Chapter 33 Naomi #2
Adri nods, even though no one can see him. "Ten-four, I'm holding here. We’re taking cover, but I'm concerned about everyone’s safety the longer this drags on." He glances at us before returning his attention to his conversation with the dispatcher. "Just hurry, goddammit. It’s pretty bad."
"Hang tight, Sheriff. Units are closing in. Over and out."
Adri exhales a shaky breath, clipping the radio back to his belt. He stands next to the window, scanning the outside.
His face is tense with emotion, and a noticeable layer of sweat covers his forehead.
"Why is this happening?" I murmur. My voice shakes with fear. I don't recognize it. I don't recognize myself. The world spins and tilts, and Ty's arms are my only anchor.
A distant siren wails through the muffled night air.
Adri’s shoulders drop slightly as relief seeps into his features. "Finally," he mutters through gritted teeth, stepping away from the window.
"Deputies?" Ty clarifies.
My brother nods, using the back of his hand to wipe the sweat from his brow. Suddenly, a gunshot echoes loudly through the hallway, taking us by surprise. The shooter—whoever it is—is on the second floor now.
"Down," Adri hisses. We drop to the floor like stones in water, holding our breath as if any noise might shatter this fragile refuge we’ve found here.
The desks around us are like shadows within shadows while footsteps approach with steady inevitability on the cold linoleum outside the classroom.
"Hey, Pratt!" comes a male voice, rough and grating, bouncing off the hallway walls. "Let’s talk!"
Adri's face tightens with resolve. He presses a finger to his lips—an unspoken command for silence. His eyes lock onto mine, then shift over to Ty. He gestures toward the door that seems both miles away and achingly near.
"What?" I mouth, panic shooting through me like an electric shock.
With deliberate stealth, Adri moves, crouching close to the ground. Through the slim window in the door, even if someone dared to peek inside, only darkness would greet them—it shields him well.
"No," I whisper instinctively when I realize what he's about to do.
Ty claps a hand over my mouth—it's gentle but firm. His eyes speak volumes: Stay quiet or we’re toast. "Shhh," he mouths.
I swallow my fear down hard because I have no choice but to comply while my hands shake despite themselves. Even fist-tightening becomes futile against this torrent of anxiety.
Ty pulls me closer beside him, and somehow there's warmth amidst the sterile chill that grips this room—a tiny shelter from chaos outside these four walls.
"We're okay," he reassures almost inaudibly.
Adri has reached our makeshift barricade by the door and parts the blinds slightly—enough for those vigilant eyes to scan what's out there waiting…watching…
"Not so brave now, huh? Asshole?" the voice in the hallway continues. "Come out, you fucking coward. Let’s talk man to man!"
I hear occasional banging on the doors as he moves, but his footsteps soon start to fade. He’s turned the corner at the end of the hallway.
We remain frozen for another few minutes. Finally, Adri crawls back to sit next to us on the floor.
"Did you see anything?" Ty asks.
"How did he get past the locked doors?" I pipe up.
Adri's ignores both our questions. "I know that guy," he admits, his breath hitching like he's just sprinted a mile.
Instinctively, I wrap both my hands around his wrist. It's not our usual style—we're more high-fiving than hand-holding siblings. Still, it fits the moment perfectly.
He takes a breath, so deep, you'd think he was trying to inhale every molecule in the room. "Pretty sure that guy was in your class," he murmurs, his eyes darting between Ty and me like a pinball machine going wild.
"No way," I blurt out in disbelief.
"It’s Harrington."
"What?" My mind short-circuits. "Decker Harrington?"
Adri nods. "Looked like him."
"That’s impossible."
"Isn’t he that kid Pratt used to bully?" Ty asks.
I nod. "Yes."
"I remember him a little from my senior year," Adri admits. "He used to always eat his lunches behind the gym."
Something clicks in my mind like a light bulb turning on. "Pratt terrorized him if he showed up in the cafeteria," I explain. "Remember when I mentioned going to Eagle Creek to talk to Asher’s parents?"
"Yeah, and I told you not to get involved," Adri grumbles. "What about it?"
"I saw him. I saw Decker. I got lost on the way to the trailer park. He was in the woods. With the rifle, I think. I didn’t really give it much thought then. Hunting's pretty common around these parts."
"Hunting season isn’t until fall, Shrimp," Adri supplies. "You know it."
"How come you didn’t tell me?" Ty asks, sounding upset. "Eagle Creek is a goddamned meth factory."
