Come Sit By Me (2 page)

AND I
DID
. There were seven framed, full-color photographs of them on the stage in the auditorium, with names under each one. Terry had brought me up to the front row, where the teachers were sitting. She introduced me to Ms. King, who seemed to be slightly annoyed. “It would have been nice if you'd consulted me before naming a managing editor,” she told Terry.

“Oh, Paul will be very useful,” Terry replied. “His father's a writer.”

Ms. King gave me a look.

“He's thinking of writing a book about the tragedy,” Terry went on, surprising me even more than Ms. King.

Terry gave me a little nudge with her elbow.

“Uh, right,” I said. “But he has to do a lot of research first. It may not work out.”

“I would be glad to be interviewed,” said Ms. King. I could tell she'd give her left boob to have somebody quote her in a book. Not that anybody would want it. She was kind of dried up and bony.

“I'll tell him you're interested,” I replied, drawing an approving look from Terry. But then I added, “Since we're going to write about the dead students, maybe you could fill me in.”

That was evidently the wrong thing to say, I could see by the way Terry's face changed. It was getting pretty hard for me to catch on to what the dynamics were.

“They were all wonderful, wonderful young people,” said Ms. King. “Top students, well-liked, and with bright futures ahead.” She was starting to tear up just thinking about them. “A great loss.”

“Why don't you write that down, Paul?” Terry said. “I've got to go over and see Dr. Haynes, the new principal.”

I thought she was being a little rude rushing off that way, but Ms. King barely noticed. She was just getting started, and I soon realized that she wasn't really telling me anything about the students who were killed. All she was doing was reciting a list of virtues that made them sound like a combination of Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa, and Princess Di.

Of course, if that was what Ms. King wanted us to write, then Terry would probably go along. It just made me a little curious to find out what the victims were really like. So I managed to unstick myself from Ms. King after a while, using the excuse that I needed to write down the names of the people who were killed.

One thing struck me right away as I looked at the pictures again: there were five students, three girls and two boys. Both of the boys were black; the girls were white. Looking around the auditorium, I could see that there weren't all that many black kids. In fact, very few. So did the fact that Cale had picked out two blacks indicate that he was a racist?

“Do you think he picked out the right ones?”

I almost jumped, and turned to see this big guy with a grin on his face.

“I'm supposed to find out about them,” I replied. “What were they like?”

“The black dudes were on the football team,” he told me. “About all they were good for. We need replacements. How fast can you do the forty?”

“Probably not fast enough,” I admitted. “How about you?”

”Five point three,” he said in a way that let me know it was a fast time. I had no idea if it was or not. “I'll be the fastest back on the team now,” he added. He gave a nod toward the pictures of the two black kids. I understood. Now that they were gone, he's the fastest. Pretty grim way to look at it, I thought.

Abruptly he stuck out his hand. “North Hawkins,” he said.

I kind of thought I didn't hear him right, but I took his hand and said, “Paul Sullivan. You said your name was North?”

“Yeah. My dad named me after a great American patriot.”

I had never heard of a patriot named North, but I didn't pursue the topic. In New York, kids had every kind of name you could think of. “What about the girls?” I asked.

“What about ‘em?”

“Well, was there any reason why Cale would want to kill them?”

He couldn't wait to tell me. “The one on the left there, Donna Hendricks, Cale asked her for sex, and she shot him down cold.”

I took a second look at the picture. “He asked her for sex? Did he have a vision problem?”

North gave a kind of loud horse laugh, and I noticed several people giving us dirty looks. You're not supposed to laugh at a memorial service. North paid no attention. “Yeah,” he said. “Sort of like starting your sex life at the bottom.”

The other two girls were considerably better looking. “How about them?” I asked. “Maybe he came on to them too?”

North shook his head. “He wouldn't have the balls,” he said. “He wasn't that crazy.”

“Did you think he was crazy?” I asked.

He gave me a look pretty much like the one Terry had given me. “He shot seven people, right?”

I nodded, looking at the pictures again. “And the two teachers? Did they give him an F, or what?”

