Bang (14 page)

Her black hat is pulled down over her eyes, and

she looks like a guy. She’s alone. I think. She’s wearing

dark-wash jeans and a black jacket, and she’s gripping a

little backpack so hard her knuckles are white. And on

the backpack is a button with a picture of a rainbow with

a line through it. My heart thunks around in my chest

and I almost can’t breathe.
So it
is
the GSA they’re after?
I’m so confused.

The bus driver inches forward and cranes his neck at

me. I shake my head and wave him off. And after a second,

I follow the girl. I let her get a few dozen feet ahead of me

and inch my phone from my pocket. I dial Sawyer’s number, but nothing happens. No signal. I try him again, and then I look at the phone battery. It’s not dead. But there’s

a little notice in the corner in the tiniest print that says

“minutes used: 250.”

“Shit,” I mutter. And then it really hits me. My prepaid

minutes are used up. I have no phone. No wonder neither

of the boys has called me.

I have no phone.
I look up to make sure the girl is still in sight. At the

corner where we’d turn to go to U of C, she stops and

waits for traffic. I pretend to look in a shopwindow, and

then when the light changes I begin to follow again. And

I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know what

she’s going to do. For all I know, she’s just doing one more

stakeout of the campus in preparation for next week. But

the way she’s gripping that little bag tells me otherwise.
Thankfully the rain keeps her from looking around. She

scurries along, head down, and when we cross a street, she’s

joined by the blond guy who she was with the other day.

They barely say two words to each other, and then they walk

together but not very closely. And I realize this is really it.
My hand finds my phone again and I try a few more

times in case I’m wrong and the minutes haven’t expired,

but it’s futile. My phone is useless. I want to run ahead,

try to find Sawyer, but I don’t want them to see me, and I

don’t want to lose track of them. I follow the two into the

quad as the rain stops, the only drops now coming from

the trees.
“Where are you?” I mutter. The quad is huge, and

there are a lot of buildings. And the campus is alive again

with students running through the rain, transporting their

suitcases, bags, and backpacks back to their dorms. I want

to go toward the hall we determined was the music building, but the two people in black go to the opposite corner of the quad toward the Hitchcock Hall dorm. I strain my

eyes looking for Sawyer, but I don’t see him anywhere.
My chest is tight. I hear a distant church bell chiming

the hour as we near Hitchcock Hall. Eight bells. The two

in black stop at the side of the big wooden door and stare

at something as people dash in and out of the building.

The guy looks panicked for a moment, but the girl shakes

her head slightly and says something. I stay by the road,

trying to look like I’m waiting for someone, trying to hide

that I’m praying my brains out to whoever will listen that

Sawyer is okay.
The two stand there whispering for a minute, and then

they come back toward me. I freeze, and then I pull a notebook from my backpack and rip a page out. I fumble for a pen and keep my head down as they pass by me, pretending to write things down. And then I walk as fast as I can to the Hitchcock door to see what they were looking at.
It’s the Gay-Straight Alliance flyer. But the green

room meeting place is crossed out and instead it says,

“moved to Goodspeed 4th Fl!!”
The blood pulses in my ears. That’s the music building. And suddenly everything I can remember from Sawyer’s vision is coming together and making sense. It’s

all happening right now, and Sawyer doesn’t know. I look

at the torn sheet of notebook paper in my hand, write,

“Call 911—Goodspeed 4th Fl!” and take off after the

shooters at full speed, shoving my paper into the hands of

a surprised student as he enters the dorm.
I race across the quad to Goodspeed, splashing

through puddles, soaking wet, watching the shooters enter

the music hall. When I reach the door I dash up the stairs

to the fourth floor, trying to look casual, as others move

through the short hallways, some carrying backpacks or

musical instrument cases. And I don’t even care about the

massive deaths right now. All I can think of is that I need

to find Sawyer and get him out of here. We’re not ready.

We can’t do this. We need to bail. Just call the cops, get

the hell out of the way, and hope for the best.
A few students wander the fourth floor, some of them

peering at closed office doors or into classrooms, and I’m

guessing they are looking for the same room I am. And

then I spy the cute guy with the glasses who handed us the

flyer yesterday. He’s down the hallway, standing in front of

an open door, frowning at his watch. “Come on, people,”

he says.
He takes a look at my wet clothes and hair. “Now that’s

dedication,” he says with a grin. “Hey—I remember you.

Your boyfriend is inside.”
My eyes bug out. “I—he—what?”
His kind eyes crinkle. “Oops. Did I get that wrong? I

thought you were holding hands the other day. I’m sorry.”
“No, I mean . . . never mind. Thanks.” I push past him

into the room and look around, spying the two shooters

immediately at the front table. Sitting at the table behind

them is Sawyer, whose normally olive complexion is alabaster now. He stares at me. I walk in like I don’t know him and go to the window.
A minute later, he’s next to me. “What happened?” he

whispers.
“It’s now,” I say back.
“No shit. You could have answered your phone!”
“Ran out of minutes. Couldn’t call you either. Now

what?”
“Ohh,” he says. “Crap. I should have thought of that.”

He glances over his shoulder. “I texted the tip hotline.

Can’t exactly call.”
“We can get out of here. There’s time.”
Sawyer grips my arm. “No, we can’t. It’s changing.

The vision. Us being here is changing it. Fewer gunshots,

fewer bodies. Down to seven. We have to stay and try to

stop it.”
“But what if the bodies are
us
?”
“Jules,” he says, and he grips my wrist. “Remember

how it was with you. You have to trust me.” There’s no

time for him to explain—the cute guy clears his throat

loudly and announces that it’s well past eight. Sawyer gets

a text message and responds quickly as we sit down at the

table. I question him with my eyes. “Trey,” he mouths.
My eyes widen, begging for more information. But

Sawyer glances at the shooters and shakes his head. He

puts his hands below the table and holds out nine fingers,

then one, then one again.
“Oh,” I breathe, relieved.
Trey’s calling the cops.
Everybody continues to make small talk except for the

shooters, who sit there, stone-faced.
From the doorway, the cute guy asks the students to

finish up their conversations. He looks down the hallway

once more and closes the door. “Okay, everybody, settle.

