Page 10 of Bitter Falls

My father’s voice whispers in my ear.I’ll always come for you, kid. You’re mine.

I feel like I’m falling down a black, black hole, and there’s no bottom. My skin’s cold. I can’t move. It’s like I’m in a cage but I’m just sitting there at my desk. I keep screaming at myself tomovebut I can’t.

Someone bangs on the door from outside and tries to shove it open.

The teacher’s shouting at me, but I don’t know what she’s saying. I hear only the gunshots. The screams.I can’t move.

Then there’s someone right next to me, grabbing me, and I think,I’m not going to die today, and without even thinking about it I pick up the stapler that’s under my desk—we’re supposed to throw staplers at anybody who gets in, I remember. But instead of throwing it I wrap my fist around it and punch him. Hard enough that I feel something twinge in my hand with a bright zip like electricity. I don’t stop. I hit him again. He’s screaming, but so is everybody else, and thepop-pop-popof the gunshots is still echoing from overhead, and all I can think is,I got him. I got him. I’m safe now.

Then someone else jumps on me. I hit him too. Then a bunch of them have me out of my desk, and I’m down on the floor. Everybody’s yelling. Someone’s kicking my hand to make me let go of the stapler, and now I’m yelling too. I’m screaming,Make it stop, and finally...it does.

No more gunshots. No more screaming. It’s quiet. I’m curled up on the floor and there’s blood smeared red on the old linoleum floor. I see a yellow hair ribbon next to me, a broken phone, fallen schoolbooks, a tipped-over backpack. I look up to see the stark faces of my classmates. They’re all staring at me.

The teacher’s standing over me, calling my name, but I don’t answer. I don’t know what to do anymore. I just shut my eyes.

“It’s just a drill!” one of the guys on the floor a few feet away is sobbing. I open my eyes and realize that I know him. He’s not a shooter. He’s in my class. It’s Aaron Moore, everybody here just calls him Bubba. He’s holding a hand to his cheek, where he’s dripping blood. One of his hands is swelling up too. Another one of my classmates is down next to him. Hank. He’s whimpering and holding his jaw with both hands. Blood’s dripping from his mouth.

Blood’s on the stapler lying on the floor between us.

I did this.

I’m the monster.

“Are those real gunshots?” someone is shouting at our teacher. Kids are quietly crying. Holding on to each other. “Is someone really shooting?”

“No, it’s okay. It’s just a drill, calm down, everybody please calm down,” my teacher says. She bends down next to me, and touches me on the shoulder. “Connor? Connor, can you hear me?” Her fingers are shaking. I don’t say anything. I don’t want to. “Brock, get that door open. Run and get Principal Loughlin. Tell him we need an ambulance. Two ambulances. Go!”

Brock’s a skinny kid with glasses. He looks scared to death, but he runs over to the door and starts pushing desks away. Someone helps. It takes a while for them to get all the barriers out of the way. By the time they get the door open again, I’m slowly realizing that I did something really, really bad.

But I heard gunshots. Real gunshots. Real screams. I don’t understandwhy this is happening.

Then the PA comes on, and someone says, “Attention, everyone: there isno active shooter, I repeat, there isno active shooter on the premises. For the purposes of today’s drill, we used a recording of gunshots to simulate the environment you might encounter if an actual shooting were to occur.There were no gunshots fired.Teachers, please remain calm and encourage your students to follow their coping strategies. This concludes today’s active shooter drill. Thank you.”

He saysthank you. I don’t know why he would say that.

I’m listening to people crying, and the boy whose jaw I broke—Henry Charterhouse—is glaring at me with blood all over his face, and I can still hear those gunshots echoing in my head around and around and around.

I don’t have a coping strategy for this.

Once I start crying I can’t stop. They give me a shot when they put me on a rolling bed to take me to the ambulance, and it makes everything go soft at the edges and fuzzy and I quit fighting them so much, but I’m trying to tell them thathe’s hereeven though I know that isn’t right either. There is nobody. Dad wasn’t after me. Dad’s dead.

I’m sorry.I hear myself saying it, over and over, but I don’t know what I’m sorry for either. Shouldn’t I have fought? They tell us to fight. Not to give up. Not to let people get us.

Nothing makes sense until it does and I really know exactly what I did. It tastes like swallowing ashes and it feels worse, like I’m falling off a dark cliff into icy water.

I’m screwed. I’m so screwed. If they put up with my weirdness before, that was one thing. But this?

I freaked out in front of an entire class. I busted up two of my classmates and yeah, they were jerks, they’d pushed me around before, but I didn’t even know who they were when I lashed out. They were justthere.

I can never come back to school.

Not ever.

4

GWEN

My son is injured, and I don’t know how bad it is. I barely remember the drive; everything’s a gray blur until I see the hospital. Norton General is a boxy three-story brick structure that dates back to the 1950s, at least. It’s the only thing that’s in focus for me. I pull into the parking lot for the emergency room and suddenly I’m inside without remembering the run, or even whether I closed the door and locked the SUV. I probably did. Muscle memory is smarter than I am right now. My heart is pounding like I ran all the way from Stillhouse Lake.

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