“Only one of them was a teacher,” North told me. “The fat lady was the librarian.”

“Where'd they get this picture of her?” I asked. “Did she use it to scare people?”

“That was the way she was,” North said. “Nobody ever saw her with a smile.”

“Was Cale like a big reader?” I asked.

North shrugged. “He wrote a lot,” he said. He started to say something else, but stopped.

“What did he write?” I asked. Another writer. Lots of people scribbling at this school.

“Nobody knows,” North said. “He kept it on a computer. That was what he was always typing on. A cheap little laptop.”

“So what happened to the computer?”

He shrugged. “They found it in his room, but nothing was on it. Maybe he didn't save what he wrote. He was a retard. Probably wrote nothing but junk. But people say he may have put everything on one of those little flashdrives. You know?”

I knew. My dad backed up all his work onto a USB drive. You could hide one almost anyplace.

Like your locker.

Terry had said they cleaned Cale's out, but maybe they missed something. I made a mental note to check.

North saw somebody else he wanted to talk to and told me he'd see me around. I noticed a black kid and decided to interview him.

I walked over and said, “I'm supposed to write an article about the kids who—” I couldn't quite get the last word out. But he knew what I meant.

His eyes flashed. “And so you figured I knew Ronnie and Marcus,” he said. “Just because they were black and so am I.”

Well, that was true, but the way he put it made it sound kind of racist. “It's not that big a school,” I said weakly.

“Yeah, well, that was the way Mr. Barnes felt too,” the kid said. “That was the reason Ronnie and Marcus were in the library. I was supposed to be with them. See, Mr. Barnes, our social studies teacher, had trouble keeping order, so he would send groups of kids to the library to work on research projects. Kind of keeps his class at a smaller level, easier to manage. He sent me and Ronnie and Marcus down there together, because we were the black kids, so he figured we should work together. But really, we weren't friends. They were both jocks, football, basketball, everything. All they wanted to do was screw around. I went off to work in the lunchroom so Ms. Robbins wouldn't give me a detention for acting up.”

“Who was Ms. Robbins?”

“The librarian.” He pointed to her picture. “A real bitch. But Ronnie and Marcus knew that even if she gave them a detention, they could get the coach to let them out of it. That meant I was the one who'd be in trouble.”

I thought about that. “Yeah, but you left so…”

“Right. It saved my life,” he said. “They brought some shrinks in to counsel us after the shooting, and one of them kept reminding me of that. Like I was supposed to have lifelong guilt over it or something.”

I nodded. I realized that I might need to quote him. “What's your name?” I asked.

“Junior,” he said. “Clifford Stokes, Junior. Everybody always calls me Junior. I'm going to get into college next year and leave this burg forever, so call me whatever you like.”

“Were Ronnie and Marcus any good?” I asked. “Maybe they could have gotten athletic scholarships.”

“No doubt about it,” Junior said. “The only one on the football team close to being as good as them was North, and he just wasn't as fast as either of them. Marcus had a better arm too. He would have been the quarterback.”

“What about the other teacher who was killed?” I asked. “Who was he?”

“That was the football coach,” Junior said. “Mr. Hardin. ‘Course everybody called him Mr. Hard On.”

“What was he doing in the library?”

“The story is supposed to be that he heard the shots and decided to be a hero.” Junior nodded in the direction of the coach's picture. “I'll remember him if I'm ever tempted to be a hero.”

“Supposed to be?” I said. “Wasn't he a hero?”

“I guess the only people who really know are dead,” Junior said. “So you can believe anything you like.”

JUNIOR MOVED
OFF
, leaving me with unanswered questions. I suspected he was the kind of guy who liked to pretend to know more than he did. Anyway, I had to find somebody to tell me about the three girls who were killed. Why hadn't Terry done that? Oh, right. I was supposed to interview people. At least that gave me an excuse, so I walked up to a reasonably nice-looking girl who happened to be standing by herself. She had reddish-blond hair and a faint smile on her face. I hoped the smile wouldn't disappear when I showed up.

“Hi, I'm Paul Sullivan and I'm interviewing people for the school newspaper,” I said. Even to me, it sounded like I was talking too fast.

