. But you were Sarah’s best friend and you were there with her when it happened. And, I don’t know, you just don’t seem like a liar to me.”

  “Thank you,” I said, surprised by just how much I appreciated Amber in that moment. “But I’m guessing you’re in the minority if Brother Lloyd is telling everyone his side of things.”

  Amber shrugged. “I think my parents are in the same place as me, if it helps. I’m not sure they ever actually believed the Sarah story to begin with. But even if most people do think you’re lying, I’d like to think the rest of my congregation is mature enough not to throw things.”

  I would’ve liked to believe that, too. But I remembered what the Gaynor family had gone through. The vandalism, the threats, the way grown adults attacked a teenage girl still recovering from a gunshot wound. If people were half as mad at me as they were at Kellie Gaynor three years ago, then Tater Tots were the least of my worries.

  I didn’t want anyone to think I could be shaken, but honestly, I was scared.

  I found out my best friend was a martyr from a bulletin board at the drugstore.

  It was in April, almost a month after the shooting. Mom and I were on our way home from my therapy appointment, and we’d stopped by the pharmacy to pick up my medication. I stayed near the front of the store while Mom went back to pick up my prescription. It was one of those days where I needed space from her. Where every word she said, every move she made, irritated me.

  It was also a Death Drum day. Most days were back then, but I distinctly remember that day being worse. Every fleeting thought, no matter how mundane or innocuous, somehow led me on a nihilistic brain spiral. This was most evidenced by my reactions to the various flyers and posters tacked and taped to the community bulletin board near the front of the store.

  A flyer encouraging people to recycle? What’s the point? Eventually the sun is going to explode anyway, and then the planet and all of humanity will be gone and nothing we did will have mattered.

  A missing cat poster? Do animals have any concept of death? That each day we creep closer to nothingness and there’s nothing we can do about it? I bet they don’t. I bet it’s nice to be a cat.

  An advertisement for the upcoming Little Miss Virgil County contest? Why do people even bother having kids? They’re going to die one day, too. Why doesn’t anyone else seem to realize that everything is pointless and death is unavoidable and all of this is just a distraction?

  You get the point. It was a Bad Day. And it only got worse when I saw the picture of Sarah.

  It was the picture—the school photo with the braids and the cross necklace she wore just that one time. It was the first time I’d seen it since the photos had been handed out at school months ago, when Sarah had taken one look and grimaced, swearing she’d never wear her hair in braided pigtails again because it made her look like a toddler.

  But there it was, smiling down at me from this community bulletin board, with big, capital letters announcing:

  YOUTH RALLY IN HONOR OF SARAH MCHALE, THE GIRL WITH THE CROSS NECKLACE.

  Then in smaller letters, just below her image:

  Come, Worship, Remember.

  I stared at the flyer for a while, reading it over and over, sure I was missing something. The rally was being held at Hillcreek Christian, a church all the way across town. If it was at Virgil County Baptist, Sarah’s church, I might not have thought twice about it, aside from that weird label. I had no idea why anyone would call her “the girl with the cross necklace.”

  But why would there be a rally for Sarah at a church she’d never even attended? Nine people, not including the shooter, had died. It wasn’t just Sarah. In fact, I was pretty sure two of the other victims, Brenna DuVal and Aiden Stroud, had gone to that church. Why wasn’t this for th
em?

  And didn’t a youth rally seem kind of inappropriate?

  Keep in mind, this came shortly after my first internet spiral breakdown, when Mom was still trying to do what she could to keep the news away from me. I’d only left the house a handful of times since the shooting. I hadn’t even seen Denny or Ashley yet. Miles hadn’t climbed onto my roof. And I’d only run into Eden at Sarah’s and Rosi’s funerals.

  I’d been largely isolated, and nothing about this post-shooting world, especially that flyer, made sense to me.

  “Prescription filled,” Mom said, joining me at the bulletin board near the door. “Let’s go home, Lee baby.”

