Chapter Thirteen Taylor
Chapter Thirteen
Taylor
AP Physics. A.k.a., a piece of cake. For me, at least. Our exam was next week, and Ms. Dowley kept going over the same problems. I had the material down, and I thought I might lose my mind as she kept repeating herself. How could the rest of the class not get it?
I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t need to. I was in the back of the class, with Ellie next to me, and we were writing notes in my notebook. From where we sat, we weren’t too worried about the teacher catching us.
Ms. Dowley had stopped chewing me out for not paying attention anyway. At the beginning of the year, she would constantly call me out, and she even gave me detention, but once she saw how good my grades were, she decided to leave me in peace.
I wondered if Ellie got good grades, or if she should be paying attention instead of passing me notes. But I didn’t really care. She was making class more fun. How’s your day, Webber? I wrote and slid the pad back to her.
The day before had sucked. I’d found out my girlfriend was in love with my brother, and I’d seen that weirdo who was obsessed with her out in the school parking lot. But I had found out Ellie liked me, and that had made me feel good.
I’m not going to lie and say I had my eye on her before. Even now, it wasn’t like I was trying to hook up, but she was cool, and she thought I was cool, and even if she was my ex-girlfriend’s best friend, I had to admit she was one of the few people who had been straight with me at this school.
It’s 8:20 in the morning. There’s your answer, she replied, eliciting a laugh. I looked up at her. Sitting together had been my idea. Maybe it was wrong, but her company was helping me get over the pain I was trying so hard to hide from the people closest to me.
I was still upset about my fight with my brother, but I wouldn’t take back what I said. I wanted him to stay away from me and from Kami. Acting like we could trust each other, like everything was cool—all that was over, it had been for months already.
Stop complaining and focus on your wave functions, I wrote and leaned back.
She shot me a killer glare, then jotted down the theorem we were working on from memory. I pulled the notebook away from her and wrote, Congratulations, you’re smarter than you look.
Smarter than you, I bet, she wrote back.
“Di Bianco and Webber, can you pay attention, please?”
We looked up at Ms. Dowley and nodded in silence. But we kept passing notes back and forth, and the questions turned more personal. I have to admit, that was my fault. I don’t know why, but I wanted to know more about her: her life, her hobbies, her interests.
I was surprised to find out there was more to her than what I’d thought.
For me, she had been the typical pretty cheerleader.
But as she told me more about herself, I started to realize why she had been Kami’s best friend for so long.
Our notes back and forth, and the laughter they provoked, was the best thing so far about the morning.
Not that it was hard to outdo arguing with my brother and being reprimanded by the teacher for ignoring her boring explanations.
As class dragged on, Ellie and I slipped into a little world of our own.
But then we heard it. Close.
Too close.
The first shot made us jump out of our seats, and we all fell silent for a second that stretched on like an eternity.
Then the screams came.
And then a lot more shots.
They were coming from the classroom next door. We were petrified, but the real shock came when the door that connected that room with ours seemed to shake and the screams got louder.
I shot up, grabbed Ellie’s hand, and pulled her out into the hallway. I could hear other students behind me doing the same a few seconds later.
Just a few seconds. But those seconds were crucial.
It was utter chaos. Nobody knew what to do; none of the stuff we’d learned in protocols as kids did any help. I looked over and saw who was behind this nightmare: a tall guy with a muscular build and an AK-47. He had dark hair in a buzz cut and matching dark eyes. Julian.
As soon as I saw him, I knew this would be the end.
For a lot of people. But almost certainly the end for her.
We ran downstairs in a crowd of students desperate to flee from the slaughter.
All I could see in my mind was the exit. If we made it there, we’d be safe. But that thought wasn’t comforting. Because Kami and my brother weren’t there, and if they were stuck inside, they’d need help.
What I saw as I reached the hallway on the lower floor was something I don’t think I’ll ever forget.
The floor was covered in blood and there were bodies, but I couldn’t make out their faces. The scariest part was when I noticed two more guys with guns walking the other way down the hall.
I heard Ellie say, “Oh my God” from behind me.
I turned back and pulled her along with me.
Just Julian there was horrible enough. Now there were two others. And who knew if there were more?
How could this be happening?
When had Julian turned into such a monster?
A thought occurred to me, slowly, and with it an intense urge to vomit and a feeling of guilt, of responsibility. I don’t know how to explain it, but all I could see in my head was the last time Julian had come to school. The way we’d beaten him up. The way I was happy to jump in.
I know it’s not the same thing. I know there was nothing that could compare to the horror being unleashed now, or all the fucked-up things he’d been doing ever since he got to town: his lies, his blackmail, the way he’d frightened poor little Cam, the way he’d abused Kami.
Maybe he was sick. Maybe he was hurting. But nothing in the world could justify this.
