Chapter 21 Rex
TWENTY-ONE
REX
PUMPED UP KICKS - FOSTER THE PEOPLE
“Shut the door behind you.” I cocked my gun. The click was loud in the silent room. A sharp gasp escaped the kid in front of me. “Don’t say a word. Turn around. In that order.”
The door closed, the boy twisted around, and in his eyes, there was stark, stark fear.
What I was doing was wrong.
Very wrong.
But it was also fucking right.
His eyes were massive, big doe-like almonds that gawped at me, taking me in, taking in the weapon in my arms.
His weapon.
A weapon he was going to use against other kids.
He swallowed at the sight.
For the first hundred miles after I left Rachel and dealt with Inked, I just rode. I wasn’t going anywhere, was getting away. Doing as she’d requested—getting the fuck out of there.
Then, when my tank hovered close to empty, I filled up at a gas station. It could have been fucking fate for all I knew but the news came on the TV—a shooting. In New Mexico. And all of a sudden, I’d remembered.
The kid. The potential shooter.
Maverick had emailed me the little bastard’s details on Christmas Eve, and suddenly, I’d known where I was going. What I was going to do. And here I was, about to deliver a judgment worthy of Solomon himself.
“You want to piss yourself, don’t you?” I rasped.
His gaze locked on mine, and he nodded.
“You should think about how you feel right now and think about how the kids in your school will feel when you go in there like you’re in a first-person shooter game.” I patted the body and resettled the butt against my lap. “You ever shot anything, kid?”
He shook his head.
“Not even some innocent deer in a forest with your dad?”
“No,” he whispered.
“I have,” I told him calmly. “The second you press the trigger, it’s like the clock slows and speeds up all at once. I’ve never known anything like it. It’s the only time it ever happens. You don’t see where the bullet goes until it hits someone, and by that point, any regrets are in the wind.
“There’s no taking shit back. No making shit right. That’s it. Someone’s hit. All GSWs are reported to the cops, so there’s no fixing things. No escaping it.” I narrowed my eyes on him. “What makes you think you can drag this out and hurt innocent people, huh?”
He squeaked, “Can I answer?”
“I ask you a question, you can answer. You call out, I won’t shoot you with this.” I grabbed the knife from the table beside me where I'd rested it as I waited for him to eat his dinner. “I’ll just slit your throat instead.”
Those big doe eyes got even bigger.
“I never miss.”
He gulped.
“Go on,” I quipped. “Answer me.”
“I want them to die.”
“Who’s they?”
“Bullies,” he breathed.
It was more than bullying. It was torture. I’d seen that in his journal notes. “You’ve talked about being bullied with your family?”
“Yes.”
“What do they say?”
“That I’m a pussy.”
Well, of all the motherfucking things to say to a kid.
I reached up and scratched my chin. “Are you a pussy?”
“Maybe.”
My brow furrowed. “Ever had sex?”
He shook his head quickly. “No.”
“This path is one helluva way to never get laid. Just saying. Well, with a pussy.” I thought about that a second. “You’d get your ass reamed in jail if they ever let you out of solitary. Maybe you’re gay. Maybe you’d like that. Is that why you’ve never had sex?”
“I’m sixteen,” he squeaked.
“So? I had sex when I was twelve.”
He gaped at me. “Twelve?”
“Yeah. Twelve. Anyway. You don’t know this yet, but pussies can take a pounding. They bleed every month and they don’t die. Babies come out of them. Seven-pound monsters. You think a pussy is weak if it can do all that?”
“N-No.”
“That’s right. So, are you a pussy?”
“Is this a trick question?” he whispered confusedly.
“Naw.” I leaned forward and set the gun on the ground then placed my booted foot over it. “Just trying to make right what your fool parents told you. You ain’t a pussy, but if you were, there’s no shame in that. Older you get, the more you’ll realize a pussy is the only place you want to be.
“Now, killing all these folks… How will that help?”
“They’ll know how I feel.”
“How do you feel?”
“Like I don’t matter.”
I scoffed. “No one matters, kid. Not really. We’re all ants in this massive universe. You want to matter to someone, you can achieve that by not going into your school, not firing a submachine gun, and expecting to be heard.
“You want to matter to anyone other than a judge and a jury, and maybe an executioner—” I started flipping my knife in my hand.
“New Mexico isn’t a death penalty state,” he whispered, his back flattening to the door.
I shot him a smile. “Plenty of ways to get sentenced to death that don’t involve a lethal injection.”
“I’d be in solitary.”
“Guards kill prisoners all the time. Anyway, you really want that to be how you live and die?”
“I want them to know how I feel,” he repeated, like that’d make the shit he was spewing be more reasonable.
