But he doesn’t recognize any of the faces.
A news reporter comes on. She looks professional, but there’s a hollowness in her eyes, as if she is trying to stay detached from the story, but the way her brows furrow shows she can’t. “We have confirmed that the total number of fatalities remains at seven, including the shooter, although three of the five wounded are in critical condition. All area schools are currently locked down. Parents, please keep phone lines and traffic clear. No other school has been attacked, and authorities confirm that Middleborough’s shooting is an isolated event and has been contained.”
The reporter pauses, her head tilted. Listening to someone in her earpiece.
“And we have confirmed that the shooter is high school junior Kirby Matheson.” A school picture of Kirby fills the screen. He’s wearing a black T-shirt and his hair is combed. He stares straight ahead, no smile on his face. Even though the background is obviously for a yearbook photo, it almost looks like a mug shot.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Teddy says, throwing back his chair and standing up. “I know that kid.”
“Approximately fifteen minutes after the shooting began, Matheson took his own life,” the reporter continues.
Teddy falls back into his seat. Every single person, from teary-eyed Madison to stoic Ms. Albans, has turned to stare at Teddy.
“I went to summer camp with him when we were kids,” Teddy says. He doesn’t know where to look, but finally his eyes fall on the sculpture Charlotte made of herself two weeks ago. He talks to the plaster eyes instead of any of the real ones.
“What was he like?” Bucky asks at the same time Charlotte says, “Holy shit.” But before Teddy can answer, Madison’s teary voice pipes up: “Did you know he was a killer?”
That one question brings everyone up short. No one speaks. They just stare and wait for Teddy to answer.
“I mean,” he says, “we were young. It was freaking summer camp. Do you expect someone you went to summer camp with to be a killer?”
“You really had no idea?” Bucky asks, his voice lower. Respectful, maybe, or doubtful.
All Teddy can think about is the first time he met Kirby. The summer camp had been a solid week of pure hell for Teddy before he met Kirby. It was a sort of pseudo–Boy Scout, super-high-activity camp. It was all about surviving outdoors. Everyone slept in tents. You had to carry your food for the day with you in your backpack as you ventured farther into the woods. It was supposed to stress teamwork as everyone worked together to build rope ladders and shit, but all it had really done for Teddy was stress how much of a lard-ass he was, and how no one wanted to team up with him, and how he would rather be literally anywhere else than stuck at this summer camp that seemed bent on leaving him dead in the woods while a group of boys his age from the tri-county area pointed and laughed.
There was one asshole—his name was Rick—and he made it his personal mission to destroy Teddy. The first night, he slipped rocks in the back of Teddy’s pack so that the next morning it was twice as heavy. When Teddy complained to the camp leader that his pack was too heavy, the camp leader mocked him. Everyone started calling him “Teddy Bear” and the older boys started to poke Teddy in the stomach to see if he’d giggle like the Pillsbury Doughboy.
And then Rick was assigned to be the leader of digging latrines for the night. He enlisted Teddy to dig. And Teddy, apparently, wasn’t digging fast enough, because Rick started to unzip his pants and piss in the hole while Teddy was still digging. Teddy remembers the moment vividly—the smell of the dirt, the bile rising up in his throat as he realized he was about to be pissed on, the sense of inevitable dread as he realized he wasn’t strong enough to fight back, that he would just take the humiliation and hope it didn’t get worse.
And Kirby came out of nowhere and rammed himself into Rick. He was an animal. He didn’t even say anything, he just knocked Rick over so hard that he was breathless, and he stood up and stared at him. Just stared at him. And Rick zipped his pants back up silently and left.
“I hate that asshole,” Kirby had said, watching as Rick sauntered away. “You know, one time I saw him kill a crow in front of a little girl, just because he wanted to. Bam, and it was dead. What a dick.”
Kirby wasn’t one of the popular kids, but he was tall, and there was something fierce about him, something that none of the other boys wanted to mess with. They still called Teddy “Teddy Bear” and they were still snide, but they let up after that. And if they got too rough, Kirby would just stand up and walk over to Teddy. He didn’t have to say anything. His presence was enough to make the other boys shut the hell up.
