Bang by Lisa McMann
“God, no. Please,” I say.
Roxie looks at her scratch. I agree, it’s not that bad. Mr. Polselli digs around a bit more in another drawer and hands her a small square packet containing an antiseptic wipe. He gives me one too.
Roxie sets the mirror on his desk out of my reach and glances at me. I avert my eyes and fold my arms as best I can with the cast. “Fine,” she says. “Sorry.”
Mr. Polselli looks at me, then picks up the mirror and hands it to me. “You don’t want to go any further with this either?”
I train the mirror at my neck and study the scratches, four neat lines, the first three pretty heavy and the fourth just a light scratch like the one I gave Roxie. Thankfully, there’s no dripping blood. It’s going to be interesting explaining this one at home. “No, it’s fine,” I say. “Just a misunderstanding.”
Mr. Polselli nods. “Okay, then.” He scribbles a note on a small pad of paper and hands it to Roxie.
She takes it. “Thanks,” she says. And without another glance, she weaves through the aisle of students and goes out the door, eyes still shiny, biting her lip.
Mr. Polselli scribbles a note to get me back into class, and then he says, “She was on your stomach. Any need to get you checked out? You had some internal injuries from your crash, right?”
I smile, and now my eyes fill with tears because he’s being nice, and because the danger and fear of the moment just caught up with me. “I’m okay. She wasn’t pressing too hard or anything.”
He looks down at his desk as a tear spills over the edge of my lower lid and I swipe it away. “Did you get your letter back?” he asks.
I freeze. “Yes.”
He smiles. “Good.” He hands me the excused note as the second bell rings and the students in his classroom start to sit down. “Take a few minutes to clean up. I added ten minutes to the excused time on your pass.”
I take the pass and the antiseptic pad. “Thank you,” I say. “A lot.” And before another tear can leak out, I turn and barrel down the aisle, hoping nobody’s looking at me and my big ol’ neckful of scratches.
Seventeen
“Jeez,” Trey says when he sees me at lunch. “What happened to you? Looks like Sawyer’s got either a well-oiled hinge on that jaw or some retractable incisors.”
I sit down next to Trey as Sawyer finds us and sits across from us.
“Random feline incident,” I say, waving him off. “One of my fans got a little too close.”
Sawyer examines my neck, then glances at Trey. “For the record, I did not do that.” He looks at me. “Does it hurt? Any repercussions?”
“Yes, and no, thankfully. Polselli’s cool. He kept it small. Good thing nobody threw a punch.” I pull the crumpled note out of my pocket and hand it to Sawyer.
Trey swipes it.
“Seriously?” both Sawyer and I exclaim.
Trey stares at us like we’re insane. “Calm down,” he says. “Take a moment.” He slowly hands the paper to Sawyer. “It’s just a lingering adolescent attention-grabbing behavior. We all do it. It’s human nature.”
I start laughing softly, insanely, at the plate of lard-filled fats on the table in front of me.
“Trey,” Sawyer says, and then he grabs my hand and squeezes it so I stop acting crazy.
I look up.
Trey’s eyes narrow slightly. “Yes?”
“We—I—need your help.”
Trey bats his eyelashes. “Oh?”
Sawyer flashes a grin despite the intensity of his thoughts. “No, not like that. It’s, uh . . . God, this is going to sound insane, but—”
Trey grows serious again. “Oh, no.” He leans forward. “Did you just say the magic word?”
“He did,” I say.
Sawyer looks over his shoulder, making sure nobody’s paying attention to us, and then he leans in. “Trey, ever since the crash, I—”
“No,” Trey says. “Shit.”
“Ever since the crash, I’ve been having this—”
“No.” Trey sits back. “No, you haven’t. No.”
Sawyer sits back. “Yes.”
Trey shakes his head. “Not funny. It’s not quite April Fools’ Day. Good practice joke, though.” His mouth is strained. I know this look. It’s the I’m pretending I’m not freaked out right now look. A classic Demarco face.
