“So it wasn’t because you were planning to kill people with your boyfriend.”
“No! I told you that already. I never planned anything with Nick. I never even knew Nick was planning anything. It was a stupid nickname. It’s not like I created it. I hated it.”
He flipped another page. “A stupid nickname started by Christy Bruter.”
I nodded.
“The girl Nick supposedly shot first. The one we can’t really see on the security video so well. All we see is you and Nick confronting her and then Christy hitting the floor and everyone scattering.”
“I didn’t shoot her if that’s what you’re thinking,” I said. “I didn’t.”
He sank into a chair and leaned toward me. “Tell us what to think, Valerie. Tell us how it really went down. We only know what we see. And what we see is you pointing out Christy Bruter to your boyfriend. At least three other kids confirm that.”
I nodded and rubbed my forehead with my fingers. I was getting sleepy, and I was pretty sure the wrapping on my leg needed changing.
“Want to tell me why you did that?”
“I wanted Nick to confront her,” I nearly whispered. “She broke my MP3 player.”
The detective stood and moved over to the window and slanted the blinds so that the sun was no longer driving into the room. I blinked. The room looked sullen now. Like Mom would never come back. Like I would forever be in this bed listening to this cop’s questions, even if I were to be writhing in pain, the gunshot wound in my leg turning gangrenous and caving in on itself.
He pulled up another chair on the opposite side of the bed than he’d been sitting on. He sat and scratched his chin.
“So,” he said. “You went into that cafeteria and pointed out Christy to your boyfriend. Next thing you know, she’s got a big hole in her gut. What are we missing, Valerie?”
I felt a tear spill over. “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened, I swear. One minute we were walking into the Commons like every other day, and the next minute people were screaming and running.”
The detective pooched his lips and closed his notebook, then leaned back against the chair, training his eyes to the ceiling like he was reading something off of it. “Eyewitness accounts say that you knelt by Christy right after she was shot and then got up and ran off. They say it was like you were making sure she was shot and then you moved on. Left her to die. Is that accurate?”
I squinched my eyes tight, trying not to see the image of Christy Bruter’s bleeding gut, my hands pressed against it. Trying not to feel the panic that I’d felt that day welling up inside my throat. Trying not to smell gun powder in the air and hear screaming. More tears rolled down my cheeks. “No, it’s not accurate.”
“You didn’t run off? Because we see you run off on the tapes.”
“No. I mean, yes, I left her, but I didn’t run off. Not because I was leaving her to die. I swear. I was leaving because I had to find Nick. I had to tell him to stop.”
He nodded, flipped pages again. “And what was it again that you said to your friend Stacey Brinks when you got off the bus that day?”
My leg was throbbing, and so was my head. My throat was dry from talking for so long. And I was getting scared. Really scared. I couldn’t remember what I’d said to Stacey. I was getting to the point where I couldn’t remember much of anything, and those things I did remember I no longer trusted to be the truth.
“Hmm?” he said. “Did you say something to Stacey Brinks after you got off the bus?”
I shook my head.
“According to Stacey, your words were something along the lines of, ‘I want to kill her. She’s going to regret this.’ Is that what you said?”
Just then a nurse popped into the room. “I’m sorry, Detective, but I’ve got to change her bandages before my shift is over,” she said.
“Certainly,” Detective Panzella answered. He stood and navigated through the various machines and wires. “We’ll talk more later,” he said to me.
I hoped by later he meant never. That somehow some miracle would occur between now and later and he’d decide I didn’t have any answers.
9
I was sitting in a wheelchair next to my bed, wearing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt for the first time since the shooting. Mom had brought them to me from home. They were old, from maybe ninth grade or something, and way out of style. But it felt good to get into real clothes again, even if it meant I couldn’t move much without the denim rubbing against the wound in my thigh and making me grunt and grind my teeth. It felt good to sit upright, too. Sort of. Not like there was much else I could do other than sit and watch TV.
During the day, when Mom and Detective Panzella and the nurses were around, I’d keep the TV tuned to Food Network or some other channel that wasn’t showing coverage of the shooting. But at night, my intense curiosity won over and I would watch the news, my heart sometimes pounding in my chest as I tried to piece together who had lived, who had died, and how the school was going on about its business.
During the commercials my mind would sort of wander. I’d wonder about my friends, about whether or not they had made it out. About how they were doing. Were they crying? Were they celebrating? Did life just go on for them? And then my mind would wander to the victims and I’d have to dig my fist into my thigh and flip to another channel to try to think about something else again.
I’d spent the morning answering questions for Detective Panzella, which was totally not fun. I tried not to think about what he was doing, ever, because I was pretty sure that, no matter what it was, it didn’t look good for me.
He was sure I was a shooter that day. Or at least somehow behind it all. No matter what I told him he was sure of it. No matter how much I cried, he wouldn’t change his mind. And given the evidence he’d shown me over the past couple days I guess I couldn’t blame him. I looked guilty as hell, even to me, and I knew I didn’t do it.
He’d left snippets and tidbits of evidence with me. He’d been through my house. My room. My computer. He’d pored over my cell phone records. Recovered e-mails. Read through the notebook… the notebook.