“You thinking about jail or shooting yourself afterward?”
He licked his lips. “I want to die.”
I hummed. “I can kill you now if you want?”
I wasn’t surprised when a puddle of piss made an appearance.
“I think we got our answer, don’t we?” I mocked, staring down at the proof he was all BS.
“Y-You… I can’t, won’t… I’ll scream!”
I smirked. “Scream away. Won’t change shit. I’ll still do it. Today can be the last day you’re on this planet if you want.”
“B-But—”
“But what?” I arched a brow at him. “Why do they bully you?”
He ducked his head. “I’m not popular.”
“Do you want to be?”
“No.” He snapped a scowl at me. “I don’t care about popularity.”
“Good thing seeing as shooting up your fucking school is how you lose it.”
His glare darkened, anger starting to replace fear. His hands balled into fists as he stormed forward. “You think I deserve to be bullied?”
“Nope. Bullies are pieces of shit who deserve to rot in hell.” I shot him a smile. “Wouldn’t that be nice? You being fucked up the ass by hot pokers by the devil himself right next to the bastard who bullied you. You can spend an eternity together. If you believe in that, of course.”
I knew his family did.
He swallowed again.
“Anyone ever talked to you about this? These feelings?”
He shook his head.
“Why not? You never talked to them about it?”
“No.”
“You got a therapist?”
“Why? Because I’m a chicken shit so I should have one?”
“You should have one because you want to kill people. I mean, if anyone was a poster child for therapy, you can’t deny that it’s you.”
His jaw clenched. “Why are you here?”
“To stop you, of course. By any means necessary.” I flicked the knife toward him. He froze, let out a whimper as it sailed past his throat, by barely a quarter inch. Enough that he’d have a slight graze from its passing as it lodged itself in the door jamb.
As he stared at me, eyes blank with shock, I pulled out another knife and started picking my nails with it.
“Like I said… any means necessary.”
“You’re going to kill me?” he whispered.
“You said you wanted to die,” I pointed out.
“I-I do. I did. I mean, I don’t…” His mouth wobbled. “I just want it to stop. I just really need it to stop. I can’t take it anymore. I said that if they left me alone on the first day back at school, that was it. I-I’d avoid them too. I wouldn’t hurt anyone. It depends on them. It’s their fault.”
“Ain’t their fault,” I disregarded. “They don’t deserve to die. No kid deserves to die, especially not in school.”
“So it’s okay for them to torment me? To beat me until I bleed. To steal from me and to humiliate me?”
“Not okay. Doesn’t mean you should shoot them. Means you should report them.”
“I have. No one listens,” he rasped. “No one fucking listens to me.” His hands fisted again and he punched the air, hitting down as he snapped, “I’m invisible.
Everything I do or say, no one hears or cares.
I tell my folks, and Dad says I’m a pussy and Mom tries to help, but when she reports them to the faculty, they don’t listen.
” Tears had started coursing down his cheeks.
He swiped at them with his knuckles. “Last time, they even told Brandon who’d reported them, and it made it worse.
” He sniffled. “I just want to escape. I don’t want this anymore. There’s no other way. I’m trapped.”
“You will be trapped if you take this next step,” I said softly. “There’s no PS5 in jail, kid.” I peered around his room, spotting the myriad home comforts there. “The next decision you make won’t just affect your life, it’ll affect the kids you hurt too. Do you think that’s fair?”
“They laugh when he humiliates me. All of them. They laugh. Is that fair?”
“Being complicit doesn’t mean they deserve a death sentence.”
He closed his eyes. “I want out.”
“Knife’s in the door, Drew,” I informed him, speaking his name aloud for the first time. “There’s an exit strategy. It’s your choice, on your terms, won’t hurt no one else. You go as you came into this world. Alone.”
His mouth tightened. “I don’t want to be alone. I’m tired of being alone.”
“You’re not alone. Your dad might be a piece of shit but he’s there. Your mom cares. This bedroom has more tech than a lab. They love you; they’re with you. It might not be how you need, but trust me, when it’s gone, you’ll feel the vacuum they leave behind.
“Shit’s bad now, and I’m not saying it’s not going to get worse, but is this really the solution?”
This time, when his eyes drifted open, I saw the entreaty there.
It had engulfed the fear and the self-righteous anger.
“What do I do?”
“You don’t kill innocent people. You don’t terrorize them. You go to your mom and you tell her what you were planning. You tell her that you were going to kill yourself.”
“She’ll—”
“What? She’ll punish you? You think jail’s a walk in the park? You think having your PS5 taken away is worse than that?”
“N-No, but they’ll look at me different—”
“Better for that now than after you’ve murdered your class, right? You think she’ll look at you with love then? Think she’ll visit you in jail?”