YOU’LL WANT TO READ THESE INSPIRING TITLES BY
Lurlene McDaniel
ANGELS IN PINK
Kathleen’s Story • Raina’s Story • Holly’s Story
ONE LAST WISH NOVELS
Mourning Song • A Time to Die • Mother, Help Me Live • Someone Dies, Someone Lives • Sixteen and Dying • Let Him Live • The Legacy: Making Wishes Come True • Please Don’t Die • She Died Too Young • All the Days of Her Life • A Season for Goodbye • Reach for Tomorrow
OTHER OMNIBUS EDITIONS
Keep Me in Your Heart: Three Novels • True Love: Three Novels • The End of Forever • Always and Forever • The Angels Trilogy • As Long As We Both Shall Live • Journey of Hope • One Last Wish: Three Novels
OTHER FICTION
Reaching Through Time • Breathless • Hit and Run • Prey • Briana’s Gift • Letting Go of Lisa • The Time Capsule • Garden of Angels • A Rose for Melinda • Telling Christina Goodbye • How Do I Love Thee: Three Stories • To Live Again • Angel of Mercy • Angel of Hope • Starry, Starry Night: Three Holiday Stories • The Girl Death Left Behind • Angels Watching Over Me • Lifted Up by Angels • For Better, for Worse, Forever • Until Angels Close My Eyes • Till Death Do Us Part • I’ll Be Seeing You • Saving Jessica • Don’t Die, My Love • Too Young to Die • Goodbye Doesn’t Mean Forever • Somewhere Between Life and Death • Time to Let Go • Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep • When Happily Ever After Ends • Baby Alicia Is Dying
From every ending comes a new beginning….
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2012 by Lurlene McDaniel
Jacket art © by Plush Studios/Getty Images
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McDaniel, Lurlene.
The red heart tattoo / Lurlene McDaniel. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Tells the story of a school bombing, portraying the relationships and events leading up to the incident as well as its repercussions.
eISBN: 978-0-307-97411-2
[1. School violence—Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 3. High schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M4784172 Red 2012 [Fic]—dc22 2011016584
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
For Peg and Mary Lou
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Part One: September—November
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Part Two: November—June
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
About the Author
AT 7:35 A.M., the day before Thanksgiving break was to begin, when Edison middle and high school students were congregating in the commons area before the day’s classes commenced, the bomb detonated.
The explosion sent most of a cantilevered staircase crashing to the floor and smashed the short decorative wall surrounding the staircase where students sat, segregated by class status. The best and most visible places along the wall belonged to the seniors. Farther down sat the juniors, then the sophomores, until the wall was packed with the school’s pecking order royalty.
The explosion happened in a nanosecond, bursting first with a brilliant flash of white, followed by a deafening roar that shook the atrium commons. Clouds of gray debris that blocked out the morning colors from the shattered skylight were flung into the air.
When the blast was over, nothing that existed before would ever be the same again for those who attended Edison.
On that morning nine people died instantly.
Fifteen were critically injured.
Twenty-two suffered less severe injuries.
And one was blinded.
Morgan Frierson looked across the football field, at stands filled with Edison students, all stomping and cheering for the start of the pep rally. A frenzied exhibition of school spirit would guarantee that Edison’s principal and staff would authorize another such rally. And who didn’t want to cut out of last period thirty minutes early? Morgan knew some kids were already melting away into the Michigan afternoon, ditching school and the rally, but most were hanging around in the stands.
She stood at the mouth of the short tunnel leading from the locker room, the football team stamping behind her, waiting for Principal Simmons to finish his comments on the makeshift stage in the middle of the field. The marching band had already played and gone through a few formations, and now its members were standing at the foot of the stage, sweating in the hot sun. Morgan fidgeted impatiently, and when she felt the brush of lips on the back of her neck, she jumped a foot.
“Whoa, babe! It’s a kiss, not a knife,” she heard her boyfriend, Trent Caparella, say.
Behind them, a few of the players made smacking sounds and off-color remarks.
Trent turned, saying good-naturedly, “Knock it off, dirtbags.”
Morgan spun to face Trent. “You startled me.”
Trent was a soccer player, but during football season Coach used Trent’s kicking leg to add necessary extra points and field goals to the scoreboard. “Nervous, Madam President?”
They were seniors and Morgan had been elected student council president. Today was her first public speech to the student body. “Nervous? How could I be? I just love talking to a thousand kids who are going to ignore me.”
“Never happen. When they see you coming, they’ll bow.”
“Very funny.” Morgan chewed her bottom lip, heard her name from the principal’s mike. She took a deep breath. “Here I go.” She jogged onto the field, looking at the ground so she wouldn’t trip. Catcalls and cheers erupted from the stands. She glanced up to see her best friend, Kelli, and a whole squad of cheerleaders waving at her. The front rows of the stands were packed with her fellow seniors, benches of honor at every pep rally, off-limits to the other kids.
