151 Days (49 page)

People started screaming and running, and I saw Mrs. Axeworthy scramble toward the back wall. Everything sounded like it was underwater, and I realized it was because I was deaf in one ear. There was this very surreal moment where it felt like a dream. Everyone was moving in slow motion, and the sound kept coming in and out of focus.

Jeremy fired the gun again over his head.

“
Stop moving
!” he screamed at them. To me it sounded like a speech coming from a broken speaker, but I understood his meaning well enough.

People stopped moving, and I couldn’t hear a thing for what, to me, felt like a long time.

And then I saw lights flashing by the library door and a low buzzing from above, and it hit me. Mrs. Axeworthy just hit the school lockdown signal. Jeremy swung around toward her, and all I could see was his gun. It’s like he was just a mass of nothing holding a gun in his hand, and it was now pointed at her. I huddled on the floor, everything in my mind telling me to stay down and away from him.
Don’t move; don’t speak; just lay here and hope he ignores me.

He was going to shoot Mrs. Axeworthy. Who was here because of me. All these people were here because of me. In fact, Jeremy was here shooting because of me.

I slowly began to stand up.

“Don’t,” I said to him, trying to sound as not-pissing-my-pants as I could. He looked over at me, and I felt my legs wobble. “This isn’t about them. This is about you and me.”

I don’t know if that was the right thing to say or not, but it certainly got a reaction from him. He grabbed my arm and looked over to Axeworthy. “Turn that damn thing off.”

“I can’t. It can only be cleared from the office.” If she was lying, then I never wanted to play poker against her, because she seemed 1,000 percent truthful.

“Get out of here while you can,” I said to him quietly. “Just run before the police show up.”

He gave me a wild-eyed look, like he hadn’t even thought about the cops. “Does that signal at the police station too?” Axeworthy nodded. I could hear him cussing under his breath as he tried to figure out what to do next.

“Just run,” I whispered, watching the barrel of his gun the entire time. “You haven’t done anything yet.”

“You really think they’re just going to let me go?” He looked manic as he shook me. “You aren’t that stupid.”

I wasn’t. I was just afraid.

“Everyone, get in the reading room,” he ordered. There were only six people total, counting the three people who showed up to the meeting. None of them moved until he pointed the gun at them, and then they flinched their way to the room. “Take out your cell phones.” Before they could even comply, he screamed, “Don’t lie and say you don’t have one. Give me the fucking phones!”

People dropped their cell phones to the ground as they filed into the room.

He knew what he was doing. The reading room had no windows or phone. Once inside, the only way to communicate with the outside world would be through this door. Mrs. Axeworthy stopped and looked at Jeremy. “You don’t need to do this.”

His face contorted through about fifteen different looks from shock to sorrow before he raged at her, “Get your ass in the room.”

She looked over at me, and I just gave her a small smile.

He slammed the door and took a few steps back. “Okay, grab that shelf and push it in front of the door.” It took me a second to realize he was talking to me.

“What, me? No. I’m not locking them in there.”

He walked toward me, the black circle of his gun staring at me like it was the Eye of Sauron. “Move the fucking shelf.
Now
.”

Sighing, I put my shoulder against the bookshelf and began to push it in front of the reading room door. It took some doing, but I found that having a gun pointed at you gave you access to previously unheard-of reserves of strength. Once it was in place, I looked back at him, almost out of breath. “So now what? You shoot me?”

I saw his eyes move across the room, and I knew he had no idea what was next.

“I’m not going to shoot you,” he informed me, pulling me over toward the front doors. “Grab those magazine racks and put them in front of the doors.”

So now I was effectively locking myself in there too.

As I pushed, I kept talking. “So if you aren’t going to shoot me, why did you shoot
at
me?”

He ran a hand through his hair, and it was obvious he was pretty close to the edge. “You came at me. What the hell did you expect me to do?”

“Not have a gun?” I answered, pushing the rack until it covered the main doorway in. It wasn’t a great barricade, but there was no way in or out without pushing it out of the way, and I had a feeling I wasn’t going to get that much time.

