by Lisa McMann
“I wonder where this green room is.”
“Let’s go find it.”
But the door requires a student ID to unlock it. We wait until someone exits, and Sawyer catches the door before it closes. We walk into Hitchcock Hall and to our right is a large room with brick walls, portraits, couches, and a piano. “Green room?” I guess. I see one of the flyers with “HERE” written over the location in black marker.
“That was easy,” Sawyer says. “But it’s not the room in the vision.” He looks all around, as if hoping to find the items from the scenes. “I mean, I guess they could bring tables and chairs in here, and a whiteboard, but . . . ” He looks at the windows and shakes his head. “No. This isn’t it. The walls are wrong.”
I flop down in a chair, suddenly weary of it all. Nothing is lining up. “How are the visions,” I say, barely even a question, just a repetition of every other time.
“Bad.”
I lean forward and rest my face in my hands. And for the first time, I feel like we’ve completely run out of ideas. “And there’s nothing new?”
Sawyer sighs sharply and I know I’ve asked him that once too often. I cringe, not that he can see it, and follow up with a muffled “Sorry” before he says anything. We go back outside to wander aimlessly around campus again.
Before we can figure out what to do next, my cell phone vibrates in my pocket. I look at Sawyer to see if he’s screwing around, but he’s not. I pull it out and look at the number, and it’s Trey. I answer. “What’s up?”
“Um, like, where the hell are you?”
I look at my watch, and it’s after six. No wonder my stomach is growling. “Sawyer and I took the bus to U of C.”
“Mom and Dad are freaking out. They keep calling me and Rowan and we’re trying to run the stinking truck. It’s a nightmare. We could actually use your help . . . if you hadn’t quit, you know.”
I shrug. “Maybe if they buy me a new cell phone they could get ahold of me. You may want to mention that.”
“I’m going to tell them that you called me from . . . shit. What do you want me to tell them?”
I look up at Rockefeller Chapel and see a door open, inviting in the spring air. I step inside and see a group of adults wearing choir robes, rehearsing. “Tell them I took a really long walk, looking desperately for a pay phone.”
“Whatever. Did you figure anything out?”
I glance at Sawyer, who is sitting on the chapel steps with his head in his hands. “No.” I pause, and then I say, “Tell Mom I’m coming to help you. We’re only about twenty minutes away.”
I hear Rowan utter a muffled swear word in the background. Trey sighs. “Thanks, Jules.”
We hang up and I go back outside and hold my hand out to Sawyer. “Hey,” I say with fake enthusiasm. “Wanna go run the giant truck o’ balls with team Demarco?”
He looks up at me, and despite the situation, a slow grin spreads across his face. “That actually sounds awesome,” he says.
Thirty-Three
Trey’s eyes light up when he sees us. “Thank the gods,” he breathes. “Did you see the line?”
“How could we miss it?”
Rowan’s hair is stuck to her forehead with sweat. She grabs a towel and wipes her face, then throws the towel into the dirty bin. “Blown away,” she says. “I do not understand why you guys enjoy this truck so much.”
I give Sawyer a hasty tour, show him how we do our orders, and set him up filling bread bowls with meatballs and sauce so we can catch up on the backlog. I make him taste everything. “This is excellent,” he says, his mouth full.
“Don’t be stealing our recipe now,” Trey says as he hands an order through the window to a customer.
Sawyer laughs, but he shoots me an anxious look that says, Does he know about our parents?
I shake my head and start grating fresh mozzarella like it’s going out of style. “No wonder you’re blown away. You’ve got no mise en place. You’re out of everything.”
Trey gives me a scornful look. “Oh, we had everything prepped, I assure you. Again, I refer your gaze to the line out front and ask you to kindly note that it’s been like this for four hours.”
“Point taken. We’ll set you back up. Right, Angotti?”
“Yes, boss,” Sawyer says.
I look around and it feels a bit too crowded in here. “Ro, you want to go outside and take orders and hand ’em through to Trey? That way you can go down the line a bit and we can get things moving faster.”