"It didn’t seem to matter," I whisper. "No one was there."
"Did you talk to him?" Adri asks. "To Harrington?"
"I just asked for directions. He told me where to go. That was it."
"How did he seem?"
"Odd, like he was back in high school."
"Crap." Adri rubs his forehead with the heel of his palm.
"What are you thinking?" Ty rasps out.
"Nothing." My brother shifts a little to lean his back against the desk opposite ours. After a few seconds of deliberation, he pulls out his cell phone and types up a text. "Can’t use the radio," he explains. "Too risky."
"So do we just wait?" I ask.
"We don’t have a choice, Shrimp," Adri says, his voice steady but tense. "We have no clue what he’s capable of. He stormed into the high school reunion with an assault rifle, looking for Pratt. The guy’s clearly lost it—probably strung out on something.
Best to hang tight until backup can handle this. "
We fall silent, huddled in a tight circle like kids during story time, except there's nothing comforting about this tale. The chaos seeps through the walls as we strain to hear over our buzzing nerves—the authorities are setting up outside.
Sporadic gunshots echo up on the third floor every so often.
Adri, finally feeling safe enough, picks up his radio, feeding our location to his deputy stationed below. "They should be here soon," he assures us.
Seconds stretch into minutes as we sit there waiting, our ears tuned to every creak and groan of the old building holding its breath along with us.
"You okay?" Ty asks me, probably for the tenth time, rubbing my back gently. His voice is low, barely there. "You’re shaking."
"I’m fine," I reply quietly.
He slips his jacket off and drapes it over my shoulders.
"Thanks," I say softly.
Adri sits across from us, shadowed but for his piercing eyes that seem to penetrate the darkness itself.
"Hey." I swing my attention toward him. "Thank you too."
"For what?" he mutters.
"Just for being a good brother, you know?"
"What's with the mushy talk?"
"I'm serious," I admit, swallowing hard as emotion wells up inside me. "We're sitting here like this, and who knows what could happen next… I wanted you to know I'm grateful."
"Stop with this nonsense, Shrimp. The only thing happening tonight is more living," he asserts confidently.
"It just feels like I’ll regret it if I don’t say it."
My brother scoffs under his breath and says nothing else.
"We’re going to be fine," Ty murmurs.
"You’re not leaving, right?" I choke out the frantic question.
He looks at me, startled. "Of course I’m not leaving. What gave you the idea?"
I shrug. "Maybe a former classmate with a rifle outside these walls."
"This isn’t something we can control."
"And the text?"
"I told you I’m not taking the gig, Nomes. I don’t want to. You’re stressed and overthinking everything."
I can't explain why I've got this urge to talk about that dumb text now.
Maybe it's because life feels precarious, like we're on the edge of something huge, and if today’s my last dance, I'd go down with peace knowing that, hey, at least I finally snagged the boy of my dreams, finally took center stage in his heart. It’s silly really—fright and worry playing tricks on my mind—but here we are.
"You two need to stop with this shit," Adri mutters. "This is not the time to figure out your relationship."
"Why not?" Ty says, shooting a strange stare at my brother.
"Don't," Adri growls out.
"Are you not going to make up?" I interject, trying to keep my voice low. "Not even now?"
"I have no interest in making up with him," Adri states.
"Right," Ty grumbles. "Because it’s convenient for you, asshole. We’re in this shit because of you."
"I warned you, Brady."
My heart twists in my chest. The classroom presses in, cold and harsh.
"Stop it," I tell my brother.
"Why?" he teases. "You afraid he’ll skip town again? Think I’m going to scare him off?"
"Can’t you just talk it out—whatever it is—and move past it?"
"He can’t move past it," Ty supplies cryptically.
"Why?" I ask.
"Because he’s a selfish asshole who thinks he’s the center of the universe."
I don’t know what to say to that. My brother isn’t the easiest when it comes to maintaining friendships or any sort of relationship.
I can’t even remember the time he had a steady partner.
So I just sit there in silence that’s occasionally interrupted by the sounds coming from outside.
I just sit there and wait, wait for this nightmare to pass.
"He won't leave," Adri whispers all of a sudden, staring at some unidentified spot on the wall across from him.
Tyler and I both look at him, confused.
"Who are you talking about?" I ask.
My brother is a stranger again. His face is ashen, strained. "Not like before," he continues, softer now, but just as urgent. "That was my fault."