Sorry about the last-minute venue change—the green

room was too noisy with everybody coming back from

break with all their luggage and parents and junk.” He

looks around the room and grins.
“If you don’t know me, I’m Ben Galang, freshman,

next year’s secretary of the alliance, and this is my first time

organizing a charity event, so yeah. Help a guy out, will

ya?” He laughs. A few people smile. “Okay, well. Welcome

to the choir members, some of whom are already part of

the GSA here at UC. It’s great to work with you all and to

see some new faces.” He smiles at somebody on the other

side of the room, at Sawyer and me, and at the shooters.
I can’t smile back. I don’t dare to turn my head to see

who else is in here. I’m freaking out. I can’t even focus

on what this guy Ben is saying. All I can do is stare at the

shooters in front of me, stare at the girl’s black bag, at the

bulge on the blond guy’s hip, under his jacket. I glance at

Sawyer and he’s sweating, watching the glass in the door,

and I know from experience that, one, he’s watching that

vision
very
closely and, two, all I can do is trust him and

follow his lead, because he’s the only one who knows how

this is all going down. And if I mess with it, it could change

everything. I dare a quick glance around the room at the

faces, all these faces that Sawyer has been seeing for weeks

with bullet holes in them, but my mind can’t even record

them—they are all a blur of one victim’s face.
Sawyer’s elbow touches mine, and I look at him. He

points to a clock above the door. “New scene,” he whispers. Does that mean he knows the time this will happen?

He points to the table and mimics flipping it. Then he

points to the girl and looks at me.
I nod. He scratches his knee and looks at me again. I

swallow hard and panic—I don’t know what that means.

He points to their legs, his fingers shaking, and finally I

understand what he’s trying to say. I nod again. And then

he spreads his hand out on his thigh, five fingers, and

before I know it he hides his thumb, and then his first

finger, and I realize that he’s counting down, and this is

happening in two, one . . .
The shooter girl pulls a gun from her little black

backpack, stands up, and whirls around, yelling, “All you

fags to the back of the room!” The blond guy follows her

lead, pulling his gun out and shoving their table out of the

way, but at first nobody else in the room moves. Nobody

understands what’s happening. They’re in shock.
It all goes in slow motion. Sawyer and I flip our table,

trying to give others something to hide behind. Ben, smile

fading, turns to see what the commotion is all about.

Sawyer springs forward from his chair, stays low, hops

over the table, and tackles the blond guy at the back of the

thighs, making his knees crumple. A shot rings out, hitting

the ceiling light fixture. The whole row of lights goes out,

leaving us in semi-darkness, and that wakes me from my

frozen state. I dive from my seat and tackle the girl the

same way Sawyer tackled the guy. She loses her balance

and lands on my back as two more shots pierce the air and

shatter my eardrums, along with a chorus of screams.
“Run!” I yell from under the girl, pulling sound from

the depths of my lungs. “Go! Get out! Run!” I hear tables

and chairs scraping and crashing, people screaming,

almost everyone running for the door as a few more shots

ring out.
Sawyer gets on top of the blond guy and starts pounding his wrist, trying to get him to let go of the gun, and it goes off again, but I can’t afford to look at what, or who,

it hits. I struggle to get the girl off my back, rising quickly

to my hands and knees to throw her off balance. I can feel

her weight shift, and she teeters, grabbing my hair and

yanking it, trying to hold on. I reach deep, finding some

other inner strength, and try to buck her off me, digging

my cast into the floor like a cane to push me up. The girl’s

gun hits me in the head as she loses her grip on my hair

and falls to the floor.
I scramble aside and turn to look where she is. She

kicks me in the face, and I see stars. As she gets to her feet

she starts screaming over and over, “Die, you sick fags!”
My cheek throbs. I try to grab her around the ankles,

but all I get is her pant leg, which she rips from my grasp,

taking parts of my fingernails with it. She stumbles offbalance and kicks me again. Awkwardly I reel away from her kick, then try to catch her foot, but instead I trip over

a chair and I’m back on the floor once again as she catches

herself and stares at me like she hates me. I roll to my

stomach and cover my face like a coward because I think

this has to be the end for me.
I hear three gunshots and I don’t know if anybody’s

hit. I freeze in place, cringing and crying, figuring she’d

be shooting at me, but she isn’t. At least I don’t think so,

anyway. When I dare to look, she’s grabbing Ben, who is

stoically trying to drag a bloody person out of the room.

The shooter girl shoves him, makes him turn around to

face her, digs the gun into his forehead, and backs him up

against the wall just as Sawyer and the blond guy bump

into me, rolling on the floor. I can hear Sawyer cussing,

trying to stand but slipping on a smear of blood, twisting

crazily and falling hard. With the momentum, Sawyer

manages to extend his arm, slamming it down across the

shooter’s chest.
The blond guy’s gun goes flying. I get to my hands and

knees and crawl after it, trying shakily to get to my feet,

but the guy grabs me and yanks my legs out from under

me, making me land hard next to him. I hoist myself up

with my good hand, swing my cast around awkwardly to

block his fist, and slam my knee into his groin before he

can choke me. He gasps and shrivels up, his face telling me

I nailed him just right, and I’m free. But my muscles are in

shock and I can’t get them to obey me. I roll away, out of

his reach, searching desperately for Sawyer.
Sawyer’s got blood on his face and he staggers to his