Bitter Falls (Stillhouse Lake #4)(10)

“It’s just a drill!” one of the guys on the floor a few feet away is sobbing. I open my eyes and realize that I know him. He’s not a shooter. He’s in my class. It’s Aaron Moore, everybody here just calls him Bubba. He’s holding a hand to his cheek, where he’s dripping blood. One of his hands is swelling up too. Another one of my classmates is down next to him. Hank. He’s whimpering and holding his jaw with both hands. Blood’s dripping from his mouth.

Blood’s on the stapler lying on the floor between us.

I did this.

I’m the monster.

“Are those real gunshots?” someone is shouting at our teacher. Kids are quietly crying. Holding on to each other. “Is someone really shooting?”

“No, it’s okay. It’s just a drill, calm down, everybody please calm down,” my teacher says. She bends down next to me, and touches me on the shoulder. “Connor? Connor, can you hear me?” Her fingers are shaking. I don’t say anything. I don’t want to. “Brock, get that door open. Run and get Principal Loughlin. Tell him we need an ambulance. Two ambulances. Go!”

Brock’s a skinny kid with glasses. He looks scared to death, but he runs over to the door and starts pushing desks away. Someone helps. It takes a while for them to get all the barriers out of the way. By the time they get the door open again, I’m slowly realizing that I did something really, really bad.

But I heard gunshots. Real gunshots. Real screams. I don’t understand why this is happening.

Then the PA comes on, and someone says, “Attention, everyone: there is no active shooter, I repeat, there is no active shooter on the premises. For the purposes of today’s drill, we used a recording of gunshots to simulate the environment you might encounter if an actual shooting were to occur. There were no gunshots fired. Teachers, please remain calm and encourage your students to follow their coping strategies. This concludes today’s active shooter drill. Thank you.”

He says thank you. I don’t know why he would say that.

I’m listening to people crying, and the boy whose jaw I broke—Henry Charterhouse—is glaring at me with blood all over his face, and I can still hear those gunshots echoing in my head around and around and around.

I don’t have a coping strategy for this.

Once I start crying I can’t stop. They give me a shot when they put me on a rolling bed to take me to the ambulance, and it makes everything go soft at the edges and fuzzy and I quit fighting them so much, but I’m trying to tell them that he’s here even though I know that isn’t right either. There is nobody. Dad wasn’t after me. Dad’s dead.

I’m sorry. I hear myself saying it, over and over, but I don’t know what I’m sorry for either. Shouldn’t I have fought? They tell us to fight. Not to give up. Not to let people get us.

Nothing makes sense until it does and I really know exactly what I did. It tastes like swallowing ashes and it feels worse, like I’m falling off a dark cliff into icy water.

I’m screwed. I’m so screwed. If they put up with my weirdness before, that was one thing. But this?

I freaked out in front of an entire class. I busted up two of my classmates and yeah, they were jerks, they’d pushed me around before, but I didn’t even know who they were when I lashed out. They were just there.

I can never come back to school.

Not ever.





4

GWEN

My son is injured, and I don’t know how bad it is. I barely remember the drive; everything’s a gray blur until I see the hospital. Norton General is a boxy three-story brick structure that dates back to the 1950s, at least. It’s the only thing that’s in focus for me. I pull into the parking lot for the emergency room and suddenly I’m inside without remembering the run, or even whether I closed the door and locked the SUV. I probably did. Muscle memory is smarter than I am right now. My heart is pounding like I ran all the way from Stillhouse Lake.

The nurse on duty at the desk looks up at me. I can tell from her expression that she knows just who I am: the serial killer’s ex, the stain on the good name of the town. Pursed lips, raised eyebrows, cool judgmental stare.

“Connor Proctor,” I manage to say. “I’m his mother.”

“Room four,” she says. I don’t ask how he is. I shove through the double doors and look at room numbers. In the first two there are other kids, each with family present. Room three holds a sweet little old lady who’s whimpering in pain as a nurse takes blood.

My son is in the room across the hall from her. Relief douses me like an ice bath, because he’s okay, conscious, alive. He’s half-reclined in a hospital bed and holding an ice pack to his swollen face. When he pulls it away to look at me, I wince. Both eyes and his nose are going to be vividly black and blue. One cheek is red and puffy. I force myself to slow down, calm down, and I walk over to his bedside and take his free hand. His knuckles are bruised and cut. He smells of Betadine and blood and sweat. He’s still in the clothes he wore to school, but his sweater is now a total wreck.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. He looks away but he doesn’t move his hand. I place a gentle palm on his forehead. He feels warm, but it’s the warmth of someone whose adrenaline is still running at peak volume. He’ll cool down, probably too fast. When that happens he’ll need a blanket.