“I’m not asking you to forgive,” Dad says. “I’m asking— Oh, God.”
At that, my dad starts weeping. Mom joins in, and their combined sobs are too much. As tears stream down my face, I hug Pepper closer and turn the TV up again.
* * *
Two hours and two and a half episodes of Gilmore Girls later, there’s a knock on the door.
“Yeah?” I say.
Kirby always said Dad looks like a tall, bald-headed scarecrow, and that description has never been more fitting than now. As he steps inside, his eyes droop with sadness behind his thick glasses, and his long arms flop at his sides as if he’s too exhausted to ever use them again.
Only five days ago, my parents and I had no idea that everything in our lives was about to be turned inside out, upside down, and backward. Back then we weren’t in constant contact with police officers, attorneys, and funeral homes. We hadn’t exiled ourselves to the home of family friends to avoid the media vans outside our own house. And we didn’t wish every day that we could find a way to wake up from this nightmare.
Only five days ago, my parents and I weren’t yet the closest relatives of someone who had spent his final minutes of life terrorizing, hurting, and killing his classmates before committing suicide. Because Kirby wasn’t yet a dead murderer.
Dad glances down at me, at the TV, back at me. “This isn’t happening today, Carah.” His tone is firm but not mean. He makes his way over and takes the remote from the nightstand, pointing it at the screen. “Not for the entire day, at least. Okay?”
Fear ignites somewhere between my heart and my stomach. I sit still, staring at the nothingness on-screen while my eyes sting with tears. I pet the soft, black hair on Pepper’s head, trying to calm myself, trying to breathe deeply enough to extinguish the mini fire my dad’s words have sparked inside me. But I guess oxygen fuels the flames.
What does he want me to do? Leave with him to discuss Kirby’s dead body with some stranger? Because I’m with Mom on that particular subject: I can’t and I won’t.
Dad rattles the leash he brought in with him, and the noise causes an explosion of doggy joy beside me. Giving a quick bark, Pepper scrambles over my legs. As he races a circle around my dad in the center of the room, his tags clink together.
“Looks like someone is in the mood for a visit to the dog park this morning,” Dad says, smiling at me.
I frown in response. By getting Pepper all excited about his leash—which Dad knew would happen—he’s pretty much given me no choice.
My best ways of coping have included keeping my phone turned off, staying away from the Internet, steering clear of all forms of news, and watching feel-good television in bed all day. I’m not anywhere near ready to face the real world outside, where people hate my parents and me because of my asshole brother.
“Carah, do you see this?” Dad pats Pepper’s head. “This is a Labrador retriever right here. And he has a serious need to get some retrieving out of his system. Don’t you, boy? Don’t you?”
My dad isn’t good at the forced enthusiasm, but since this type of thing would usually be Mom’s job, it isn’t like he has a lot of practice, either. Anyway, it’s Pepper, looking at me with his golden-brown eyes, who does the convincing; I know I have to get up. For him.
“All right.” I let out a loud sigh. “I’ll do it.”
Dad leaves so I can get dressed. I dig through my splayed-open suitcase and put on clean yoga pants, a big sweatshirt, and running shoes. Avoiding looking at myself in the vanity mirror, I pull my long brown hair into ponytail. It feels bumpy, but I don’t care.
In the living room, Dad hands me my phone. Without turning it on, I drop it into my pocket, along with a few doggy cleanup bags and treats that I already grabbed. It’s possible that I have messages waiting for me—the type of messages I’d really love to see. But I’m terrified I’ll find the other type instead, so I don’t look.
Pepper wheezes with excitement as I leash him, and Dad follows us out the front door with his car keys in hand. He tells me to avoid walking anywhere near Birdland, that he’ll meet me at the dog park when he’s done at the funeral home—maybe in an hour or two—and to be careful. Pepper and I start down on the sidewalk and I wave as Dad backs out of the driveway.
