Chapter Twelve Kami
Chapter Twelve
Kami
No one could have imagined this would happen. Looking back, maybe I could have seen the signs or pinpointed the clues I had somehow managed to convince myself weren’t there. I hadn’t wanted to see them. Was it fear?
All I know is I did feel something strange that morning when I walked into school.
Don’t ask me what it was, exactly; it was just something in the air.
Call it intuition, a premonition, whatever, but when it happened my mind became awash in relief—not real relief, of course not, but I did feel like a weight had been lifted, as if the pressure I’d been feeling finally had somewhere to go.
For weeks, I’d had the strange feeling that something was about to happen, and now I knew why.
My brain had kept telling me to be on alert, that something was brewing in those hallways full of teenagers, those classrooms where everyone was pushing themselves to reach the goals society had imposed on us ever since we’d been old enough to talk: study, pass your exams, get into a good college, get a scholarship, study some more, become crippled with debt, study, work, pay off your loans, work some more, buy a house or an apartment or rent forever, find someone to love you and put up with you, have kids, work, save up so they can go to college, keep working, and so on.
From now until infinity.
A loud boom made the whole class jump in their seats.
I looked up from my final exam, along with all my classmates, and a shiver ran down my spine. It sounded like gunfire.
Then a second shot followed.
Then a third.
There was a silence that lasted for centuries. Then we heard the screams.
Mr. Dibet stood slowly. I had the urge to do the same. Stand up and run, except not a single muscle in my body reacted, and my classmates were paralyzed, too.
“Someone call 9-1-1,” our teacher said, walking toward the door. No one moved.
“What are you waiting for?” he insisted, and finally there was a slight commotion.
In a quivering voice, I responded, “Sir, none of us have our phones.”
Mr. Dibet stared at me in pure horror. Then the gun went off again, much closer this time, and I screamed.
“Everyone under your desks! Now!” the teacher ordered us.
We knew the drill, and no one spoke a word, though I could soon hear people whimpering.
What were we supposed to do next? Shit, we’d been practicing the protocol for what to do in case of an active shooter ever since we were little, but were we prepared?
The fact that it was really happening only reflected just how fucked up the world had become.
Run, hide, fight—that was the protocol, right? Or was it hide first? I looked left and saw Kate, horrified, trembling, hugging herself.
I wished I could say something to her, move to her and wrap my arms around her, feel the warmth of someone who had been my friend since we were kids. It was true we weren’t talking anymore, but whatever had happened between us recently didn’t matter at that moment.
I heard her whisper something, but her words didn’t make any sense to me.
“This is my fault,” she said. “My fault.”
I squeezed my eyes shut when the next shot rang out. I covered my ears and started praying in silence.
Thiago.
Taylor.
Cameron. Oh my God, Cameron.
That was how the nightmare began.
* * *
The fire alarm rang through the halls, and I could barely hear the sound of the gunshots. Meanwhile, a voice came over the PA with instructions: “All students outside immediately!”
Through all the chaos and noise—how many times had the shooter fired?
—I asked myself how many people might have died already, and how could this possibly be real?
Mr. Dibet ordered us all to our feet and said, “We’ll walk out single file as quickly as possible.
The nearest exit is just a few feet away.
The police will be here soon. Let’s go!”
We all lined up at the door. When we opened it, what we saw outside was utter chaos.
People were running up and down the halls in terror, pushing past each other to reach the closest exit. And the same thing happened with my fellow students. As soon as the door opened, everyone started to run. Students behind me shoved me to the ground.
“Kami!” Kate yelled just as someone’s foot came down on my cheek. I closed my eyes, stunned by the intense pain.
Nobody cared that I was lying there, their feet landing all around me and stomping on the other people who had tripped or been knocked down, the feeling of panic too overwhelming for them to care.
I was terrified I’d be trampled to death, but then I felt someone grab my sweater and pull me up. It was Kate.
“Are you OK?” she asked.
My cheek was on fire, but I nodded, and as I looked around, the terror overtook me again. I grabbed Kate’s hand, pulled her after me, and shouted, “Come on! We’ve got to get out of here!” The shots were getting closer, my brain felt like it was short-circuiting, and I was hyperventilating.
Kate screamed, “No! You don’t understand, Kami.” Jerking me in the opposite direction, she added, “It’s my brother, OK? I know it.” Again, I was struggling for air, and I felt weak and unable to move. “It’s Julian!” she continued. “Julian is the one doing all this.”
I shook my head.
No. It couldn’t be.
“He put locks on all the doors…”
I heard a boom and an echo, shouts reached our ears, and instinctively, we both crouched down.
I saw blood at the end of the hallway. That was all I needed to react. I grabbed Kate’s hand and we ran away from the doors.
My God. This was Julian. Julian was the one responsible for this.
We rushed upstairs, where the science laboratories were, and then I froze when I saw blood pooling in the hallways next to two lifeless bodies on the floor.
“Oh my God,” Kate kept saying over and over.
“Don’t look,” I ordered her. My mind was in a state of panic, as if incapable of registering what had happened only minutes before.
Dozens of thoughts were racing through my head, all of them unsettling, and I couldn’t figure out what mattered most. I needed a place where I could stop and think.
I pushed open a door to my right and pulled Kate behind me into a classroom that was practically empty except for Ms. Davies.
She was lying on the floor, lifeless, her eyes fixed on nothing.
Her blouse was soaked with blood, and there was a wound on her head.
A dark puddle had spread beneath her, reaching almost to the door.
