by Callie Hart
Leon slumping to the ground.
The cold, wet chill that spreads outward across my chest.
I stagger back, stunned at the sight of Leon sprawled, glass-eyed, on the floor.
“What the…fuck?”
I look at Kacey, and her mouth is open, tears streaming down her face. She’s holding the gun I dropped in her hands. “God, I’m sorry, I…I don’t know what happened. I shot him. I shot him!”
I hold my hand to my chest, and…it comes away red.
The pain kicks in, just as I look down and see the small, smoking hole in my sternum.
Turns out I was wrong.
The gun Leon dropped outside the library wasn’t empty after all.
I just forgot to check the chamber…
35
SILVER
I’ve been climbing the walls, straining to listen, to hear anything for minutes now. Long minutes that have surrendered nothing but silence. At some point, not long after I let Jake into the booth and I watched him whimpering on the floor, I realized that I couldn’t let my fear control me anymore. Alex didn’t fucking blink before he went back down there, determined to help. What good am I here, locked away in a glorified closet, when he’s out there, risking himself for us?
“Fuck this. I’m not waiting here another second. It’s been quiet for too long. Something must have happened.” I head for the door, but Jake jumps to his feet, barring the exit. “You’re not going anywhere. We have to stay here and wait for the cops,” he growls.
I realize something else, as I look up at him, into a face that has scared the shit out of me for so long now. I know that I'm not scared of him anymore. “Don't worry, Jake. No one's expecting you to go out there and act. If anyone asks, I’ll be sure to tell them how bravely you handled all of this. Now get out of my way.”
“Sit down, Silver.”
I won’t sit down. I won’t listen to him anymore. No way in hell am I going to let his cowardice prevent me from trying to help in any way that I can. I stand my ground, folding my arms across my chest. “Move.”
Jake looks at the other two girls. Funny how he doesn’t seem so untouchable now. “She’s right, Jake. It’s been quiet for too long. Something must have happened. We should go and look.” Sophia’s the last person I expect to say this, but she seems a lot calmer now. She comes and stands beside me. Alicia swears unhappily, but she joins her friend. Then it’s us three girls against Jake.
“You’re all fucking insane,” he spits, moving out of the way. “Be my guest. Go out there and get yourselves killed. See what difference it makes.”
He doesn’t follow us out. The door slams closed behind us, and the king of Raleigh High locks himself back in the booth without another word.
We tiptoe through the music room and down the stairs, and that's where we see the first cop. Relief surges through me, making my legs turn to Jell-O; I've never been so happy to see a badge and a gun in all my life. “Any of you hurt?” the guy calls, hurrying toward us.
“No. No. But there are others,” Alicia says. “The library. Have you checked the library? We heard most of the shots in there.”
“The EMTs are in there now, dealing with the casualties. Head outside, girls. There are blankets and more ambulances. You’re probably in shock. Your parents are on—hey! Hey, where the hell are you going?”
I’m not heading outside. No fucking way. If most of the shooting took place in the library, then that’s where Alex would have gone. I’m running at top speed before I even make the decision to bolt. Alicia and Sophie both shout after me, but I don’t hear a word they say.
I have to find Alex.
If he’s hurt, I need to be with him.
I crash into a firefighter on the stairs up to the library. He tries to grab hold of me, to stop me, but I duck around him, pressing forward…
..and then I stop.
The library’s a blood bath. Everywhere I look, bodies lie in strange, unnatural poses. Some of them are covered with grey sheets, body bags laid out on the floor beside them.
Fuck.
Where is Alex?
WHERE IS ALEX?
I see Sheriff Hainsworth, standing grimly by one of the stacks, his head bowed, hands on his hips, and I make a beeline for him. “Sheriff Hainsworth? Sheriff Hainsworth, have you seen Ale—”
The question freezes on my lips. At the sheriff’s feet, three EMTs are working frantically over a body. The floor is slick with blood. So much blood. It’s everywhere.
