Only Child(46)

“Zach, can you please just…” Mommy’s voice didn’t sound friendly either. I tried to get my eyes to stop looking at the cameras, but they kept doing the opposite. “Zach, stop it!” Mommy squeezed my leg hard. It was like a hard pinch, and tears came in my eyes.

“Melissa…,” Daddy started to say.

“Hey, man!” All of a sudden Dexter was behind Miss Wanda and he looked short because he was on his knees, and it looked funny. He gave me a wink and a smile. “Can you try to look at me? I’ll stay here if you want. Keep your eyes right on me for the next few minutes?” I shook my head yes, and the tears went away.

“OK, great. Here we go then. Let’s get started,” Miss Wanda said, and a man next to the camera said in a loud voice again, “Picture’s up! Quiet, please!” and everyone else answered with the “Ssshhhhh” again. Then it was quiet for a little while before Miss Wanda started to talk.

“Jim, you learned about Andy’s death while waiting at St. Paul’s Church for news about your son. Can you tell me about that?”

It took Daddy a while until he said his answer. “Yeah. OK. I…stayed behind at the church where the children and families gathered after the shooting to wait for updates from the police regarding the…missing children. Melissa took Zach to West-Medical to try and see if Andy had been taken there. Um…” Daddy coughed and then he was quiet.

“Can you describe to us the situation at the church?” Miss Wanda said.

“OK,” Daddy said. “It had emptied out quite a bit. It was chaotic at first when parents were coming in looking for their children, but over time most families left the church and there were only a few of us left. I hadn’t heard from Melissa at the hospital yet, and waiting for news was…it was hard. We were told there had been fatalities, and not being able to locate Andy…It wasn’t a good sign. We waited for a long time.”

“How did you finally learn that Andy was indeed one of the casualties?” Miss Wanda asked.

“Eventually some clergymen entered the church. A priest and a rabbi…and they came with Mr. Stanley, the assistant principal. I knew when I saw them. I knew right away.”

I didn’t move and I kept staring at Dexter. Dexter looked right at me, and I could see his long beard on his chin was shaking.

“And you had to break the awful news to your wife and son,” Miss Wanda said. It was weird she said “break the news”—I know it’s called “make the news.”

Daddy coughed again. “Yes. I drove to West-Medical and I found them in the waiting room. Me showing up there…Melissa knew what it meant.” I thought about when Daddy came to the hospital and what his face looked like, and how Mommy started howling and hitting him and throwing up. My throat started to hurt a lot.

“Zach, do you remember what it was like—when your dad came to the hospital to tell you about your brother?” All of a sudden Miss Wanda was talking to me, and I didn’t know it was going to be my turn on the interview and right away I got hot all over. I forgot what she asked me.

“Zach?” she said again. “Do you remember what it was like when your dad told you about your brother?” Now she was talking to me in a nice voice, not like earlier.

“Yes,” I said very quietly. My throat still hurt too much to talk. I could feel the red juice starting to spill up my neck into my face, and I started to feel hot. Everyone in the room was going to see, and on the video on TV they were going to see, too. Dexter said something to me with his lips, no sound, and it looked like he said “OK,” but I wasn’t sure.

“What was it like, Zach?” Miss Wanda asked the same question again. I looked down at my lap because I wanted to hide my red face. I wanted to wait for the red juice spill to go back down.

“I don’t want to say,” I said, and it came out like a whisper.

“What was that, honey?”

I kept my eyes on my lap, but I started to feel a mad feeling starting up in my belly. I wanted her to stop asking me the same stupid question. I didn’t want to talk.

Mommy bumped her arm into my side. “Zach?” she said.

And then I didn’t know what happened. The mad feeling got big. Like the Hulk. “I don’t want to say! I don’t want to say!” I yelled a lot of times.

“OK, then you don’t have to….” I heard Mommy’s voice next to me, and she tried to put her arm around me, but I pushed her away and it was too late, because when the Hulk gets mad, he stays mad. Everyone in the room stared at me, even Dexter, and stupid tears came back in my eyes.

“Stop looking at me!” I yelled, and the yelling felt good. I looked around, but everyone was still looking at me, and then I saw the cameras. Now I was going to be on TV like this, mad and yelling. So I went over to the camera that was next to Miss Wanda and I kicked it. It fell over, and the man with the loud voice tried to catch it, but he was too slow and the camera landed on the ground with a loud crash. Pieces fell off it, so it was broken.

All of a sudden I felt someone picking me up and holding me tight. I couldn’t move, and I saw it was Daddy and I yelled, “Let go of me! Let go of me!” But Daddy didn’t let go of me. He carried me out of the living room and up the stairs, and the whole time I yelled and tried to kick Daddy with my feet.