I looked down and realized I’d stepped in it.
“Let’s get out of here!” Kate roared. Just then, the fire alarm turned off. There on the second floor, we could hardly hear the shouting, but the whistling of bullets continued.
“Shh,” I said, pulling her to me and crossing the room to hide in a cabinet in the back.
“Kami…”
“We’re going to hide in there, OK?” I said as I carefully started removing the books and papers stored there to make room for us, as if on autopilot.
It was hard to concentrate, but I did my best to make us some space without making a sound.
It reassured me to hear that the gunshots were still coming from downstairs.
“Come on!” I whispered, and we got inside, closing the door and crouching down in that tiny space where the two of us could barely squeeze in.
Kate looked like a stranger. I’d never seen fear like that on her face, and I imagined she was thinking the same thing about me.
“Kami,” she whispered, controlling the tone of her voice, wrapping her arms around herself, “Julian’s not alone.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
It took her a second to respond. “It’s not just him. There are others.”
That couldn’t be. Struggling to keep my voice down, I asked, “What do you mean others? How many? How many, Kate?”
“Two more. They don’t go here. They met through his website.”
His website. The same one Thiago told me about, the one that was full of racist and homophobic content… “How can this be happening?” I asked myself.
“Julian’s a psychopath, Kami. And he’s obsessed with you.”
“Don’t say that, please, Kate. Don’t try and convince me he’s doing this because of me!
” It was pointless, because deep down I knew it was true.
That didn’t mean it was my fault. Julian’s obsession with me had turned ugly, and when that group of kids had beaten him up at school a few weeks ago, that had been the last straw.
“He won’t stop,” Kate declared. “He’s coming for you, Kami. He’s crazy. You can’t imagine the things he’s done, the things he’s done to me.”
Now I was starting to understand why Kate had been acting the way she had.
And for once, she was being sincere. She went on: “I tried to stay away from him. I tried to get him to leave me alone. I even talked to my parents. But he can be so weirdly charming when he wants to. And they didn’t believe me. ”
“It’s OK, Kate. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
I tried to calm her down, but she shouted back at me, “You don’t understand, Kami!
” I couldn’t believe she was having an outburst now, when we were in so much danger.
I needed her to control herself. If there were two others, one of them could be roving the upstairs halls, and anyone near the biology classroom could have heard her.
No, dammit. I didn’t want to die. Not so young.
“Kate, please, be quiet,” I begged her.
“He’ll know we’re here, Kami,” she fretted, and in her eyes, I could see it was true. Every word she uttered was sincere and full of terror.
“No,” I said. Our hiding place was secure. The school was huge; they couldn’t find us, not that fast, and they’d already been in here. If we just stayed quiet, if we just—
“I sent him a text. He knows you’re with me,” she confessed, taking her phone out of her back pocket.
“What the— You’re not supposed to even have your phone on you, Kate! What have you done?”
“It’s not my fault! He said he’d kill me if I didn’t do it!”
I saw she was about to contact him again, and I grabbed her wrist and squeezed it until she couldn’t type another letter. “Are you kidding?” I hissed. “What is wrong with you?”
“He promised me he wouldn’t hurt me, Kami. He promised me that if I…”
“Kate, he’s lying! Can’t you see that? He doesn’t care about any of these people!”
“I’m sorry, but I have to try, Kami!”
I didn’t give her time to think it over.
Instead, I kicked open the cabinet door and ran out.
She shouted my name, but I didn’t bother looking back.
When I reached the stairs at the end of the hall, my mind registered the dead faces on the bodies lying there, even as I tried to look away; those poor people who had just started a normal day at school had now been shot dead.
I couldn’t help but think how they had tried to escape, just as I was trying to escape now.
I hid under the stairs. I needed to think.
I needed to get a grip on my nerves. Clutching my head in my hands, I thought of my brother.
Fuck. I needed to find him. I remembered how he’d said he wanted to go home.
Had he known something? Had that piece of shit Julian been threatening him again?
Had he gotten to him without any of us knowing?
I imagined Cameron hiding, alone and afraid, with no idea where to go. I imagined getting to him too late, having to admit to my parents that I hadn’t been able to save him.
I opened my eyes and promised myself I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him.
Where was Taylor? Where was Thiago?
I remembered seeing Kate talking to Taylor. What had she said to him? Was she concocting something fucked-up for him, too? Had Julian given her orders to help find him and kill him the way he wanted to kill me?
Never in my life had I missed my phone the way I did then. Had Julian known we wouldn’t be able to use them?
Of course he had. Kate was his spy. She had told him everything that was happening at school. And he had known exactly how to take advantage of what he’d learned.
I didn’t know where to go or what to do.
The screaming, the gunshots, they were driving me crazy.
And then I saw them.
One guy. Two. They were armed, and the redheaded one was holding up his pistol to show the other one, a fatter guy with brown hair, who asked if he could try it.
They started to complain there was no one around to shoot at, and I held my breath.
I was petrified, my hands and legs trembling… My heart beat so loudly I was worried the two murderers could hear it. Could this really be happening?
Don’t let me die, Lord. Please don’t let me die. And protect my brother and my friends, and Taylor and Thiago, please Lord, don’t let them be harmed.
Where was God when things like this happened? Where was he when we needed him most?
“Where do you think she is?” the brown-haired guy asked.
“I don’t know. But I’m sure ready to see what he does with her,” the redhead responded.
“I just hope he shares with us.” When I heard that, I knew they were talking about me.
I had to get out of there. Now.