Damaged (26 page)

"Fuuuuuuuck!"

He took the broken printer off its stand and slammed it against the mantel, where it exploded. Ink sprayed everywhere. For a minute, Adam thought it was blood.

"I loved you, Erin! When I didn't want to go out with you, you cried and I felt bad. So I agreed. But when you did it to me and I cried, you didn't even care! You should have been Erica. You should have been the one who I murdered in the shower. At least she was honest to me."

Adam's knees gave out. He fell to the floor. Soon, he looked down at his hand and realized his minor abrasions. He wanted to see more blood. A lot more. Not his own.

Adam took a cab to Lowe's. He got some stuff he needed: a bigger, better flashlight with better, more powerful batteries; another roll of twine; duct tape; needle-nosed pliers… and, as he walked up the last aisle, toward the checkout lane, he stopped and found something overlooked but definitely worthwhile: large iron plumbing pipes.
All I have to do is fill them up with gunpowder, and I'll have weapons no law authority can compete with—bombs.

He grabbed two medium-sized ones and one large one, and placed them in the cart.

A moment later, he wheeled the buggy toward the last checkout lane. The cashier, a young blond goddess with eyes as clear as Palm Beach water and lips as voluptuous as Angelina Jolie's, was standing behind the register, drinking a cup of coffee. Her hair, straight and thin, was wrapped in a ponytail. But when she turned to see Adam coming her way, she quickly pulled out the band and fixed it nicely.

Her attraction to him was instantaneous. She noticed his lifeless eyes
(maybe I could make him happy
), his stiff stature
(maybe I could relieve that with a kiss)
, and his messy hair (
you should see MY hair in the morning).
There was something about him that made all the other jerks she always dealt with on a regular basis disappear.

"Hi!" she said, blinking her eyes at him.

Adam casually unloaded his items onto the counter.

"Hey, my cousin has one of these flashlights," she said. "They're really bright. You can even focus the beam, I think."

Adam never looked directly at her.
Oh, how beautiful it'll be to blow up the town.

He's a cutie. Maybe this is a guy I can take home to my mom. Who knows?

"Is this all for you today?" she asked, wanting him to look at her.

But he never did. She even accentuated her breasts. Her name tag looked like it was about to pop off her shirt.

"Okay, that'll be 30.31. Do you have a discount card with us?"

Adam handed her money from his dead father's wallet. There was actually trace amounts of his blood still on it.

"Out of fifty," she said, taking the crisp fifty and hitting some buttons.

Why won't he look at me?

Why does she have to be so fucking cheery?

He hasn't looked at me once.

What's her problem? Shit, maybe she knows. Maybe it's a trap.

Just look up. It's okay. God, I wish he would at least say something.

Maybe she needs to die, too.

Why are all the nice-looking guys never interested?

I can make you scream in pain, bitch. Don't get close to me. Don't smile. You hate me.

I like him.

"Here is your change. Thank you," she said, blinking her eyes at him and parting her mouth.

Adam took his goods and walked toward the exit, not even giving a first glance to the girl who might have made him happy. She watched him as he went, disappointed and a little hurt.

Another customer approached. She put her hair back into a pony tail and went back to work.

Was that dumb slut actually attracted to me?
Adam
thought as he sat down in the cab and closed the door
. Impossible. Cannot happen. I don't believe it. I will not believe it. Thank you, Erin, Erica, and all you Blake High bitches, for ruining my love life.

Look at what you made me into!

You created me; now I will destroy you.

Before he went home, Adam had the cab driver make another stop: Berik's Gun Shop. He knew he was not old enough to buy gunpowder, but he paid the driver a hundred bucks to get him two pounds of top-grade low explosives. And the driver, a lonely, dirty, bald man who kept complaining about George W. Bush the whole way, actually bought it for him. No questions asked.

***

A knock on the McNicols’ front door.

A cab halting at a red light.

The door opening and Chris shouting, "Hey, Adam, you home? Hello?"

The cab still stopped at a red light.

Chris darting upstairs and entering Adam's room. Nobody’s inside. However, the computer's on and Chris wants to get online.

Adam looking out the side window at the gloomy sky.

Chris clicking the mouse. Damaged, Adam's manifesto, comes up.

The cab stopping at a stop sign.

The horrible information seeping into Chris’s unbelieving brain as he reads the current what Adam may have done.

Rain starting to pelt the windshield as the driver complains more about George W.

Chris freaking out. He doesn't believe it, but he needs proof. He finds it in the basement—the lonely jar of Chloroform.

The cab pulling up to the curb…

Adam paid, got out, and walked up the porch steps. He entered, set his stuff down in the hallway, took off his coat, and entered the living room. Chris was sitting on the couch, holding the Chloroform, a floppy disk, and a blood-stained piece of twine. Adam had never seen his best friend look so surprised. Chris had never seen his best friend look so horrified.