She gave me a look like I had spoken faster than she could understand. “What about?” she asked finally.

“Well, the kids who were killed,” I answered, making an effort to speak more slowly.

“What about them?”

Brilliant. Now she was interviewing me. I had to take control. “Whatever you thought of them,” I said. “Some memory you have. Did you know them well?”

I could see that she had trouble processing information. Three sentences in a row were two too many for her.

“I knew Sharon Craft kind of well,” she said, nodding in the direction of the pictures. “We were in Mr. Flynn's social studies class. I mean, I didn't know her well enough that we would make a point of sitting together in class or anything. I mean, her family was—is—wealthy. But we sometimes were at the same table for lunch. She liked the meat loaf, but I didn't.”

She would have said more, but I broke in. “Was she nice? Did she plan to go to college?” I shook my head, warning myself not to ask more than one question at a time.

The girl's eyes almost crossed, she was thinking so hard. “She was nice,” she said finally. “They were all nice.” She thought about that for a few seconds. “Pretty nice,” she added. I could tell that “pretty nice” wasn't quite as nice as “nice.”

“Which one was pretty nice?” I asked.

The girl hesitated even longer this time. I had to restrain myself from asking another question. My dad says the secret to interviewing is to give people time to think about their answers. It was harder than I thought.

“Donna,” she said at last.

“Donna Hendricks?”

She nodded.

“What was the matter with her?”

She shrugged and turned away. “Well, you know…I guess you don't know. Are you new?”

I nodded.

“Well, everybody heard that Donna sort of shot down…him.”

“Cale, you mean?”

She nodded slightly. Apparently she didn't want to mention Cale's name. He was like the Lord Voldemort of Hamilton High.

“He asked her for sex?” I said. I still didn't quite believe it.

She looked at me and then quickly looked away. “She told everybody.”

I thought about this. “I guess he didn't like that.” Didn't take a genius to see that. I wondered if talking to this girl was making me stupid. “What's your name?” I asked.

“Pam,” she said.

“I need your full name to quote you,” I said.

That brought an alarmed look to her face. “Don't quote me,” she said.

I nodded. I could see that. I didn't think Ms. King would be thrilled if I wrote an article saying Cale had asked a girl for sex and been turned down. Even though apparently everybody in the class already knew that.

“I'll just say you thought they were nice.”

She thought about this. Conversations with her must be pretty long. “Do you think that would be all right?” she asked.

“Seems O.K. to me,” I told her.

What about the third girl, I wondered. I read her name off her picture. “Gwen Maguire. She was nice too, right?”

Pam nodded. “Everybody liked her,” she said.

I almost said, “Not Cale,” but decided that would only make Pam more nervous. “How'd she get along with Cale?” I asked instead.

She gave me a look, like it was a dumb question. “None of the girls had anything to do with him,” she said.

“Because he asked Donna for…?” I avoided the word “sex” because it seemed to make her nervous.

“Not that,” Pam answered. “It was just that he was weird.”

I understood. I imagined being “weird” was the number one reason for getting shot down by girls—not just around here, but everywhere. Though in New York, it was a lot harder to be truly weird than it was here in Hamilton. I realized I didn't see any Goths, or people with lip and nose rings. A few people had tats, but they weren't outlandish.

“Weird how?” I asked.

“Oh…you know. He, he kept to himself.”

My face must have shown what I thought. If nobody wants anything to do with you, it's not weird to keep to yourself.

Pam tried to think. It was obviously difficult for her. “He wrote a lot,” she said, as if that explained everything.

I glanced down at the notebook I was writing in. I almost hid it behind my back.

She caught my look. “Well, I mean he wrote all the time,” she explained.

“What was he writing?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Who knows?” She waved at somebody else in the room. “Is that all?” she asked me.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said. She had given me a couple of things I could ask someone else about. As she walked away, I called after her, “I never got your last name.” But she pretended she didn't hear me. Some journalist I was. I could quote her as “Pam-Who-Refused-to-Give-Her-Last-Name.”