“Good call,” Trey mutters.
“Gladly,” Rowan says. “It’s fucking hot in here.”
I look at her as she leaves. “When did she start cussing?”
“Mmm. Yeah. That would be today,” Trey says.
Sawyer laughs. He works really fast, and once he’s caught up with the bread bowl orders, he looks for other things to do. “How can I help?”
I grab bunches of fresh spinach from the cooler and shove them at him. “Rinse, spin, steam two minutes, and rough chop. Got it? Then garlic and onions over in that cooler—you okay chopping onions?”
“Pfft. Of course,” he says, like I just insulted him. And I freaking love that he knows everything I’m talking about. I remember my dreams of leaving love notes made of green peppers for him on the cutting board and laugh under my breath.
Once I have the cheese tub filled, I chop tomatoes, and then the orders start getting filled again and the line begins moving.
“Okay,” Trey says when we have a good rhythm going. “Catch me up. Are we still looking at Monday or Tuesday for the thing?”
“Don’t know,” I say. “For a while we were actually thinking tomorrow night, but now we’re not sure. Still, Sawyer’s visions are so bad he can’t drive, and he’s seeing them everywhere.”
“Tomorrow night.”
“Yeah.”
“Great.”
“At least if it is tomorrow, it’ll be over soon,” Sawyer says, moving to get onions. He looks in the caddy to see how we dice them and starts in. His knife skills are pretty great, and I’m freaking in love all over again.
“So what’s the plan?” Trey asks. “Do we have one?”
“Um . . . ,” I say, and I feel really helpless, because we don’t have a plan at all, despite my promise to Sawyer that we’d have one by now.
“I think what we need to do is forget about the classroom,” Sawyer says decisively. “And focus on the sidewalk and the shooter guy—girl—walking there. If we stop her, the rest of the plan doesn’t come together for them. If she doesn’t show up, I bet the other one—or two—abandon the plan.”
Trey gets backed up, so Rowan pops in to help with a stack of new orders. “You guys better not die while I’m gone,” she says. “I mean it.”
“Shit,” I say, remembering. “I’ve got to get you to the airport.”
“Yes, you do. You ruin this for me, and I ruin your face, bitch.” Rowan smiles sweetly and hands off another order through the window.
“Wow.” I glance at Sawyer and he’s grinning. He looks at me. “I freaking love you guys. Can I work at your place?”
“Um . . . ,” we all say, knowing it was a joke, but I change the subject back to what Sawyer just said. “Anyway, I think you’re right, Sawyer—we don’t have enough information, so we go with what we know. We know the shooter walks down the sidewalk by Cobb Hall. So we plant ourselves there around sundown in the next few days, or whenever the weather looks like the skies could be dark.”
“And that’s so easy to predict in Chicago in spring,” Trey says. He hands off another order. “Nice, too, that the campus is just around the corner from our house.” His sarcasm is evident.
“But we’re on spring break, so that’s easier.”
“But we have jobs.”
“Some of us do,” pipes Rowan from outside the window.
“This is more important,” I say.
“Your face—” Rowan says.
“Shut it,” I say. “Ina
ppropriate at this time.”
“I love you all,” Sawyer says.
“Well, let’s just get through this before you go spouting off with your overemotional diatribe,” Trey says. “Sheesh. You’re even scaring the gays.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Sawyer says, scooping up his diced onions and putting them into the onion bin. “At my place, it’s a bunch of old ladies, my parents, my older brothers, who are almost never there, and me. And my cousin Kate—she’s cool. But she’s in college so she only works a couple shifts a week.”
I frown, glancing at Trey, who looks horrified. “That sounds awful,” he says.
“It is, trust me.”
“And then you also get punched in the face.”
There’s an awkward pause. Sawyer tries to blow it off. “Yeah. Just one of the many perks of the job.”
I shoot Trey a warning glance, but he chooses not to see it. “You know,” he says, “once this whole thing is over, we’re going to talk about that.” He looks at his ticket. “One salad, one balls minus cheese, one heart attack,” he calls out. “Come on, step it up back there.”