Then I see the hand thrown out lifelessly to one side. A glimpse of the fierce wolf tattoo on the back of it. The sharp, thorny vines that are wrapped around the wrist.
“Oh, God. God, no, that’s not…that’s not him?”
“Silver, get outside with the others. There’s nothing you can do here,” Sheriff Hainsworth commands, trying to push me back. I rip myself free of him, struggling forward, determined to prove to myself that I was seeing things just now. That the body on the floor does not belong to Alex.
“He’s coding,” one of the EMTs grinds out, scrambling around in the small red bag beside her. “There’s too much blood. Airway’s collapsed. We need to intubate. Damn it, where the fuck is the epi!”
She shifts out of the way, and my heart stops dead in my chest.
Alex.
It is him.
“No! No, no, no, no, no!”
His t-shirt’s been cut away, exposing his chest. And there, just below his left pec, a tiny, perfectly round hole is leaking blood all over his tattooed skin. His face is so pale, his dark eyelashes resting against his cheekbones. He doesn’t cry out in pain as one of the other EMTs sticks him with a needle. He doesn’t respond at all.
“Still in v-fib. Prep the paddles. Forget the trach kit. If we can’t get a rhythm, it won’t matter if he can’t breathe anyway.”
The dull roaring in my ears mutes the words they’re firing back and forth to one another. The world is crashing down around me. “Save him! Oh my god, you have to save him. Please!”
“For Christ sake, someone get her out of here,” someone snaps.
Hands close around the tops of my arms. I yank myself free again, spinning on the police officer I saw back in the hall. “Don’t fucking touch me! I’m staying!”
The EMT who stuck Alex moves quickly, placing two gel pads on his chest. “Charging to two hundred. Clear.” She discharges the defibrillator next to her, and Alex’s back arches off the ground. The next second, he’s still again. Lifeless.
“No good,” she says, her fingers pressed against the side of his throat. “Again. Charging to three hundred. Clear.”
I cover my mouth with my hands, biting down on my lip so hard that the metallic, sharp taste of blood coats my tongue. Alex’s body jolts again, then slumps back down to the ground.
“Anything?” the first EMT asks.
The woman operating the defibrillator rechecks Alex's throat for a pulse…then shakes her head.
“Nope. Nothing. Flatline. I’m afraid he’s dead.”
…
Dorme, Passerotto. That’s right, mi amore. Shhh. Rest. It time to go to sleep…
36
SILVER
I’ve never looked good in black.
Even before, when I used to hang out with Kacey, and it was all she ever wanted us to wear, it used to wash me out too much. I'm too pale as I stand in front of the mirror in my bedroom, fiddling with the high-necked collar of the dress Mom picked out for me. We called a truce after the shooting. With so many announcements and funerals, so many damaged parents mourning dead children, it felt wrong to be angry with her over Dan. There'll come a time at some point in the future when she's going to have to tell Dad what happened—I know that now. It was wrong of me to try and force her into keeping it a secret—but for the time being, we're standing united as a family while Raleigh grieves.
In the mirror, I see her standing in the doorway to my bedroom. She’s already dressed in her funeral clothes, and there are dark, br
uised shadows under her eyes. “You haven’t eaten anything,” she says.
“Can you blame me? I’m not really feeling hungry this morning.”
She smiles sadly, her mouth pulling into a tight line. “I know, honey. I just thought I’d try. Your dad and Max are already waiting downstairs.”
“Okay. I’ll be down in a minute.”
She leaves, and I tug at the collar again, this time trying to loosen it. It’s too tight. Too restrictive. I can’t fucking breathe. I give up eventually. No matter how much I pull and tug at the damn thing, I’m never going to feel comfortable in it.
We’re silent in the van on the way over to the cemetery; it was decided that it’d be better if there was no actual church service, since no one in town was likely to come.
