151 Days (48 page)

“I would,” she said, sounding like she was going to start crying.

“No, you’d feel guilty, but you wouldn’t care. We haven’t talked since the party, and even then I was a dick. You’d feel bad because another human being killed himself, but I mean, who would care if I was gone as a person? Who would miss me?”

She said nothing, which was an answer in itself.

“See, we’re all told we are special, unique people, but that’s crap. We are all the same stupid, self-centered pig of a person and only care about what we want. We wallow around pretending to be more than we are, but in the end, what’s the difference between a pack of wild animals fighting for the last scrap of food and a bunch of fat people fighting over a waffle iron at Walmart during Christmas? In the end, we all only care about what we want and are willing to do anything to get it.” I took a pause as my own words seemed to seep in. “Even cause someone to kill himself.”

Sammy took another step toward me and sat down slowly on the bed. “Jeremy, put the gun down. It’s not that bad.”

I gave her a hard look.

“Okay, it might be that bad, but we can fix it,” she amended. Holding her hand out, she suggested, “Let me help you fix it.”

I hadn’t even realized I was crying as I handed the gun over to her. She put it down and pulled me into a hug. I broke down as I hugged her back. I had cried a lot since Kyle threw those pictures in my face, but this was the first time I really let it all go. I just held on to her and wailed.

“I would miss you,” she said, whispering into my ear.

“Thank you,” I said between sobs, grateful I had at least one person in the world.

So, yeah, after that you kinda know. Sammy said she had asked Kyle if it was okay for her to bring anyone to the meeting, and he had said he didn’t care. I kept pushing her to ask about me specifically, but she said it was okay and that I should go. That I needed people to talk to, and that was what the alliance was all about.

It sounded more to me like she knew if she had asked, Kyle would have said no.

That Monday was the first time I’d been to school in almost two weeks. My father had talked to the school and seemed to convince them that I had been out on a perfectly normal medical problem and was coming back. In all my first days of class, I had never been as nervous as I was that day. I walked around campus expecting someone to see me and let out a scream as they ran away. Either that or just beat the shit out of me for good measure.

Instead, I was ignored.

It was like I was invisible, and I had to say, it was kind of cool. I gathered all the work I had missed in the past weeks, trying not to stress over walking into that meeting. Sammy met me outside the library as I paced up a storm, finishing my smoke down to the filter.

“Calm down,” she said, giving me a warm smile. “It’s going to be okay.”

“You don’t know that,” I said, rubbing the butt out under my boot.

“I have faith.” I looked over at her, and she burst out laughing. “Sue me, I don’t do Pollyanna that well.”

“Pollyanna if she was raised by the Addams Family,” I muttered back.

She paused and gave me a huge smile. “That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“How sad is that?” I remarked, getting nervous all over again.

She must have noticed because she put one hand on the library door. “You ready?” I shook my head. “Too late now,” she said, pulling the door open and walking in.

I took a deep breath and thought about just turning around and running back home. Instead, I followed her in and readied myself. As I walked in, I could hear Kyle’s voice.

“No one is turned away.”

He saw me and froze in place. I saw the same look in his eyes that he had when he’d thrown the photos at me. I knew in that instant this was a mistake. “Get the fuck out,” he ordered. “Don’t stop. Turn around and get out.”

I could feel something sour in my stomach as everyone turned to look at me.

“Kyle,” Sammy tried to explain. “He’s sorry and wants to—”

That was as far as she got.

He came rushing at us. I really thought he was going to swing at me. “Sorry? You’re sorry? Oh well, then that makes it better, doesn’t it? It doesn’t matter what you did as long as you say sorry at the end. Is that how it works?”

He was talking to me, but my mouth refused to work. My heart was exploding in my chest, and I felt myself begin to shiver in a cold sweat. “I-I just wanted….” Between you and me, I had no idea what I was going to say I was sorry for and will now never know.

“I don’t care what you wanted, you dick. I mean, you didn’t care what he thought, right? So why should anyone give a flying fuck what you want?”

