There was a familiarity to the carnage that spread a numbness through Charlie’s body. She slowed to a jog, then a brisk walk. She had seen this before. She knew that you could put it all in a little box and close it up later, that you could go on with your life if you didn’t sleep too much, didn’t breathe too much, didn’t live too much so that death came back and snatched you away for the taking.
Somewhere, a set of doors banged open. Loud footsteps clumped through the hallways. Voices were raised. Screaming. Crying. Words were being shouted, but they were unintelligible to Charlie. She was underwater. Her body moved slowly, arms and legs floating against an exaggerated gravity. Her brain silently cataloged all of the things that she did not want to see.
Mr. Pinkman was on his back. His blue tie was tossed over his shoulder. Blood mushroomed from the center of his white dress shirt. The left side of his head was open, skin hanging like tattered paper around the white of his skull. There was a deep, black hole where his right eye should have been.
Mrs. Pinkman was not beside her husband. She was the screaming woman who had suddenly stopped screaming. She was cradling the child’s head in her lap, holding a pastel blue sweater to the girl’s neck. The bullet had ripped open something vital. Mrs. Pinkman’s hands were bright red. Blood had turned the diamond on her wedding ring the color of a cherry pit.
Charlie’s knees gave out.
She was on the floor beside the girl.
She was seeing herself lying on the ground in the forest.
Twelve? Thirteen?
Spindly little legs. Short black hair like Gamma. Long eyelashes like Sam.
“Help,” Mrs. Pinkman whispered, her voice hoarse. “Please.”
Charlie reached out her hands, not knowing where to put them. The little girl’s eyes rolled up, then just as suddenly, she focused on Charlie.
“It’s okay,” Charlie told her. “You’ll be okay.”
“Go before this lamb, oh Lord,” Mrs. Pinkman prayed. “Be not far from her. Make haste to help her.”
You won’t die, Charlie’s brain begged. You won’t surrender. You will graduate high school. You will go to college. You will get married. You will not leave a gaping hole in your family where your love used to be.
“Make haste to guide me, oh Lord my salvation.”
“Look at me,” Charlie told the girl. “You’re going to be fine.”
The girl was not going to be fine.
Her eyelids began to flutter. Her blue-tinged lips parted. Tiny teeth. White gums. The light pink tip of her tongue.
Slowly, the color began to drain from her face. Charlie was reminded of the way winter came down the mountain, the festive red and orange and yellow leaves turning umber, then brown, then starting to fall, so that by the time the cold reached its icy fingers into the foothills outside of town, everything was dead.
“Oh God,” Mrs. Pinkman sobbed. “Little angel. Poor little angel.”
Charlie couldn’t remember taking the child’s hand, but there were her little fingers caught between Charlie’s bigger ones. So small and cold, like a lost glove on the playground. Charlie watched the fingers slowly release until the girl’s hand fell slack to the floor.
Gone.
“Code Black!”
Charlie jerked at the sound.
“Code Black!” A cop was running up the hallway. He had his radio in one hand, a shotgun in the other. Panic cracked his voice. “Get to the school! Get to the school!”
For a brief second, the man made eye contact with Charlie. There was a spark of recognition, and then he saw the body of the dead child. Horror, then grief collapsed his features. The toe of his shoe caught a streak of blood. His feet slipped out from underneath him. He fell hard to the ground. His breath oofed out of his open mouth. The shotgun flew from his hand and skittered across the floor.
Charlie looked down at her own hand, the one that had held the child’s. She rubbed together her fingers. The blood was sticky, not like Gamma’s, which had felt slick like oil.
Bright white bone. Pieces of heart and lung. Cords of tendon and arteries and veins and life spilling out of her gaping wounds.
She remembered going back to the farmhouse after it was all over. Rusty had hired someone to clean, but they hadn’t done a thorough job. Months later, Charlie was looking for a bowl at the back of one of the cabinets and she’d found a piece of Gamma’s tooth.
“Don’t!” Huck yelled.
Charlie looked up, shocked by what she saw. What she had missed. What at first she couldn’t comprehend even though it was taking place less than fifty feet in front of her.
