It was pitch black. I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. I was scared. I heard Marybeth scream as Alex pushed me under the table. Sitting on the hard tile floor, I brought my knees up hard against my chest, wrapping my arms around them. Alex squished up next to me. What was happening? Why did Alex push me under? Had he seen something that made him think this wasn’t just a power outage? My heart pounded, and I could hear the faintest of sounds as if they were on loud speakers.
Out of nowhere a flash of bright light accompanied by the two loudest bangs I’d ever heard, echoed through the pizzeria. My ears buzzed and I covered them.
I felt, but couldn’t hear the others at our table push their way under it only seconds after the loud bangs. Squished on all sides, with heavy breathing surrounding me, I felt cramped and hot and found it harder and harder to breathe. I kept seeing the flash of light even though my eyes were shut and my ears filled with a horrible ringing from the bang. After about a minute, the ringing diminished and stars blinded my eyes. At last, I could hear the chaos that had erupted at the front of the restaurant.
A huge crash, like a cabinet with glass had been thrown to the floor assaulted my ears. Unable to see a thing, terror gripped me listening to the loud sounds echoing around us. Had the terrorists come for us? Chairs and tables scraped across the floor and crashed down, glass broke again and again, people shouted, and a roar of gunshots rang through the place. Marybeth whimpered. I wanted to grab a hold of her, but knew it was impossible. With bedlam surrounding us, time suddenly seemed suspended as my thoughts searched for peace.
Instead of peace, a horrible realization washed over me like boiling water. We could die. The men from the ballroom waited for their opportunity to take us out and they’d found it. But, who were they shooting at?
Something hit the wall above us. What I assumed was a bullet, whizzed past. Gasps and shouts of pain filled the air. Every swear word in the book, as well as words in languages I couldn’t understand rang out in bursts. Was the FBI here? If not, we would die—or worse, get captured and tortured. A part of me wanted to stand up and turn myself in, but most of me was frozen in fear. Please don’t let anybody get hurt or killed.
Loud thuds and more shots all seemed to get closer and closer to us.
Summer prayed frantically for someone to save us. Was she crying?
Significant moments of the last two weeks flashed across my mind in those desperate minutes and made me pray, too. I’d finally found what I had longed for—I felt like I belonged. People wanted to be with me, cool people, and now I might die.
When feet pounding the tile floor got louder and louder, sounding only feet from our table, I ducked down, pulling myself into a tighter ball. It was a horrible thing to have to rely purely on sound. Thank Heaven for my sight. Gunfire rang out, followed by an “Uhh” and a crash that seemed way too close to us. Feet thudded back to the front of the restaurant. Nothing seemed to get near after that, but it didn’t relieve the suffocating fear that had enveloped me. Would they torture us or would they kill us quickly if the FBI didn’t succeed?
My mind thought of every horrible torture I’d seen on TV or heard about and brought it to life. I wasn’t only trembling anymore, I was shaking. I wanted to live. I wanted us all to live. Even without these new friends, I had discovered I had worth. I was somebody. Alex squished his arm around me and held me even closer, which I hadn’t thought possible in that cramped space. Somehow, having his arms around me left me less claustrophobic.
Some lights popped on, casting weird shadows on the floor. I could hear people talking loud and fast as steady footsteps approached us. I held my breath, trying to see what was coming. A feeling of imminent death surrounded me, and I heard someone crying.
Alex whispered softly in my ear, “Christy, I have so much to say to you. I don’t know what’s about to happen, but I need you to know that I think you’re amazing. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before and—”
“Are you guys okay?” A woman’s voice interrupted. Her large, black-booted feet standing at the edge of the table freaked me out a bit.
No one moved or made a noise.
I thought it was so curious that we were hearing a woman’s voice.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m with the Drug Enforcement Agency. Come on out. You’re safe now.”