We both knew he was talking about Kelly.

The teacher, the weird one who liked cats, came up behind Kyle. “Kyle.” He ignored her, so she asked a little more forcefully. “Kyle, what’s going on?”

He never stopped staring at me. “Jeremy was leaving.”

Sammy’s voice sounded really pissed. “I thought anyone could be here. Wasn’t that what you were just saying?”

Kyle turned to gape at her. “Really? You want him to stay?” Before she could answer, he looked back to me. “Sure, he can stay. He can stay as long as he wants. As soon as he tells everyone what he did.” I heard people gasp all around me. “So go for it, Jeremy. Share with the rest of the class, and you can have a seat anywhere you want.”

I had never been so close to someone who hated me so much. I was unprepared for how unpleasant it was to see such raw emotion radiating off of someone like that and not flinch. Time began to slow, and I could see everyone looking at me with varying stages of confusion on their face. I looked back at Kyle and pleaded under my breath, “Please don’t do this.”

If he heard me, he didn’t show it. “Leave, or I will tell them what you did.”

There was a time when I would have argued with him. A time when I possessed enough arrogance to stand and shout back at him. I had admired this guy from afar for so long, but standing here, inches from him threatening me, I couldn’t honestly find a thing about him that I found appealing. Did I do this? Did I make this Kyle when I killed Kelly?

And there it was. The first time I thought it to myself.

I had killed Kelly.

Sure, I wasn’t there loading the gun or putting it in his mouth, but as plain as day, I was the reason he was dead. Me. I had done that. And there was nothing I could do to take that back. So instead of arguing or trying to convince him of anything, I turned and scurried out of the library like any good monster does when confronted by the hero. I just turned and ran as fast as I could.

I can’t tell you where I ran or for how long. All I know was, the next thing I remember was being in my room with the gun in my lap. It was night, and I had no real memory of how I got there. I just knew it was where I had ended up. All paths led here eventually. There wasn’t anything I could do about it. I could fight and kick and scream, but I was a horrible person, and I needed to die.

It really couldn’t get any plainer than that.

I sat in the dark and began listing the reasons I should die in my head. Like water bursting from a dam, they just came rushing to me, one after another after another. With the echoes of all my failures racking up in my brain, I tried to find a reason I should live.

The silence was overwhelming.

Days passed, and every time I came up for air, I found myself sitting on my bed looking at that gun. Sometimes I saw Kelly standing at the edge of my bed, his unblinking eyes telling me to do it. Sometimes it was Kyle and his burning hatred of me asking who would even care. After a while I couldn’t tell the difference between them.

That weekend I ignored calls from Sammy as my sorrow began to darken into something else. Where did Kyle get off treating me like that? When did he get elected king of the gays? Kelly was an asshole, and what I did was wrong, sure, but Kyle wasn’t his friend, so why should he care? As Saturday turned to Sunday, the darkness began to warm and became a rage as my emotions began to simmer. Kyle was just as guilty as I was. What did he do to make Kelly’s life better? I had done what I did out of defense, and it may have been the wrong thing, but Kyle didn’t have a right to punish me.

I was the only one who got to hate me.

None of this would have happened without Kyle’s bullshit. If he and Brad had never gotten together, this whole thing wouldn’t have happened. I’d still be on my way to college and out of here, and Kelly could still be alive, being the dick he was. My life was over just as much as Kelly’s, if not worse. Kelly was gone. The pain was over.

Mine was just beginning.

What this town needed was a wake-up call. They needed to know that Kyle wasn’t the golden child they all thought. He didn’t have the answers, and his hands were as bloody as mine. Of course, no one would listen to me. Why should they? I was just a loser in a long line of losers in Foster, and they would just ignore me. What I needed was a spectacle, a show. I needed something spectacular to grab them by the balls and make them pay attention. And once they were looking my way, I could say my piece, and they’d know the truth.

And in the end, should someone die?

The only answer was yes.

