Come Sit By Me (14 page)

“If I stopped him, no matter what stage of the plan he was in, I would be a hero.”

It was difficult to understand the rules in North's fantasy world. “You would be a hero for stopping him?” I said.

“I would have saved the school.”

“But he would have told everybody who bought the guns for him.”

North shook his head. “Not if I stopped him by killing him.”

I let that sink in.

North raised his shotgun and aimed it at something in the woods. Or at nothing. Maybe he was reliving the memory of shooting Caleb. Who was his friend.

Or not really. North wasn't the kind of guy who had friends. Just people he used. “The trouble was,” he said, “he had already gone too far. I couldn't take credit for stopping him. Somebody might have found a connection between us.”

“So where did it go wrong? What detail did you miss?” I asked, with a touch of sarcasm.

“It was out of my control,” he said defensively. “The school bus that I was on had a flat tire. His bus arrived on time, and he went to his locker where he'd already stored the guns. We were supposed to meet there, but when I didn't show, he decided to go ahead on his own.” He shook his head. “I didn't think he would have the balls, really.”

“So when you finally got to school….” I began.

“The whole thing had gone to shit,” he finished. “People were already running out the front door, but I went in a side way. I knew he was in the library. That was the plan. Mr. Barnes sent kids there on a schedule, and I wanted to wait until the day when both Marcus and Donna would be there at the same time. Then go in and nail them.”

He thought about it, replaying the plan in his head. “I hadn't counted on the coach being there,” he admitted.

“He came to the library when he heard the shots,” I said, remembering the story Junior had told me.

“That was what the newspapers said,” North replied. “They wanted to make him a hero. Actually, he was there to tutor Marcus and Ronnie. Do their social studies project for them, basically. Because he wanted them to be eligible for the team. Caleb told me the coach hid under the table after the first shots. Caleb had to stalk him to get him.”

“So…you got there and Caleb was alive.”

“As he would be. He had the rifles, after all. Nobody else had any. If everybody went armed, like they should, they could have fought back.”

“And what did you do?” I wanted to hear it all.

“Well, he had used his rifle, the one he had practiced with, and had run out of ammunition. Fortunately, he had brought my rifle along in case I showed up. Which I had, so now he gave it to me because he didn't know what I was going to do. Then, when he looked away, I shot him. It was a clean kill. He never knew what happened.”

I stared. I couldn't quite believe he would admit it, just like that. “You shot him.”

“Had to,” he said. “As you pointed out, he was my only connection to what had happened. Everybody assumed he shot himself because I got him with a head shot. I wiped my prints off the rifle and put his on.”

“What if he had shot you first?”

“I told you. He had run out of ammunition. His weapon wasn't loaded,” North said. “That was a detail that I had paid attention to. Just the way yours isn't loaded now.”

“It is, though, North. I loaded it in the truck.”

He smiled. “You're not a good liar.” Liars like North always think everybody else is lying.

“What are you going to tell people if you shoot me?” I asked.

He raised his shotgun. “That you weren't an experienced hunter and stepped in front of me as I was firing at a deer.”

I nodded. He could get away with that.

“Are you going to tell me where you hid the drive with Caleb's book?” he asked. He had his finger on the trigger.

“If you shoot me, you'll never find out,” I said.

“The first place I look will be your house,” he told me. “And your father and sister won't be able to defend themselves. You already told me they don't have any weapons there.”

I raised my shotgun casually, and took a breath. We were so close that there was no need to aim. I looked into his eyes. They were cold, the coldest eyes I'd ever seen. He didn't hate me. I was just an obstacle in his path, no more significant than the turkeys we'd killed. No more significant than Caleb. To do what I had to do, I had to look at him the same way.

“If you tell me, I won't hurt them,” he said. My Dad and Susan.

I didn't believe him.

But I realized he would kill me. Right now.

I pulled the trigger and watched his eyes disappear, along with the rest of the top of his head.

