Last Girl Ghosted(76)

Get under our desks? She and Jessie looked at each other, and Jessie started to cry.

Bonnie grabbed her friend and pulled her down to the ground. Mr. Brennan walked over to the door and turned off the light. She saw him try to lock the door, but it wouldn’t latch. She heard him swear under his breath. He heaved a table in front of the door, with the help of Bruce, who leaped up to assist. Then he put his finger to his lips, and everyone was stone still. Except Jessie who was whimpering so softly into Bonnie’s shoulder.

When Doug came to the slim window in the door, his eyes seemed to find hers right away. She was in a direct line from the door. He was so pale, and his dark hair was wild, his eyes glassy and strange, like he wasn’t Doug at all, but some monster in a Doug shell. She forced herself to offer him a sad smile, her whole body shaking, her mouth filled with cotton.

“Ohmygodohmygod,” Jessie whispered. “Ohpleaseno.”

Bonnie gave him a slight shake of her head. Please don’t do this, Doug. It’s not right, she thought. Trying to send the message to him with her mind.

He pushed the door, was stopped by the heavy table. She saw him redden. She heard sirens, very faint, way, way too far away.

That’s where he did it.

Holding Bonnie’s eyes, he put the gun to his own head and pulled the trigger.

The sound. The sight. That moment. It burned into her brain, into her soul.

She would never, ever stop seeing it. It would invade her dreams, her thoughts.

Whenever there was a loud sudden noise of any kind, it would come back. From that day, she would be plagued by migraines. Doug killed five kids, Becky Johnson, Amy Watson, Chad Markus, Martie Doyle, and Will Jones, and two teachers, Miss Carol and Mr. Beech, and then ended his own life. Bonnie thought he sought her out on purpose, looking for the only one who had ever seemed to care about him. Someone who would bear witness to his tragic end.

Jessie said that Bonnie screamed and screamed, but Bonnie didn’t remember.

Later there were funerals, and a long investigation. Some of the parents brought a lawsuit against the school because so many of the doors had failed to lock, and the police seemed to think that would have saved lives. Not everyone had been as fast thinking as Mr. Brennan in moving obstacles in front of the door.

There was a payout, a big one, to all the families who had lost children, or been affected, like Bonnie for mental trauma, or James Smith, who Doug shot in the leg. Her parents put the money in an account for her education. It was invested well, and it grew into a sizable nest egg by the time she graduated college.

But it didn’t matter. Because Doug had ruined her life that day.

And it was her fault that all those people had been killed.

Because that day when he told her about the gun in the library, she never said a word about it. In fact, she promptly forgot about the conversation and about Doug as soon as she climbed into Jessie’s mom’s SUV to head to their house for pizza, movie, and a sleepover. The truth was that she didn’t think about Doug at all, before, unless he was right in front of her, or unless she needed his help with something. And she was only nice to him because her mother had taught her that it was important to be nice to everyone.

And maybe it was. Maybe Doug would have killed her, too, if she hadn’t been. He only had one bullet left in his gun, and he used it on himself. Or maybe it was just because he couldn’t open the door. Maybe it was because he, too, heard the sirens.

But he killed a part of her. The part that believed that the world was a good and safe place, that people most of the time were helpful and friendly, that her future was bright with possibilities. And even though she went on to college, to grad school, to become a college English professor at the small private school not far from where her parents still lived, part of her never moved on from that day, from the moment. It was a weight she carried forward, a dark cloak that seemed perpetually wrapped around her. Her parents worried, she knew that, as her friends all partied their way through their twenties, met “the one,” got married, had babies. Not Bonnie. She stayed back there in the English classroom, watching Doug shoot himself in the head. Over and over.

Of course, there had been a battalion of therapists. Medication for a time. She’d even written into her favorite advice columnist once. It helped; it all did—a bit. She healed some, moved on, was productive enough. Still, she had trouble joining life, building friendships, dating. That was why Jessie, who was still her best friend, forced her to join Torch. And it was on Torch that she met Shawn.

“You know darkness,” he said to her that first night. They’d left the bar where they agreed to meet and found their way to a park bench, sat while the full moon glistened on the lake water and talked. “I see it in you.”

The statement startled her into telling the truth.

“I do,” she admitted. She told him, in broad strokes, about the school shooting.

“I do, too.” He’d had a violent childhood, he said. He’d lost a sister. He didn’t offer details and she didn’t press. “It’s part of life. You don’t have to fear it. To accept it is an embrace.”

He quoted Rilke. “‘You are not surprised at the force of the storm...’”

And something inside her relaxed and felt known for the first time since the day she watched Doug die. All this time, she’d wondered how she could live knowing what darkness awaited. With Shawn, she realized all of it, light and dark, life and death, was one terrible, beautiful mingle, and that the whole point was to just live well, while you could.