From the backseat of a truck, I listened to my father slur his words, repeating a story only he knew. I sat behind him on the passenger side, ignoring him.
Physically, I’m 26 years old, bundled in a purple puffy jacket and snow boots with a backpack next to me and being driven to my old high school. The place I couldn’t wait to forget. Inside I’m 10 years old with fresh wounds cut from my father’s addiction.
We pulled into the guest parking spot where I hoped to jump out and run away from the broken child within and into the broken teenager I used to be. Then my father climbs out of the truck before I can even unbuckle myself. I didn’t want to be seen with him in his stained white tee and basketball shorts, shuffling his feet as he struggled to stay upright. One of my classmates walks up to him and my father pulls out a pill bottle offering a deal.
The front passenger door is still open and I try to shove him back inside but he is as steady as stone and won’t budge as I push.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? You need to leave now!” I erupt.
I’m squishing the door into him while his feet are still planted and as the warning bell for first period rings, I give up and walk towards the front doors. Glancing back, I see a large package exchanged between my father and a younger boy whose face I couldn’t place.
As I step into the front doors, I find my locker and empty my backpack. My best friend, Aaron, starts gossiping about the latest drama in our school. I barely hear what he’s saying and I’m annoyed he can’t read my mind.
Slamming my locker, I swing towards him, lashing out “Aaron, I really don’t care who she’s dating right now, I don’t know who he is, and I just had to fight my dad so can you please just shut-“
BANG
There were no screams. No footsteps running for safety or slamming doors, locked and barricaded from the inside. I lock eyes with Aaron. The lockdown drills of hiding under our desks did not prepare us to die.
As if he gained the ability to read my mind, we book it running down the hall to the nearest exit, not knowing if towards safety or towards the gun. We turn a corner outside the school building towards an outdoor bathroom with two stalls next to two sinks but no entry door.
He takes the furthest stall while I climb the toilet in the stall closest to the entry. I still had my backpack, now empty, slung over one shoulder as I desperately tried to keep the stall door shut, barely reaching the hole that should’ve held a lock while balancing on the unsteady, slippery seat. My backpack slips off my shoulder and bangs against the wall. I hear footsteps outside heading toward us.
All at once the footsteps were drowned out by cries from a group of middle schoolers and Haley, a girl from our grade, rushing the bathroom, trying to find safety in our stalls. Aaron comes out of his stall as we desperately try to quiet them. The stalls weren’t big enough for us all and the students were too panicked to console.
BUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUM
The shots fired and left my ears ringing. I looked to my right as the bodies of the middle schoolers fell over the sinks and hit the ground. My eyes dart to the entrance and standing there is the young boy who took the package from my father holding a large gun I’d only seen in video games.
I feel Aaron thump against the wall beside me, the vibration of the force of the bullets throwing him back. I couldn’t turn to face him.
I lock eyes with the young boy as his eyebrows narrowed and I raised my hands letting out a faint “please” that may have only voiced in my head. The muffled, low bangs hurtled towards me, almost leisurely in slow motion. I instinctively tried to protect myself, placing my hands in front of my chest, crossing, futilely blocking the bullets before I felt a pressure hit my core and pin me to the wall next to Aaron.
Almost instantly after, Haley hits the wall to my left. I hold my head up to meet her gaze as she slowly peeks down, watching the blood soak the lower half of her shirt.
It doesn’t hurt and I’m still not dead. I’m starting to feel light headed and cannot detach my hands from my chest.
I steal a glance at Aaron and quickly look away from the blood gushing down his face, dripping from his chin. The three of us are still standing somehow and pinned in the space between the bathroom stall and the sink.
I don’t look at either of them again, but at the ground at the blood pooling on and around our shoes like puddles.
My eyes become heavy and Aaron tries to hold me up. I try to find his face in the last memory I had, annoyed at his gossiping and where he wasn’t covered in blood. That memory slips further and further away as my knees sink to the floor, hovering just above the tile.
Whiplash. My body being hurled into the air, away from the bathroom, away from the blood and away from Aaron. My feet meet a sandy ground. A young woman in a pencil skirt with a clipboard and freshly blown out wavy hair stands next to me, a beach with waves crashing behind her.
She starts a speech, something about endless possibilities and finding a new home. I look down at my fresh clothes I put on just that morning, free of the blood I know I lost.
“I’m dead, aren’t I?” I interrupt her.
“Yes-”
“I need to see my body,” I interrupt again.
“No.”
“Take me there now. I won’t believe I’m dead until I see it,” I tell her, though not really sure myself if it’s the best idea.
“Fine,” she shrugs and snaps in my face. With a startled blink I’m looking down at a row of bodies wrapped in sheets, lying in the grass outside of the high school.
“Is that one me?” I point at the sheet wrapped body beneath my feet.
“Yes, and that’s Aaron,” she points at the form to the right of mine.
I pull the sheet down past my chest and where my hands should be are broken bones lying attached to my skin.
I covered myself up, immediately trying to forget the sight. Although I wasn’t breathing, I still mostly felt alive. I gulped as I turned the sheet away from Aaron’s face. I stare in horror at the bloody holes where his blue eyes and long lashes should be, dried blood crusted around the rest of his face. He is unrecognizable.
A low, familiar chuckle. Aaron stands behind me, alive and without blood. ‘Well, we died. Now what?”