Sawyer digs the heels of his hands into his eyes and then rests his arms on the table and looks back at Trey. “I wish it was a joke.”
Trey throws a nervous glance my way. I don’t smile. He looks back at Sawyer. “No. You are mistaken. You are not having a vision. It’s just PTSD or something. You’ve been through a lot.”
Sawyer sighs. “Okay. Well. You would know.” He stares at his lunch and shoves a forkful of by-product into his mouth. His eyes get glassy and he won’t look at either of us. He chews a few times and then just stands up and takes his tray to the guys in dishwashing.
“He’s serious?” Trey says.
“Yeah. Thanks for making him feel like crap.”
“Fuck. What did you do to him?”
The guilt pang strikes again. I get up as Sawyer comes back this way. “Yeah, I don’t know,” I say. “Come on. We need to talk to him.”
Trey sighs and gets up. “Okay.” He grabs my tray and his and takes them away while I meet up with Sawyer.
“He knows you’re serious now,” I say.
Sawyer just shakes his head. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”
“I don’t think we have a choice. Let’s just get it out there to him, see what he says. Please—I think he’ll help us.”
He presses his lips together. “Fine.”
I beckon to Trey.
Trey catches up to us and we leave the cafeteria together. The clock says we’ve got about twelve minutes before the bell rings. We walk down to the trophy hallway, where only the memories of students linger—almost nobody hangs out here; they just pass through.
When we reach a quiet corner, Trey stops and faces us. “Okay, explain. How the hell did you start seeing a vision? What is this, some sort of contagion? A virus? What? It’s like a bad B movie.”
“We don’t know. All I know is that I don’t have my vision anymore, but Sawyer has one now.”
“So what is it—a snowplow hitting our restaurant this time?”
I look at Sawyer. “You should explain everything. Including what you said in your note.”
Sawyer begins. And I watch the two guys I love most in the world talk to each other. They are almost exactly the same height, a few inches taller than me. Trey’s eyes are black and his hair is darker than Sawyer’s, almost black, but they both have natural waves. Sawyer tries to fight his hair by keeping it short, while Trey coaxes his longer locks to curl every morning. I almost smile as I watch them. They are both so beautiful.
But the story Sawyer tells is not beautiful. I tune in, watching Trey’s face go from shock to disbelief. “A school shooting,” Trey says. “God, that’s my worst nightmare.” He shivers.
I didn’t know that. “Mine’s a toss-up between burning and being crushed,” I murmur.
“Drowning,” Sawyer adds. “Stampede. Or . . . being shot in the face by a fucking maniac or two.”
That brings us back. “So we have two shooters now,” I say, opening up the note Sawyer gave me this morning. Trey shushes me as a group of freshmen walk by. One of them eyes us in fear.
Sawyer waits until they’re gone. “Yeah.”
“And you don’t know what school,” Trey says. “That’s . . . impossible.”
“We need help, man. You’re the only one who will believe us.”
I watch conflict wash across Trey’s face.
“Guys,” he says, “look. I’m not trying to be all superior or grown up or whatever, but this is insane. Insane. How bad . . . I mean, the visions—I guess they’re pretty bad.”
“They let up a little when I manage to figure something out. But yeah. It’s about fifty million times worse than hav
Trey glances at the clock. “I think . . . ” He gives me a guilty look, and then his gaze drops to the floor. “Look. I think it’s too big for two teenagers. Or three. And, Sawyer, you should try and just get through it until it happens, and then hopefully it’ll go away.”
The bell rings.
“But, Trey,” I say, “it’s a lot of people. It’s their families. Their lives.”
“You don’t know them.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” I say, my voice pitching higher. “Besides, I feel like it’s my fault. I mean, Sawyer didn’t do anything to deserve this stupid vision, except somehow he caught it from me. I have to do something—” I grab his shirtsleeve as he turns to go to class. “Trey, come on.”