When his body fell, I upchucked into the bloody mess until there was nothing coming up
from my stomach but yellow spit.

It didn't make me feel anything like I had expected when I shot the turkey.

I GOT
AWAY WITH IT
. I already had the alibi that North had invented, only I used it for myself. After sitting there for awhile, trying not to look at him, I took his gun and fired it in the air. I told people that was the gun I'd used when I shot him. I said we had exchanged guns and I hadn't realized mine was an automatic, that I didn't have to pump it to get it ready for firing.

It was an accident, a terrible, terrible accident. I cried a lot. It wasn't hard to, really. Even when the Colonel showed up. The way he looked at me, I wanted to cry. From fear. Fortunately, I was never alone with him.

Many people were actually sympathetic to me. I stayed home from school for a week. I missed North's funeral, but heard that most of the senior class and the teachers were all there. I wonder if the principal told everybody we had to move forward and look to the future.

The school counselor told my Dad it might be good for me to stay home the rest of the year. I think they would have rather not have me walking the halls. But I didn't want to have to repeat senior year. Not in that school. Not in that town.

When I finally went back, I was assigned to go to the counselor's office every other day. I thought of Caleb every time she made a note, and had to clench my teeth to keep from laughing. That would have been bad, if I had started laughing.

When my Dad decided I had recovered enough from the shock, he gave me his standard speech against the widespread use of guns. I didn't tell him North's viewpoint. Nor did I ask him what he would have done if North had staged a home invasion with shotguns. Susan and I heard parts of the speech each night at dinner time for several weeks. She blamed me, for having to listen to the speech, that is. I never told her I had saved her life.

At school, the other kids kind of avoided me. It was like I reminded everybody of Caleb. Only I was alive. I'd come around a corner, and a group of people would stop whatever they were talking about and stare at me. To my surprise, North's jock friends didn't hold a grudge against me. Once in a while one of them would give me a soft punch on the arm and say something like, “Hang in there, man.” Although they didn't ask me to sit with them at lunch any more.

Terry was more direct. “You've got to throw yourself into your work,” she told me. “It will take your mind off what happened.” She might have regretted giving me that advice, because my work picked up a lot, and in some classes I started getting better grades than she did. She had her heart set on being the valedictorian at graduation.

But I didn't forget about what happened. Caleb started to show up, and not just when I was sleeping. I was in the library one day, waiting for Susan to finish up so we could go home. Ms. Clement had given me a book on grieving. It was meant for kids about ten years old who had lost a parent. Of course, I had lost my mother a couple of years before, but that was different.

Anyway, to be nice I sat down at a table and began to read the book. For some reason I looked up and saw Caleb. He was at the doorway holding a rifle. I let out a yell and he vanished. Ms. Clement hurried over and asked me what was wrong.

“I'm sorry, I think I dozed off and had a nightmare,” I said. I was always saying dumb things to her, so she nodded like that was perfectly understandable.

“Would you like me to drive you and Susan home?” she asked. I looked at her and couldn't help staring at her boobs. Bump. “No, no,” I said. “I'm all right now.” But she went over and said something to Susan, who apparently reassured her that I could keep the car on the road.

Sometimes Caleb came to my room at night. I had finished
Look Homeward, Angel
, just to say I had done it. There was some kinky sex after all, between the hero and a black woman. Not normal sex, but enough. And at the end the hero starts to have conversations with his favorite brother, the one who died. I figured Caleb had read that part too.

Caleb didn't say anything to me. Usually he just looked at me for a while, and then he was gone. One time, he stood up and pointed out the window just before he faded away.

I realized I was supposed to go look, so I did. It was night, but there was a street light outside our house, and as I watched I could see a car drive by. Slowly. It was a Hummer. I remembered that the Colonel had a Hummer.

That made me paranoid, of course. I sat by that window almost every night, and sure enough I kept seeing the Hummer go by. I couldn't see the driver, but I was sure I knew who it was.

