I glanced at the light, still red, then quickly replied with a thumbs-up. As traffic starting moving again, I heard my ringtone.
“Hola, niña bonita,”Ethan said when I picked up.“¿Estás lista para la prueba?”
“I think the fact that I have no idea what you are saying does not bode well for this quiz today,” I replied.
“I asked if you were ready for the test,” he said, laughing. “Also I called you a pretty girl.”
“Well, that’s nice.” I smiled. “And the answer is clearly no.”
I heard someone’s voice in the background; he drove to his own school every day with three of his buddies, and the collective volume was always high. “Will you guys shut up? I’m trying to talk to my girlfriend.”
I felt my face flush. That never got old.
“You’realwaystalking to your girlfriend,” someone said. “And aren’t we stopping for doughnuts? It’s Friday.”
“No can do, I said I’d meet Coach in his office before the late bell,” Ethan said. To me he added, “Still not sure what this is about. Got me kind of in knots.”
“It’s got to be good,” I told him, as I had the night before, and the day before that. Getting called in for a special meeting with his lacrosse coach could only mean something really good or bad, according to Ethan. My money was on the former, but I understood his worry. “Be sure to text me, though. I’m curious.”
“You and me both.” Another chorus of laughter from the background. “I’d better go, we’re almost there. Talk at lunch?”
“Yep,” I said, as school came up in the distance. Usually I got to mine first, as he and his buddies were always stopping for food en route. “I can tell you how badly I bombed that quiz.”
“Vas a hacer bien,” he replied.
“I don’t know what that means!”
“You’ll do fine,” he told me, laughing. “Love you, Lulu.”
“Love you, too,” I told him. “Talk soon.”
I pulled into the lot, then wound around, looking for a parking space. By the time I found one, in the lower part dotted with dusty potholes, my console clock said 7:55. I had twenty minutes to find Jilly, cram like crazy, and then hope for the best for the quiz.
When I got to the bench in the courtyard where we always met, she wasn’t there, so I sat down and pulled out my book to go over verb tenses. I thought about Ethan, going to his coach’s office at probably right that same moment, and closed my eyes, thinking a good thought for him.
By the time the bell rang, Jilly still hadn’t shown up.So much for studying, I thought, although I wasn’t exactly surprised. Everything at the Baker house was nuts, but the mornings were especially so, which was why Jilly had such a low grade in Spanish: she was always late. I was just bad at it. Apparently.
When I got to class, Señor Richards was already giving out the quizzes. I slid into a seat and opened my bag, taking out a pen and checking the door again for Jilly as he handed me mine. I scanned the first question: no idea. Great.
The late bell rang, and after the normal amount of backpack zipping and general settling-in noises, the room fell silent around me. As I worked down the page I realized I wasn’t entirely clueless, which was encouraging. Up at the front of the room, Señor Richards was on his laptop, brow furrowed as he scanned the screen.
By the time I’d finished the quiz as best I could, it was eight forty-five and I was one of the last ones to hand in mypaper. As I did, I glanced outside for Jilly. A half hour was late, even for her. A few moments later, Señor Richards got to his feet, coming around to lean against the desk, and told us in Spanish to open our books to page 176.THE SUBJUNCTIVE, the title heading said in English. The upshot seemed to be that you used it when you weren’t certain. Well, I thought, that would come in handy for me.
Just then, outside the half-open door, I heard someone running down the hallway. For a minute I thought it was Jilly, but then they passed by, a blur in my side vision as Señor Richards directed our attention to the board, where he was busy writing something in his boxy print.
At 9:05, when the bell rang signaling the end of the period, I immediately pulled out my phone, expecting to see a string of increasingly panicked texts from her over the last fifty minutes. But there was nothing except a bunch of news alerts, which I didn’t bother to read. I had a long way to go in the five minutes we were given between classes if I wasn’t going to be late myself, to Art History.
As usual, everyone seemed to be moving super slowly when I was in a rush. The hallway was packed with people on their phones or talking loudly to each other as I wound through bodies and backpacks, trying to get to the one staircase that was usually less crowded than the others. By the time I got downstairs, I only had two and a half minutes until the bell. I did notice a lot of people standing around the TV in the main office, looking at something, but it didn’t occur to me to see what it was.
Once outside, I passed a couple making out and two guys walking super slowly with instrument cases as I headed for the steps that led to the Art and Theatre building. I pulled my backpack closer and started up them, taking the last couple two at a time, then popped out right by my classroom’s back door, which Ms. DiMarcello, bless her, kept propped open because she knew it was a valued shortcut.
“Louna!”
When I heard Jilly’s voice, some aspect of it—tone, volume, a trembling—made me stop where I was. I turned around to see her coming toward me across the grass, where you weren’t allowed to walk, her footsteps leaving prints in the dew. She had one hand to her mouth, and her eyes were wide. Without even knowing why, I suddenly felt cold.
“Oh, my God,” I said, rushing over to meet her. “What happened? Are you okay? Is it one of the kids?”
The bell rang then, loud and piercing. She reached out, her fingers clamping my upper left arm. “No, it’s not... Louna, there’s been a shooting.”
