How to Save a Life(29)

“You think your parents are Native American?” I asked, taking in his very Caucasian blond hair and blue eyes.

“I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever know.” His fingers wove tighter with mine. “I’m okay with it. I just want to be okay with the rest of what I am. Be at peace with what I do know.”

We walked along the trail and sat down on a fallen log, back-to-back to prop us up. Evan told me about his stint at the Woodside Institution. He told me everything, and I felt his trust as if it were something tangible. Something delicate and precious that he set in my hand.

“I was fifteen years old, and the ink on my adoption papers had hardly dried. I’d been a Salinger for about a month. And this one morning, I woke up feeling like I was in tune with my new family. I could feel this…hum running through the house, like a power line had gone down outside. I thought maybe I was so happy to have been adopted that my imagination was working overtime. But it felt good. Natural. And then I thought maybe it wasn’t just me. Maybe everyone else could feel it too. All of us, sitting there, in each other’s space and feeling…everything.”

I could hear in Evan’s voice how much he wished that had been true, and my heart ached a little already, because I knew it wasn’t.

“What happened?” I asked, my fingers tightening around his.

“The good feeling didn’t last, but the feeling of being in tune with everyone got stronger at school. I was in algebra class. With Becky Ulridge. She was this girl I had a crush on, and she turned to smile over her shoulder at me. And that’s when it happened. A shooter, right at that moment, walked into a factory in Jefferson County. The employee break room. And he had an automatic weapon and he opened fire.”

“How did you know that?” I asked.

“I dreamed it,” he said slowly, and I could feel his back tense against mine, waiting to hear how I’d react.

I’d heard the rumors of course, but hearing it from him… A rumor could be brushed off as fiction. Here was Evan asking me to believe it was real. I froze for a moment, unsure what to do or think. But I’d already vowed I wasn’t going to be like everyone else who never gave Evan the time of day. I could keep that promise at least and hear him out.

I let out a slow breath. “Go on.”

I felt Evan’s relief, could practically see him smile a little. He gave my hand a grateful squeeze.

“The shooter in Jefferson fired the first time and I let out a scream. Right there in algebra class. My body jerked and I sent papers flying off my desk. My textbook hit the kid in front of me. Whatever was happening in that factory… I was feeling. Seeing and hearing it. Living it. I fell out of my chair. Like I’d taken a bullet.

“Nobody knew what to do, not even the teacher. Everyone was staring while I begged and cried out for it to stop. Jesus, someone make it stop. Becky was staring, too, but she came a little closer. I took one look at her and…I knew.”

“Knew what?” I asked, my voice small.

“Her dad was in the factory,” Evan said miserably. “He was in the break room.”

I sucked in a breath, my heart pounding. “Jesus, Evan…”

“The exact instant I looked at Becky’s eyes, I knew he was there. I kept telling her how sorry I was…”

“You…saw it all happen?”

“Yeah,” he said heavily. “It brought me to my f*cking knees. A breakdown, I guess. Not the kind you usually hear about, not a nervous collapse. I broke down because I felt all the horror and pain in that factory. I’d dreamt it the night before, but couldn’t remember it all until that morning. Then it all came back.”

I didn’t know what to say. I knew I was supposed to be skeptical, that I should chalk up the shooting and his breakdown to a coincidence. A crazy coincidence, and nothing more.

But it wasn’t, was it?

“What next?” I asked, my voice small and breathy. “What happened next?”

“I just lost it. They hauled me away in front of the whole school, kicking and screaming and crying.”

“To Woodside.”

“Yes. I was there three weeks. The first week I spent trying to convince them I wasn’t lying, that I wasn’t crazy. That I’d had dreams like this before but it didn’t mean I was a mental case or dangerous. The second week I spent trying to take it all back. Everyone thought I was suffering some huge break with reality. No one believed what I was telling them. The third week I spent admitting they were right. Yes, I made it all up. Yes, I’d been depressed lately but I was fine now. You’re absolutely right—being adopted had triggered some kind of breakdown over my abandonment. Anything and everything so they’d let me out.”

“And they did.”

“Yeah, but the damage was done. I went back to school and the whispers were deafening. My reputation, which wasn’t all that hot to begin with thanks to Shane, was destroyed. They called me Nostradamus, and asked me to read their palms or pick lottery numbers. They called me Freakshow and a nutjob and a loon. And Shane told them I’d had ECT, and said I’d heard voices that told me the future. Just piling it on, and they still do, until I’m about ready to crack. It’s been a f*cking nightmare that I can’t wake up from.”

“And what about Becky?” I asked in a small voice. “Where was she when you got out?”