“The gun wasn’t for you,” he said, walking behind the desk, taking all the phones off the hook.

“Then who was it for?” I asked, trying not to sound sarcastic because I believe that guns don’t react all that well to snark. You ever see anyone mouth off to a gun and come out better for it? I rest my case.

“It was for me,” he answered, way too casually to be a lie. He saw my mouth open in surprise. “Oh please. What do you care if I live or die? Weren’t you the one screaming for me to get out of here a few minutes ago?”

He had a point. An ugly, hard-to-swallow point that had a hidden razor blade inside it, but a point nonetheless.

“Oh, nothing to say?” he asked, kicking some chairs in front of the back fire exit. Again, if someone was to charge in through there, they would have to take precious time to clear the chairs and tables away from the door. “It’s funny how holding a gun suddenly gets you newfound respect.”

“It’s called fear, Jeremy. Not respect. Don’t mistake the two.”

See? That was snarky, and the gun wasn’t happy with me. I know because it came rushing at me, held by a furious Jeremy. “I don’t fucking care what it’s called. I have this in my hand, and you pay attention to me. That’s all I care about.”

I said nothing and tried not to flinch away from him.

“See? Instant respect—just add gun.” He jumped up on the counter, and we waited in silence.

After a few minutes, we could hear police in the distance. “I guess we’re in it now,” he said quietly.

This was insane. I mean, of course it was insane. I was sitting in a library with a guy with a gun pointed at me, but I mean, it was crazier than that. “What are you trying to do, Jeremy?” He looked over to me. “I mean, what’s your endgame here? What stops this?”

In less than a second he broke down, and his face grimaced into pain, and it looked like he was going to burst out crying. He put the gun to the side of his head and pushed it like he was trying to force it through the bone and flesh. “I just fucking want it to end.”

I reached out to him, out of instinct because he seemed in pain.

He jerked back, almost falling off the desk, pointing the gun at me. “Fuck off.”

Needless to say, I did indeed fuck right the hell off.

“Don’t pretend to like me now that I have your life in my hands,” he warned me. “I can see through that shit.”

I have no idea what happened next. I would blame it on some kind of aneurysm or possibly just plain old stupidity, but however it came to be, it happened.

I just stopped being afraid.

Like a switch, it just went away, and I was just tired. So he could shoot me. So I could die there. If it happened, it happened, but I just didn’t care anymore. At least, not enough to be afraid of it.

“I was reaching out to comfort you because you looked like you were hurting, not because I like you. And if you’re going to shoot me, then fucking do it. But stop waving that thing in my face to make a point.” I went over and sat down in a chair. “So I ask again, what’s the endgame here? What do you want?”

He jumped off the counter and came at me, gun first, of course.

“You think I won’t shoot you?”

I shrugged. “I think I can’t stop you from shooting me. So what’s the point?”

He continued to wave that thing at me for several seconds. “I will do it.”

I nodded. “I believe you.”

“Don’t think I won’t.”

“I won’t.”

“Good.”

He lowered the gun and sat down across from me.

“Jeremy, what do you want?” I asked after a few seconds.

He put his head down on the table. “I don’t know anymore.”

I looked at the gun and wondered if I could take it away from him, but it seemed like a dumb idea. “Do you want to, I don’t know, talk about it?”

He looked up at me, and we just stared at each other for a few seconds, saying nothing.

And then we both burst out laughing.

Through tears I croaked out “I’m sorry, that was a little too after-school special.”

He was trying to catch his breath, he was laughing so much. It was weird because I couldn’t recall ever seeing him laugh before. That thought alone depressed the shit out of me.

“What did Kelly do to you?” I asked out of the blue.

He wiped his eyes as his laughter evaporated suddenly. I saw his hand tighten on the gun and mentally berated myself for ruining the moment. “Lots of people have done lots of things to me,” he said darkly. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Did you come to kill them?”

He looked up at me, his face pale from the suggestion. “What? No. You think I came here to shoot up the school or something?”