The next week of camp was . . . better. It was rough, but it was livable. Kirby started talking to Teddy. They became friends, or at least summer-camp friends, much like friends among prisoners, trapped together for a time and making the best of it. Teddy had never been good with kids his age before that. He had moved around a lot because his dad’s job kept transferring him, and he had always been pudgy and never into the popular stuff. He had dreaded going to camp—his parents’ way of trying to get him to make friends before starting another new school—and it hadn’t worked. Not until Kirby.
Kirby was his first friend. The first person to show the fat kid compassion. The first one to treat Teddy like a human.
“No,” Teddy says now. “I had no idea that Kirby could . . . could kill like that.”
* * *
Bucky was right—they closed school early that day. Middleborough was too close to home. There were grief counselors available for students, but a lot of the teachers and counselors from East Monroe were going up to Middleborough to help with grief counseling there. There were a few news reporters gathered outside of East Monroe, looking for reactions from students about the shooting. They didn’t seem human to Teddy; they looked like emotionless androids thrusting microphones at students until the principal forced them off of school grounds.
Teddy drives straight home. It just feels . . . right. Something tragic happens in the world every minute of every day, and nowhere is really safe, but home is the only place we really have to go back to in the end.
It makes Teddy wonder if Kirby had a home he wanted to go to or not. If maybe that was why . . .
When he walks in the door, his mother rushes at him, wrapping him in a tight hug. She doesn’t let go until Teddy pushes her away, protesting.
“Are you okay?” she asks immediately.
“Mom, I’m fine,” he says. “The shooting wasn’t at my school.”
“But so close.” Her voice cracks. “So close to here. Oh, God. It could have been you.” She grabs him again, squeezing hard.
Teddy gives in and hugs her back.
His mother finally leans away. “Did you know any of them?” she asks.
Teddy freezes.
“The victims?” she presses.
Teddy shakes his head. Before school let out, the news had flashed six photographs on the screen. Billie Palermo, a pretty-looking girl. Sydney Kemble, Madison’s cousin. She had been right to be so scared and upset. Tyler Bower. Mia Kim. A teacher. And Jackson Parker.
Teddy stares at the last picture. Jackson had been to one of the summer camps too, the first one, when Rick had been such a jackass. He’d egged him on and laughed at Teddy. He’d laughed at everyone. And now he was dead.
* * *
As soon as Teddy opens his laptop, Saul pings him with a chat. Holy shit, dude, he types. What a day.
Teddy types, Yeah.
Bucky says you knew that killer.
Teddy frowns at the screen. “Why don’t you get right to the point,” he mutters, but all he types is: Yeah.
Daaaaaaaaammmmmmmm.
“Damn” has an “N” on the end, dude.
Like that matters.
Teddy shrugs, even though Saul can’t see it. He considers logging off. He doesn’t want to chat.
He wants to find out more about the shooting. About why. He brings up all the local news sit
es. He scans CNN and MSNBC. They give him the statistics over and over again. Six dead. Five wounded. Two in critical condition. And the shooter. Kirby Matheson. Suicide.
What was he like? Saul asks.
Shut up, Teddy types. He finds an article describing the events at Middleborough High minute by minute. It’s hard to believe that everything happened in less than a quarter of an hour.
8:03 a.m.: School security cameras catch Kirby driving into the school parking lot in his beat-up blue Ford Focus.
8:06 a.m.: Kirby exits the car, a coat slung over his arm. The coat’s slung over his gun, too, but you can’t see that from the grainy black-and-white photo from the security camera.
8:10 a.m.: Kirby enters the school. He heads straight to the gym, where there is a pep rally going on for an upcoming basketball game.
8:11 a.m.: The first shot happened before he gets to the gym. And just like that, Billie Palermo and Sydney Kemble are gone. Poor Madison.