  I pointed to the flyer, to Sarah’s face. “What’s this?”

  She glanced at it, then looked away quickly. She knew something. I knew she knew something by the slight downturn of her lips, by the darkening of her brown eyes. We had the same eyes, and I remembered Sarah telling me how the color of my irises seemed to shift when I was lying.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Mom said. “Let’s just go home.”

  She tried to put a hand on my shoulder, but I pulled away. “What is it about, Mom? Why is some random church having a youth rally for Sarah?”

  “We can talk about it in the car.”

  “No!” I stomped my foot, like a child. I was so mad. So mad that she kept trying to coddle me. I didn’t want her to hide things from me. I wanted to know everything. Even if it hurt. Even if it was bad for me.

  “Leanne.”

  “Tell me!”

  I screamed it so loud that people nearby stopped and turned to look at us. The cashier, standing behind the counter a few yards away, raised an eyebrow, clearly wondering if he should say something.

  Mom waved a hand at him, then took me by the elbow and steered me out the glass doors, the cheery bell jingling obnoxiously overhead. As soon as we were outside, I smacked her hand off me and curled in on myself, refusing to move any farther until she explained why my best friend’s school photo, the photo she hated, was on that bulletin board, and why people gave a damn about her necklace.

  Mom sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “There have been a few rallies around the state in Sarah’s memory,” she said, her voice resigned. “That’s all.”

  “But why?”

  Mom shrugged. “Why do churches do anything? You’re asking the wrong person.”

  My lack of religious inclination comes from my mom. She was raised Baptist, but after the way her congregation treated her when she got pregnant with me at sixteen, she lost interest in organized religion. To this day, I’m honestly not sure if she lost faith in a higher power or just in the church. She doesn’t like to talk about it. She always says that whatever relationship she does or doesn’t have with God is her business, and no one else’s.

  “But why Sarah?” I demanded. “Why just Sarah? And what was that stuff about a necklace?”

  “I … I think it’s about what happened in the bathroom, baby.”

  “The bathroom?”

  She chewed on her bottom lip. Another expression we had in common. “A lot of people are talking about what Sarah … what she said to him.” My mother has never, not once, said the name of the shooter aloud. “The police found her cross necklace at the crime scene. And with him asking her about what she believed before she died and her standing up to him …”

  She trailed off, tears springing into her eyes as she looked at my face. I’m sure I looked startled. Or maybe even sick. I felt sick. And confused. Sarah hadn’t had a necklace on that day. She hadn’t said a word to anyone but me in that bathroom once the shooting started.

  But Mom must’ve thought my expression meant something else. She tried to rush forward, to hug me, but I dodged her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping the wetness from her eyes before wrapping her arms around herself. “Talking about this must be … I can’t imagine. I’m sorry. We don’t have to … Lee?”

  I had already started storming off, away from the store and to the parking lot. I didn’t want her hugs or her tears or her explanations about Sarah. I didn’t want to turn everything into death in my mind. I didn’t want, didn’t want, didn’t want.

  That day, I wasn’t thinking about how the story must’ve gotten started. Or where it had come from. Kellie Gaynor didn’t even cross my mind. All I could think was that I hated everything about this world I was living in. This post-shooting reality. My brain was making me miserable. My mom was driving me nuts.

  And now, not even my memory of my best friend felt safe or real.

  Brenna was eighteen, a senior, when she was killed. At six foot one, she was the star of the girls’ basketball team. She’d already scored an athletic scholarship. The previous fall, when VCHS had released its School Pride Calendar, a way of raising funds for the various sports teams, Brenna and her boyfriend, Aiden Stroud (the captain of the football team), were featured on the cover.

  She’d been the student assistant to Coach Nolan during my first semester, when I was taking his World Civics class. Mostly that meant she sat at his desk and played games on his computer until he needed her to go make copies.

