Say Something (4 page)

It was always hard to concentrate on school once the calendar turned to May. The sun was finally shining, and the only thing that sounded good was sitting outside, listening to music and maybe bouncing rocks off the water at Blue Lake.

But by May of junior year, it was almost impossible to force myself to go to school. After nine months of giving me shit, you’d think Chris Summers would have found something better to do to occupy himself. Hell, even a chimp gets tired of batting around the same ball after a while. But, no, he’d only managed to ramp it up over the winter, calling me Butt Pirate and talking all his buddies into speaking pirate language every time they passed me in the hall.
Yaaargh, I heard Nick Levil’s been down to Davey’s locker to check out the booty! Har har har!

One afternoon I ditched school and pedaled out to Blue Lake. It was a sunny day, and the lake was sparkling, the soft ripples bouncing sunlight right back at my eyes. So peaceful.

Until I heard the noise.

A bang, like a gunshot.

Some people will say you can mistake a gunshot for a car backfiring. Bullshit. A gunshot sounds like a gunshot, and you know exactly what it is the minute you hear it. Or at least I did. I stopped my bike, planting my foot in the dirt, my ears perked up, unsure what to do.

But then I heard voices and laughter behind shelter 3, the same shelter where we’d always met when we came out to Blue Lake. I saw a car I recognized, parked by the restrooms. A black muscle car. The same one Brandon had been in when he flipped me off through the passenger-side window. Jeremy’s car.

I turned my bike toward the voices, leaning it against the car. I walked through the shelter house and out the other side, where I saw Jeremy sitting on a rock, messing with a gun in his lap.

“What’re you doing here?” I heard from over by the water, and turned just in time to see Nick, holding an empty soda can.

Jeremy stuffed the gun under his leg, his head whipping toward me.

“Hey, Peewee!” he called around the cigarette hanging out of his mouth. “Skipping school like a big boy? Cute!”

I took a few steps forward. “What’s up?” I asked, every nerve ending in my body on alert. I recognized the look in Nick’s eyes—the same smoldering intensity I’d seen that night in his basement when I’d found all those scratched-out names on the hate list. Only this time it made me really nervous.

“Just hanging out,” Nick said.

“Practicing some skills,” Jeremy added in his rough voice. “Having our own school today. Only without the assholes. It’s called the School of the Attitude Adjusters.” He laughed. “Class is about to be in session. You need an attitude adjustment, Peewee?”

I made a face but ignored him and turned my attention to Nick instead. “Haven’t seen you for a while.”

“Leave him alone,” Nick told Jeremy. “David’s okay.” He walked all the way up to where I was standing, and I noticed the can he was holding had a huge, ragged hole right through the middle. “I’ll be at school tomorrow. I’ve got some stuff to take care of.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, eyeing the can in his hand.

He looked out across the lake, squinting. “Nothing,” he said. He paused. Then, “You ever think about it, Dave?”

“Ever think about what?”

“Them. Chris Summers and Abby Dempsey and Jacob Kinney and Ginny the two-faced bitch Baker. You ever wonder why they all act like that? Like, if we had all that they have—the cars and the money and the doting mommies and daddies and the huge houses—do you think we’d be like them? Or is it something born in them, and they’d do the things they do regardless of whether they had everything or nothing? I mean, maybe they’re just… bad people. Mistakes.”

“I never thought about it,” I said, feeling awkward and strange around Nick again and wondering when this happened, when he became such an uncomfortable person to hang with.

He crumpled the can in his fist, collapsing it right along the hole, and dropped it onto the rocks at our feet. “Yeah, I guess you don’t think like we do. You’re a good guy.”

“We’ll find out,” Jeremy called. “We’ll find out if they’re just piss-poor people, right, Peewee?”

“Leave him alone,” Nick said again.

“What?” Jeremy asked, all fake innocence. “Peewee’s okay, he knows I’m just talking. Tell you what, Peewee, you can come visit me down at my cousin’s cabin in Warsaw after. We’ll go fishing. You fish?”

“After what?” I asked, not sure if I wanted to know the answer.

“Nothing, he’s just messed up,” Nick said. “I need to take him home. He isn’t making any sense. You should go.”

I didn’t want to go. Leaving felt risky, as if walking away meant I was agreeing with something dangerous. As if I were part of a secret I didn’t really know, but knew enough of to be frightened. But hanging out in the middle of Nick and Jeremy’s… whatever they were doing… felt too uncomfortable, so I went back to my bike and pedaled away, feeling relieved as I left them behind.

***

I didn’t know why, but I felt like I needed to check in at school and see that everything was normal, so instead of going home, I biked straight to Garvin High.

I found Valerie on the bleachers after final bell, gouging the word
PAIN
into her jeans with a black pen. It looked like she’d been graffitiing herself all day. Her jeans were covered with words and pictures, rips, staples. She was a walking emotion.

“I wanna draw,” I said, sitting next to her. I pulled a pen out of my notebook and scrawled a smiley face on her knee. She immediately X-ed out the eyes. “Wow, bad mood,” I teased.

