The Impossible Knife of Memory(62)

“Don’t yell at her when you’re pissed at me,” I said.

“I’m not pissed at you, but you’re picking a fight.”

Conversations at the tables around us were dying down. Zombie heads turned, smelling blood. My irritation had snowballed big enough to crush an entire village.

“I’m not picking a fight!” My fist pounded.

“Stop yelling,” Finn said.

“Okay, kids,” Topher said. “Time out.”

“Stop lying and I will!”

“I didn’t lie,” Finn said.

“You didn’t tell me about the insurance or the job, or the latest Chelsea disaster.”

“You don’t exactly give me minute-by-minute updates about your dad, but I don’t make a big deal about it.”

“Don’t talk about him,” I said. “Not here.”

He acted like he didn’t hear me. “I figure when you’re ready, you’ll tell me what’s going on. Why can’t you do the same thing for me? My family’s not half as crazy as yours. It’s not like you have to worry about my mom swinging an ax around or getting wasted and doing something stupid, right?”

“Stop it!” I stood up and pushed the table, sending the coffee cups flying and everyone scrambling to rescue their burritos and books.

“That’s enough!” called a cafeteria aide, pushing his way through the crowd to our table. “You boys need to move.”

“Whatever,” Finn muttered as he walked away.

The aide handed me a roll of brown paper towels, the kind that don’t absorb anything. “You caused the mess,” he said. “You clean it up.”

“Whoa,” Gracie said after the zombies in the cafeteria stopped staring. “You guys just had a fight.”

I ripped a useless handful of towel from the roll. “Shut up, G.”





_*_ 65 _*_

When the announcement came, Ms. Rogak was reading the scene where Athena tells the Dawn to show up late so Odysseus can enjoy a long night with his wife.

“This is a lockdown,” said the principal’s voice. “Anyone in the hall must find a room now. Staff please follow all lockdown drill procedures.”

Ms. Rogak rolled her eyes, closed her book, then locked the door and pulled down the blind to cover the window. By the time she got back to her desk, we all had our phones out, trying to connect with the outside world, just to make sure. I texted Finn first, Gracie second.

There was a 99.99 percent chance this was another drill, but we’d all seen security camera footage of armed lunatics and small bloody bodies on stretchers being raced across playgrounds. Memorials of soggy teddy bears and dead flowers. Sobbing friends. Catatonic parents. Graves. Even with a 99.99 percent chance, it felt like I’d just stuck a fork into an electric socket and someone had turned the power on.

“It’s a prank,” said Brandon Something. “Someone called in a threat to get out of a test.”

Threat

“Wish they’d done it earlier,” a guy on the far side of the room said. “They would have canceled school and I’d still be in bed.”

“Quiet,” Ms. Rogak said.

Gracie texted me back; she knew nothing. Finn didn’t answer.

I thought I heard a siren. My heart thumped hard. Was it headed for the school? I couldn’t tell.

Assess

The door was the only entrance. In theory, we could escape out the windows, except that we’d need a crowbar to break the thick glass, and we’d have to survive a three-story fall. I texted Finn again:

what’s going on?

???

Still no answer. The siren had stopped.

“What if it’s real?” a girl asked.

“Don’t get worked up, it’s just a drill,” said Ms. Rogak.

Jonas Delaney, sitting in front of me, gnawed on his thumbnail like he hadn’t eaten in days.

BANG!

The sharp noise in the hall made everyone hit the floor. I curled into a ball next to Jonas.

“It’s okay,” said Ms. Rogak, “it’s okay, um, but let’s stay on the ground for a minute. Okay? Stay quiet.”

My adrenaline screamed, rocketing me into hyperawareness, senses cranked to the max. Time fattened and slowed down so much that each second lasted for an hour. I could smell Jonas’s sweat, the mold growing in the old books on the shelves, the dry-erase markers at the board. I could feel the hum of the building under me, the air moving through the heating ducts, the electric current that tied the rooms together, the Wi-Fi signal pulsing in the air.

Jonas rocked back and forth, his lips pressed together, his eyes squeezed shut. I replayed that noise over and over. The more I thought about it, the less it sounded like a gunshot.

BANG!

The second noise made Jonas shake, but I was convinced.

“Don’t worry,” I whispered to him. “It’s not a gun. That’s some idiot kicking a locker, trying to freak us out.”

“Shhh,” he warned.

Static burst from the loudspeaker. “All clear,” the principal’s voice announced. “That was much better than last month. Thank you.”

Ms. Rogak stormed to the door muttering about suspending the chucklehead in the hall. The room held silent for a second after she left, then exploded into nervous laughter and loud conversation. A girl showed her shaking hands to her friends. Brandon Something joked about who had been afraid and who had been cool. I crawled back into my chair, pulled up my hood, and tried very hard not to puke. Jonas stayed on the floor.