8:22 a.m.: The last shot. The shot Kirby fired into his own head.
The article is vague on most of the shootings, but specific on Kirby’s death. The bullet traveled through the bottom of his chin into his brain. He was killed instantly, and messily. There were witnesses to the suicide. CNN says that their description of Kirby’s death was “too graphic to share with the public” and that “school counselors will be providing aid to the students who witnessed this and the other deaths.”
That phrasing sticks out to Kirby. “Other deaths.” All the reports talk about is the six people killed, but it was seven, wasn’t it? The six victims . . . and Kirby. He was killed too. By the same gun that killed the others.
Teddy swallows down the sour taste rising in his mouth. Can he really feel sympathy for a guy who slaughtered five innocent students and a teacher? He forces himself to stare at the pictures of the dead until he can’t see Kirby in his mind’s eye anymore.
There’s a difference, he tells himself, between the killer and the victims, even if in the end, they’re all the same kind of dead.
Come on, dude. Saul’s chat message pops back up on the screen. Tell me about him.
I don’t want to talk about it, Teddy types. His eyes feel tired, drinking up the images on the screen.
Just tell me one thing, and I promise I’ll leave u alone, Saul types.
Teddy sighs angrily. What.
Did you know that he was like this, dude? When you knew him, did you know that he was such a messed-up monster?
Teddy immediately pounds two letters on the keyboard: N-O.
But he doesn’t hit send.
* * *
The second year he went to the outdoor summer camp, he was actually kind of looking forward to it. A year of being away from that shit—plus a year of getting taller but not wider—had given him some confidence, and he planned to show the dicks just how much he wasn’t what they thought he was. Turned out that hardly anyone from his school had attended summer camp, so no one knew him as “Teddy Bear” at East Monroe Middle School. It was eighth grade, and most of the kids had already made friends, but there was one more new kid that year, Saul Hutchinson. Teddy and Saul had become friends quickly and easily. Saul was into wrestling, so Teddy got into wrestling, and even though he didn’t lose much weight, he got a lot more toned. He towered over the sixth graders. He was never as good as Saul was at sports, but he didn’t suck quite so hard. He did a good job of fitting in. He never stood out one way or another, and it was . . . good. Easy. Nice.
So summer camp didn’t seem like such a big deal. He didn’t think Rick Harris could pick on him anymore, and he knew from practice that he wouldn’t have as much trouble carrying his pack, with or without rocks in it. He had changed in a year.
So had Kirby.
Kirby was still one of the tallest boys in their camp group, but also one of the skinniest. He kept to himself—even more so than before.
But he was still friends with Teddy.
It didn’t take long for Teddy to realize that something was going on between Kirby and some of the other boys, the ones from Middleborough. Kirby had been attending a private middle school—he never told Teddy why—but he wasn’t going back next year. He was going to Middleborough High. Sometimes he seemed happy about that. Sometimes . . . not so much. The boys who were going to Middleborough High in the camp group were mostly okay—people like John. But Rick was also going to be there.
On one of the first days of camp, some of the boys were playing flag football. Teddy and Kirby sat on the sidelines, sharing a can of Pringles. Teddy was being stupid, sticking two chips in his mouth upside down so he looked like a duck. Kirby was staring at some of the kids, just staring. He’d take a chip and snap it in half, then crush it in his fist, letting the crumbs drop down. Teddy spit out his duck-lip chips and ate them properly, then watched Kirby. Kirby’s entire focus would be on one kid, his eyes following every move. Stare. Take a chip. Stare. Snap the chip in half. Stare. Crumble.
Smile.
When the next game started, Kirby stood up.
“Where are you going?” Teddy asked.
Kirby didn’t answer. He bounded down the bleachers, two at a time, and snatched a thin yellow banner, attaching it to his shorts. As he joined the other players, Rick had said something to Kirby. Teddy watched as Kirby didn’t answer, but the second the whistle blew to start the game, Kirby ran at Rick like a wild animal, throwing him to the ground so hard that Rick’s breath was knocked out of him and Kirby was kicked out of the game.
