Bang (11 page)

We leave his car in the school parking lot—it’s

safer in case his parents go looking for him, he says. And

we drop Rowan off. She knows she’s got to stay the model

obedient child for a few more days, so she doesn’t even

pout about it.

Trey drives and we go straight to the University of

Chicago. We find the building we need, park the balls in a

nearly empty parking lot, and wander the grounds until we

find a whole huge section with mostly old buildings—Trey

says it’s the main quadrangle.

Sawyer walks slower than usual, so we let him take

the lead. He talks us through the vision—as much of it

as he can.

“I only see one gunman in the outdoor scene—the

short, slight one. I don’t know where the other guy is. He’s

bigger and blond. Maybe he’s there next to the smaller one

and I just don’t see him because he’s not in the shot, I’m

not sure. So if this is the right sidewalk,” he says, pointing

to the one we’re on, “he walks in this direction, I think.”

“Do you know which building it happens in? Can you

tell?” I try to sound easygoing. Sawyer doesn’t need anybody else harassing him, especially me.

“I don’t know.”

Trey points. “Look, there’s some graffiti. Those two

guys are trying to remove it from the stone.”
Sawyer and I follow his finger. “I’ll go talk to them,”

Sawyer says.
Trey and I exchange a look and stay back as Sawyer

approaches the two painters in front of an old, ivycovered building. He talks to the guys for a minute and returns to us.
“The vandals were some haters writing slurs at one

of the college equal rights groups or something,” Sawyer

says. “They didn’t really know.” He frowns, gazing over

the grounds, and starts walking through the campus, lost

in thought.
Trey and I follow, acting casual when security drives

by in their carts. I look at the trees. Definitely budding,

and with the warming trend happening, they’ll be growing

quickly, changing daily.
Sawyer stops, closes his eyes, and massages his eyelids,

deep in thought. He covers his ears, then looks up and all

around. He walks a few paces up a path between a road

and a building and looks all around again. He frowns and

mutters something.
“What are you looking for?” I venture.
“The little stop sign. I haven’t seen it. It should be

here . . . somewhere.” He rubs his temples. “The vision

is in all the windows. Fucking gunshots won’t stop. I can’t

even think.”
Trey and I start looking for the stop sign too.
“It should be there,” Sawyer says. “I guess I have the

wrong building.” He emits a heavy sigh and runs a hand

through his hair, gripping it in frustration. “But everything

else is right. That building with the ivy,” he says, pointing

to a gorgeous old building on one side of the quad near

where we stand. “The redbud trees. The sidewalk. And

suddenly now, believe it or not, the noise and everything

stopped. I can’t seem to conjure up the vision at all—not

in any windows or signs or anything.”
“It’s because you’re doing something right,” I murmur,

hoping he can find some encouragement in it, but knowing how helpless he must feel.
Trey walks in the direction of where Sawyer pointed.

“Maybe we’re just on the wrong side of the building,” he

says over his shoulder. “I’ll run around to see if it looks

the same from the other side.” He starts jogging down the

path. I go over to Sawyer.
“Is there anything I can do?” I ask.
There’s a distant look in his eyes that’s not due to the

punch he took to the face, but he focuses in on me and

relaxes into a half smile for a moment. He reaches one arm

around my neck and pulls me close, kisses the top of my

head. “Just don’t leave me.”
As we stand there together, two girls and a guy pass by

us silently, and I think it must be sad to be stuck at school

during spring break. And then I think about me going to

college someday, and wonder if I’ll ever want to go home.

Only if Trey and Ro are there too.
Sawyer’s arm tightens on my shoulders and his whole

body tenses. He puts his lips to my ear and whispers, “I

think that’s them.”
I turn my head and look at their backs. One girl has dark

brown hair in a ponytail. The other has short blond hair, a

pixie cut. The guy has blond hair too. He’s wearing a black

knit cap. My heart races, but I’m confused. “I thought you

said there were two guys?” I say in a soft voice.
“Come on,” he says, and we start to follow leisurely

behind them. “I thought they were guys, but I never see

their faces and they’re wearing black. The guy I see with

the gun in the classroom is slight and short. It’s that girl,

the one with the ponytail.”
I bite my lip. Has Sawyer started losing it?
“In the vision she’s wearing a knit cap, and her jacket

collar is up. I’m guessing her hair is tucked into the cap.

