A Spark of Light(81)

Don’t shoot don’t shoot don’t shoot, she said over and over, even though he already had. But Bex really meant, Don’t shoot Wren.

Then Wren was leaning down over her. “Aunt B-bex, get up …” Her eyes were like Hugh’s.

Her hair, though, that came from her mother. It brushed Bex’s cheek, like a fall of silk, a curtain that closed them off from the world.

Last year Bex had opened an art installation in the center of Smith Park. From the limb of a tree she hung a tiny striped circus tent, just big enough for one. If you slipped inside, you saw an easel with a white canvas, and a scatter of colored Sharpies. BEFORE I DIE, Bex had painted across the top, I WANT TO …

Over the course of two weeks, people who came to the park to eat lunch or skateboard or read a book had wandered inside out of curiosity, and had contributed their own answers.

… swim in all five oceans.

… run a marathon.

… fall in love.

… learn Mandarin.

When Bex took down the installation she had, at the very bottom of the canvas, finished her own open sentence, painting the word

Live.

She stared up at Wren and imagined a parallel universe where she could still breathe, where she could still move. Where she put her palm against the cheek of her beautiful girl. Where she got to turn back the clock, and do it over.

—


BEFORE OLIVE HAD RETIRED FROM the university, the dean had handed down a protocol for a school shooting. Mississippi allowed concealed carry of weapons, and even if you weren’t supposed to bring one onto a college campus, that didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen. However, as she had told Peg that night, she didn’t want to have to go to work every day wondering if today would be the day she had to Run-Hide-Fight. It was the first time she had ever felt weary of her work, and it was the first seed planted in her mind that perhaps it was time to stop teaching, and to take up gardening or bread making. The world was changing; maybe it was time to step aside for someone else, who could not only talk about neural plasticity, but do so while escaping a maniac with a semiautomatic rifle.

It hadn’t sounded like a shot. That was all Olive could think as she swam up from the gauzy tunnel of her thoughts. It was like popcorn in a microwave, like balloons bursting. It wasn’t until she heard a scream that she even looked up and saw a pink-haired girl race past her and out the front door.

Then she looked down to find a woman bleeding on the carpet with a teenager huddled over her.

There was a crash in the back of the clinic.

The teenager turned, her eyes enormous. “Help.”

Run.

Olive stood and glanced around wildly. She could see an arm flung bonelessly past the base of the reception desk, a dark arm with a festival of gold bangle bracelets, swimming in a pool of blood. Sweet Jesus; that was Vonita.

Olive grabbed the girl’s wrist, pulling her toward the front door, but the girl was steadfastly clinging to the woman who’d been shot. “We have to get out of here,” Olive said to her.

“Not without my aunt.”

Olive grimaced and tried to pull the other woman up, but even with Wren’s help, they couldn’t move her more than a few inches. The cry that tore from the woman’s throat was a red flag that would draw the shooter again. “If we leave, we can get her an ambulance.”

That convinced the girl. She scrambled to her feet as Olive pulled on the door handle, but it was locked. You had to be buzzed into the clinic, was it possible you had to be buzzed out? She threw all her slight weight into the mechanism, even pounding on the door, but it didn’t give.

“We’re stuck here?” the girl asked, her voice shimmying up a ladder of panic.

Hide.

Olive didn’t answer. She opened the first door she could find. It was a supply closet, filled with boxes on one side and cleaning supplies on the other. Olive crouched down, pulling the girl in with her, and shut the door.

This was where her knowledge of the shooting protocol got fuzzy. She had left her purse in the waiting room, and with it her phone. She couldn’t call 911. Should she try to barricade the door? If so, with what?

She couldn’t help but note that had she not been sitting in a waiting room contemplating mortality, her life would not be in danger right now.

Beside her, the girl’s teeth were chattering. “I’m Olive,” she whispered. “What’s your name?”

“W-Wren.”

“Wren, I want you to listen to me. We can’t make a sound, understand?”

The girl nodded.

“That’s your aunt out there?”

She jerked her head. “Is she … is she going to die?”

Olive didn’t know how to answer that. She patted the girl’s hand. “I’m sure the police are already on their way.”

In truth, she was not sure about this at all. If she had thought that the gunshots sounded like bubble wrap being stomped on, why would anyone outside the clinic even assume anything was wrong? Fight, she thought, the last step of the protocol. When your life is in imminent danger and you cannot run away or hide, take action.

The directive seemed particularly relevant today.

Suddenly in the dark there was a small rectangle of light.

“You have a phone,” Olive whispered with wonder. “You have a phone! Call 911.”