I looked down at the gun and back to him and just nodded.

When he looked down at the gun, he seemed surprised, as if seeing it truly for the first time. “Oh God, what did I do?”

Seeing a crack in his armor, I dove in.

“Nothing yet,” I assured him quickly. “You haven’t done a thing yet, Jeremy. There’s still time to make this right.” He was crying now, and I felt like I was losing him. “No one is hurt, and no one needs to be. This can be fixed.”

He looked up me, anguish etched across his face like a tribal tattoo. “Is that what you told Kelly?”

If he had pulled the trigger, it wouldn’t have hurt as much as those words did.

“Is that what you told him? That everything would work out, and if we all just worked together we would overcome it? Did he believe it? Did it do anything to help him?”

There was a feeling like I was answering him from the bottom of a very deep and dark well. “No.”

“
Then stop trying to sell it to me
,” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “It’s not going to be okay, Kyle. I am going to die. That’s how this ends. There isn’t another ending, so just shut the fuck up.”

While I was struggling to find something to respond with, two loud blasts sounded over the loudspeaker. Jeremy jumped at the sound like he was a startled cat. “What the fuck?”

I realized that Jeremy, that both of us, were running out of time.

“Let them go,” I said, standing up. He turned at me, and I tried not to stare at the gun. “Let the other people go. If you let them go, it’s a sign of good faith.”

Things were moving too fast for him. I could see it by the way his eyes darted about like a trapped animal. “Good faith? To who?”

I really do think he didn’t get what he was doing.

“The police, Jeremy. The police are outside. That was a signal for teachers to check in. They’re going to figure out where we are. If you let them go, then the police will calm down some.”

“You just want me to let you all go?” he asked out loud, but I honestly, don’t think he was talking to me. “If I let you all go, then what’s stopping them from killing me?”

“I’ll stay with you,” I volunteered before the voices in my head could shout me down.

“You’d stay here? With me?” It was obvious he didn’t believe what I was saying.

I nodded, wondering why I would offer that.

He didn’t say a word for a couple of minutes. The entire time, I kept expecting Jennifer’s dad to come bursting in with a SWAT team.

“Fine,” he said, making his choice. “Help me get them out of here.” We both moved toward the door. “This isn’t a trick? You’ll really stay?”

I nodded but was shocked to find that I meant it. I really was going to stand here next to him.

No matter what happened next.

B
RAD

S
LOWLY
BUT
surely I got control of my body back. And with each passing second, I grew angrier and angrier. I sat there glaring at Jennifer, not believing what she had done to me. I didn’t trust myself to talk, so I just sat there, fuming in my own thoughts.

“You think I wanted to do that?” she asked me after a while.

That was it.

“I think no one was holding a gun to your head making you. So I guess that makes you one up on Kyle, right?”

She tried to shake off my words, but I could tell they had landed. “You don’t know Kyle is in trouble. We do know that there is someone out there with a gun. We need to stay put, and you know it.”

I did know it, but at that particular moment, I didn’t care.

“Your dad teach you that?” I asked her, my anger lacing every syllable.

She was starting to cry, but I knew her well enough to know it was from anger and not because she was breaking down. Jennifer didn’t break down. In all the time I had known her, I had never seen her lose it completely.

“You want to hate me, Brad? Fine, hate me. If Kyle is in trouble, I will be just as worried as you are, but I am not going to let you endanger everyone else in this room because of it.” She wiped her eyes. “I am not sorry for what I did, and if you move toward the door again I’ll do it again. So sit down and shut the fuck up because we are scared shitless, and you aren’t helping.”

I was about to say something back when there was a pounding at the door.

We all jumped back in shock as Mr. Powers tried to figure out what to do.

Whoever it was pounded on the door again and yelled “Let me in already.”

It was Josh.

“It’s Josh Walker,” I said to Mr. Powers. “Let him in.”

He shot me a look, and I could tell that even he was losing it a little. “And if he’s the shooter?”

Jennifer tossed out, “If Josh Walker had a gun, he would have already shot himself in the foot. Let him in.”