Later that week, Teddy had confronted Kirby right-out. “What’s your problem?” he said. “You’re so effing angry. All the time.”
“I don’t want to go to public school,” he said, not looking him in the eyes.
“So don’t,” Teddy had said. “Stay at St. Luke’s or whatever that place is.”
Kirby scowled. “Who’s going to pay for it? You?”
“It may not be so bad.”
Kirby gave Teddy the most incredulous look he’d ever seen. “I went to elementary school with those losers. I know exactly how bad it’s going to be.”
Teddy half shrugged. “People change.” He was proof of that. No one, not once, had called him Teddy Bear that year.
Kirby turned his full attention to Teddy. He looked him up and down, slowly, from the bottom of his boots to the cap on top of his head. “Yeah,” he finally said. “People change. Not always for the better.”
And he walked away.
* * *
Come on, man, tell me. The words flash in Saul’s chat box on Teddy’s screen. Did you know he was such a cold-blooded killah?
Teddy deletes the N and the O from his text box.
Yeah, he types. And then he turns off the computer and walks away.
* * *
Teddy’s dad comes home early with a box of pizza from Brothers, his favorite Italian place. Teddy’s dad works close to Middleborough High School, as a city manager.
Teddy’s dad goes straight to him, doesn’t say a word, just drops the pizza on the counter and wraps Teddy up in a tight hug. It’s only then that Teddy starts to think about how his dad almost bought a house in the Middleborough district. It would have looked better for his job, but Teddy had liked this house more than the one on Egret Lane. That if they’d ignored Teddy and bought the other house, he would have gone to Middleborough High School. Where Kirby went. Where the shooting happened.
He might have been one of the victims. He might have died.
He hugs his dad back as hard he can. They just stand there, clinging to each other. They don’t cry. They don’t talk about what might have been. They just hold each other so tight that nothing else exists between them, not the fear, the doubt, the worry.
* * *
Teddy and his parents eat pizza while gathered around the television, watching the news. Teddy’s dad talks about what a bitch traffic was, how the roads around the school are all closed and clogged with media vans. Everyone’s at Middleborough—all the big news statio
ns, some of the celebrity reporters Teddy’s mom watches daily.
There’s a candlelight vigil. People are cramming flowers and ribbons and stuffed animals and photos and cards into the holes of the chain-link fence around the track, the closest area to the gym that they can get to without crossing the police tape that surrounds the area. There are so, so many pictures of people crying. They keep replaying that one image, where the kids stream out of the gym with their arms raised on their heads as black-jacketed SWAT teams move in.
The news reporters are uncharacteristically quiet as the hundreds of people gathered for the candlelight vigil start singing “Amazing Grace.” Teddy’s dad puts down his pizza slice. His mother bows her head. Teddy stares silently, grease and cheese dripping off his pizza, a lump in his throat as the camera scans the crowd gathered at the fence. He sees Madison there, her eyes red and her cheeks tearstained, clutching a framed photograph of her cousin, the second person shot and killed by Kirby Matheson.
Almost as if reading his dark thoughts, the news flicks from the vigil to another analysis of Kirby. Flashy text flies across the screen. WHY DID HE DO IT? it says in bold letters. Underneath that, beside a picture of Kirby, there’s a caption: KIRBY MATHESON, PORTRAIT OF A KILLER.
“Kirby Matheson seemed like a classic American boy,” the reporter says in a calm voice, like she’s narrating a documentary or something. “But beneath his gentle exterior lay a monster.” The image of Kirby’s school photograph flips to a negative, making him look monstrous.
The image flies off the screen, replaced by a woman walking across the front lawn of Middleborough High School. It’s still daylight; this must have been filmed earlier. “Matheson had few friends, but showed no real tendency for violence, officials say. Unlike the shooters at Columbine or Virginia Tech, Matheson was not considered an outsider. An active member of the school’s band, Matheson seemed, if anything, a bit of a loner. But not someone others considered dangerous.”
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