Only Child(20)

After a while I had to pee, so I came back out of the closet and I went in the bathroom. Next I went into my room because I wanted to look for stuff to bring in my new hideout.

“I was looking for you, Zach.”

I jumped because I didn’t see Grandma standing in the door of my room and she surprised me. I didn’t want Grandma to know about the hideout, so I made up a lie: “I was looking for my dump truck in Andy’s room.”

“I made you some dinner, OK, darling? Can you come downstairs?”

“Is the party done?” I asked.

“The…party? It wasn’t a…Everyone went home, yes,” Grandma said, and she looked at me funny.

“Is Mommy coming home for dinner?” If it was dinnertime, then Mommy stayed at the hospital the whole night last night and today all day, and that’s a long time just to sleep.

“No,” Grandma said, “she’s not coming home yet. Maybe tomorrow. But I’ll eat with you, all right?”

It wasn’t all right. Daddy promised me yesterday that today we were going to see Mommy at the hospital, but we didn’t because of the party, so Daddy said a lie, too.





[ 12 ]


    Do Souls Have Faces?


AFTER DINNER WAS DONE, Grandma made me take a shower. Then she tucked me in for bedtime, and I was allowed to sleep in Daddy’s bed again. I asked her about school: “Am I the only one who’s staying home from school, because of what happened to Andy?”

Grandma was sitting on the side of the bed with her straight back. She wiped the hair on my forehead to the side. “No, darling,” she said. “All the children are staying home. A terrible, terrible thing happened at your school yesterday. I imagine it will be a while until the school reopens. People will need time to heal.”

“Grandma?”

“Yes, darling?”

“Is Andy still there, at the school?” I kept thinking about how Andy was lying there in the school, all by himself except for the other dead people. I was trying not to think about it all day, but now it was bedtime, and at bedtime it’s harder to stop thinking about stuff, maybe because all you do is lie there, so all you can do is think.

Grandma made a sound like a cough with her throat, like something was stuck in it and she was trying to get it out. “Andy is not at the school anymore,” she said, and she made the coughing sound a few more times. “Andy is up in heaven now with God. God is going to take care of him for us now.”

“But how did he get up to heaven from the school? Did he get like zoomed up there?”

Grandma did a little smile with her red lipstick lips. “No. His body doesn’t go up to heaven, only his soul, remember?”

I remembered that Mommy told me about that when Uncle Chip died. The body is still here on earth, but that’s not the real person anymore, so it’s OK that the body gets put in a casket and buried in a grave, because the important part of the person that is called the soul goes up to heaven. It goes up there right after you die. I wondered if all the souls of the people who died from the gunman went flying up when I was still in the school, hiding in the closet, and if someone saw them, maybe the gunman.

I don’t know what a soul looks like. Mommy said it’s all your feelings and thoughts and memories, and I thought maybe it looks like a bird or something with wings, like the wing on the charm Miss Russell gave me. I wondered if your soul still has your face when it goes up to heaven, because otherwise how do the people who love you who are already in heaven know it’s your soul and find you so you’re not lonely and you can be together?

After Grandma said good night and left Mommy and Daddy’s room, I tried to think about Andy’s soul up in heaven together with Uncle Chip’s soul, but my brain kept switching to Andy’s body in the school and the blood in the hallway and on the walls, and I couldn’t get the bad thoughts to go into the brain safe.

Maybe the brain safe only worked in the hideout. I took Clancy with me and went in my room. I took my Buzz Lightyear flashlight from my nightstand drawer and went through the bathroom in Andy’s room, trying to walk very quiet, because our floors are old wood, so they squeak when you walk on them, and I didn’t want Daddy and Grandma downstairs to know I got out of bed. I flashed Buzz up to Andy’s top bunk. Empty.

Then I went in Andy’s closet and sat down on his sleeping bag. The flashlight made a little light circle in the dark closet, and I made zigzag patterns with the circle on the walls and shirts and jackets. I lay down on the sleeping bag and put my legs up against the wall, and that was comfy. I put Buzz down next to me and Clancy on my chest, and I crossed my hands under my head for a pillow.

Right away I felt like I wanted to whisper again: “OK, bad thoughts, go in the safe!” I thought about the bad thoughts like they were little people in my brain marching to where the safe was in my brain. Slam the door. “That’s it. And don’t come back out!”

It worked! I laid there like that for a while and thought about Mommy and about if she was coming home tomorrow. Then I got sleepy and went back in Daddy’s bed.

Then, in the middle of the night, the gunman came back.

    POP POP POP



I sat up and it was too dark. I couldn’t see anything, I only heard the POP sounds in my ears.