A teenage girl was sitting on the floor, her back to the lockers. Charlie’s brain flashed up an image from before, the girl sneaking into the edge of her tunnel vision as Charlie ran up the hallway toward the carnage. Charlie had instantly recognized the girl’s type: black clothes, black eyeliner. A Goth. No blood. Round face showing shock, not pain. She’s okay, Charlie had thought, running past her to reach Mrs. Pinkman, to reach the child. But the Goth girl wasn’t okay.
She was the shooter.
She had a revolver in her hand. Instead of picking off more victims, she was pointing the gun at her own chest.
“Put it down!” The cop was standing a few yards away, his shotgun jammed into his shoulder. Terror informed his every movement, from the way he was bouncing on the balls of his feet to the death grip he had on the weapon. “I said put it the fuck down!”
“She will.” Huck knelt with his back to the girl, shielding her. His hands were up. His voice was steady. “It’s okay, Officer. Let’s stay calm here.”
“Get out of my way!” The cop wasn’t calm. He was amped up, ready to pull the trigger the moment he got a clean shot. “Get the fuck out of my way!”
“Her name is Kelly,” Huck said. “Kelly Wilson.”
“Fucking move, asshole!”
Charlie didn’t watch the men. She watched the weapons.
Revolver and shotgun.
Shotgun and revolver.
She felt a wave pass through her body, the same kind of anesthesia that had numbed her so many times before.
“Move!” the cop screamed. He jerked the shotgun one way, then the other, trying to angle around Huck. “Get the fuck out of my way!”
“No.” Huck stayed on his knees, his back to Kelly. His hands stayed in the air. “Don’t do this, man. She’s only sixteen years old. You don’t want to kill a—”
“Move out of my way!” The cop’s fear was like an electric current crackling the air. “Get on the floor!”
“Stop it, man.” Huck moved with the shotgun, blocking him at every point. “She’s not trying to shoot anybody but herself.”
The girl’s mouth opened. Charlie couldn’t hear the words, but the cop obviously did.
“Did you hear that fucking bitch!” the cop screamed. “Let her do it or get the fuck out of my way!”
“Please,” Mrs. Pinkman whispered. Charlie had almost forgotten about the woman. The principal’s wife had her head in her hands, her eyes covered so she didn’t have to see. “Please stop.”
“Kelly.” Huck’s voice was calm. He reached his hand over his shoulder, palm up. “Kelly, give me the gun, sweetheart. You don’t have to do this.” He waited a few seconds, then said, “Kelly. Look at me.”
Slowly, the girl looked up. Her mouth was slack. Her eyes were glassy.
“Front hallway! Front hallway!” Another cop rushed past Charlie. He went down on one knee, sliding across the floor, two-handing his Glock and screaming, “Put it down!”
“Please, God,” Mrs. Pinkman sobbed into her hands. “Forgive this sin.”
“Kelly,” Huck said. “Hand me the gun. Nobody else has to get hurt.”
“Down!” the second cop boomed. Hysteria pitched his voice up too high. Charlie could see his finger tense on the trigger. “Get down on the ground!”
“Kelly.” Huck made his voice firm, like an angry parent. “I’m not asking anymo
re. Give me the gun right now.” He shook his open hand in the air for emphasis. “I mean it.”
Kelly Wilson began to nod. Charlie watched the teenager’s eyes gradually come back into focus as Huck’s words started to penetrate. Someone was telling her what to do, showing her a way out of this. Her shoulders relaxed. Her mouth closed. She blinked several times. Charlie intrinsically understood what the girl was going through. Time had stopped, and then someone, somehow, had found a key to wind it back up again.
Slowly, Kelly moved to put the revolver in Huck’s hand.
The cop pulled the trigger anyway.
2
Charlie watched Huck’s left shoulder jerk as the bullet ripped through his arm. His nostrils flared. His lips parted for breath. Blood wicked into the fibers of his shirt like a red iris. Still, he held onto the revolver that Kelly had placed in his hand.
Someone whispered, “Jesus Christ.”
“I’m all right,” Huck told the cop who had shot him. “You can holster your weapon, okay?”
The cop’s hands shook so hard that he could barely hold onto his gun.