Morgan trotted up the platform stairs, her hair bobbing on her shoulders, and went to the mike. “Seniors, juniors, sophomores, freshmen!” The bleachers yipped with whistles and stomping. Each class attempted to outscreech the others. Morgan quickly decided to dump her prepared remarks about school spirit. “Here they are!” she shouted. “Your Fighting Eagles!”
&n
bsp; The football team, dressed in bright blue-and-white uniforms, jogged out onto the field, and the students did their cheering duty, led by the cheerleading squad. Morgan kept her eyes on Trent. He was gorgeous: tall, blond, broad-shouldered, with bulging leg muscles from years of playing soccer. She felt so lucky to be his girl. Ever since their freshman year, when they’d first set eyes on each other, they’d been a couple—“the Jock and the Princess, a Disney movie in living color.” That was what Kelli had always said about them. Morgan couldn’t deny she agreed with her friend’s analysis. She and Trent were a perfect couple; everyone said so. He was one of the reasons she’d been elected student council president, and they the Most Popular Twosome for the yearbook. But she’d earned Most Likely to Succeed and become a Merit Scholar on her own. No denying she was driven to earn high grades and college scholarships. Trent had already been offered athletic scholarships from top universities. They would be going their separate ways after graduation. That was hard for Morgan—knowing that this was their last year together before their lives changed forever.
The team jogged around the football field. Cheers. Kelli and the cheerleading squad flashed pom-poms, made human pyramids, executed precise tumbling routines. More cheers from the bleachers. The band struck up the school song and air horns sounded out of nowhere. The principal beamed toward the stands. Morgan felt a deep stirring of school spirit and teared up. For a moment, her gaze connected with Trent’s. He blew her a kiss.
And then, without warning, in front of the goalpost at the east end of the field, all hell broke loose.
Firecrackers went up; bottle rockets and shrieking banshee noises exploded out of a box painted in the school colors that had been sitting innocently between the goalposts. The bleachers erupted with screams and expelled them in waves. Like rats pouring from a sinking ship, kids flowed downward, outward across the field, running in every direction. Simmons grabbed the mike from Morgan, yelled, “Stay calm! Please, don’t run!”
Morgan froze, watched in horror as the cheerleaders were overrun, the band shoved aside. She lost sight of Kelli’s dark hair in the melee. Above, the sky went bright with sprays of colored sparklers, a July Fourth bonanza in September.
“It’s fireworks!” Simmons yelled into the mike. “That’s all. Just fireworks.” No one was listening.
Morgan felt someone grab her arm, turned to see Trent holding her wrist.
“Come on!” he shouted, pulling her down the platform steps. With his arm around her, they dodged fleeing students, jogged to the side of the field and into the tunnel.
She stopped, turned as the last of the noise and fireworks subsided. Pale smoke dissipated into the bright blue sky. By now the field was completely empty of human life aside from Principal Simmons, still standing on the platform and clutching the mike. The ground was littered with paper, shredded pom-poms and a few lost shoes. Morgan was trembling. “Who would do this?”
Trent shook his head. “Some jerks.”
“But why?”
“Probably thought it would be funny.”
“Do you think it’s funny?”
He shrugged. “Maybe not funny. But it sure got noticed.”
“Please don’t tell me you or Mark had anything to do—”
Trent threw up his hands, backed up. “No way. We’d never pull something like that. Not our style. That prank took coordination and planning. We were in class or with the team all afternoon.” He rested his arms on her shoulders, leaned his forehead against hers. “I love you, babe. I wouldn’t ever rain on your parade.”
She believed him. Plus, he was right. The fireworks show had been well planned and executed. Someone had wanted to ruin the pep rally—her pep rally, the one she’d arranged, fought for and endorsed. She felt a burning in her chest and stomach as her fear morphed into anger. “I’m going to find out who did this.”
“I guess everyone wants to know.” Trent stated the obvious.
Morgan stared hard at him, fire in her brain. “And when I do, I’m going to make sure they’re tossed out on their butts.”
Her parents were waiting for her when she walked in the front door. “Are you all right?” her mother, Paige, blurted.
“I told you I was fine on the phone.” Morgan was still mad, and she hadn’t expected her parents to shut down their law offices and rush home early. She’d patiently explained that the fireworks drama was a stupid prank and that no one was even near the display when it went off.
“It’s all over town,” said her father, Hal. “Some cell-phone video clips are already up on TV. Kids took pictures while they were running away. Pretty bad video, but you get the sense of panic.”
Morgan knew the clips would go viral in no time. That made her madder.
“Was anyone hurt?” Paige asked.