A sloth couldn’t have moved slower than we did as we all shifted and then poked our heads above the tables. A tall, muscular woman wearing a jacket that had the letters, “DEA” on the front, stared down at us, her light brown hair pulled back into a tight bun. We squirmed our way back to our seats, eyes fixed on her.
“Sorry about doing that while you guys were here,” she said, a light tone to her voice. “We were hoping you would’ve already cleared out when we had to move. The good news is, that we got some really bad dudes off the street. You were probably scared to death. Thanks for staying so calm.”
Calm? I looked around at everyone’s faces, they all showed relief, but my heart wouldn’t stop racing, and I’m sure my face didn’t show anything like calm. I had to think hard about taking deep breaths to slow the beat. As she continued to talk, I noticed how much I felt like a little kid. The condescension in her voice irritated me, and yet I wanted my dad’s arms wrapped around me.
An ambulance’s sirens screamed in the distance, and I looked past the large woman to see someone lying on the ground near the front doors, with two others giving him CPR.
I heard everyone around me asking questions and the female officer answering. She told about detonating a flash bang that caused the obnoxious light and noise after the lights went out to distract the drug dealers. The questions from my group seemed to move miles away, while the voices of the men near the front of the restaurant, surrounding the fallen DEA agent, became clear.
“1-2-3-4-5-6”
“Nothing, I’m getting nothing.”
“Come on.”
“Hang on.”
“Stay with us.”
A small pool of blood puddled near his chest. Chairs and tables were overturned and scattered and broken glass was everywhere. The sirens rang out and then stopped. Two paramedics rushed into the restaurant with another hot on their heels pushing a gurney. In record time, they put the fallen man on the gurney and rushed him to the hungry ambulance while continuing to do CPR.
A drop of sweat clung to my chin, waiting to fall. Please, let him make it. I brushed the sweat away on my sleeve. Only then did I notice a man, face down on the floor, not ten feet from our table. The large agent talking to us almost completely blocked him from our view. Had he been trying to hide or get away? Or had he been coming for us? Other bodies near the front of the Pizzeria lay still and no one paid them any attention.
Jeremy wasn’t here. Nathan wasn’t here, and everyone standing around wore DEA jackets. Had the FBI just saved us—or was this merely as it appeared—a drug bust?
Out the front window, a line of officers and agents held the arms of cuffed men. I counted seven in all. I tried to remember if I had seen them when we walked in, but I couldn’t recall. I hadn’t been paying attention to anything but Alex.
I heard the ambulance’s renewed scream slowly soften to a whisper as it drove further away. The cuffed men were taken into a van that pulled up in front of them. After the ambulance disappeared, the doors of the van closed behind them and they were gone. A few agents still milled about the pizzeria, cameras shooting and their notebooks being filled. The medical examiner arrived.
My life suddenly seemed to have meaning. Things finally looked up for me, and my mortality dangled before my eyes. My life could be exciting and I had things to look forward to. Things I didn’t want to miss.
Alex’s hand grabbed mine, and I turned to him. He smiled, head bent to the side in a playful way. A DEA agent led my mini-group through a back door. Rick glanced back at us, as we climbed out of the booth. I brushed up against the woman agent, who blocked the path to the front entrance, trying to av
oid an over-turned chair and noticed a badge on her belt that looked suspiciously like the one Jeremy had worn into the FBI building. Her jacket fell back over it, allowing me only a second or two look. I hadn’t had the time to see what was printed on it. I looked her in the eye and she looked back, a pressed smile taking over her mouth.
I forced myself to smile and scooted around the now covered body that lay near our table.
It seemed the incident hadn’t fazed anyone else in my group, and it was business as usual to them. Weird. Hadn’t they noticed the dead guy right by us, or the severely wounded DEA agent? Didn’t they suspect this might have something to do with the ballroom?
Outside, they all talked about going to The National Mall one last time. As we waited for taxis, I did hear Rick comforting Marybeth and pulling her in for a hug. At least Marybeth seemed to be having the right reaction to what had happened. Maybe it would hit them later, when they had time to reflect on it.