My head spins. I can't understand this. I can't understand him. The room is a vacuum, airless and still. The world narrows to three people, three voices, three pieces of a puzzle that never fit. I watch Adri. I wait for him to explain.
"What are you saying?" The question slips out, fragile and thin. I'm afraid of the answer. I'm afraid of everything.
Ty’s body stiffens beside me.
Adri looks down, his shoulders tense with the weight of something heavy. "I kissed him," he says.
The hell?
I feel the words like a physical blow, a force that knocks me back.
"You kissed who?" I manage to squeak out through the shock.
Adri meets my eyes squarely, and there’s a familiar storm in his gaze. "Who do you think, Shrimp?" He pauses for dramatic effect. "Your damn boyfriend." His chin juts defiantly toward Ty.
"Why?" I blurt out.
"What kind of question is that?" he grits out. "I was seventeen. I didn’t know what the heck was happening to me. I had a crush on him. I guess I read the room wrong."
I’m doing the math in my head while my brother speaks. "Read the room wrong? He was fourteen, Adri."
"That didn't prevent him from going after you."
"We’re the same age."
"Are you saying I’m old?"
"That’s not what I’m saying." I’m shocked and frustrated at the same time, and my emotions are all over the place.
"If you had any brain in that head of yours, you wouldn’t have done that.
" I have more questions. When? How? Did Ty like it? I don’t know which one to ask first. Instead, I turn around and look at Ty, sitting by my side.
He just stares at me, not saying anything.
"Is this true?" I finally ask.
"Yes."
"And?" I press on.
"He said he wasn’t into guys and that I misunderstood him," Adri butts in.
"And me? What about me?"
"I liked you, not him," Ty finally says after what seems like an eternity of nothing.
"Then why did you leave me?"
"I told him to go without you," Adri butts in again.
I turn my attention to my brother, trying to wrap my head around this unbelievable situation. "Why?"
"Because he was jealous," Ty blurts out. He stares at Adri, then at me, then at nothing. The past explodes around us, fragments of a life I never understood. I do now.
"What is this?" I croak through tears in my eyes. "Some kind of a joke?"
Adri runs a hand over his tied hair, a gesture I've seen a thousand times. A gesture that suddenly means something else. "It’s not."
The classroom shifts and spins, the walls closing in with the weight of the revelation.
"You mean to tell me you chased away the one man I truly loved just because he turned you down?
" I exclaim in disbelief. Then, shifting to Ty, I add, "And you just went along with it, leaving me behind to question if our four years together meant anything to you at all?" I look at them, really look. My hands are shaking so much, I’m scared that I have no control over my body, the same way I’ve never truly had control over my life.
"You ruined my life," I whisper. "Both of you. "
Adri snaps back, "You think you're the only one going through shit, Nomes? Yes, I fucked up, and every day for the past seventeen years, I’ve lived with this guilt that I somehow screwed my sister over. I can’t sleep because of it…watching you fading away."
"Then you shouldn’t have done it. You should have stayed in your lane, minded your own business."
"You were going to piss your life away on his right along with him." Adri gesticulates at the man by my side.
"I’m not the one who pissed his life away," Ty grits out. "I was doing something to get out of here. You were doing nothing except hanging out with some shady characters."
"She had an opportunity to do great things, and you were in the way," Adri says. "I took care of it. I gave her a future. You had nothing to give except a shitty song and empty words."
"Stop it," I demand. "Both of you. Sto—"
Adri’s radio crackles softly, the volume so low, you can barely hear it. "Sherriff Medina. Do you copy?"
Our attention shifts. My heart pounds so loudly in my ears, I can barely hear myself think.
Adri's expression hardens. He’s back in his work mode. "Sheriff Medina here," he replies. "What’s the situation on the ground?"
"The shooter is still on the third floor. East wing. My guys are trying to lock him down, but we don’t have a visual.
We believe there are still hostages in there with him.
We're preparing to evacuate everyone on the first floor, but we need you to stay put and keep yourselves hidden until we give the all-clear. "
"Copy that." He ends the transmission and relaxes against the desk.
"Are we just waiting?" I ask quietly.
"It’s the safest option," he explains.
"It’ll be fine, Nomes." Ty reaches out to bridge the sudden gap between us. He attempts to grab my hand, but I can’t do this right now. The silence in the classroom is heavy and suffocating. The past blurs with the present, and I'm caught in the center, trying to make sense of the senseless.