The Churning Wake

Chapter Five - Then

The night before that shitty, shitty day, there was a huge party at Austin Fynch's house. Austin was a Senior, the school's star quarterback, and committed to a college already. He was dating the lovely Tanisha Hall, also a graduating Senior: volleyball captain; soccer star her sophomore year; cross-country co-captain as a sophomore; and Belle in our school's spring play, Beauty and the Beast. She was something extraordinary, Tanisha was. The eighteenth death, killed in the bathroom, just feet away from where Lizzie Altobelli stood, washing the mascara from her eyes in hopes that the boy standing in the doorway with a gun aimed straight at her was just a bad dream.

The party was a lot of things – loud and very intoxicated being some of the main ones. I left early, completely exhausted, but Lex stayed behind. She'd left him and was following Derik Heron around, trying to impress him. I suppose she succeeded, because she hooked up with him. I never knew whether or not it was an accident, a drunken accident, but that one hookup ended with twenty-four lives being lost, and more being changed forever.

Leo drove Cole and I home, where I kissed him lightly goodbye and hurried into my house. I checked to make sure my mom was asleep, then laid down and tried to ignore the fact that Beanie was at Cole's house and I wasn't. It was a weird dynamic, when Jen and Cole had Beanie, because it left me so alone when I had become super used to having her with me all the time.

I lay there and I felt suddenly strange. Something washed over me, and I felt like I was supposed to do something. I texted Lex, but she just replied with a smiley face and muted me. I took that as a sign that she was alright, and who else was I supposed to be looking out for, anyway? Beanie was just two weeks old and I was still getting used to her being a separate being from me. I'd put my hands on my belly and talk to her, then remember she wasn't there, she was Cole's house.

My mom said that was normal. At least, she'd done it with me. My mom always loved my dad, but he didn't love her with the same fierceness. He left her when she was halfway through her pregnancy with me, and she saw him a few times, but he never talked to her again. I always told myself that Cole wasn't going to be that way. Always. But we had problems, too. Looking back, they were minimal and no big deal. But my younger self didn't know that. She thought everything was a huge deal and she acted that way. I wonder what it would have been like if I hadn't suggested we take a break. Would we have been together the day before he died? Would I have kissed him one last time and told him that I loved him so, so much? I probably would have, because deep down, regardless of our differences, we loved each other so much. I loved him so much. He would have been such a great daddy to Beanie, taking her places and making daddy-daughter memories with her.

Do you see what the shooter took from me? From us? From everyone involved. Because a death didn't affect just the victim's family, it affected the lives of their friends, their children (in the cases of Paige Walker, Cole, and all of the teachers who had kids), the people they worked with, worked out with, cared for... Everyone affects everyone around them. Maybe he thought he was snuffing the life out of them, and he definitely did, but he took the life out of many more people for several months, too. You can't knock over just one domino and expect them all to stay standing. That's bullshit.

My phone rang and it was Cole. I was tempted to leave him ringing, but I picked up. "Hey." I said it softly, so my mom wouldn't come in and take my phone away, citing something that said teenagers need their sleep.

His rougher voice warmed me from the inside, "Hey, baby girl."

"What's up? Beanie alright?"

Cole chuckled on the other end of the line, "Bri, she's okay. Perfect, even. Sleepin' right now. But that's not why I called. Joey was supposed to take" and here he said a name I vowed not to repeat, "home, but he left and nobody knows where he is. I was wondering..."

"Cole! Stop finding such shitty excuses to call me. Listen, I don't know and, quite frankly, I don't care where he is. Lex was with Derik, so I'm sure he's alright, probably just getting over a tough breakup."

"Tough breakup." My boyfriend rolled the words around as he said them, and I fought the urge to push the red button and hang up on his sorry ass.

"Shut your damn mouth. Not. A. Word."

"Alright, alright..."

"Goodbye, Cole. Tell Beanie I love her."

Cole sighed, "Yes, ma'am. Goodnight, Brianna."

I put the phone back on the bedside table, right beside my lamp, and stared at the ceiling, thinking of everything and yet, somehow, nothing. I knew Cole had been referring to Joey Parks, a sophomore in the same Algebra class as Cole and I. Joey wasn't popular exactly, but everyone knew who he was. He was a football player, a center, I think, with his black hair cut close to his scalp and quick-moving brown eyes. Joey's sister, Jade-Luna, had graduated the year before, and my mom had gone to her graduation party. I knew him loosely, but I'd only ever had one actual conversation with him.

Sleep still evaded me as my thoughts trailed, bouncing from one subject to another until eventually they came full circle. Where was he? I didn't know then what I know now. That the very boy that had been so infatuated with my best friend was counting down the last hours of his life. At that very moment, the police told me later, he was in his home, sitting at his desk, his eyes rabid and his mouth hurling obscene plans into a dutifully rolling camera.

I always wondered what Lex saw in him. He was relatively normal, I thought. He didn't show up to school every day, but almost no one did. His parents were heavily involved in the community. His mom was a nurse and his dad was a pastor at a local church. He had a lot of siblings, too many for me to ever learn them all, and he was somewhere right in the middle. Looking at him, you wouldn't have jumped to thinking he was so violently depressed. He was so... good.

I suppose, looking back, that was a good sign that nobody picked up on. But no one saw absolutely anything wrong with him. The investigators tried to get witnesses to come forward and say that, yes, they knew that this boy's mind was fucked up, but nobody did. If anyone knew, they didn't say anything. But the thought still crossed my mind, several times in the weeks after the massacre, that maybe people did know. Maybe Lex knew. Maybe Cole knew. Maybe Joey knew. But then the shooter went into Miss Winter's classroom and opened fire, and he took out any chance of anyone ever knowing for sure. When he killed Paige Walker, he made a choice. He made the choice before he killed her. And the sad part? The part even sadder than the deaths, if that's even possible? He could get away with walking into the school with a gun because no one noticed. No one paid attention to the kid running late for school. He didn't have a backpack, just a long black trench coat. He wore dark sunglasses and hid his gun beneath said trench coat. He blended seamlessly into the crowd of students, because nobody thought twice about him. Not even Lex.