“Come on, what? It’s too dangerous. You’re being irrational. I’m sorry about the noise in your head, Sawyer, and I hope it goes away soon, but, well, we almost died once already. If we manage to survive this, it won’t be for long, because our parents will murder us.” He starts walking quickly. “Get to class,” he says over his shoulder to me.
Sawyer and I look at each other. “I’ll work on him,” I say.
“No. It’s cool. I’ll . . . I’ll see you.”
“I’m planning on the library if you can make it.”
Sawyer’s face sags. “I—I don’t think so. Not today.” He turns and goes toward his next class, and I go to sculpting. With Trey.
Eighteen
“Let’s just talk about it a little more before you decide,” I whisper once the teacher lets us loose to work on our own. Trey and I share a table, which is, according to our stunned classmates, something no brother and sister have ever before done willingly in the history of education. I don’t get why not, but whatever.
Trey pretends I’m not there.
I don’t know how to handle him when he does the silent treatment—it may be a stereotype, but we Italians aren’t exactly known for our ability to keep our opinions quiet. All I know is that if I poke him a little, he’ll start in on me, and that’s when we can actually accomplish something.
“What if we do know one of the victims?” I whisper. “Does that change anything?”
He frowns at his misshapen bowl, then scrunches up his nose and smashes the clay into a ball and starts over.
I try again. “What if you save someone and he turns out to be the guy of your dreams?”
He turns toward me. “For shit’s sake, Jules,” he hisses. “This is not a romantic situation in any possible way. Grow up.”
Yow. I stand abruptly and walk over to the paint shelf, pretending to pick out colors for the fake fruits I’ve been making to go in Trey’s dumb lopsided bowl that he keeps destroying, all of which will one day be buried under a sea of bullshit crud collected by my father. I think about painting my fruit Day-Glo colors so they’ll be easier to find when my mother’s looking for something to put on top of my casket after I get shot to death. And then I start thinking about actually getting shot if things don’t go well, and I really start creeping myself out.
I’m pulled back to reality when I realize somebody’s calling my name. I whirl around, and it’s the art teacher telling me and Trey to go to Dr. Grimm’s office—the principal. Yeah, that’s his real name. Thank dog he’s not an oncologist.
Trey’s puzzled glance meets mine, and then in an instant my heart clutches, because I realize if they want both of us it’s not just because of my stupid scratchfest with Roxie. It’s got to be something serious with Rowan or Mom or—or Dad. Fuck.
I stumble out of the room after Trey, and I feel like the world is coming up around my head like water. When we’re alone in the hallway, both of us walking faster than normal, I say it. “Do you think Dad . . . did it?”
Trey’s teeth are clenched and he replies in monotone. “I don’t know.”
How awesome is it being a kid who’s always wondering if one day she’s going to come home from school to find out her dad offed himself?
We round the corner near the office, and inside, through the glass wall, I see a cop. “Oh, Christ,” I say, and I feel all the blood flooding out of my head. “Do you see Mom anywhere?”
“No.”
We reach the door and Trey pushes it open and I stare at the cop and then at the secretary and I can’t help it. “What’s wrong?” I say, breathless. “Is Rowan here?”
The secretary, Miss Branderhorst, frowns at me like I did something wrong.
Trey whips his head around as somebody enters the office behind us.
It’s Sawyer.
He looks as puzzled as we are.
The cop asks us our names, and then the principal comes out, and they make us go back into his office, and the only thing I can think of is that my dad went postal and took out Sawyer’s parents and then killed himself. Mom, I think, and now I’m freaking myself out and telling myself to calm down.
We sit in chairs, and none of our parents are there, most likely because they’re dead, and then the cop says, “Where were you at lunch today?” And this is weird, but right then I realize he’s the guy who fills in once a week for our regular beat cop, Al, by the restaurant, and somehow knowing that makes me feel better.