That’s her, I’m sure of it.”
“But, Sawyer,” I say, “school shooters are never girls.”
“Don’t be sexist,” he says, and I actually hear a little

bit of the old, nonstressed Sawyer teasing in his voice,

and I know he’s sure we just stumbled on a big clue. But

he turns serious again as we follow, trying not to look like

we’re trailing them.
Trey is standing at a crossroads, looking at the ground.

The three in black pass him, and the girl with the ponytail

gives him a long stare, long enough for Sawyer and me to

get a good look at her profile before they continue walking.
“I’m going to follow them,” Sawyer says. “I’ll meet

you back here.”
I almost protest, but then I notice the expression on

Trey’s face. I nod instead. “Be careful.” And he continues

on without me. I make a beeline to where Trey is standing.
I squint as I approach. “What’s wrong?” When I’m

close enough to whisper, I tell him, “Sawyer thinks those

people are the shooters.”
“No way.” Trey looks startled and cranes his neck to

get a better glimpse. I look down at the ground next to

where he’s standing. And there’s the stop sign that’s missing, lying in the grass, a fresh black dirt hole near the base of it. But it’s no longer a stop sign. Underneath the word

“STOP” is another word in black spray paint.
“‘Stop fags’,” I say, reading it, and the anger wells up

inside me. I press my lips together and blink back the

gritty tears that spring to my eyes. “Wow, the haters are

so clever these days.”
“Aren’t they?” Trey murmurs. “At least we found the

stop sign.” He tries to shrug off the slur but I know better. I know it hurts him. Then he points to a little blue flag stuck in the ground next to the hole. “Looks like it’s

flagged to be replaced. I’m sure they’ll have it up before

school starts again.”
“Well, that’ll satisfy the evidence in the vision. I think

that means the crime scene is somewhere near this building. We’ll have to ask Sawyer.” Trey and I both look at the sprawling structure, several stories high, with spires and

gargoyles adorning it and green ivy creeping up its walls.

Trey takes pictures with his phone. I count windows, trying to figure out how many rooms are in there, but it’s impossible to tell.
Trey shakes his head a little and looks at me, then looks

back at the enormous buildings around us. “Somehow this

seems just a little harder than stopping a snowplow,” he

says.

Sawyer comes back after a few minutes. We

show him the stop sign and the structure Trey and I guess

to be the building in which the shooting will take place.

Sawyer cocks his head and looks at it through narrowed

eyes, taking in the turrets and spires. He glances beyond

it, and then he turns to peer along the stretch of buildings

the other way. “I think it’s this one,” he says, pointing to

Cobb Hall, but he doesn’t sound very sure.

“What happened to the shooters?” I ask, making sure

nobody else is in earshot.
“They went to the parking lot, got in a car, and took

off. I got the car info and license number. Not that it’ll do

us any good.”
“Don’t you think we should call the police?” Trey asks.

“I think we have to. Isn’t it the law or something?”
“Come on, Trey,” I say. “We went through this last

time. They’re going to ask how we know. And then what?”
He’s quiet for a second. “Why can’t we leave an anonymous tip?”
I think about that. “Okay, that’s not a bad idea. Is there

a way to do that?”
He shrugs. “Easy enough to find out with Sawyer’s

phone.”
Sawyer is already looking it up. “Yeah, there’s an

anonymous text line called TXT2TIP. It doesn’t give the

cops your number.”
“So . . . we just say we think somebody has plans to

shoot down a bunch of students sometime in the near

future?” I think about it for a minute. “I suppose it would

be better than nothing.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Sawyer looks up. “You think I should

do it?”
We look at each other and nod. “We need all the help

we can get,” Trey says. “It would make me feel a lot better

about everything.”
“Me too,” Sawyer says. “Okay, here goes nothing. I

sure hope this isn’t a trick.” His fingers fly over the screen.

He stops, reads what he has and shows it to us.
“That looks good,” I say. Trey nods in agreement.
Sawyer takes a breath and lets it out. He presses send.

And now the police know there might be a shooting in the

near future near Cobb Hall.
There’s not much else we can do. We try to peer into

windows on the first floor, but none of the ones we can

see into look anything like what Sawyer described. We try

the doors to the building all the way around, but they’re

locked.
“You know,” I say after we come full circle around

the buildings, “we might not want to be seen here. We

look kind of suspicious since there aren’t very many

students. Especially with the graffiti stuff that was happening, and now that the police have our tip…I mean, they could be on their way over. Maybe we should get

out of here.”
Absently, Sawyer touches his puffy eye. “Yeah, that’s

cool, but how are we going to monitor things to figure

out timing? The buds on the trees are near where they’re

supposed to be. The ivy is . . . well, it’s hard to tell if it’s

the same as in the vision. I don’t think ivy changes much

from day to day. The new stop sign will be up soon, I’m

sure. But maybe there are other stop signs. And the vision

doesn’t actually show the shooters walking into the building by the stop sign—they’re just walking near it. So I don’t know.” He looks around and we all start heading

toward the meatball truck. “How are we supposed to know

when it’s going to happen?”
Trey shrugs. “All we know is that it isn’t happening

tonight. And that’s the best we can do.”