“Jessica Campbell.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t know why I even care anymore. Why can’t she just leave me alone? She wants to hate me, fine. But why can’t she act like I don’t exist? Why does she always have to be making it such a big deal?”

I drew a Mohawk on the smiley face and then added angry eyebrow lines over the X-ed-out eyes. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe she’s just a bad person.”

She looked at me, her pen hovering over her jeans. “Funny, Nick and I were just talking about that the other day.”

Graduation was in ten days, and everyone was all about getting high school over with. Other than a moment of silence on May 2nd, nobody seemed to even remember that our class was going to be missing a bunch of grads. And it was only a few minutes after the moment of silence that Jacob Kinney, supposed best friend of the tragically late Chris Summers, started in again.

“Hey, Dav-a-lina,” Jacob called as we walked back to our classes, “maybe you can find a pink, glittery cap and gown for graduation. With flowers!”

Whatever.

Ten days from now, I would never have to listen to that jerk again. I would never have to answer to “princess” or worry that the drawing of a penis someone had inked on the cover of my math book would be seen. I would be free.

But then they pantsed Doug Hobson again. Right outside the locker room, their favorite place. And I don’t know what made me snap. I don’t know if it was the buildup of two years of torment or if it was the look on Doug’s face, like he was laughing along with them, only I knew he wasn’t. I knew he was only doing it because he felt that laughing somehow made him look like he was in on the joke. Like he was in control of his uncontrollable situation.

“Grow up,” I called, stepping next to Jacob, so close I could smell his breath.

He stopped laughing, though he was still smirking. “Why don’t you back off, queer? I’d think you’d like it. Free show. You don’t even have to buy him dinner first.”

I was done. I was done listening, I was done watching, I was done talking. Without even thinking, almost without even realizing, my fist darted out and smashed against Jacob’s cheekbone.

He hit the ground, and I had a crazy moment of staring at my hand thinking,
Holy shit, I just dropped Jacob Kinney!
But I barely had time to process the thought before he was up on his feet again and coming at me. I tried to dodge, but I was too slow, and his friends got behind me, blocking me from running away. He caught me under the chin, and my head snapped back. I stumbled backward a few steps, regained my footing, rammed into him, and next thing I knew, we were on the floor, and I was swinging my arms as hard as I could, my eyes shut, not paying attention to where my fists were landing. He cussed and called me names, landing punches on my cheeks, shoulders, chest. I just kept swinging until someone grabbed me under the armpits and pulled me up.

I finally opened my eyes, and there was Jacob, just a few feet from me, yelling and struggling to get free from Coach Radford.

“Calm down,” I heard in my ear, and wanted to die when I realized that it was the girls’ gymnastics coach who was holding me back. Of course. Because being subdued by a woman could only make me look even more like a weakling.

“He attacked me,” Jacob said, seething. I was pleased to see his face streaked with blood and hoped that it was at least partially his and not all mine.

“I’m sick of it!” I screamed so loud, my voice cracked. “I’m sick of him getting away with it! He didn’t learn! Nick shot all those people, and he still hasn’t changed! His best friend died! His best friend!” I knew at that point I wasn’t making any sense, that I wasn’t getting my point across, and that at best I was going to land myself on Angerson’s Potential School Shooter watch list. But I couldn’t stop. “He’s a bad person! He’s just a bad person!”

***

Mom picked me up. She had to find a sub to run her bus route, and she was so upset, her voice quivered when she spoke.

“Suspended,” she said as we left the school together. “You’re lucky they didn’t expel you. Ranting and raving about the shooting? Picking a fight? What is wrong with you?”

I ground my teeth together, which sent pain shooting through my jaw. She had no idea. Of course she didn’t. Because I never told her. Not anything. Not about the years of being called names. Not about finding Nick and Jeremy at Blue Lake the day before the shooting. Not about what happened May 2nd in the Commons. She knew none of it.

Say something. Just say it.

But I’d held it in for so long, I didn’t know where to begin. The words seemed too long, the story too big. I’d never felt so guilty in all my life.

When we got home, I went to my room, leaving Mom hollering from the kitchen, something about being grounded and how lucky I was that they were still going to let me walk at graduation and what was this she was hearing about me skipping school and I wasn’t suicidal or on drugs, was I?

“It was a mistake,” I yelled back. “I made a mistake.” And I shut the door, hearing Nick’s voice.
What if they’re just mistakes?

I flopped on my bed and grabbed my laptop, searching for the
Garvin County Sun-Tribune
and the reporter who had practically lived at our school after the shooting.

Say something. Say it.

I picked up my phone and dialed the number on the screen. “Hello? Is this Angela Dash? You’re the one writing all the stories about the Garvin High shooting? Yeah, I have a tip for you. Someone knew that the shooting was going to happen and didn’t tell. And it wasn’t Valerie Leftman. You should check out Nick Levil’s other friends.”

I hung up and laid the phone on my chest, staring at the ceiling. If I didn’t have the guts to say it myself, maybe someone would find me out and say it for me.