“Scrapes and bruises in the scramble to get away.” It had taken Morgan thirty minutes to make her own getaway from school grounds and the parking lot, dodging police and firefighter response teams. Her cell had buzzed constantly during the drive home.
“Kids could have been trampled to death,” her mother insisted.
“Any idea who the culprit was?” her dad asked.
“Not a clue.”
“We’ll make sure the book’s thrown at them once you find out.”
Her cell vibrated as another text came in. Morgan looked at the message. She still hadn’t heard from Kelli, although she’d texted her twice. Not Kelli this time either.
Paige stepped up and hugged Morgan. “We’re glad you’re safe.”
“Me too,” Morgan mumbled, swallowing a teary lump in her throat. She wasn’t sure if the lump meant relief from not being hurt or if it was from the pure fiery knot of anger she’d been nursing. Whoever had done this was going to pay.
He had always thought she was pretty. Probably because of her red hair and green eyes, a dynamite combo, to his way of thinking. Stuart Rothman—Roth to everyone—had studied Morgan Frierson from a distance ever since sixth grade, when he’d first landed in Edison Middle School. They were seniors now, and she was popular and well liked, with a string of wordy accomplishments attached to her name. He had a list of words after his name too—most of them negative. It didn’t take a degree in rocket science to recognize that she was out of his league. Plus, she was superglued to Trent, the soccer star, a guy Roth had disliked on first sight. Why did the jocks always get the pretty girls? And why did the pretty girls flock to the jerks?
Roth blew through a yellow traffic light in the center of downtown—dead-in-the-water downtown. Grandville, Michigan, was nowheresville to Roth, a dying town of shuttered factories that had once catered to the auto industry. Now Main Street was Dead Street, with a few businesses still hanging on, including his uncle Max’s tattoo place, the Ink Spot. Roth pulled his pickup truck into one of the many open spaces near Max’s shop.
He went inside, where Max was inking a fat man’s shaved back. The air smelled of fresh ink and antiseptic cleaners. Max looked up, the hum of his tattoo needle pausing. He pushed his glasses up onto his forehead. The fat man never stirred, although Roth knew that inking was painful, even with numbing cream. He wore his uncle’s ink art on his own body, so he knew how it felt to be tattooed. “You all right? What happened at the high school?” Max asked. “It’s all over the news.”
“I’m fine. Someone set off fireworks to celebrate the pep rally.” Roth crossed to the minifridge and dug out an apple.
“And you know nothing about it?”
“Not a thing.”
Max gave him a long, hard, skeptical look. He was a big man, a former marine with a permanent limp from an accident that had ended his military service. “No injuries?”
“A few kids got knocked around in the stampede out of the stadium.”
“But not seriously?”
Roth didn’t meet his uncle’s gaze. He took a big bite of the apple. “That’s what I heard.”
“You know, if whoever did this is caught, they’ll be expelled.”
/>
“I think whoever did it will be smart enough not to get caught.”
“Better be.” Max held Roth’s gaze for a long moment, lowered his glasses and set back to work.
“Where’s Carla?” Roth asked.
“Running errands. She’ll head straight home and start on supper. You should go to the house too. She’ll be worried about you.”
“I’ll go tell her I’m right as rain.”
“Got homework?”
A history paper due on Monday, two workbook pages of advanced algebra and a hundred pages to read in a novel for English. “Naw. Not a lick,” Roth said.
“We always had homework when I was a senior,” Max said without looking up.
Roth shrugged. “Times change.”
Max blew air through his lips in disbelief. “I expect you to graduate next June. It’s not optional.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be up there ready to walk.”
“Tell Carla I’ll be home in an hour.”
Roth finished the apple and walked outside into the crisp late afternoon. The air had turned cooler, and the oak trees along Main were tinged with color. Leaves had already fallen into the bed of Roth’s older-model pickup. He liked keeping the blue truck spotless. It had been a gift from Max and Carla when he’d turned seventeen the year before, the one possession Roth counted as truly belonging to him. All the rest of his life was on loan—his home, his family.
He’d been orphaned at the age of seven, his biological parents blown up in a meth lab cook gone bad, and had become a ward of the state. He’d passed through three foster homes by age ten. His uncle Max had stepped up and taken him when Roth was eleven and Max’s military career was over. Max had no idea about raising a kid, especially an emotionally wounded one, so there had been a lot of adjusting at first, with Roth pushing every boundary, waiting for Max to get rid of him too.
Max had been hard on him, a drill sergeant who knew nothing about being a parent. Roth had no one else and he didn’t want to return to foster care, so Max made a pact with him. “Look, we’re family. This isn’t the way it should be for either of us, but it is. Took me a while to wrestle you from the state, but here we are. We’re all we got.”