We stop by the food truck festival grounds to check it out

like Dad’s expecting Trey to do. Trey takes care of booking a spot tomorrow for the meatball truck, and finally we’re on our way back home to Melrose Park. We don’t

say much, but we’re all wondering. What day? What time?

What building? What room? And I remember the way it

was with the crash. Everything pointed to Valentine’s Day,

but at the last minute I realized it was happening the night

before. It was all about observation, noticing the littlest

things in the vision, that made the difference. It’s unbelievably frustrating that I can’t see this thing myself.

“How are the visions?” I ask. It’s dark now, and

we’re out of the city, heading back to school. Trey’s

driving, I’m in the middle seat. Sawyer’s by the window,

staring out, tapping out the sound of eleven gunshots

on his thigh.

“They come and go.” He winces and closes his eyes,

and his fingers stop tapping.
“Were you able to decipher any words from that

whiteboard once you did a close-up?”
“No.”
I look at my lap, cringe, and ask another question. “In

the vision, when you see the shot of the building, is there

any particular part of the building that seems to be, like,

the focus of the scene?”
He’s quiet. Trey glances at Sawyer and then at me. I

shrug. He frowns and looks back at the road.
“Yeah,” Sawyer says after I’ve already given up on

him. He shifts and stares out the window, and I realize

he’s looking into the side mirror of the truck. “I mean, not

any specific window, but there’s a section of what I think is

Cobb Hall that gets a close-up.”
Without a word, Trey slips his phone from his pocket

and hands it to me. I look at him, puzzled, but then

remember he took pictures of the building. I go through

them until I find a shot of Cobb Hall. I touch Sawyer’s

arm. “Which part?”
He startles and looks at Trey’s phone for a long

moment. And then he looks at me. “I can’t see the photo,”

he says.
We stop talking.
Trey pulls the truck into the school parking lot. “Jules,

I think you should drive Sawyer home. I’ll take this ball

bus home and pick you up from Angotti’s back parking lot

on my first delivery. That’ll give you two a little chance to

. . . do . . . whatever it is you do when you’re alone.”
Sawyer doesn’t argue, and he and I get out. I wave my

thanks to Trey as he takes off again.
We stand face-to-face in the warm, wet air as everything around us melts. I look up into Sawyer’s eyes, and he cringes and looks away. “Dammit.”
“What is it?” I ask.
He doesn’t look at me. “It’s in your eyes,” he says.

“The vision. It’s playing in your eyes.”
It makes my stomach hurt. I close my eyes, reach up

to touch his face, turn his chin back toward me. “Better?”
I feel his breath on my face a split second before his

lips touch mine. A thrill runs through me, from my toes up

to my throat and ending in a low moan. Sawyer sucks in

a breath and kisses me hard, his hands sliding around my

neck, under my hair. I lean back against the car door and

he presses against me, setting me on fire.
My fingers explore his chest inside his jacket and he

flinches once, just barely, just enough to remind me that his

father beat the shit out of him last night. I lighten my touch

and slide my good arm around his back, pulling him close,

chest against chest, legs clenching legs, wishing I could pull

his entire body into mine. Wishing I could fix him.
His lips find my neck and I can’t think straight. I reach

up and slide my fingers through his hair, whisper his name

in his ear. His hot breath rakes over my collarbone and

his fingers tremble at my shoulder, his other hand sliding

down my side and finding the hollow of my back, and then

our lips are together once more, softer, gentler, and we’re

breathing hard.
Sawyer reaches around me for the handle of the door

to the backseat, fumbles with it, and then lets it go. “No,”

he says like he’s reprimanding himself. And then, after

a deep breath, “No,” again. And then he lets the breath

go, his cheek against mine and his sigh in my ear. “Jules

Demarco,” he says. “You scare the hell out of me.”
I smile against his earlobe. “I know,” I say.
Truth is, he scares the hell out of me, too.