With a ragged breath, I look up at the door, suspecting it was the police who shattered the window within it, but all I see is my brother’s startled face, his body leaning against the wall.
“Trey! Thank God!” I shout. And then I watch him sink to the floor, leaving a streak of red on the wall behind him.
Thirty-Seven
“Trey!” I scream again, but I can’t let up on the girl. I move my free leg around and step hard on her arm as she screams out in pain, screaming her hatred, calling me a sick fag, calling me an abomination, telling me I belong in hell. Telling me God hates me. Ben comes running to kick the gun away from the girl, and finally, finally, the police come.
It takes them a few minutes to sort out the good guys from the bad, especially with the girl screaming at us. As soon as they’ve got her, I crawl over a slippery floor to Trey, where another cop is trying to talk to him, telling him to stay awake, telling him help is on the way.
“Back off,” the cop says, holding his arm out to push me back. “Give him some room.”
“He’s my brother,” I cry, my voice ragged, and the guy lets me near him again. “Is he breathing?” Blood spurts out from somewhere around his shoulder.
“Yes. What’s his name?”
“Trey. Trey Demarco.”
Within seconds the paramedics are there, assessing all the injured, and I follow their gazes around the room, suddenly remembering Sawyer again in all of this. Two of the paramedics run to a girl who is lying against the back wall, eyes glazed, holding her side as blood spills from between her fingers, and I don’t want to see that, but I can’t look away.
On the other side of the room, the blond shooter gets shoved to the floor and handcuffed, and the girl shooter still hollers hate speech as she’s being held by two cops. And then there’s Ben Galang, glasses knocked off, face bleeding. Ben Galang, who almost surely should be dead, reaching out and helping Sawyer to his feet.
There’s one more guy near the door who cries out, trying to scrape himself along the floor, his foot bleeding profusely.
That’s it. That’s all. Everybody else made it out.
I look at Sawyer as the paramedics take the girl with the stomach wound away first, and then they load Trey onto a stretcher. Sawyer stares back at me, his face as stricken as mine feels. I turn to the paramedics. “He’s my brother. Can I go with you?”
The paramedic looks at the cop, who nods. “Just her.”
“What hospital?” I ask.
“Down the street—to the UC ER. Let’s go.” They hoist him up until the wheels click into place.
I check to make sure Sawyer hears it, and he nods. And then, with tears in his eyes, he mouths, “I’m so sorry.”
• • •
Later, after Trey has been wheeled into the ER, a doctor checks me over. He gets an intern to cut my blood-soaked cast off, and we decide there’s no reason to put a new one on since I was getting it off later in the week anyway.
While I’m sitting there, the cops arrive to interview me and the others who have trickled in. I tell them what happened, my voice getting shaky all over again. “We were sitting in chairs,” I begin, “and Ben was leading the meeting. The girl and blond guy got up and pulled guns out. My friend Sawyer and I both reacted—the shooters were right in front of us so we saw them. The girl was yelling hate speech against the LGBT students. I dove for the girl’s legs to knock her off her feet. Her gun went off a bunch of times . . . I’m not sure how many. I saw that Sawyer had the other guy on the floor.” I tell them how the girl got away from me and held the gun to Ben’s head, and then how my brother burst in and broke the glass in the door, and how that distracted the girl and Ben punched her and she shot Trey instead.
And when they ask me how I knew to react so quickly, I just look at them. “I don’t know,” I say. The cops seem satisfied, and they’re gone before my parents arrive.
My parents.
Yeah.
• • •
Five things I don’t want to talk about:
1. Why the heck Trey and I were getting shot at when our little sister was missing
2. Why we were clear on the other side of the city when we were supposed to be grounded
3. How on earth their good son could be with them one hour and shot in the arm the next
4. Why we want to give them so much grief, because first the crash and then Rowan and now this
5. How that Angotti boy fits into all this mess
And all I can think to say in response is “At least I didn’t wreck the balls.”
They are not amused. But thankfully, they have a lot of other stuff on their minds.
• • •
And after the docs get a good look at Trey and fix him up, they tell us we are very lucky, because the bullet passed through the muscle of his arm and didn’t hit any bones and barely nicked an artery. And while there may be some nerve damage, he should regain full use after a few months. They’re going to keep him here for a couple of days.
Once I get to see that Trey’s all right, I wonder where Sawyer is. I leave Mom and Dad in Trey’s room and venture out to the waiting room. And there, either stupid or stoic, is the boy I love. The blood on his face is wiped clean, and he has a couple of stitches on his forehead. Sitting next to him are two guys. One I don’t recognize, and the other is leaning forward with his face in his hands, and I don’t realize who he is until he looks up. It’s Ben.
Sawyer stands up fast when he sees me. He looks me all over. “You okay?”
I nod. I have some bruises, a few cuts, but that’s it. “You?”
“Fine. How’s Trey?”
“Trey’s okay,” I say, and it’s clear by the look on Sawyer’s face that he hadn’t heard anything yet. “I’m sorry, I thought they’d tell you.”
“No.”
“Have you heard anything about the others?”