The ground's covered in snow, the world too white and bright, after the first really heavy flurries of winter rolled in late last night. Max is somber next to me on the back seat, his face drawn. He looks wrong in the suit Dad took him to get fitted for—like he's a little adult now, old enough to handle something like this, when he most definitely is not. As Dad pulls into the lot and parks up, I take Max's hand and give it a squeeze. “You want to wait here in the car?” I whisper. “It's okay. You don't have to come. No one's gonna think badly of you.”
He grimaces, looking down at his polished shoes. “I don’t wanna be rude, though.”
God, I just want to hug him so hard. I want to hold him so tight and protect him from this kind of shit. This kind of violence was never supposed to rear its ugly head in a town like Raleigh. Max should have been sheltered from this kind of horror. “Honestly. It’s okay, Bud,” Dad says, reaching into the back and giving him a squeeze on the knee. “Wait here. It’s no big deal. The service won’t be long. Take a nap or something, kiddo.”
At any other time, this would be a strange suggestion to make, but in the ten days since Leon shot up Raleigh High, no one’s been sleeping very much, Max included. He’s been getting most of his rest in during daylight hours, when his nightmares seem to leave him alone for the most part.
I walk between Mom and Dad along the pathway that’s been cleared in the snow toward the gravesite with my heart in my throat.
Jesus, I can’t do this. It’s too fucking hard. I can’t take another moment, feeling so torn open and raw inside. I’ve cried so much, it’s a miracle my tear ducts even work anymore. My legs threaten to give out as we turn a corner and I see the priest standing there over the open grave. I want to turn back. I want to go and sit this out with Max in the back of the car, but I can’t. I wanted to do this, but now that the time’s come…it’s just so difficult.
As if he can read my thoughts, Dad puts his arm around my shoulders, tucking me into his side. “Sure you don’t wanna go get a milkshake at Harry’s instead?” he asks quietly.
“No, no, I’m fine. I’ll be okay.” I don’t think I will be okay, though. This is going to be brutal.
The priest looks up from his open Bible, smiling tightly at us when he sees that we've arrived. I look down into the grave, swallowing back bile. The casket that's already been lowered into the frozen ground is simple, plain, and inexpensive. There's no brass plaque on the top of it like the one Mom had engraved with a quote for Grandpa when he died. There are no flowers, except for the two large sprays of white calla lilies we've brought with us. Mom and Dad set the arrangements down at the foot of the grave, bowing their heads respectfully. The priest begins immediately.
“In the name of God, our Father, we are gathered here today to commit the body of this young man to the peace of the grave.”
Pain lances through my chest, so spectacular and blinding that I have to press my hands against my ribs.
“You gave him life, Oh Lord,” the priest continues. “Now we beseech thee to receive him unto your rest. Though the path be straight and narrow, often your servants wonder. The gift of this life is challenging, filled with love and laughter, but also with much hardship and sorrow. We pray to thee to stand beside us in our grief. Bring comfort and understanding into our hearts—
At first, I pay no heed to the rumbling in the distance. It’s not until the rumbling turns into a roar that I lift my head, frowning.
“...we plead for your mercy, Father, and pray for the soul of your troubled servant…”
The roar becomes a throaty snarl, echoing around the cemetery, so loud now and so close that my heart skips a series of fluttering beats.
It can’t be…
“…accept Leon Wickman into your heart, Lord. May he find in Heaven the peace he could not find here on earth…”
I look up at Dad, about to beg for his forgiveness, only to find that he’s already smiling at me. “Go on, kiddo. Go find him. It’s all right. We’ll stay.”
I'm bolting, kicking off my shoes and running barefoot through the snow before he can even finish his sentence. My pulse races, arms pumping, legs burning, feet stinging against the cold, but I don't stop. I run faster, as fast as my legs will carry me. And then, breathless, struggling to catch my breath, I reach the top of the snowy rise by the entrance of the cemetery…and there he is.
Still straddling his bike, helmet in his hands, he looks up and sees me, and a slow, wicked smirk spreads across his handsome face.
“Alex Moretti, as I live and breathe,” I call down to him. “You weren’t supposed to get out of the hospital until tomorrow afternoon.”
