“A what?” I said. Just behind me, I could hear my teacher rapping her hand on the wooden desk to quiet everyone down, just like she always did. “I don’t understand.”
In response, she pulled out her phone.BREAKING, it said in yellow block letters on the screen, above an image of a flat, cinderblock building with a flagpole out front, a tiger painted on its side.SHOOTER CONFIRMED AT HIGH SCHOOL, BROWNWOOD, NEW JERSEY.
I just looked at the words, trying to make sense of them.“Oh, my God,” I said, immediately pulling out my own phone, fingers shaking as I selected Ethan’s number. It went straight to voicemail, but that wasn’t unusual: he wasn’t allowed to have his phone out in class. Still, I fired off a text—YOU OK???—for when he would see it. Because Ethan was fine. He had to be. What were the chances?
“I was late, with Crawford’s stupid lunchbox thing, and I heard them break in on the radio,” she said. She was still holding my arm. “It was in the gym, at least that’s what they were saying.”
Ethan’s first class was English: I knew this as well as, if not better than, the fact that Spanish was my own. “He wouldn’t have been in the gym,” I said. “He starts in the main building.”
“Oh, good,” she said. She eased her grip, finally, letting her hand drop. “I just, when I heard Brownwood, and they said there were fatalities—”
I looked back at my screen and the two words I’d sent, willing the dots to appear beneath them that would signal he was typing a response. Nothing.
“Louna?” I heard Ms. DiMarcello call from the door behind me. “Time to come in. We’re starting.”
“One second,” I called over my shoulder. I looked at Jilly. “He’s fine, right? It’s a huge school, he always says so.”
“I’m sure he is,” she said. “And it sounds like he wasn’t even near there.”
“Yeah.” I swallowed, looking at my phone again. “I should... I guess I’ll go in to class?”
“Okay,” she said. Neither of us moved. “I’m sure he’ll text you any minute.”
I heard footsteps and looked behind her to see a school resource officer coming toward us. There were two: one was wide and muscular, built like a fireplug, the other skinny and tall. This was the skinny one. “Ladies, it’s past late bell. Move along to your second periods.”
“I’m going,” Jilly told him, then looked at me again. “Text me. The minute you hear.”
“I will,” I said. He was still standing there, watching us. I slipped my phone in my pocket and went inside.
For the next fifty minutes, Ms. DiMarcello stood in front of the board, lecturing about the Surrealists. Not that I could have told you then, or now, what she said: I wrote not one word on the empty white page of the notebook in front of me, my eyes instead on my phone’s screen, which I had hidden under my coat in my lap. Our school, like Ethan’s and most others, had a strict in-class no-screen policy that I usually followed. But that day, I would have fought someone to keep it close and on. By the time the bell rang, there was still no word.
The minute I got back outside, I dialed him again. This time, it went straight to voicemail without even ringing. Clearly, I was not the only one calling. I pulled up my texts.
PLEASE LET ME KNOW YOU ARE OKAY
No dots. I felt suddenly sick, and lurched over to a nearby trash can, pulling my hair back. But nothing happened. Justpeople pushing past, talking, on their way to class, like any other day.
Then, a beep.Thank God, I thought, tears springing to my eyes.
ANY WORD?
Jilly. I typed her backNO, then started walking down to the main building, still gripping my phone in my hand. My next class was Western Civ, all the way down by the bus parking lot. It wasn’t until I was about halfway there that I remembered something about my conversation with Ethan that morning.
Said I’d meet Coach in his office before the late bell.
I stopped walking right where I was, causing someone to bump me from behind. They exhaled, then cut around me as I opened my news app. The latest wasn’t hard to find: it was right at the top.BREAKING STORY: SHOOTING AT NJ HIGH SCHOOL. I clicked the link, which took me to a picture of that same school building and flagpole, this time with cop cars parked all around the front of it. Three bullet points, designed for scanning quickly, were below.
SHOTS FIRED JUST BEFORE FIRST PERIOD, AROUND 8:20 A.M.
MULTIPLE VICTIMS REPORTEDLY IN GYM AREA
SHOOTER BELIEVED TO BE CURRENT STUDENT, ACTING ALONE
8:20, I thought. I’d just gotten my Spanish quiz. Ethan should have been in English, trying not to look at the hair of the girl in front of him, which he maintained was so greasyit literally dripped onto his desk. I knew this. I knew everything about him. So how did I not know if he was all right?
The hallway was emptying as everyone went into classrooms and down the nearby staircase. Moments earlier, it had been packed, elbow to elbow, with me just one of a sea of people. Now I stood there, staring at my screen, until all the doors around me shut and I was the only one left, standing alone. I told myself I wasn’t moving until I knew something, that I’d stop time in this interim. Later, it would seem silly that I thought I could do this, have some control over events already unfolded. But I believed in a lot of things, before. I never heard from Ethan again.
CHAPTER