After that, I sort of brought up with my Dad the idea that we should move. Out of Hamilton. Very far away. But I couldn't tell him why.

He tried to reassure me. We couldn't leave in the middle of my senior year. I was doing very well, according to all my teachers. The counselor said I was coping nicely with my feelings of guilt. (I should have been. I didn't have any.) And besides, Susan had made a lot of friends. I knew that, because they always gathered in her bedroom and giggled hysterically, except when they happened to see me. Then they stared.

I was the killer.

So I studied. And studied. I was getting As or A pluses in every course. I realized that I had to get into some college so I drove myself crazy with the test prep books and aced the SATs. The counselor said I could probably get into an Ivy, but I didn't want to.

They were all in the East.

Too close to Hamilton.

I applied to Stanford and a bunch of other places on the West Coast. They all accepted me. Apparently nobody had told them I had killed the star of our football team. Not a good extracurricular.

Spring came, and the Senior Prom, which I had no intention of going to at all. Then one day after school, Terry asked me, “You ever think about going to the Prom?”

I looked up from the article I was writing. “The Prom? When is it?”

“Next Saturday. I think you've been working a little too hard. Might do you good to go out.”

I nodded, though Terry telling me I had been working too hard was like the Kardashian sisters telling me I was getting too much publicity. “The thing is,” I said, “I haven't got anybody to go with.”

She gave me a long look, and I woke up. “Um, would you like to go to the Prom?” I said.

“Thanks for asking,” she said. “Yes, I would.”

That meant I had to rent a tux, but my Dad was happy to see me going out with somebody, so he paid for it. Terry insisted that we take her car. At the time, I figured that was because it had no back seat. I drove to her house and met her parents, the Schwartzes. Their home had a lot of books in it, no surprise. Her father gave me a handshake with a tight grip. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Terry tells us you're a fine young man.” I had the impression that was the seal of approval for him. I remembered the Colonel telling me the same thing. I must have that effect on people. Just goes to show how wrong they can be.

Terry came downstairs, dressed in a mint-green prom dress with two spaghetti straps holding it up. The first thing I noticed was that she had freckles on her shoulders. I had never noticed that before, and then I realized I'd never seen her shoulders before. My eyes started downward from there, until I realized her parents were noticing every move I made. I remembered that I was holding a box with a corsage in it, and handed it to her. She opened it to lots of approving sounds from her mother, who fastened it to Terry's dress.

Terry got her red hair genes from her mother. That was clear. It went well with her green dress. Mrs. Schwartz asked me if I drove safely. I said that Terry was driving us, putting a slightly amused look on her mother's face. “Have you ridden with her before?” she asked. After I replied that I had, she said, “Then you know you should fasten your seat belt.”

I smiled and nodded. “Her father bought the car for her,” Terry's mother said, as if that explained a lot. “I hope you won't be too late,” she said, turning to Terry.

“We may go to an after-party at somebody's house,” Terry said. “But we'll be safe.”

“Better there than out on the roads,” her father said.

The Prom itself wasn't bad for a dance in a high-school gym. They had rigged up colored lights that moved slowly around the walls, meaning the gym itself was pretty dark and almost romantic. I think they must have used a few hundred cans of air freshener. Some of the music was live, put on by a local band that was trying hard to sound like the Black Eyed Peas, even though all its members were white. I danced with Terry a few times, and we weren't any worse than anybody else. When we sat down for a while, I got her a soft drink—the only kind of beverage served, although I noticed some people had brought flasks of something else that they poured into their drinks when no chaperones were looking.

One of those with a flask was the guy called Hack, North's friend. He was sitting with Colleen, and making sure her drink was well fortified. She'd be ready for action by the time they left the Prom.

Terry saw who I was looking at. “Would you like to ask Colleen to dance?” she said.

“I don't think she'd want to,” I said.

“I happen to know that she would,” Terry said.

