Out of Order (7 page)

“If that’s the worst thing that could happen, why on earth wouldn’t you go out there?”

I swallowed hard. “It would be humiliating. My mother—”

“No offense, but who gives a shit about your mother?” Kate cut me off, tipping my chin up to meet her eyes. Her manicured nails pricked the skin at my jaw, but I didn’t mind. Kate could be quite captivating. Beautiful but deadly. “She isn’t voting. It isn’t her graduation. She already got to do this. It’s your turn.”

“It’s my turn,” I repeated.

Kate spun me around and hooked her arm through mine. Before I could protest, she was marching me out of the bathroom and down the hallway, her heels clicking loudly on the tile. We made it to the stage door of the auditorium before I could even catch my breath. I could hear one of my competitors making his speech, the words muffled by the heavy door.

“You can do this,” Kate whispered. Then she hugged me. I hugged back, hard, tucking my face into the warm crook of her neck. “It’s your turn.”

She kissed the top of my head and then let go, dashing away before I could say anything else. She disappeared around the corner, heading for the doors to the auditorium so she could watch me make a fool of myself out there.

When I could hear applause, I quietly opened the heavy stage door and stepped into the wing. It was dark, but I had a clear view to the brightly lit stage, where four boys sat after having made their speeches. Principal Sterner said my name, and I stepped out of the darkness and into the spotlight.

A hush fell. Principal Sterner’s eyes widened almost cartoonishly when he saw my face. I walked up to the podium in silence and then smiled painfully at the crowd.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said into the microphone, standing on tiptoe to reach it. I adjusted it quickly to my height. “I took an unexpected trip and may have broken my nose.”

The crowd murmured, seemingly unsure if that was a joke. I couldn’t see anyone through the bright stage lights, but I could imagine what I looked like—bruised, bloody, and a little sick.

“That was a joke,” I explained, feeling a flush come to my cheeks. “It’s not broken. But you know that uneven step in the courtyard? Someone really ought to fix that.” I glanced at Principal Sterner, who had turned a strange shade of puce. “I mean, I can’t be the only person at this school with two left feet!”

There was some laughter from the students, and I took that as a win.

“I had a speech prepared,” I continued, holding up my bloody cue cards. “But unfortunately I got some blood on them, so I guess I’ll just have to wing it!” Principal Sterner looked as though he might intervene, so I quickly fell into a more traditional speech, mentioning my academic record and my commitment to the school, outlining my prefect duties and fund-raising activities.

As my eyes adjusted to the bright stage lights, I could see a few faces in the crowd, including my parents sitting in the front row. My dad was smiling fondly, which was encouraging. My mother had her lips pressed tightly together and looked like she might’ve been grinding her teeth every time I strayed from the speech she had painstakingly planned to portray me in the best possible light. I was the only female candidate, the only nonwhite candidate, and the youngest graduating student in the school. Although I mentioned none of these, I hoped they wouldn’t work to my disadvantage.

“But most of all,” I added after what should have been the official end to my speech. “I care about this school. I care about the students, the teachers, the clubs. I wouldn’t be up here right now but for the fantastic support of my friends. We all come from different backgrounds, but we are here in this institution with a common goal of learning and bettering ourselves. A lot of that learning, I have to say, comes from everyday experiences. Today, I fell in the courtyard and thought—that’s it. My campaign is over. But my friends picked me up and cleaned me up, and one of them told me something that I need to share with you now.”

The crowd murmured again, shifting around after my
unusually long speech.

“Our parents already did this. They have put certain expectations on us—to follow in their footsteps, to go to certain colleges, or get better grades than they did. Our parents put a lot of pressure on us!” I took a deep breath. “No offense, but who gives a shit about our parents right now?”

There was a small gasp from the crowd. I imagined it coming from my mother and smiled with satisfaction. Principal Sterner started forward as though he was going to take away the mic, but I held up my hand at him—
one second, please
.