And there’s something comforting about Trey being there, knowing he’ll be with us tomorrow and the rest of the week too. Once we get Rowan out the door, we’re home free.
Thirty-Four
My parents are strangely silent about my being gone all day, probably due to Rowan handing over gobs of money and telling them how I went out to save them when they were blown away. My mother thanks me for helping out, and I respond kindly, coolly, and that’s the end of that.
Sawyer and I talk on the phone until he falls asleep. I toss and turn all night, and so does Rowan, making me think she’s actually nervous about flying for the first time, all alone.
Sunday morning dawns, and I hear my mother moving around the apartment, getting ready for mass. Rowan has already begged off mass after the long, arduous day on the food truck, and Mom said she could skip today, which was the plan all along. Rowan goes through her duffel bag for the millionth time. By eight thirty, I think I hear Dad moving down the hall, but when Mom leaves, I strain to hear Dad’s footsteps on the stairs too and I don’t hear them. Rowan looks at me and mouths a cuss word.
I sit up and shrug, hearing his door close again. “Meh. No worries. It’s not like he’s going to notice us.”
• • •
Once we’re ready, Rowan gets her bag and we sneak out to the pizza delivery car. I have directions printed out and Rowan goes through her purse nervously. “Photo ID, ticket, toiletries,” she mutters. She tells me her airline and we head out to the glorious world of O’Hare Airport, a slithering ant farm of a place where even really seasoned drivers choke and get lost. After missing the correct terminal, almost getting plowed over by a bus, and more swearing by the innocent fifteen-year-old I once knew, we finally find the right place, and I do what everybody else seems to do—park any old where I feel like it.
She puts her hand on the door handle and looks at me. “Thanks,” she says.
I smile. “Have a blast, okay? And if it’s not what you expect, call me. I will come and get you.”
She laughs. “You have a few other things on your mind.”
“You’re my number one,” I say. And then I have to punch her in the arm before things get mushy. “You know what signs to look for inside?”
“Yeah. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“You either.” I pinch her knee, which she hates, and then she’s opening her door, slipping out, and she’s gone. A second later I roll down the passenger window and yell out, “Call me when you get there!”
She looks over her shoulder and smiles. “I will,” she says. She lifts her hand in a wave. And she looks so damn excited it makes me cry.
• • •
On the way home I can’t get my stomach to settle down. I know our parents are going to freak, and if they find out I drove Rowan to the airport, they’ll probably have me arrested or something—I wouldn’t put it past them. My dad, anyway. And you know what? I’m trying really freaking hard not to care. Before I head back inside the house I call Sawyer to discuss the plan for the day, which is to get the hell out of here before my parents figure out Rowan is gone.
Inside I can hear the TV, which means Dad is out of his room and hopefully getting ready to open the restaurant rather than sit in the blue TV haze all day with the shades down. They’re going to need him down there without Ro and Trey. I feel a twinge in my gut, but I have to ignore it. Today is not the day for that. I slip past the living room and knock lightly on Trey’s door.
He opens it and lets me in, closing it behind me.
“You ready?” I whisper. “Mom will be home any minute.”
Trey sighs. “Yeah, about that,” he says. “I think I need to stay here, for the afternoon at least. You’re pretty sure this thing is happening in the evening, right?”
I nod.
“I’ll meet you guys out there before dark. I just think I should be here for when they find out about Rowan, you know? So they don’t call the cops.”
I sit down on his bed and rub my temples. He’s right, of course. And he’s the best one to handle them.
“Yeah, okay,” I say.
“If anything crazy happens, call me. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
“Okay,” I say again. On an impulse I reach out and hug him around the neck. My cast clunks against his head.
“Ouch. When are you getting that stupid thing off?” he asks, laughing.
“Friday morning. If we all live that long.”
“And we have multiple opportunities to die,” Trey says. “Death by exploding heads. Er, I meant Dad, not . . . the other.” He cringes.