Seeing him like this, as the parent in charge, the one holding things together, is strange; not long ago, I wouldn’t have believed it possible. In fact, the last meaningful conversation between Kirby and me happened as a result of Dad’s unreliability.
On a Thursday night almost two weeks before today and exactly eight days before the shooting, I was one of the few people still at school almost five hours after the final bell had rung. The second big deadline for the yearbook was coming up and we were behind as usual. Things weren’t so serious that Ms. Naman was trying to pull us out of our other classes, but still bad enough that we were all showing up an hour or two before school and then staying much longer afterward. During the weekend, some of us had been plugging away on it until midnight.
“I’m done with this!” Vincent announced, sliding his chair back and hopping to his feet. “For the night, I mean. Obviously, I’m not done done because, impossible. See you all tomorrow. Don’t work too hard.”
Without waiting for a response from the rest of us, Vincent rushed from the yearbook room—the smallest classroom in the entire school—leaving the door wide open behind him.
Sitting across the table from Gwen and me, Jolie, our head editor, rolled her eyes. “And it’s down to just us three once again. The three who are always caught up on our own stuff, who have to help the slack staffers.”
“We should probably stop being so awesome,” I said.
“For sure,” Gwen said. “Just think of the amazing lives we could be living outside this room.”
We said things like that all the time, but it was a joke and we knew it. There was nowhere else we’d rather be and nothing else we’d rather be doing. This was Gwen’s and my second year on yearbook and Jolie’s fourth. We were addicted to this massive project, where each of us got to be a photographer, journalist, designer, and marketer all at once.
Jolie said, “I’m feeling like maybe if the boys in this class didn’t spend all their time talking about movies and Doctor Who and how they’d use a time machine, they could finish their own spreads before deadline.”
Stretching my arms, I glanced over my shoulder at the wall clock. Seven exactly. I still had another thirty minutes before Dad would be coming to pick me up—if he didn’t forget again. I’d left my phone in my locker by mistake, so I hadn’t checked in with him to make sure. “Let’s get our own time machine. We can go back and use creative motivation methods on the others.”
“Oh, I’ve got some real creative motivation in mind.” Jolie mimed punching the air a few times, and then strangulation using both hands.
“FYI,” Gwen said. “I’m not on board with time traveling for class purposes. The only way I’m flying away to some other year is if it’s, oh, around twenty-five A.D.”
“You mean so you can hook up with your Lord and Savior?” I asked.
She pushed her blond bangs out of her eyes. “If by ‘hook up with,’ you mean, ‘hang out with all the time,’ then yes, Carah, that is my plan.”
“We know you better than that,” Jolie teased. “And that foot-washing prostitute had better watch her ass if you ever get a time machine.”
Gwen said, “It’d be no contest. Pretty sure Mary Magdalene wasn’t even J. C.’s type.”
I laughed. Before I started hanging out with Gwen freshman year, I’d never known anyone who refused to go out with boys from school because of a mad crush on Jesus.
“We might as well wrap up for the night,” Jolie said. “I’m having a hard time focusing, which does me no good for copyediting.”
While she and Gwen went around checking that all of the computers had been turned off, I saved my changes and logged off my own machine.
Jolie pressed the po
wer button on Vincent’s monitor. “Today in U.S. History, I was seriously thinking about what I’d do if I could go back in time. When I’m old and done caring about whether or not I might accidentally expunge my own existence, I think I’d want to change the world in a big way. Like by keeping Christopher Columbus from getting funding. Or killing Hitler before he came into power.”
“Every time!” I slapped my hand on the table. “It never fails. Whenever we talk about time machines, someone always wants to go back and kill someone. Why can’t we have hypothetical time travel without becoming hypothetical murderers?”
“Okay, fine.” Jolie shrugged. “I’ll go back and make sure Baby Hitler is never born. Better?”
“Much.”
“But how would you pull that off?” Gwen asked. “Find Hitler’s mom nine months before his birthday, give her some condoms, and say, ‘Make your husband use these. Trust me on this’?”