“Where are we going?!” Ellie asked, but there was no time to answer.
All I could think of was finding the closest exit.
I prayed to God we wouldn’t run into some other psycho, and I was reassured to hear the gunshots fading away as we ran farther and farther from the main door.
The thing was, we’d run away from the only exit.
At the back of the building, a group of students had gathered.
They seemed desperate, not knowing where to turn.
“We’re trapped!”
“We’re going to die!”
I scanned the crowd, but Kami and my brother were nowhere to be found.
“Shit!” I yelled. Everyone looked at me, and several people shouted, “Where should we go, Taylor?”
They wanted me to help them. They were begging me.
I didn’t know who half of them were, but for some reason, they’d decided I could save them.
I couldn’t take responsibility for all of them.
I already had Ellie on my hands. And the more of us there were, the fewer chances we had to make it out alive.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I…”
“Please,” they shouted, “let us go with you…”
Ellie whispered to me, “Come on, Taylor, you can’t abandon them.”
Think, Taylor, think, goddammit!
“To the library,” I said. “We’re going to the library.”
The fire alarms stopped, and so did the gunshots, and an eerie silence ensued.
There was whimpering, sobs, shouts. But someone was hunting us, and we needed to keep cool.
I silenced the people around me, cursing as I counted them.
One, two, three, four… Seven in total. Ellie and me—that made nine.
Where the hell was I going to hide nine people?
We made it to the library, and to my surprise, there was no one in there. “Hurry, find whatever you can to block the door,” I told them, and we all got to work.
“Will this work?” a younger kid—maybe fourteen—asked, handing me a broomstick.
“Sure,” I said, sticking it through the handles on the door. “But it’s not enough. Hey, you!” I called to a senior whose name I didn’t remember but who was in good shape. “Help me push this bookshelf over.”
Everyone else pitched in, and after we got the shelf blocking the door, we pushed a desk behind it, just in case.
“That’ll stop them, right?” a dark-skinned girl asked, her voice small. She barely came up to my chest and looked like she was trying hard not to cry.
“Yeah,” I lied to reassure her, “it’ll definitely stop them.” Then, I told everyone to get down so nobody would see them through the windows.
Then I ran to the phone. I remembered how angry I used to get when kids were trying to study and the librarian seemed oblivious, talking loudly with her boyfriend on the landline. But now, that phone was a lifeline. We had to let the outside world know what was going on. Immediately.
Remembering bitterly how our idiot of a principal had forbidden us from bringing our cell phones to class, I dialed 911. The line was busy.
“Shit!”
“What is it?” Ellie asked.
“I can’t get through—maybe the lines are jammed.”
“That’s good, right? It means lots of people are calling, and the police are probably on their way.”
I wanted to think so. I wanted to think they’d be here any time.
I walked over to the window and looked out. I could hear sirens and see flashing lights. Police cars were screeching to a halt in the parking lot out front.
I hated to think what was to come. The survivors, if there were any, emotionally shattered, covered in blankets, gathering in front of the school the way I’d seen on TV. And then they’d have to take out the dead. It didn’t matter how many—even one death was one too many.
How many lives would be ruined? How many parents would suffer forever, knowing their children had been stolen from them?
I remembered my mother and father, how destroyed they’d been when my sister died.
It all played in my mind like a film. And the only thing I could think of was how I would never wish such a thing on anybody.
I couldn’t let my mother suffer that way.
Not again. I had to find Thiago. I had to get these people out of there. I had to save them.
I don’t know why, but it felt like a duty suddenly. I had this feeling that my purpose, the reason I had been put there that day, was to save these kids from this hell. It was my obligation, and I accepted it.
And that meant I needed the police to know where we were so they could rescue us. But how? The library’s windows were in the back of the building, and the police had parked out front.
The lights went out.
And that’s when I knew I’d made a huge mistake.
It was as if I could feel our collective energy vanish in a heartbeat.
“What happened?” a chubby younger kid asked.
Ellie looked at the ceiling. “They’ve cut the power.”
I looked over at the librarian’s desk. Her phone was cordless.
That meant it wouldn’t work. I’d made a terrible mistake; I’d waited too long.
I picked it up just in case, and all I heard was dead air.
Our one way of getting in touch with the outside world was gone.
Julian… Had he known? Had this been part of his plan?
Had he somehow cut the lines to the phones in the teachers’ lounge, the cafeteria, the office?
I’d had my opportunity to call someone and get out the message that we were locked in the library. I could have called anyone. Anyone could have alerted the cops: my mother, one of my friends from DC.
“SHIT!” I screamed, slamming the phone down and raising my hands in frustration.
And then we all heard a sound.
Holding our breath, we looked at each other.
Did somebody know we were in here?