“Kami!” Kate yelled just as someone’s foot came down on my cheek. I closed my eyes, stunned by the intense pain.
Nobody cared that I was lying there, their feet landing all around me and stomping on the other people who had tripped or been knocked down, the feeling of panic too overwhelming for them to care. I was terrified I’d be trampled to death, but then I felt someone grab my sweater and pull me up. It was Kate.
“Are you OK?” she asked.
My cheek was on fire, but I nodded, and as I looked around, the terror overtook me again. I grabbed Kate’s hand, pulled her after me, and shouted, “Come on! We’ve got to get out of here!” The shots were getting closer, my brain felt like it was short-circuiting, and I was hyperventilating.
Kate screamed, “No! You don’t understand, Kami.” Jerking me in the opposite direction, she added, “It’s my brother, OK? I know it.” Again, I was struggling for air, and I felt weak and unable to move. “It’s Julian!” she continued. “Julian is the one doing all this.”
I shook my head.
No. It couldn’t be.
“He put locks on all the doors…”
I heard a boom and an echo, shouts reached our ears, and instinctively, we both crouched down.
I saw blood at the end of the hallway. That was all I needed to react. I grabbed Kate’s hand and we ran away from the doors.
My God. This was Julian. Julian was the one responsible for this.
We rushed upstairs, where the science laboratories were, and then I froze when I saw blood pooling in the hallways next to two lifeless bodies on the floor.
“Oh my God,” Kate kept saying over and over.
“Don’t look,” I ordered her. My mind was in a state of panic, as if incapable of registering what had happened only minutes before.
Dozens of thoughts were racing through my head, all of them unsettling, and I couldn’t figure out what mattered most. I needed a place where I could stop and think. I pushed open a door to my right and pulled Kate behind me into a classroom that was practically empty except for Ms. Davies. She was lying on the floor, lifeless, her eyes fixed on nothing. Her blouse was soaked with blood, and there was a wound on her head. A dark puddle had spread beneath her, reaching almost to the door. I looked down and realized I’d stepped in it.
“Let’s get out of here!” Kate roared. Just then, the fire alarm turned off. There on the second floor, we could hardly hear the shouting, but the whistling of bullets continued.
“Shh,” I said, pulling her to me and crossing the room to hide in a cabinet in the back.
“Kami…”
“We’re going to hide in there, OK?” I said as I carefully started removing the books and papers stored there to make room for us, as if on autopilot. It was hard to concentrate, but I did my best to make us some space without making a sound. It reassured me to hear that the gunshots were still coming from downstairs.
“Come on!” I whispered, and we got inside, closing the door and crouching down in that tiny space where the two of us could barely squeeze in.
Kate looked like a stranger. I’d never seen fear like that on her face, and I imagined she was thinking the same thing about me.
“Kami,” she whispered, controlling the tone of her voice, wrapping her arms around herself, “Julian’s not alone.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
It took her a second to respond. “It’s not just him. There are others.”
That couldn’t be. Struggling to keep my voice down, I asked, “What do you mean others? How many? How many, Kate?”
“Two more. They don’t go here. They met through his website.”
His website. The same one Thiago told me about, the one that was full of racist and homophobic content… “How can this be happening?” I asked myself.
“Julian’s a psychopath, Kami. And he’s obsessed with you.”
“Don’t say that, please, Kate. Don’t try and convince me he’s doing this because of me!” It was pointless, because deep down I knew it was true. That didn’t mean it was my fault. Julian’s obsession with me had turned ugly, and when that group of kids had beaten him up at school a few weeks ago, that had been the last straw.
“He won’t stop,” Kate declared. “He’s coming for you, Kami. He’s crazy. You can’t imagine the things he’s done, the things he’s done to me.”