Before Jolie or I could answer, a familiar voice from near the door chimed in: “That’s what I’d do to make sure my sister was never born.”
I turned my head, and sure enough, there was Kirby, leaning against the filing cabinet like it was no big deal, like I hadn’t told him the last time he’d shown up here out of the blue that he couldn’t step foot in this room.
It seemed like a lot of kids at school didn’t even realize he was my brother—he usually avoided me, so I did the same—but Jolie and Gwen knew; they were the ones I complained to about his moodiness.
Crossing her arms over her chest, Jolie said, “Kirby, we’d never let you get away with erasing Carah. And you’d better start being nicer to her, or she’ll find a way to go back and make sure she grows up as an only child. How would you feel about that?”
His back went straight and he narrowed his eyes. Both of us inherited dark circles under our eyes from Mom. I’d been covering mine with makeup since fifth grade, but Kirby didn’t really have that option. His had been looking extra purple in recent weeks, which made him look extra tired and extra mean. “How would you feel,” he spoke in a bland tone, “about me making sure Carah never starts hanging out with you bitches in the first place?”
At that, I stood. “Kirby, just get out! You know you’re not allowed in here.”
“Find your own ride home, then,” he yelled as he stalked back to the hallway. “Dad isn’t coming for you.”
I pushed my chair in. “I’m so sorry about him, you guys.”
“Not your fault,” Jolie said. “Anyway, I’ve been called far worse things.”
Gwen nodded. “Me too. Just the other day, my brother told me I was a mediocre photographer. For real. Mediocre!”
“Brothers are the worst. See you two tomorrow.” I ran after Kirby, and found him scuffing his rubber soles against the waxy floor to make screeching noises as he walked. “What happened?” I asked, coming up beside him. “Why are you here instead of Dad?”
Kirby glanced over. “Why do you think? Mom’s flight home was supposedly delayed until morning. Dad’s off the rails and told me to come get you. Of course, J Building’s locked up and you’re not answering your texts, so I had a great time waiting at the door until that Vincent guy finally came outside. Thanks for wasting my time, by the way.”
My defensiveness was far overshadowed by worry; January had become our father’s worst month. Uncle Roger jumped to his death two weeks after Christmas back when Kirby was in eighth grade and I was in seventh. “Kirby, what’s wrong with Dad?”
“An excellent question, and one I ask myself every day. I swear to God, that man is useless. No wonder Mom’s screwing her coworker.”
I glared at him.
For months after his older brother’s suicide, Dad had washed his antidepressants down with alcohol and drank all day, every day. When his manager finally confronted him over it, Dad drunkenly threatened to kill him and his family. No one called the cops—even though they probably should have—but he did get fired over it.
Gradually, things got better again at home, but hearing Dad was “off the rails” was enough to put me in a panic—especially since Kirby had told me a few weeks before that he thought Mom might be having an affair. I got along with Mom much better than Kirby did, and I didn’t think it was true, but I couldn’t completely rule it out, either.
“I’m serious. Is Dad drinking? Did he forget to take his meds? What?”
Kirby shrugged. “Both? Neither? I don’t know. He didn’t want to leave the house. Do you have to be so dramatic about it?”
“Yeah, I’m the dramatic one.”
“You are.” He pursed his lips. “And so are your friends who can’t take a joke.”
I started toward the sophomore hallway, and Kirby followed. “Yeah, speaking of my friends, you don’t get to call Jolie and Gwen ‘bitches.’ And you can’t just barge into the yearbook room like that. If our teacher had been there, I could have been kicked out of the class for it.”
“Give me a break. What’s the big deal about your precious yearbook room, anyway?”
“The big deal,” I said, “is that only yearbook students are allowed to see which photos we’re using, or know the theme, or see what the cover looks like. That’s how we keep it a surprise for everyone at the end of the year.”
Kirby hurried to get ahead of me and then started walking backward. “Do you think there’s one single person—aside from you so-called yerds—who gives the slightest shit about the theme? Come on. There has to be some other reason for the extreme threat of kicking you out of the stupid class.”