“They aren’t in high school! They already got to do all this!” My speech was building in volume as I hurried to get what I wanted to say out. I didn’t want to have my mic taken away. “They don’t know what high school is like for
us
, only what it was like for them. So for those of you thinking about what your parents would say right now if they were hearing this speech, I have four words for you:
It’s our turn now!
” I paused and took a deep breath. “Thank you. Vote Corinna Nguyen!”

I sat down next to my competitors, who all looked suitably shell-shocked. I hadn’t heard their speeches, but judging from the looks on their faces, theirs had been the cookie-cutter “I get good grades! I do well at sports! I am a well-rounded person! Vote for me!” type. I couldn’t help but feel elated, even afterward, facing my parents.

“What were you thinking?” my mother demanded as soon as she saw me, her eyes narrowed. “You could get disqualified for profanity!”

“She won’t be disqualified,” Dad said, brushing my hair of out my face and tilting up my chin to get a better look at my nose. “Are you sure this isn’t broken? It’s rather swollen.”

“Just bruised,” I assured him. “I’m okay.”

He tutted but didn’t make a further fuss, instead shushing my mother’s objections and insisting we go out for ice cream as a family. “But school isn’t over for another hour. I’m supposed to be in biology,” I protested, but he waved me off.

“My little girl gets ice cream after her big speech. No buts.” He walked over to where Principal Sterner was standing watching the students file back into the classrooms. “I’m signing out my daughter to have her nose tended to.”

Sterner barely glanced at my father, bobbing his head in a dozen quick nods. “Yes, yes, of course,” he said. “Make sure she gets some ice on that.”

“Will do,” he replied, an edge of sarcasm to his voice that went completely over Sterner’s head.

My dad slung an arm around my shoulders protectively as we walked out of the building, Mom already starting to rant about the legal actions we could take against the school for my having been injured on their property. This was our family picture: Dad, warm and supportive; Mom, strong-willed and focused; and me, stuck between the two of them like a doll on a shelf.

I
DIDN
’
T
start crying until my dad burst through the curtain, his black hair standing up on one side and his eyes wild with fear. He saw me, and his tense shoulders dropped with instant relief. “Oh, Kitten,” he breathed. And that’s when the dam broke.

“Daddy,” I said like I hadn’t since I was a small child, reaching for him as my eyes welled up with tears. “
Daddy.
”

He was at my side in an instant, pulling me into one of those strange sideways-hugs that you can almost manage on a hospital bed. I clawed at him, my nails catching in his wool sweater, the ugly one that Mom and I couldn’t convince him to give to charity. And then I cried so hard my throat burned and my eyes stung, my tears acidic from grief and horror. He might have said something soothing, but all I heard was the rushing in my ears and the steady thud of his heart under my cheek.

Eventually, the police arrived. Mom fended them off for a while, asserting herself as my legal counsel the moment they pulled back the curtain. She was already bargaining—no photographs containing my face, not one mention of my name outside of official reports; they had ten minutes with me and then I was going home, not a minute longer; she was in her element and Dad was in his, curled around me protectively.

I told the two police officers everything I could remember, numb to the words coming out of my mouth. I spoke in short sentences, trying to make myself as clear as possible.

We were on our way home from prom. Ricky and Jessa had been hungry. We stopped at Sparky’s. I went to the bathroom alone. I heard gunshots, dropped to the floor. I opened the door and looked out. He shot Jake in the head. I hid in the stall that was out of order. He searched the men’s room, then the ladies’. He didn’t find me. He left. I waited for a while, and then I went out. I checked for pulses. I called 9-1-1 on Ricky’s iPhone.

I spoke slowly, as though calm, but my throat burned with tears and most of it came out choked. One officer was jotting down my story in a notebook. My mother started crying. My father was chewing on the inside of his cheek. Then came the questions.

“What did the gun look like?”

“It was a sawed-off shotgun. It was—like—” I held out my hands the right distance apart. “Like this big.” I shook my head. “I don’t know anything about guns.”

I looked at my hands then, as though they were coming into focus for the first time since I’d left the diner. They were covered in blood, tacky in places, but mostly dry and flaking off. I felt sick to my stomach again.