“That was bad.”
“I know. Sorry.”
I rap on his chest with my knuckles. “We’ll be in the quad. I’ll call you if anything changes.”
His lips press into a wry smile. “Be careful,” he says. “It’s not worth dying for, okay?”
I nod. And I know. “We’re calling the police as soon as we have an idea of what’s happening, and when, and where.”
I open Trey’s door and almost run into my dad. “Oh. Sorry.”
He startles too and hits one of the stacks of Christmas tins. Finally, after years of waiting, they come crashing down, making way more noise than something so lightweight should make. I stoop down and help pick them up, putting them back on the precarious pile as best I can with my dad blocking the hallway. I hand the last one to him, not quite looking him in the eye.
“Thank you,” he says.
I nod and back into Trey’s doorway again so he can get past me.
“And thank you for helping your brother and sister yesterday,” he says gruffly. “Mom will add those hours to your final paycheck.”
“That’s fine.”
He doesn’t ask me if I want my job back. And I’m too proud to ask for it.
Scary how much like him I am.
Thirty-Five
Dad goes into his bedroom, and I duck into mine, grab my backpack, make sure I have my phone, and scoot out of there. As I descend the stairs, I hear my dad calling for Rowan, and I can’t run away fast enough. “Trey Demarco, you are a saint,” I mutter under my breath. I owe him big for handling this.
The sky is dark. Occasional giant drops of rain splat on the pavement in front of me, and I wish I’d thought to bring an umbrella. I grab the bus to Sawyer’s neighborhood, call him to let him know I’m coming, and just miss a wave of pouring rain. It’s only spitting by the time I hop off. And when I look down the street toward Angotti’s Trattoria, I see Sawyer walking toward me.
“Okay, so here’s what I know,” he says in greeting. “Main shooter girl is holding a Glock 17 Gen4. It holds at least seventeen bullets. She doesn’t have an additional magazine on it.”
“Hmm,” I say. This information means nothing to me, other than the fact that the killer woman can shoot at least seventeen times. Which is more th
an eleven.
Sawyer grips my hand as the almost empty bus pulls up and he buys two fares. We grab a seat in the back. “Also, I finally managed to figure out a few words on the whiteboard. Musical terms and composer names.” He flashes a triumphant smile.
“How did you manage that?”
“Every time I tried to zoom, the pixels went nuts and I couldn’t read anything. But I finally thought to use my mother’s reading glasses to magnify the words—she’s, like, totally farsighted—and I got these words: Rachmaninoff, Vespers, E A Poe, The Bells.”
I frown. “Edgar Allan Poe is a writer, not a musician.”
“Right, but I looked up ‘The Bells,’ which is by Poe, and Sergei Rachmaninoff turned it into a symphony.”
I feel a surge of hope for the first time in a long time. “So it’s a music classroom, you think?”
“That’s what I think.”
“So, wait—the victims are not the Gay-Straight Alliance people? It’s, like, a regular music class?”
Sawyer’s breath comes out heavy, and his face is strained. “All I know is that the GSA is meeting in the green room, and the room in the vision is a regular music classroom. So the two events don’t appear related.”
“But that means . . . ”
“We’ve got everything wrong. But at least we know it’s probably not going to happen today—there are no classes in session until tomorrow.”
I think for a moment. “But the weather is supposed to be sunny tomorrow, and you said it’s cloudy and the pavement is wet in the vision.”
He shrugs. “Maybe there are sprinklers on the quad. Or maybe it rains when it’s not forecasted—wouldn’t be the first time.”
“True.” I look out the window. “So, wait. Why are we going there today, then?”
“To see if we can find the music classrooms and figure out which ones have evening classes. Hopefully the buildings will be open now that students are returning from break.” He pulls out a map of the entire main quad, and it’s like he’s been energized.
“Are you . . . feeling okay?”
He looks at me. “Actually, for once, yeah. The vision calmed down after I figured out the music thing. So I feel like I got something right.”