That Monday I showered and got dressed with a new vigor I hadn’t possessed in forever. It was the first few minutes of my last day on Earth, and somehow that knowledge was liberating. This was my last shower, the last time I was going to brush my teeth. It made everything seem… I don’t know. More important? Less stressful? Nostalgic? I don’t know what the word was, but it was different, and I liked it.

I put the gun in my messenger bag and walked out of my house for the last time.

Life is different when you walk with a gun on you. People cease to be people and are just potential targets. No one is a threat because you know you can just blow their head off if you want to. Maybe that was it. Maybe this was what being a god felt like. Every person I let walk by was a person I let live because I had death in my hand, and there was nothing they could have done about it. For the first time in my life, I walked down First Street not afraid for my life.

As I walked onto campus, I went over my plan in my head. I would go into Kyle’s precious meeting, point my gun at him, and get him to admit that he was just as guilty as I was. Once he did that, I would put the gun in my mouth and pull the trigger.

My place in Foster High history would be sealed.

I smoked half a pack waiting for lunch and his meeting to start. What was the worst that could happen? I could die of lung cancer? That made me laugh, a little too loud since people walking by gave me a scowl. My hand twitched toward my bag before I stopped myself. I had a part to play. I couldn’t waste it on random assholes. Though that did give me a thought.

Surely Kyle wasn’t the only person who needed an attitude change in this school.

What if there was a way I could get him to admit what he had done, tie him up or something, and then go poke my head in some classrooms. Kelly’s friends were just as bad as he was. Making them pay would be funny.

And then it came to me. What I should do became perfectly clear.

I needed to get Kyle to admit his shit, and then I needed him to see he had made the wrong choice. In one move I could get him to see the greatest mistake he had made was not picking me, and I could do it in one fell swoop.

I’d make him watch Brad beg me not to kill him right in front of Kyle’s eyes.

A huge smile spread across my face as I settled on my course of action. The lunch bell rang, and I watched people begin to file into the library. I waited until they closed the door before I got up and took a deep breath. Looking around, I realized this was the last time I was going to see this school.

Good.

I put my hand in my bag and walked into the library.

The moment Kyle saw me, he got up and began walking toward me aggressively. He had that look again, like he was going to hit me. I tried to pull the gun from my bag, but it got stuck. Kyle kept coming, screaming something at me as I struggled to get the gun free. He kept getting closer, and I felt fear clamp down as I yanked the gun free and pointed it at him.

My heart stopped as it spit out three bullets.

Oh my God, what had I done?

K
YLE

S
O
MOVIES
are mostly crap.

I say that because they show you all this stuff, and in your mind, you think you’ve seen it and would be ready for it in real life. Like a car crash. You see them all the time, and you think, well, that guy just got the one cut they always get on their forehead. He stumbled out and chased the bad guy for, like, fifteen blocks. How bad could it hurt?

Car crashes fucking hurt.

Another lie? Guns.

You see guys shooting them all one-handed, jumping across the room, and the noise is all
pop-pop
. Fucking
pop-pop
. You know what they could do if they wanted to make it like real life? In the movie theater, they could come up behind you and light a firecracker and stick it in your ear so it goes off when the gun fires. That is the only way you can get the deafening roar that shakes you to your very bones when the gun goes off. Your whole
body jerks away from the sound, because it is literally the loudest thing you’ve ever not
heard.

As for one-handed shooting like it’s nothing?

Jeremy was firing a Glock 33 semiautomatic pistol. The bullet leaves the barrel traveling roughly around 900 feet per second and can stop a grown man in his tracks. I didn’t hear the bullet because I was instantly deaf in that ear, but there was a rush of hot air past my cheek, and I stumbled backward, falling to the ground. Another shot went off right on top of the first, and I could see out of the corner of my eye that shot was as random as the first one. We all froze as Jeremy stood there, his hand over his head, with a smoking gun in his hand. There was an endless second of silence followed by complete and utter chaos around us.