Black Bird of the Gallows(47)

I pause, bite my lip. Are you worried about dying?

I stopped worrying about that years ago.

Of course he has. This is a breeze for him. Probably nothing can scare him.

I peek up to see Aidan Moller unfolding off his desk. His face is inches from the face of his cell phone. “My dad’s on the police scanner. They said the police shot and killed the shooter.” His voice cracks through the middle of it. “It’s over.”

More than half the room is crying to varying degrees, but it’s sobs of relief now. I vaguely wonder why I’m not crying. Have I seen so many bad things in my life that I’m impervious to this kind of thing? No, I’ve never been through a gunfight. It was Reece’s calm assurance that no one in the school would die today. I believed him.

Mr. Dougherty moves to the window and peeks around the window shade. “Yes, it appears to be very much over—no!” he says when a few students move toward the window. “There’s nothing to see. Stay in your seats until the police come and escort us out.”

No one argues with Mr. Dougherty. Cell phones light up, including Mr. Dougherty’s. I text my dad and assure him I’m fine.

We get word that one bystander was killed. Two more people are on their way to the hospital, but are likely to make it.

Reece texts me. U hear the news?

Yes. Brooke okay?

Yup, he replies.

I’m not crying. Is something wrong with me?

There’s a pause before he responds. You’re the opposite of wrong. But you also know who caused this.

The Beekeeper?

Yes. And this was only the preshow.

I respond, Huh?

Sick knots of dread clench my stomach as his words scroll down my screen.

Today was nothing. A tiny sample of what’s to come.





21-the connection


School is closed Friday, the day after the shooting, and so is The Strip Mall. It’s a good thing, since my dad isn’t letting me out of his sight. We spend Friday and Saturday hanging out on the couch, playing video games, eating ice cream straight from the container—yes, Dad decided that life was too short to live without dairy after the awful events at school—and watching the news. The ice cream is glorious. The news is not.

The shooter was a twenty-three-year-old guy with no previous problems with the law. The network flashes his picture on the screen every five seconds and really, you couldn’t find a more everyday-looking guy. I mean, he really did not look like a psycho. He wasn’t from Cadence, but from a rural town farther east in Appalachia. The shooter’s red-faced parents cry to the reporter that their boy was a good boy. They never saw this coming. And no, they didn’t know about any guns. They don’t know why their son tried to kill all those people. None of the smart people on the news know why, either.

The sad thing is, there is no why. The shooter probably was a good boy before he was stung.

Dad shakes his head, drilling his spoon into a pint of rock-hard mint chip. “I don’t get what makes people do these things,” he says. “I’m just so glad you’re safe.”

The number of times he has told me how glad he is I’m safe this weekend is in the double digits. I pat his arm. “Me, too.”

I’d been trying to find the right time to bring up a possible temporary exit from Cadence. To get myself and Dad out of town, in case that really bad thing happens. With the recent violence, now seems to be a good time to try. “Hey, Dad, what do you think of taking a trip?”

“Hmm.” He nods. “I could see about taking some time off in April. When’s your break?”

“I was thinking like, next week? We could check out a few of the colleges I applied to. In Philadelphia and New York? We could make a road trip of it.”

“Can’t do it. I’m closing a huge sale of equipment to the hospital and will be in Pittsburgh part of the week to train the techs on it.” His brows knit. “Besides, you can’t miss school for a road trip. Don’t you have midterms coming up?”

“Right. Okay. Just a thought, with all the stuff that’s been going on around here, I thought…”

He shakes his head. “You’re not missing school. I understand what happened scared you, but Cadence is still a safe place, Angie.”

Nope. He’s not biting. A trill of panic traces up my spine. I’m not getting out of Cadence, but my dad will be in Pittsburgh. That’s something. I could get really hysterical, tell him a catastrophe’s coming and we’re going to die, but I suspect all that would do is make my dad cancel his appointments in Pittsburgh and stay home with me. I’d rather he get out of here and be safe.

“You know, they’re going to be testing the water,” he says. “Folks think it’s contaminated with heavy metals from all the mining back in the day.”

I study him from the corners of my eyes. “What do you think?”

“I don’t see how mining from sixty years ago is suddenly affecting us now, but hey, I’m not a scientist.” He nods toward the kitchen. “There’re three cases of bottled water in the pantry. Use that for drinking and brushing your teeth until all this is figured out.”

“Okay, but I seriously doubt Lake Serenity is contaminated. They test it all the time,” I say. “The dam has been there for decades, so the water is nowhere near the old mines.”