From the sound of things, pretty much everybody had seen the notebook. Even the media knew all about the notebook. I’d seen pieces of it highlighted on one of those late-night TV news magazines. I’d heard it quoted on one of those morning talk shows, and I tried not to think about how ironic it was that the coiffed newspeople who found the notebook so fascinating were just the kind of people who would’ve ended up in it. Matter of fact, I think a couple of them actually were in it. I wondered if they knew that. Which sent me into a spiral of wondering and what-ifs and that was never a good place to be, especially with Detective Panzella sniffing around my room all the time.
I had lost count of the days, but figured I’d been there for about a week by the number of visits I’d had from the detective.
He had already been in, just after I’d gotten dressed and settled into the wheelchair. As always, he smelled like leather and he smacked his lips a lot when he talked. His suit was brown and blank like a grocery sack. And he had this sarcastic cock to his head that made me feel like I was lying, even when I knew I wasn’t. He’d kept our chat short, leaving me alone with my wheelchair and cooking shows, and I was glad of it.
After the detective left, Mom came back with the clothes, a couple of magazines, and a candy bar. She seemed to be a little bit happier, too. Weird, I thought, given that she knew the detective had been in my room quizzing me. She didn’t look as much like she’d been crying, either. Her red nose and swollen eyes had become almost permanent fixtures on her face and I was shocked to see her breeze in with a face full of makeup and, if not a smile, a look of complacency on her face.
She handed me the clothes and helped me get into them. Then she let me lean against her while I hopped on my good leg over to the wheelchair and she plunked me into it. She unwound the remote from where I’d had it wrapped around the bedrail and handed it to
me. Then she sat on the edge of my bed and stared at me.
“Your leg is getting better,” she said.
I nodded.
“You talked to the detective.”
I nodded again, looking at my bare feet and wishing I’d asked her to bring socks.
“Is there anything you want to tell me about it?”
“He thinks I’m guilty. So do you.”
“Now, Valerie. I never said that.”
“You’re never even here when he comes in to grill me, Mom. There’s nobody here. I’m always alone.”
“He’s a very nice officer, Valerie. He’s not out to get you. He’s just trying to find out what happened.”
I nodded again, deciding that I was suddenly too tired to fight with her. Suddenly I decided it really didn’t matter what she thought. This was so big she couldn’t save me even if she did think I was innocent.
We sat there for a few minutes. I flipped the channels on the TV and ended up watching Rachael Ray, who was cooking some sort of chicken or something. We were both silent, save for the shush of Mom’s shoes when she shifted positions or the squeak of the vinyl seat of the wheelchair when I did. Probably Mom couldn’t think of anything else to say, either, if I wasn’t going to give her some big, dramatic soap opera confession or anything.
“Where’s Dad?” I finally asked.
“He went home.”
The next question hung heavily between us and I considered not even asking it, but decided she was waiting for it and I didn’t want to disappoint her.
“Does he think I’m guilty, too?”
Mom reached over and unkinked a spot in the remote control cord, keeping her fingers busy.
“He doesn’t know what to think, Valerie. He went home to think. At least that’s what he says.”
Now that was an answer that hung just as heavily as the question, if you asked me. At least that’s what he says. What was that supposed to mean?
“He hates me,” I said.
Mom looked up sharply. “You’re his daughter. He loves you.”
I rolled my eyes. “You have to say that. But I know the truth, Mom. He hates me. Do you hate me too? Does everyone in the world hate me now?”
“You’re being silly now, Valerie,” she said. She got up and picked up her purse. “I’m going to go down and grab myself a sandwich. Can I bring you anything?”
I shook my head, and as Mom left a thought flashed through my head like a strobe light: She hadn’t said no.
Mom hadn’t been gone long when there was a soft knock on the door. I didn’t answer. It just seemed like too much energy to open my mouth. Not like I could keep anyone out these days, anyway.
Besides, it was probably Detective Panzella, and no matter what, I was determined that this time he wouldn’t get a single word out of me. Even if he begged. Even if he threatened me with a life sentence. I was sick of reliving that day and just wanted to be left alone for a minute.
The knock came again and then the door swished open softly. A head peeked around it. Stacey.
I can’t tell you the relief I felt at seeing her face. Her whole face. Not just alive, but not even marked. No bullet holes. No burn marks. Nothing. I almost cried seeing her standing there.
Of course, you can’t exactly see emotional scars on someone’s face, can you?
“Hey,” she said. She wasn’t smiling. “Can I come in?”
Even though I was really happy to see that she was alive, I realized once she opened her mouth and the voice that came out was the voice I’d laughed with, like, a million times over the years, I had no idea what to say to her.
This may sound stupid, but I think I was embarrassed. You know, like when you’re a little kid and your mom or dad yells at you in front of your friends, and you feel really humiliated, like your friends had just seen something really private about you and it totally takes away from the “got it under control” persona you’re trying to project into this world. It was like that, only times a billion or something.
