“Why don’t you finish telling him about what happened at West Egg?” Charlie said.
Jay looked at me, and his expression was embarrassed and out of place. You’d think he was in an entirely different room from the rest of us—a room all on his own. “I should’ve warned you it would be dangerous for you, with your writings,” he said softly.
“Oh, stop bulling him!” Charlie screamed. “Tell him the truth!”
“You let them try to kill me?” I asked.
“I watched closely to make sure you’d escape—thateveryoneescaped,” he explained frantically. “I would never let them do that.”
“All those boys that had to go back home after losing their place at the academy...”
“West Egg was never a good home for them anyway,” Jay said, his voice still meek. “You saw what they did to the Colored boys there. And it was inevitable—my father was new money. He didn’t have enough for what we set out to achieve, setting everybody up for society and giving them a place to live. We were going to lose everything!”
“So, you and your father hired Cannon and the others to burn it down?” I could feel myself starting to shake. “To cut the student body in half, collect the insurance money, and use your half of it to rebuild the Gatsby name and fortune while Buchanan used his share to destroy Harlem? That’s what you did?”
“That isn’t the whole—”
“Don’t lie to me!” I shouted, the words tearing from my throat. I barely recognized my own voice. “You were the missing link? All this time... I blamed the Buchanans. They were the bad guys. The Gatsbys were good. I made excuses for you, your father. I told myself you were different, you cared... and oh my goodness, I did it to myself, for what? For you?”
All those doubts and questions—I had been a fool not to listen to them! Now my heart was a deflating balloon.
“I didn’t want them to do it,” Jay said softly, eyes welling with tears. “I tried to stop it, but he never listens to me. He said we’d lose everything! I... I should’ve done more. I regretted it right away after it happened.”
“You’re gonna regret a lot more than just that,” Buchanan said.
Before I could even process his reentry into the conversation, he pulled a gun from his jacket pocket and aimed it at me. He pulled down the hammer. I couldn’t prepare for what was coming next before Jay jumped in front of me. And Buchanan pulled the trigger.
Jay hit the floor, and all I could hear was a ringing, blurring everything around me. But I couldn’t yet look down because Buchanan was preparing for another shot.
I pulled out Cannon’s gun. Buchanan ducked behind a corner while Charlie stood still.
For a moment Charlie and I stared at each other.What’s it gonna be?Both of us were stranded in indecision. And then Charlie ran off to be with his father.
And I fell like a dying rose petal to the side of the boy I loved.
“Sorry,” Jay choked out, with a laugh. “You have no reason to believe me, but I really wanted to stop them. I didn’t... mean to get shot.” He was bleeding from his beautiful stomach and laughing about it.
I held his face in my hands, my heart opening like a crater. “It’s not your fault... I...”
I didn’t care what he’d done anymore. To hell with it. Couldn’t we just start over? Like we always did?
His wound was deep, bringing thick, dark stains to his shirt, and every moment I hesitated felt like watching as the life was drained out of him, but the life was being drained out of me, just from looking at his face, pale and strained, its color contrasting the dark red blood against his beautiful stomach, now crumpled beneath the weight of a deadly bullet.
I tried to force myself to think—make a decision—do something. But all I could do was hold him, trying to keep him tethered to this world, trying to keep him here with me, even as his pulse slowed beneath my fingertips and my chest caved in.
There had to be something to save him here. I stood up to call after Charlie and ask him for help—forgetting for a moment we were in the middle of a shoot-out.
Buchanan was sneaking up again. He shot at me once more and missed. The man really wanted to kill me, even if I didn’t want to kill him.
I pulled the trigger of Cannon’s revolver, shooting back. The smell of wildfire filled the space in front of me, a cloud of smoke blocking my view of the Buchanans.
I waved away the smoke and saw them fleeing the room like the cowardly rats they were. I took the chance to open Buchanan’s drawer and loaded more bullets into the revolver.
Jay’s words rang in my mind.Would you kill the people after us?
The question was simple but heavy. And it needed no answer when rage consumed you.
All I could feel was rage as I stormed into the other room, my footsteps loud in the silence. Buchanan and Charlie were deliberating in the shadows. I raised my gun at them again, but this time, instead of shooting, they fled, branching off in separate directions.