  But I remember this one day, toward the end of the semester, when we were all sitting around, waiting for Coach to arrive. The bell had already rung, but he wasn’t there yet. Then Brenna came running into the classroom, a grin spread so wide that it seemed to split her face in half. She shut the door behind her and said:

  “Listen up. Coach is busy with something at the front office. He’ll be here in, like, two minutes. So we don’t have much time.”

  She then instructed us to turn all of the desks around. None of the freshmen hesitated. We were all on our feet, and the room began to fill with the sounds of metal scraping against tile. Brenna kept watch by the door while we worked, occasionally glancing over her shoulder and urging us to hurry as we moved on to turning the unoccupied desks.

  “Keep the rows straight,” she said. “Like they’re supposed to be this way.”

  Sarah was in that class with me, and she couldn’t stop giggling as we flipped around the last two desks in our row.

  “Here he comes!” Brenna announced, turning away from the door. “Sit down, sit down.”

  She bolted across the room, her long legs carrying her from the door to Coach Nolan’s chair in just two strides.

  A split second later, the door opened, and Coach Nolan was greeted by a class full of freshmen staring him down. Our desks were no longer facing the whiteboard but, instead, the door at the back of the room. His eyes widened in surprise, and he just stood there, blinking, for a second.

  “You’re late, Coach,” Richie McMullen said, his voice mock-stern.

  Coach Nolan looked at him, then at Brenna. “You did this, didn’t you, Ms. DuVal?”

  “No idea what you’re talking about, Coach. Isn’t this how the classroom is always arranged? Doesn’t look any different to me.”

  “Funny you say that, because I didn’t say anything about how the classroom was arranged.” He shook his head, but a smile was obvious beneath his mustache. “All right. You guys want to have class facing this way? We’ll have class facing this way.”

  It didn’t end up being as fun as it sounds, though. We had a pop quiz that day. And facing the back of the room instead of the front didn’t make much of a difference.

  It had barely even been a prank, but it was enough to cement Brenna as being “cool” in the eyes of a classroom full of freshmen.

  She would always smile and say hello to us in the hallways when none of the other seniors even bothered. She’d exchange high fives with the underclassmen jock boys while leaning against her locker in that casual-but-clearly-posed way you see in teen movies.

  I was always surprised when she acknowledged me. I assumed she forgot who I was the instant she walked out of Coach Nolan’s classroom every day. I was quiet, not the girl who raised her hand and volunteered answers. My grades in that class weren’t the highest or the lowest.
I was solidly average. A brunette with an unmemorable face.

  But one day early in the next semester, after my World Civics class had ended, I found myself spending a lunch period in the gym. Sarah had a dentist appointment, and rather than sitting alone in the cafeteria, I had decided to take a bag lunch into the gym and sit in the bleachers while I got a head start on some of that night’s homework. Brenna was there, along with a few other girls from the basketball team.

  They were taking turns shooting free throws. I’d look up between math problems and watch them for a minute before going back to my work. The other two girls, whose names I didn’t know, did pretty well, only missing a couple of shots. But Brenna didn’t miss a single one.

  “Bell’s about to ring,” Brenna told them, catching the ball and dribbling it for a minute. “Nice job, ladies. We’re going to destroy Wright County next week.”

  The girls whooped, high-fived Brenna, then headed for the gym doors. She stayed behind, though, and shot one last free throw.

  I was gathering up my stuff when I heard her say, “They suck, don’t they, Bauer?”

  I looked around, half sure she must be talking to someone else, even though that was irrational. I was the only Bauer in our school, let alone in that gym. “Um,” I said when I realized she’d been speaking to me. “No. I thought they were good. They made most of the shots.”

  “Most isn’t all,” she said. “They shouldn’t be missing free throws.”

  “Are you worried about beating Wright County?” I asked.

  She snorted. “No. We’ll definitely beat the Wright County girls. They’re on a whole different level of terrible.”

  “That’s good, at least.”

  “Not good enough, though.” She looked me over, blue eyes narrowing. “How tall are you, Bauer? Five eight? Five nine?”