I wanted to say a ton of things to her, I swear. I wanted to ask her about Mason and Duce. I wanted to ask her about the school. About whether or not Christy Bruter lived and Ginny Baker, too. I wanted to ask her if she knew that Nick was planning this. I wanted her to say it blindsided her, too. I wanted her to tell me I wasn’t the only one guilty of not stopping it. Of being so incredibly stupid and blind.
But it was just so weird. Once she came in and said, “You didn’t answer when I knocked so I thought you were asleep or something,” it all felt so surreal. Not just the shooting. Not just the TV images of students streaming, half-bloody, out of the cafeteria doors of my high school like a nicked vein. Not just Nick being gone and Detective Panzella chanting Law & Order phrases at my bedside. But all of it. Every bit, going all the way back to first grade when Stacey showed me a loose front tooth that stuck straight out like a piece of gum when she poked her tongue behind it and me baring my stomach on the monkey bars on the playground. Like it all was a dream. And this—this hell—was my reality.
“Hey,” I said softly.
She stood at the end of my bed, awkwardly, the way Frankie was standing on the day I woke up.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
I shrugged. She’d asked me the same question a million times, after a million scrapes, in that other, dream world. The one where we were normal and little girls didn’t care about their stomachs showing on the playground and the teeth stood out like Chiclets. “A little,” I lied. “Not bad.”
“I heard you have, like, a hole there,” she said. “Frankie told me that, though, so who knows if you can believe it.”
“It’s not bad,” I repeated. “Most of the time it’s pretty numb. Pain pills.”
She started scraping at a sticker on the bedrail with her thumbnail. I knew Stacey well enough to know that this meant she was uneasy—maybe pissed off or frustrated. Or both. She sighed.
“They said we can go to school next week,” she said. “Well, some of us. A lot of kids are afraid, I think. A lot are still recovering…” She trailed off after the word “recovering,” and her face flushed, as if she was embarrassed to have mentioned it to me. I was struck with another dream image, one of the two of us sweating under a sheet draped over a picnic table in her back yard, shoveling imaginary food into baby doll mouths. Wow, it had seemed so real, feeding those plastic babies. It had all seemed so real. “Anyway, I’m going back. So is Duce. And I think David and Mason too. My mom doesn’t really want me to, but I kind of want to, you know? I think I need to. I don’t know.”
She turned her face up and watched the TV. I could tell that her mind was hardly on the cream puffs being pulled out of the oven by whatever food show host was cooking at the moment.
Finally she looked at me, her eyes a little watery.
“Are you going to talk to me, Valerie?” she asked. “Are you going to say anything?”
I opened my mouth. It felt full of nothing, like maybe full of clouds or something, which I think is only appropriate when you come out of a dream world like that and into an ugly, horrid reality, so horrid it has a taste, a shape.
“Did Christy Bruter die?” I finally blurted out.
Stacey looked at me for a second, her eyes sort of rolling around, all soft-like, in her head.
“No. She didn’t. She’s just down the hall. I just saw her.” When I didn’t say anything, she tossed her hair back and looked at me through squinty eyes. “Disappointed?”
And that was it. That one word. It told me that Stacey, even my oldest friend Stacey, the one who was with me when I started my first period, the one who wore my swimsuit and eyeshadow, believed I was guilty, too. Even if she wouldn’t say it out loud, even if she didn’t think I pulled the trigger, deep down she blamed me.
“Of course not. I don’t know what to think about anything anymore,” I answered. It was the most truthful I’d been in days.
“Just so you know,” she said. “I couldn’t believe what hap
pened. I didn’t at first. When I heard everyone saying who did the shooting I didn’t believe them. You and Nick… you know, you were my best friend. And Nick always seemed so cool. A little Edward Scissorhands or something, but in a cool way. I never would have thought… I just couldn’t believe it. Nick. Wow.”
She started to walk toward the door, shaking her head. I sat in my wheelchair, feeling numb all over, taking in everything she had said. She couldn’t believe it? Well, neither could I. Mostly I couldn’t believe that my oldest and “best” friend would just assume that everything she’d heard about me was true. That she wouldn’t even bother to ask me if what they were all saying was what really happened. That moldable Stacey was being molded into someone who no longer trusted me.
“Neither could I. I still don’t sometimes,” I said. “But I swear, Stacey, I didn’t shoot anybody.”
“You only told Nick to do it for you,” she said. “I’ve gotta go. I just wanted to tell you I’m glad you’re okay.” She put her hand on the door handle and pulled it open. “I doubt they’d let you anywhere near her, but if you see Christy Bruter in the hallway here, maybe you should apologize to her.” She stepped out, but just before the door swished closed behind her, I heard her say, “I did,” and I couldn’t help but wonder for, like, eight hours after that, what on earth Stacey had to apologize for.
And when it dawned on me that she was probably apologizing for being my friend, that dream world just blinked out, vanished. It never existed.
10
I thought I was going home. Mom had slipped in while I was sleeping and had laid out another outfit for me to get into, before disappearing again like smoke. I sat up, the morning light streaming through the window and across the foot of my bed, and brushed the hair out of my eyes with my fingers. The day felt different somehow, like it had possibility.