“Wait.” Sawyer holds his hand out. “Um, did somebody die? Why are we here?”
Principal Grimm interjects. “Mr. Angotti, kindly answer the question.”
Trey sits up, his eyes sparking. “You’re not going to tell us if somebody died?”
“Nobody died,” the cop says.
“Jeeezabel,” I say, slumping back in relief. “You gave us a heart attack.”
The cop and Principal Grimm exchange a look. And then the cop repeats the question. “Where were you at lunch today?”
“We ate lunch in the cafeteria. Together,” Trey says. “And then we wandered the halls until the next period started like everybody always does. Are we in trouble or something?”
The cop looks at me. “What did you talk about?”
“What?” I ask, confused as hell, and then my blood runs cold. Somebody overheard something. I sense Trey stiffening in the chair next to me.
“We received a 911 call from a student who says he overheard you three talking about something suspicious. Do you want to tell me what you were talking about?”
I keep the puzzled look on my face. “Let’s see, we talked about the weather warming up, we talked about our work schedules—me and Trey at Demarco’s Pizzeria, and Sawyer at Angotti’s Trattoria—” I add, in case it helps. “And, gosh, I don’t know,” I say, looking at the boys on either side of me. “My psych project, maybe? TV shows, video games?” I start throwing out random things, hoping one of them will save me.
“Call of Duty,” Sawyer says. “You ever play?” He looks at the cop. “It’s kind of violent, but . . . ”
The cop doesn’t answer. He looks at me and my cast, and then at the scratches I almost forgot I have on my neck. “You’re the Demarco kids who saved this guy’s parents’ restaurant,” he says, flicking a thumb at Sawyer.
“Yes,” Trey says. “Well, it was mostly Jules.”
I blush appropriately, for once. “You’re our beat cop when Al has his days off, aren’t you?” I ask.
“Police officer,” Principal Grimm corrects.
The cop grins for the first time, rolls his eyes without the principal seeing. He pockets his little notebook and adjusts the gun on his belt. “Yeah, I’m your fill-in beat cop,” he says to me, and then he turns to the principal. “I think we’re done here.”
The principal’s eyes flicker, but he nods. “Thank you, Officer Bentley.”
The cop leaves, and then the principal looks at us. He clasps his hands together. “Well. You may go.”
We all stand up and file out to the reception area. Principal Grimm flags down Miss Branderhorst to write us excuses to get back into class.
Once we’re in the hallway and my heart starts beating
Except for when Trey says, “All right. I’m in. But only to keep you bozos from getting killed.”
Nineteen
After school Trey and Sawyer head to the library while I drive Rowan home.
She observes me loftily. “Are you going to tell me what happened to your neck?”
My fingers automatically reach up to touch the scratches. “Oh. Stupid Roxie took something and I accidentally scratched her trying to get it back, so she lunged at me and scratched the hell out of my neck.”
“Wow. Well, I guess she’s probably jealous.”
I raise an eyebrow, check my speedometer, touch the brakes just slightly. “Of what?”
“Come on,” Rowan says. “Pay attention for once. She’s been in love with Sawyer for years.”
“Years? How would you know?”
“The same way you sophomores know more about the junior class than you know about the freshman class. Everybody watches up.”
I’m a little surprised at how delicious this news feels. “I thought they were just friends.”
“Please. Is anyone just friends? There are always other motivating factors in relationships. Maybe not constant, but consistent.”
I look at her.
She looks back at me, her face certain.
I shrug, wondering how she became such a philosopher all of a sudden.
“So now what?” Rowan says.
“Now what what?”
“Now what are you guys doing? You, Trey. Sawyer. Something’s up.”
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
She flips the visor down and examines her face. “My flight is Sunday morning,” she says. She rummages through her backpack and pulls out a pair of tweezers, then starts plucking invisible hairs from her perfect eyebrows.
I haven’t thought about her flight. Or about her secret visit to see Charlie. I haven’t thought about her at all lately.