“Did you get a good look at the shooter’s face?”

I kept staring at my hands, unable to process the words and the image of the literal
blood on my hands
at the same time. I didn’t remember there being that much blood on my hands when I’d checked for pulses. When had I put my hands in blood? When I stood up?

“Hey!”

I jumped inside my skin and my heart began racing wildly as I looked up at the officers. My mother jumped to my defense instantly, despite the tracks of tears drying on her flushed cheeks.

“Don’t you
dare
yell at her,” she seethed, and the cop who had spoken put his empty hands up defensively. “She’s
traumatized
.”

I didn’t feel traumatized. I felt anger bubbling just below the surface of my cheeks, contained only by the hard set of my jaw. I felt numb in my extremities, violently sick to my stomach, with a pounding headache forming at my temples. But traumatized? What did that feel like?

“Sorry, ma’am,” the officer said, though he didn’t sound sorry. “But we need a complete statement before any of the details are lost.”

“I only saw him from the side,” I said. “He was wearing—it was a baseball cap, Cincinnati Reds.”

“Race, hair color, eye color, height?” the officer with the notebook pressed, tapping his pencil obscenely loud on the plastic spiral.

“He was white. Brown hair, I think. He was tall….” I shook my head and stared at my hands again. They were shaking. “He was really strung out. High on something. He was shaking, and his pupils were—y’know?” I made a gesture with my hands that the policeman seemed to understand.

“Had you seen him before?”

“Yes.”

The word came out before I’d even processed the question. I had seen him before. There was a certain familiarity, even recalling him, that I
knew
the man with the gun. I closed my eyes, tried to place him. He was too old to be a classmate. He didn’t work at the school. He didn’t work at the drugstore.

“Where?”

“I don’t
know
,” I groaned, still running through possibilities. He wasn’t one of Mom’s defendants. He didn’t volunteer at any of my initiatives. “But I think I
know
him.”

“Was he hanging around outside before you went into the diner?” the other officer piped up, glancing at my mother as though to make sure he was allowed to speak. She inclined her head slightly.

“No, there wasn’t anyone outside.” I began picking at my fingernails, unable to meet anyone’s eyes. My nail polish was chipped on the tips. I really should have gone for that third coat of polish. “But I know that I know him from
somewhere
.”

“From school? A classmate?” The officer with the notebook stopped tapping his pencil.

“No, he was too old. In his twenties, I think. I don’t
know
.” I wanted to pull on my hair or rub at my face, but the image of blood on my hands was too strong. I didn’t want to spread it anywhere. “I don’t know if I know him. It’s just a feeling. He was
familiar
.”

In any other situation, I would have had the opportunity to carefully examine his face. I would have time to imagine a name passing through his lips during introductions, whether it was weeks or months or years since we’d last met. I would have whizzed through yearbook pictures, mug shots, volunteer timetables, work uniforms in my head until something sparked the recognition and I would say, “Oh, you’re so-and-so!” He would smile, tilt his hat and say, “Wow, you’ve got a great memory,” and I would know his voice and face and be able to reconcile them with our previous encounters.

Instead, I was trying to grind uncooperative gears in my head, left with only a face in profile and a baseball cap to help guide me. “It’s so close, but I just can’t remember,” I sighed, looking back at the police officers and biting my lower lip. “I’m sorry. It happened so fast. I didn’t get a good look at him.”

“And thank God you didn’t,” my mother said, a line I would have expected from my father. He clutched me a little closer, refusing to end the side-hug. “If you had, you might’ve have been killed too.”

Too. As well. Also.

My friends were dead on what was supposed to be one of the best nights of our lives. We had three days until we were supposed to walk across a gaudily decorated stage and receive our high school diplomas. Jessa, Kate, and Ricky would never get to do that now.

M
Y
BIOLOGY
class was the last group to be ushered from our desks to the auditorium for the graduation rehearsal. We were marched through the school in a rather disorderly fashion and I felt more like a sheep being herded than a valedictorian, but the little gold sticker they would add to my diploma said otherwise.