Alex helped me into a cab with Summer and Josh again. As we drove, I rested my head back on the seat, closed my eyes and counted my blessings.
Songs I’d learned as a child in church played softly in the background of my mind as I thanked God that I was alive and would live to see another day. My outlook on life had shifted as I had crouched beneath that table—life was worth living—my life was worth living. I didn’t have to let things around me determine my happiness. No longer would I wait for it to find me, because maybe tomorrow was my day to die. I would no longer live like I had been, scared, lonely and disappointed. Silent prayers of thanks escaped my lips more than once before we arrived at The Mall.
By the time I climbed out of that taxi, I felt great. Nothing but positive things filled my mind. I looked at my mini-group, who had been my existence for almost two weeks, and let myself be happy for my plain Jane life. I discovered I wouldn’t trade it for the life of anyone that stood in front of me, not even Summer’s. Their lives no longer seemed so inviting.
We played hard at The Mall, laughing, running, and talking. I’d found a freedom I’d never felt before. Running down the stairs to the Reflecting Pool beneath the Memorial should have brought back terrorizing memories of a blue eyed man giving me a picture, but it didn’t. I decided not to allow some crazy men to ruin my life and make me live scared any longer. If I was going to die, I didn’t want it to be in terror. I wouldn’t give them that power anymore. I also wasn’t going to let anyone intimidate me again. Summer and Kira’s snide comments and dirty looks weren’t going to haunt me anymore. I’d wasted the last three months of my life in misery. Now, I was going to be happy.
Some of the time we all walked bunched up, chatting. Other times we splintered into groups of two to six. The ebb and flow was almost musical, and I danced through the various groupings, never staying with one group very long. We made it past the Washington Monument when Eugene let us know we only had half an hour until bed-check.
As we walked to the street to hail taxis, we conspired to act as if we were going to bed, but then meet up at nine-thirty in the rec room, after Mrs. J. hit the sack. I couldn’t wait.
Out of nowhere, Rick stood next to me on the sidewalk, and his hand grazed mine. I looked up at him and smiled. His fingers danced across mine and my blood starting racing. It sped up considerably when I felt Alex’s hand grab my other hand and pull me to a waiting taxi. Rick tried to grab the one he’d grazed, but Alex had already pulled me too far away and his hand caught only air. Rick’s face squished up, and he mouthed the words, “Come with me.” I pressed my lips into a frown and let Alex pull me further away. Rick kept his eyes locked on me until my taxi drove away. I know, because my eyes were fixed on his.
In our hotel, Mrs. J. stood at the end of our hallway, telling us to go to our rooms. Like obedient little children, we all did and then waited the long half-hour to escape. Much to my chagrin, as Marybeth and I headed out our door, Mrs. J. stood guard at the end of the hall with a sour face. We hesitated, but only for a moment, and then I grabbed Marybeth’s arm, and we headed for the vending machine room. What had gotten into Mrs. J. these past few nights? For almost a week and a half she hadn’t monitored us, but now…Could she possibly know something?
Once inside the vending room, we searched our pockets for any change we could find. We were five cents short of the cheapest item. We looked on the floor and in the change slots. Nothing. We stared at each other for a few seconds and then busted up laughing. Why were we trying to keep up the ruse? Mrs. J. knew we were trying to sneak out; she wasn’t dumb. We slinked back to our room, waving and saying goodnight to a scowling Mrs. J.
We laughed so hard once the door closed, I was sure my stomach muscles would be sore the next day. It felt good to laugh. No, great. Mrs. J. had beaten us, so we conceded defeat, talking until we fell asleep. I wished I could talk about my problems with Rick and Alex with Marybeth. I didn’t want her to think badly about me, though, and I knew she didn’t understand the whole no-dating-until-sixteen-thing. Besides that, I wasn’t sure I understood it anymore.
CHAPTER NINETEEN