I think back to Mrs. Naman’s rule sheet from the start of the year. “Well, we do have our equipment. Cameras. Computers. And we have to protect our work. If someone got in there and—”
“Sabotage!” Kirby punched a locker as he yelled the word. “Now, that’s a reason I buy. Your teacher wants to make sure no one sneaks inappropriate words or pictures into the book, right? Because that would get her fired. So she tries to make you feel like you’re in this exclusive club.” He put on a high-pitched voice. “ ‘Okay, children. Now, remember. You must protect our secret theme. Or else!’ ”
I hated the way he put his cynical spin on everything. A year and a half in yearbook class, and I’d never thought of it like that. My footsteps echoed as we continued in the direction of my locker without speaking. Kirby had gone back to dragging his feet, which caused me to grit my teeth.
“It’s better when no one’s here,” he announced. “Peaceful. Like a place I’d actually want to spend my time.”
I always found it creepy being here after hours, and Kirby, with his extra-annoying shoe sounds, was making it worse. I truly didn’t get why he thought our school was so awful. I hung out with my friends and made sure to avoid the jerks as much as possible. It wasn’t hard. “Maybe if you survive the apocalypse, you can claim the school as your new home,” I said. “Until then, I guess you’re stuck with the rest of us.”
I stopped at lockers 203 and 204, turning the combination and popping open the top one first, and then the bottom.
“Why do you suddenly have two lockers?” Kirby asked.
Only juniors and seniors were assigned full-length lockers at our school, so those of us with half lockers sometimes had to get creative. After over four months of me crawling underneath Bobby Avalos between every class, he came up with the idea that we should keep our coats and bags in mine and our books and pencils and stuff in his. “Bobby and I are sharing now.”
“Ah. Bobby Avalos,” Kirby said. “The football player.”
“Soccer player,” I said, sliding on my coat.
“Right. But did you know that in every other country in the world, soccer is called football?”
I draped my bag over my shoulder and stared at my textbooks, trying to remember which ones I needed. “I don’t hear Bobby and his teammates calling themselves football players, though. Sometimes they say footballers.”
“Fun fact: Guys who call themselves ballers are twenty times more likely to give yo
u chlamydia.” He reached into Bobby’s locker and pulled out my stuffed black Lab. “What’s with the Pepper replica?”
I snatched it away from him, and then tucked my geometry book into my bag. “It’s mine. From Bobby.”
Kirby snorted. “A stuffed animal. Such an original gift.”
“Who said it needs to be original? He takes his puppy to the same park I take Pepper to, so he knew it would be meaningful. In fact, that’s how he asked me to winter formal. He put this dog and a card in my locker for me to find one morning.”
“Typical.”
“If you ever had the guts to ask someone, I doubt you’d come up with something better.”
“Maybe not, but I wouldn’t go for the biggest cliché of all time.” Kirby leaned his back against the locker next to Bobby’s and slid down slowly, until he was sitting by my feet. “You and your footballer sound like a couple of single parents in a rom-com. Meeting at the park with your kids. Moving in together.” He gestured at our lockers. “How positively adorable you are.”
“Oh, shut up.” Simultaneously I used my hand to slam Bobby’s locker and my foot to kick mine shut. Then I raced for the exit.
I’d made it all the way out the door, down the dark walkway, and almost to Kirby’s car in the empty student parking lot before he caught up. “I’m thinking of asking someone to the dance,” he said.
Kirby never, ever said “I’m sorry” or admitted when he’d been trying to get a reaction out of me. Instead he softened his tone and offered something—usually a compliment or a confession—to smooth things over until he was in a bad mood again.
He stepped forward to unlock the passenger door, and then he even opened it for me. Another unspoken apology.
I sat down and placed my bag on the cleanest floor mat in the history of floor mats. The outside of Kirby’s car was filthy, but you could seriously eat off any part of the inside. “You realize that the dance is happening in, like, a week, right?”