Now I was starting to understand why Kate had been acting the way she had. And for once, she was being sincere. She went on: “I tried to stay away from him. I tried to get him to leave me alone. I even talked to my parents. But he can be so weirdly charming when he wants to. And they didn’t believe me.”
“It’s OK, Kate. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
I tried to calm her down, but she shouted back at me, “You don’t understand, Kami!” I couldn’t believe she was having an outburst now, when we were in so much danger. I needed her to control herself. If there were two others, one of them could be roving the upstairs halls, and anyone near the biology classroom could have heard her.
No, dammit. I didn’t want to die. Not so young.
“Kate, please, be quiet,” I begged her.
“He’ll know we’re here, Kami,” she fretted, and in her eyes, I could see it was true. Every word she uttered was sincere and full of terror.
“No,” I said. Our hiding place was secure. The school was huge; they couldn’t find us, not that fast, and they’d already been in here. If we just stayed quiet, if we just—
“I sent him a text. He knows you’re with me,” she confessed, taking her phone out of her back pocket.
“What the— You’re not supposed to even have your phone on you, Kate! What have you done?”
“It’s not my fault! He said he’d kill me if I didn’t do it!”
I saw she was about to contact him again, and I grabbed her wrist and squeezed it until she couldn’t type another letter. “Are you kidding?” I hissed. “What is wrong with you?”
“He promised me he wouldn’t hurt me, Kami. He promised me that if I…”
“Kate, he’s lying! Can’t you see that? He doesn’t care about any of these people!”
“I’m sorry, but I have to try, Kami!”
I didn’t give her time to think it over. Instead, I kicked open the cabinet door and ran out. She shouted my name, but I didn’t bother looking back. When I reached the stairs at the end of the hall, my mind registered the dead faces on the bodies lying there, even as I tried to look away; those poor people who had just started a normal day at school had now been shot dead. I couldn’t help but think how they had tried to escape, just as I was trying to escape now.
I hid under the stairs. I needed to think. I needed to get a grip on my nerves. Clutching my head in my hands, I thought of my brother. Fuck. I needed to find him. I remembered how he’d said he wanted to go home. Had he known something? Had that piece of shit Julian been threatening him again? Had he gotten to him without any of us knowing?
I imagined Cameron hiding, alone and afraid, with no ideawhere to go. I imagined getting to him too late, having to admit to my parents that I hadn’t been able to save him.
I opened my eyes and promised myself I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him.
Where was Taylor? Where was Thiago?
I remembered seeing Kate talking to Taylor. What had she said to him? Was she concocting something fucked-up for him, too? Had Julian given her orders to help find him and kill him the way he wanted to kill me?
Never in my life had I missed my phone the way I did then. Had Julian known we wouldn’t be able to use them?
Of course he had. Kate was his spy. She had told him everything that was happening at school. And he had known exactly how to take advantage of what he’d learned.
I didn’t know where to go or what to do.
The screaming, the gunshots, they were driving me crazy.
And then I saw them.
One guy. Two. They were armed, and the redheaded one was holding up his pistol to show the other one, a fatter guy with brown hair, who asked if he could try it.
They started to complain there was no one around to shoot at, and I held my breath.
I was petrified, my hands and legs trembling… My heart beat so loudly I was worried the two murderers could hear it. Could this really be happening?
Don’t let me die, Lord. Please don’t let me die. And protect my brother and my friends, and Taylor and Thiago, please Lord, don’t let them be harmed.
Where was God when things like this happened? Where was he when we needed him most?
“Where do you think she is?” the brown-haired guy asked.
“I don’t know. But I’m sure ready to see what he does with her,” the redhead responded.
“I just hope he shares with us.” When I heard that, I knew they were talking about me.
I had to get out of there. Now.