May 2nd. Like any other May morning. Mom running off to get to her bus before I was even out of bed. Dad downstairs, the radio playing some old Pearl Jam song from his glory years. Brandon sleeping. Sara and I numbly eating cereal. Sara was going to be graduating in two weeks, but I still had another year of numbly eating cereal ahead of me.

Mason came in, messed with the fish, and we walked, the grass making the toes of our shoes wet, Mason’s cigarette smoke punching through the air ahead of us.

“I can’t make it twenty more days,” he was saying. “I will throw myself off that bridge over there if I have to listen to one more minute of World History.”

A black muscle car rumbled up next to us and stopped. Jeremy was at the wheel. The passenger-side window rolled down, bringing with it the sound of a baby crying in the backseat. Nick’s face, pale behind sunglasses, tilted up at us.

“Want a ride?” he asked.

As much as Mason liked to get his smoke on in the mornings, and as much as that crying baby was already making my ears bleed, we weren’t about to pass up an offer. We jumped in, squeezing in the back, next to the car seat. The baby cried harder.

“Shut the fuck up, Dylan! Damn!” Jeremy shouted before rolling up the windows and taking off again. “Bitch owes me big for taking him today.”

Nick mumbled something that we couldn’t hear over the squalling, and he and Jeremy both laughed. They were high. I could tell from the smell. And from the weird way Nick was smiling into the side mirror.

“So you ready for the last day of school?” Nick asked, turning around, aiming that creepy smile right at us.

“Twenty days left,” I mumbled. He watched me for a while—or at least I think he did, behind those glasses—and then turned back.

“Yeah, man, not long before it’s all over,” he finally said.

“Gonna be over before you know it,” Jeremy added, and again with the laughter.

I glanced at Mason, but he was just looking out the window. He didn’t seem to be weirded out by Nick and Jeremy. Of course, he hadn’t seen the list or the scratched-out names. Or the gun at the lake.

Jeremy rolled to a stop on Starling, right by the soccer fields. I could see Stacey and Duce already on the bleachers.

“Time to take the brat to day care,” Jeremy said. “And I gotta get me some road-trip food. Gonna be holed up for a while after today. So you can get out here.”

Mason opened the door, and we slid out. I was so glad to be rid of the crying, I didn’t notice until the car rumbled away that Nick hadn’t come with us. “You think he’s acting weird?” I asked.

“That dude’s always weird. I think he fried one too many brain cells,” Mason said.

“No, I mean Nick.”

Mason shrugged. “Not really. Other than ditching more than usual.”

We walked across the field, side by side, and in my head I kept trying to convince myself that it was just me. That Nick was acting fine and I was being paranoid, and that if something was up, he would tell us. Running to tattle would make me look like a little kid and would totally piss Nick off. It was all in my mind.

But I couldn’t quite make myself believe it.

We got to the bleachers, and everybody was talking and jacking around, and soon I forgot about the ride in Jeremy’s car. It was just another day. Just another May 2nd.

Valerie’s bus arrived, and I could see right away that something was wrong.

“Look what that bitch Christy Bruter did to my MP3 player,” she said, coming up the bleachers.

“Oh, man,” I said, looking at the cracked screen. “You could get it fixed or something.” In the back of my mind I was thinking maybe I could fix it for her, and she’d start to see me as more than just a friend. But I knew that was stupid.

Something behind me caught her eye. She thumped up the last few bleachers and waved at Jeremy’s car, which had come back. Nick got out and, with a cool chin tip, headed toward us. Valerie ran down the bleachers to meet him, forgetting me completely. Why would I ever think that offering to fix a stupid MP3 player might make her change her mind about me? Why would I ever think I could outdo Nick Levil? It was hopeless.

Angerson scurried up to us and said, “All right, Garvin students, let’s not linger this morning. Time to go to class.” Duce took off, and then Stacey. Mason called out to Joey, and he was gone, too, leaving just me at the bottom of the bleachers, and Val and Nick slowly sauntering toward the school a few steps away.

I heard little snippets of their conversation—
I totally hate her. I’ll take care of it. Let’s go get this finished
—and I purposely hung behind them, walking slowly, sick of being the third wheel in their little lovers’ conversation. Sick of Nick’s weird behavior and Valerie’s devotion to someone who wasn’t even around anymore.

And that’s when I saw it.

A gust of wind blew, and Nick’s jacket flapped up in the back. Not much, just enough to reveal black metal sticking out from his waistband.

I looked around, but nobody else had seemed to notice. Nobody had seen a thing. But I’d seen it, I knew I had, and it was the same gun Jeremy had hidden under his leg at Blue Lake the day before.

Just like that, everything clicked into place. Everything I had known since that first day I found the hate list, since I wrote Chris Summers’s name on it and saw the predatory glee on Nick’s face. I’d known it when Jeremy said I could visit him down in Warsaw
after
.

I gotta get me some road-trip food. Gonna be holed up for a while after today.

I’d known it all along and had been telling myself I was wrong.

But I was so right.

Nick Levil was going to shoot up the school.