Well, Terry was a good source of information. But somehow I still didn't want to dance with Colleen. It would be like gloating over North's body. We were alive and feeling sexy, and he wasn't, and never would be.

“Whose house are we going to afterward?” I said, to change the subject.

“I'll let that be a surprise,” she said.

It was.

Around eleven o'clock, people started drifting out, probably eager to get to the real business of the evening: last chance to get laid in high school.

Terry's friends were mostly kids who were aiming to get to college, like her. I didn't have any expectations that the after-party we were going to would be a drunken sex orgy. There would be some couples sitting around with beers and maybe copping a feel or two in a dark corner.

I was wrong. Terry drove us to a house in one of the nicer sections of town and parked in the driveway. One thing was wrong: all the lights were out.

“It doesn't look like anybody's home,” I said as we walked toward the front door.

“They're not,” she said, putting a key in the lock. “They're in Florida. Friends of my parents. I promised to feed their cat while they're away.” And, sure enough, as she opened the door and flicked a light switch, a gray cat with a black tip on her tail appeared. Terry reached down and petted her.

I sat down on a sofa as Terry went into the kitchen and tended to the cat food. From the furniture and the art on the walls, I figured the owners were pretty well off. But not exactly my idea of a post-Prom wild party, I thought.

Terry took her time. I saw her leave the kitchen and go down a hallway. Finally she came back and stood in front of me. “Not here,” she said. She reached for my hand and pulled me to my feet. “Where are we going?” I asked.

“I thought I didn't want to go to college as a virgin and then have sex for the first time with a total stranger,” she told me.

Bump.

We went down that hallway and into a bedroom with a large king-size bed covered with a quilt. On a bureau there was a silver tray that held a bottle of champagne and a couple of stemmed glasses.

“Do you want to open the bubbly?” Terry said.

I started untwisting the wire that held the cork, slowly getting the idea, but not really believing it. My hands were sweating, I noticed. “How'd you get the champagne?” I asked.

“Opal bought it for me,” she said. She reached into a little purse and pulled out a couple of square foil packets. “She got me these too,” she said.

The cork popped out of the bottle at just that moment, and we both laughed. Kind of nervously. I didn't think she ever got nervous.

We didn't finish the bottle. A couple of glasses each was enough to get us to start pulling each other's clothes off. I managed to get the straps and zipper down on the prom dress and she stepped out of it. But the bra gave me trouble until she reached up and unfastened it. How can they do that backwards and without looking?

Anyway, I didn't stop to figure it out. I was looking down at her breasts and thinking that even though they weren't as huge as Colleen's they were so nice to see, and then I was holding them in my hands and feeling from the way the nipples got hard that Terry was enjoying this too.

We kissed for as long as we could before getting so excited that we had to go farther. I was first to get naked, turning my back to her as I got into the bed. I already had a pretty good boner and I covered myself up with the quilt. She pulled it off me. “I can wash the sheets,” she explained, “but not the quilt.”

Just as she was tossing the quilt onto a chair, I saw Caleb at the doorway.

I jumped out of bed, startling Terry, who was slipping out of her panties. I don't know what she thought I was doing, because she couldn't see him. Maybe she figured I was running away.

The closer I got to Caleb, the less visible he seemed. When I got to the door, he was gone. I shut it firmly and headed back to the bed.

As I turned around, I saw Terry lying on the bed, face up, wearing nothing but a smile. She looked a lot better naked than I had expected. Pretty damn beautiful, if you ask me. “There's no reason to shut the door,” she said. “I told you, everybody's in Florida.”

I didn't explain. I knew why Caleb was there. He still wanted to know if Terry had red hair on her pussy.

But she had shaved.

Plan ahead.

We used both the condoms. It was probably a good thing we didn't have more, because we would have stayed all night and would have had to explain why to our parents. On the way back, Terry seemed to be driving slower than usual. Maybe because of the champagne she was being cautious, but I think we had pretty much worked off the alcohol. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?” she said.