“They’re alive,” Sawyer says.
Ben glances at Sawyer with a puzzled look. “How do you know?”
“I mean, I guess I don’t know,” Sawyer says, giving me a look that says he really does. Because the vision changed, I’m sure, like mine did, right there at the end. “But they were alive when the paramedics took them. So I hope . . . ”
Ben stands up and comes over to us. “Hey,” he says to me. “I don’t know if you remember. I’m Ben Galang—”
“Freshman,” I say. “Just voted in as next year’s secretary.” I smile. “Your first charity event ever.”
Ben’s face crumbles, and I feel terrible. Because he doesn’t know everybody lives. He doesn’t know how bad it could have been.
“Shit,” I say. “I’m sorry. I’m stupid. I’m just a stupid non-college student who is, um, stupid.”
He holds back his emotion, and then he says, “You guys saved our lives.”
And you know what’s funny in a not-funny way? I almost forgot that part, because I got so wrapped up in the clues that none of the tragedy seems real. And I hate that about me. Sawyer shrugs and says, “We just had the clearest view of what was happening.” He looks at me. “Gotta stay on your toes when you run with danger girl’s crowd.”
I squelch a smile. “You guys want to check on the others? I should get back to my family. See if I can get my parents to stop freaking out.”
Sawyer gives me a sympathetic smile, and then we hold each other for a long minute, unable to talk about it all right now, but both of us saying everything we can with a kiss to a forehead and one to the lips.
When his arms stiffen, I turn around, and he lets me go. My mother is there in the doorway. She shakes her head and opens her mouth to speak, and then shakes her head again, like she can’t believe my gall. And then she closes her eyes and sighs heavily. “Hello, Sawyer,” she says.
“Hi, Mrs. Demarco.”
“You’re not too badly hurt?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Your parents . . . ” She looks around.
“They’re not here.”
<
br /> She nods, unable to hide her relief. “Well.”
“We were just leaving,” Sawyer says. He looks at Ben and the other guy, who now rests his hand on Ben’s shoulder, and I wonder if he’s Ben’s boyfriend.
“I’d like to thank your son,” Ben says. “He saved my life. He . . . ” Ben stops talking.
“Now’s not a good time,” my mom says. “Tomorrow, when Antonio isn’t here. That would be better.”
Ben nods. “I’ll come by. Thank you.”
My mother smiles grimly. “I’m glad you’re all okay.”
Sawyer and the others file out of the waiting room and go down the hallway to the elevator. I look at my mother, waiting for her to yell at me some more.
And all she says is “Your father told me you know about his affair.”
It takes me a second to change gears.
“Yeah,” I say. “I do. I told him that.”
Her face is pained. “Do the others know? Trey and Rowan?”
“No.”
She looks away. And then she says, “Do you know where in New York Rowan is?” Her voice is broken and weak for the first time, and I realize she’s trying to hide her tears from me. “That’s all she’ll tell me.”
“Yes. She’s safe, Mom.”
She puts her hand to her eyes like a shield, a brim for the tears, and she breaks down, unable to hold in her sobs. And I stand there, scared, in shock, watching her cry for the first time, and I don’t know what to do because we’re not exactly a hugging family, and I don’t think she probably wants me to. So I watch her, dumb, cold, as she sobs into her hand. And I hate that. I hate myself for not hugging her. I hate that the Demarcos can yell like crazy but that’s the only emotion in our tiny repertoire of feelings that we’re allowed to express.
• • •
Mom drives, and we ride in silence once Dad gets the clue that I’m not speaking to him no matter what he says to bait me. When we get home, I go straight to my room, the only Demarco kid left, and I have no phone. No way of talking to Trey or Rowan without my dad eavesdropping. No way of calling Sawyer without Dad checking the numbers, because he’s so controlling and paranoid. So all I can do is lie on my bed in the dark, alone, and stare at the flashing light that pulses on my wall, thinking about the horrible event that happened today, and wondering why I’m so fucking cold inside.
Thirty-Eight
In the morning I grab my savings money, leave a note for my parents telling them I’ll be with Trey all day at the hospital, and head down the stairs. The sky is still cloudy, but it’s not raining. I debate taking the delivery car, but that’ll just piss my parents off more, so I’ll take the bus. I descend the steps and go outside.
“Hey,” says a voice.
I whirl around, and there’s Sawyer standing next to the back door. “You scared me,” I say. “Guess I’m a little gun-shy.”
He cringes. “Too soon.”
I nod. I don’t know what my problem is—I feel like I just finished playing a video game or something, like everything that happened yesterday wasn’t real. And I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
We walk to his car and get in. “Are your visions gone?”
“Completely. It’s insane.”
I laugh, and he frowns again. “It’s not funny.”
“I know.” On the seat is the newspaper, and on the front page is a picture that looks familiar. I pick it up and open the fold, and stare at the students in the quad outside the door to Goodspeed Hall. In the foreground paramedics are loading somebody into an ambulance, and students’ faces are in agony. And then I read about it. The whole story, plus some quotes from witnesses: “Two students—I don’t know their names—they, like, tackled the shooters and screamed for us all to run . . . and we did. We left them there and we just ran.”
