LITMIR.BIZ

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      She told Huck, “Look, I love my dad, but I don’t practice the same kind of law that he does. Half my caseload is in juvenile court, the other half is in drug court. I work with stupid people who do stupid things, who need a lawyer to keep the prosecutor from overcharging them.” She held out her hands in a shrug. “I just level the playing field.”

      Huck glared at her. His initial anger had escalated to furious in the blink of an eye. “I want you to leave my room. Right now.”

      His hard tone made Charlie take a step back. For the first time, it occurred to her that no one knew she was at the school and that Mr. Huckleberry could probably break her neck with one hand.

      “Fine.” She snatched her phone off his desk and started toward the door. Even as Charlie was telling herself she should shut up and go, she swung back around. “What did my father ever do to you?”

      Huck didn’t answer. He was sitting at his desk, head bent over a stack of papers, red ink pen in hand.

      Charlie waited.

      He tapped the pen on his desk, a drumbeat of a dismissal.

      She was about to tell him where to stick the pen when she heard a loud crack echo down the hallway.

      Three more cracks followed in quick succession.

      Not a car backfiring.

      Not fireworks.

      A person who has been up close when a gun is fired into another human being never mistakes the sound of a gunshot for something else.

      Charlie was yanked down to the floor. Huck threw her behind a filing cabinet, shielding her body with his own.

      He said something—she saw his mouth move—but the only sound she could hear was the gunshots echoing inside her head. Four shots, each a distinctive, terrifying echo to the past. Just like before, her mouth went dry. Just like before, her heart stopped beating. Her throat closed. Her vision tunneled. Everything looked small, narrowed to a single, tiny point.

      Huck’s voice rushed back in. “Active shooter at the middle school,” he whispered calmly into his phone. “Sounds like he’s near the principal’s—”

      Another crack.

      Another bullet fired.

      Then another.

      Then the homeroom bell rang.

      “Jesus,” Huck said. “There’s at least fifty kids in the cafeteria. I have to—”

      A blood-curdling scream broke off the rest of his words.

      “Help!” a woman yelled. “Please, help us!”

      Charlie blinked.

      Gamma’s chest exploding.

      She blinked again.

      Blood misting from Sam’s head.

       Charlie, run!

      She was out the door before Huck could stop her. Her legs pistoned. Her heart pounded. Her sneakers gripped the waxy floor but in her mind, she could feel the earth moving against her bare feet, tree limbs slicing into her face, fear cinching a length of barbed wire around her chest.

      “Help us!” the woman cried. “Please!”

      Huck caught up with Charlie as she rounded the corner. He was nothing more than a blur as her vision tunneled again, this time to the three people at the end of the hallway.

      A man’s feet pointed up at the ceiling.

      Behind him, to his right, a smaller set of feet splayed out.

      Pink shoes. White stars on the soles. Lights that would flash when she walked.

      An older woman knelt beside the little girl rocking back and forth, wailing.

      Charlie wanted to wail, too.

      Blood had sprayed the plastic chairs outside the office, splattered onto the walls and ceiling, jetted onto the floors.

      There was a familiarity to the carnage that spread a numbness through Charlie’s body. She slowed to a jog, then a brisk walk. She had seen this before. She knew that you could put it all in a little box and close it up later, that you could go on with your life if you didn’t sleep too much, didn’t breathe too much, didn’t live too much so that death came back and snatched you away for the taking.

      Somewhere, a set of doors banged open. Loud footsteps clumped through the hallways. Voices were raised. Screaming. Crying. Words were being shouted, but they were unintelligible to Charlie. She was underwater. Her body moved slowly, arms and legs floating against an exaggerated gravity. Her brain silently cataloged all of the things that she did not want to see.

      Mr. Pinkman was on his back. His blue tie was tossed over his shoulder. Blood mushroomed from the center of his white dress shirt. The left side of his head was open, skin hanging like tattered paper around the white of his skull. There was a deep, black hole where his right eye should have been.

      Mrs. Pinkman was not beside her husband. She was the screaming woman who had suddenly stopped screaming. She was cradling the child’s head in her lap, holding a pastel blue sweater to the girl’s neck. The bullet had ripped open something vital. Mrs. Pinkman’s hands were bright red. Blood had turned the diamond on her wedding ring the color of a cherry pit.

      Charlie’s knees gave out.

      She was on the floor beside the girl.

      She was seeing herself lying on the ground in the forest.

      Twelve? Thirteen?

      Spindly little legs. Short black hair like Gamma. Long eyelashes like Sam.

      “Help,” Mrs. Pinkman whispered, her voice hoarse. “Please.”

      Charlie reached out her hands, not knowing where to put them. The little girl’s eyes rolled up, then just as suddenly, she focused on Charlie.

      “It’s okay,” Charlie told her. “You’ll be okay.”

      “Go before this lamb, oh Lord,” Mrs. Pinkman prayed. “Be not far from her. Make haste to help her.”

      You won’t die, Charlie’s brain begged. You won’t surrender. You will graduate high school. You will go to college. You will get married. You will not leave a gaping hole in your family where your love used to be.

      “Make haste to guide me, oh Lord my salvation.”

      “Look at me,” Charlie told the girl. “You’re going to be fine.”

      The girl was not going to be fine.

      Her eyelids began to flutter. Her blue-tinged lips parted. Tiny teeth. White gums. The light pink tip of her tongue.

      Slowly, the color began to drain from her face. Charlie was reminded of the way winter came down the mountain, the festive red and orange and yellow leaves turning umber, then brown, then starting to fall, so that by the time the cold reached its icy fingers into the foothills outside of town, everything was dead.

      “Oh God,” Mrs. Pinkman sobbed. “Little angel. Poor little angel.”

      Charlie couldn’t remember taking the child’s hand, but there were her little fingers caught between Charlie’s bigger ones. So small and cold, like a lost glove on the playground. Charlie watched the fingers slowly release until the girl’s hand fell slack to the floor.

      Gone.

      “Code Black!”

      Charlie jerked at the sound.

      “Code Black!” A cop was running up the hallway. He had his radio in one hand, a shotgun in the other. Panic cracked his voice. “Get to the school! Get to the school!”

      For a brief second, the man made eye contact with Charlie. There was a spark of recognition, and then he saw the body of the dead child.

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