He shrugs. “Hospital food’s the worst, Argento. And besides, I had to see you. I may have performed an elaborate and highly professional escape from the recovery ward about an hour ago.”
I slide all over the place as I throw myself down the embankment toward him. When I reach him, he catches me up in his arms, grunting a little as he hugs me to him. I realize too late that I’ve probably really hurt him. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I keep forgetting…”
He dismisses my apology by kissing me, his mouth against mine, hot and persuasive. He tucks a piece of my hair back behind my ear when he’s done with me. “How the hell can you forget, with the badass scar I’m rocking these days?” he asks.
After Alex had officially been pronounced dead, the lead EMT had charged up the defibrillator again and given it one last shot. A final Hail Mary. Screaming in a heap on the floor, I’d been too hysterical to notice the fact that they were all still working over him, but I sure as hell heard that EMT when she announced that they’d regained a sinus rhythm.
The bullet had traveled straight through Leon and buried itself deep in Alex's chest, perforated one of his major arteries, caused both of his lungs to collapse, along with all kinds of other damage to his body. The eight-hour surgery that saved his life has left him with a nine-inch-long scar from the base of his throat to his mid-torso, and he's convinced it's ruined the tattoo of his family crest.
“I’m glad you came here today,” he says, whispering into my neck. “It doesn’t make any sense, I know, but…I liked Leon. Until he started killing people.”
“I know. I did too.”
“I heard the nurses saying his father checked himself into the psych ward.”
“Yeah. There’s a for sale sign up at the end of their driveway. Dad says they’re probably going to have to pull it down though. Apparently, the fact that a mass murderer used to live there is gonna affect the house’s resale potential.”
“Fuck. How did any of this even happen?” Alex shakes his head sadly. “No one fucking saw how broken he was. I sure as hell didn’t when I hung out with him. I had no clue.”
“I don’t know. Leon was Kacey’s puppet. When she shut me out, he did, too. I never blamed him for it. Not really. But I wasn't close to him for nearly a year. I wish I'd noticed the change in him. I would have tried to help…”
“And now Kacey’s been sent to Seattle under a cloud of shame, Leon’s gone, and eighteen other people are dead.”
“Don’t forget that you nearly died,” I remind him.
He pulls a bored face, like that part’s not impor
tant. “And they’re reopening Raleigh in a week. Savage bastards. You’d think they’d give us all a little more time to recover.”
“We’ll all have to re-take our senior year if they did, and I, for one, would prefer to get it over with and move the hell on.”
“Oh? And where does that leave me, Argento? You, so quick to try and leave town and all…”
“I don’t care all that much about leaving Raleigh anymore. Just high school. But it would be nice to go to college somewhere less cold? And I was kind of hoping you might…”
Alex firmly shakes his head. “I can’t. I can’t go to college. Monty will never let me live it down if he ever finds out I can read and write properly.”
“You are coming to college!” I say. “You’re coming with me, wherever I end up going, and you’re going to love it. You have to promise.”
He observes me with a pensive, serious look in his eyes. He's far too pale after everything that he's been through, but he already looks so much better than he did. “All right, Silver Parisi. If that's what you want, then fine. I’ll go to college with you. I’ll follow you to the ends of the fucking earth if it'll make you happy. But there is something we need to do first.”
“And? What’s that?”
“We have to actually graduate first.”
Epilogue
SILVER
There are days in your life that are more than a series of hours strung together. Days that start off the same as any other. You eat breakfast. You struggle to find your keys. You’re mad at your mom, or your dad, or your brother, or your friend. You couldn’t find the shirt you wanted to wear, and it feels like the world is ending. And then something happens. Something so terrible and so catastrophic that suddenly the fact that you were running late doesn’t matter anymore. A literal or metaphorical bomb goes off, and all of the tiny little annoyances that were driving you crazy are thrown into stark relief, revealing them for what they are: unimportant. So inconsequential that you’re humbled by the size of the universe and how little control you have over absolutely anything in your life.