I read that there were two other injured students who managed to make it out and down the elevator, and they directed the police to the right place. And I read about a guy who said, “Some girl ran by me and shoved a note in my hand that said to call 911, so I did. I didn’t know her. I’d never seen her before.”
I look up and realize we’re still sitting in the parking lot, and I can’t read any more because tears are streaming down my face. And I look at Sawyer and he’s crying too, and he reaches over to me and he holds me and we cry together for a very long time. And it’s real now. Suddenly it’s really freaking crazy real. That happened. And we were sitting right in the middle of it. And Trey could have died.
“You’re sure you’re not seeing any more visions?” I ask after I’ve wiped my eyes and we’re on the road, heading for the hospital.
“I’m sure. It’s gone.”
“Thank God. It’s really over.” But the relief I want to feel isn’t coming.
He glances at me. “How did you decide to come back?”
I’m not sure what he’s asking at first, but then I realize what he means. “The girl with the gun—she got off the bus I was going to get on, so I followed her. When did you figure it out?”
“I ran into Ben in the quad as he was changing the location. He recognized me from the day before and asked where I lived. I told him I was still in high school and checking out the campus for the weekend, thinking about going there for college. I told him I thought what he was doing was cool. He latched onto that and sort of dragged me with him, but then I realized we were headed for a music classroom. That’s when everything came together. I tried calling you but you didn’t pick up. . . . I figured you were on the bus asleep or something.” He glances over his shoulder as we merge. “I’m sorry about your phone. I never thought about you having it long enough to run out of minutes. I guess I figured your parents would get you a new phone when you started doing deliveries again.”
“They made me take Rowan’s on the few times I did deliveries.” I pause. “It’s my fault. I should have been keeping track of the minutes.” That was a dumb mistake, and I cringe to think about how it could have wrecked everything. “I almost freaked when I saw you sitting in that classroom. Wasn’t that strange to finally be there—to see it?” I ask, remembering how it was when all of my crash vision stuff fell into place.
“It was spooky and horrible.” He adjusts his hands on the wheel and I notice his knuckles are all scraped up.
I think about all the things that could have happened. “One of the reasons I feel so weirdly detached from this is that I wasn’t seeing it like I was last time. I mean, this time I was focused on the clues and figuring them out. I wasn’t seeing body bags or dead students. I knew I had to trust you and do whatever you said. And that was really hard at first, but in the end, especially in those last seconds, I knew that was the only way to go. You were, like, navigating, and all I could do was listen and follow.” I glance over at him. “And you did it.”
Sawyer sighs and puts his elbow up next to the window. He scratches his head and smooths his finger over his stitches. “No, I didn’t, Jules. That’s the problem. I didn’t stop them. They still managed to hurt people. They still managed to get attention for their hateful shit.”
I shift in my seat to look at him. “Sawyer, you don’t even know what you’re saying. You saved almost a dozen lives! You’re one guy, and you stopped this tragedy from being major. I wish I could’ve stopped that truck before we hit your building, or stopped it down the street before the guy had the heart attack, and saved him. But we can’t do everything—the vision isn’t a total fix; it’s a chance to change a bad thing to something less bad. But there’s no guarantee that everybody turns out fine. Come on, Sawyer,” I say, my voice softening. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. The vision’s gone. You did what you were supposed to do. Maybe . . . maybe those people needed to go through that experience in order to become the people they’re going to be, you know? Maybe that experience triggers something inside of them that will help them become great.”
“And maybe it’ll make them dependent on prescription drugs, or want to kill themselves.” His voice is
bitter.
My mouth falls open. “Are you serious right now? You think the vision gods, or whoever, gave us these chances so we can end up watching the people we save turn into drug addicts?”
“How the hell should I know?” he yells. “How the hell do you know? Are you just rationalizing it to make yourself feel better about almost getting killed?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing!” I shout back at him. “I’m just trying to live my life and get through it, okay? So what if I’m rationalizing. So what? At least I’m dealing with this freak thing!”
“Just because it’s over doesn’t mean I’m ready to deal with it!”
We’re both quiet for a long time. And then Sawyer asks in a softer voice, “When we’re acting on a vision, do you ever wonder if we’re invincible?”
And it’s so almost funny in a superhero cartoon sort of way. But really, it’s not funny at all. Because I’ve thought it too.
Thirty-Nine
When we come in, Trey is sitting up in the bed, his arm in a sling and a shadow of stubble on his face. “It’s about time,” he says. He’s got the look of a stoner on his face, and I see he’s got a morphine drip going. Guess Mom and Dad don’t think he’ll get addicted. Eye roll.
“You could’ve gotten shot a little closer to home.”
He screws his face up. “Yeah, about that. What the hell happened? I don’t remember anything.”
Sawyer and I pull up chairs and tell him the story. Before we can finish, there’s a knock on the door. A nurse pokes her head in. “Trey, a few of the students you helped save are here. They want to say thanks—is it okay if they come in?”