"Don't tell me it was you."

"Chris, what are you doing here?"

"I was supposed to stay the night here, remember? We were supposed to hang out. Maybe you were going to fuckin’ kill me or something like that?"

Adam looked down and shook his head. "You go through my stuff, invade
my
privacy?"

"Privacy? Privacy? I stumbled upon it, and I'm glad I did. What were you going to do to me tonight? Burn me? Torture me with a drill? Saw my stomach open with your saw like on this disk?"

"Fuck no. You're my best friend."

"Oh, am I?"

“You are and you know it. You know how those fuck-ups treated me."

"Tell me it isn't you, Adam. Just tell me it's not." Chris swallowed hard, eyes watering. "Cause if it's not—"

"Then you'll know I'm lying. It was me. I did what I did and it felt good, man."

"You didn't kill three of our classmates, Adam. You couldn't have. You just made up this weird story just because you hated them, and this bottle of Chloroform… it was always down there in your basement, collecting dust, and this twine—tell me it wasn't you. It's not in your nature. You can't even stand up to Bain at school, let alone cut him in half. And you can't talk to Erica, let alone scald her and make her choke on razor blades?"

Adam stared at him. His expression verified Chris's questions.

"It was. Me."

Chris turned around, ran his hands through his hair, and groaned. He knew the truth but could not accept it.

"I've seen you punch holes in walls, break windows—hell, I saw you killed your printer, but I've never seen you hurt a living thing. Never. Did someone tell you to do it? Make you do it?"

"Yes."

"Well, who?"

"Erica, Pete, and Bain."

"Jesus Christ! What's wrong with you, man? Why? How? That's what I wanna know first, is how the hell you did it. No evidence? Nobody at any of the scenes except one, and they couldn't identify you, in—?"

"In Pete's basement. Pete's dad. I wore a Halloween mask. I dressed differently. I made myself look fat."

"And what? You were walking the streets late at night, whistling, knocked on their doors and said, ‘hey, you want to die?’ Or you drove to their houses and—how in the fuck did you do this? Somebody had to have seen you. You couldn't have done it alone."

"That secret passage down in my basement. It leads to everywhere in town."

Chris was suddenly quiet. It was all starting to make sense to him. Nevertheless, he still did not want to believe it. It was far too crazy. "Why, Adam? Why you? Why now?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know? Come on! What did you do? Sleepwalk and—"

"—No."

"—And decided that you felt like doing something different for a change, so you stole this Chloroform from the school lab, bored, and—"

"Nooooo! I did it because I had nothing left. All right? My mom was blowed up in an airplane, my girlfriend ripped my fucking heart out—what do you want me to say? Thanks, God, I appreciate my life? To bow down before Bain and those other two corpses and say: ‘I love what you've done to me when I didn't do jack-fucking-shit to you?’ Why should people treat me like shit when I did nothing wrong? Nothing! If I had a somewhat normal life before that really bad day I had a week ago, I wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't have even thought about it. I wasn’t picked on in school, Chris, I was fucking tortured. I did to them what they did to me. No difference. They are dead because of their actions, not because of mine. All I wanted was to be treated fairly, and since that was never going to happen, I guess I figured that I would make things fair. I'll remove everyone who is unjust. I don't care if it's wrong or against the law. Did they have the right to call me names? Black my eyes? Throw me down and laugh? It happens in every school in America. And you know what? It's not normal! Bullying is not normal. What's normal is people being kind. Nice. Anything but indifferent. You want to know why kids shoot up schools? That's why. It's not because of Marilyn Manson, or heavy metal music, or the Natural Born Killers movie… it's because society doesn't give a shit about people who have
nothing!
Well, I didn't know what else to do, Chris. My mom and Erin was all I had. I feel like the people I murdered took them both away from me. Those sick mother fuckers." Adam teared up and took a deep breath.

Chris looked, above all, empathic. He knew life had always been rough for Adam, but had no idea it was this rough. Some of his defending words even made sense… to the point that he would
not
rat his best friend out. He could not do such a thing. The thought didn't even cross his mind. More than anything, he wanted to help the lost, lonely soul crying across the room from him. He looked up to Adam. Chris thought of him as the brother he had never had.

***

"So what now?" Adam asked him. They were sitting on Adam's bed, back to back, Adam with his arms folded, Chris with his hands clasped together.

"Are you going to tell on me? Call the police? Have me killed in the electric chair?"

"Adam, I am with you all the way. I will not do that. But if you do get caught, I never found out. I had no idea."

"Of course," Adam said.

"I won't testify against you or mention a word to anybody about what I heard today. Just promise me you won't tell on me if someone does catch you."

Adam turned around. "You want to try it? With me?"

"What do you mean—hell no, I ain't killing nobody."

"Why? How do you know you won't like it?"

"No, I said. Case closed." However, Chris
was
thinking about it. There were two bullies in Blake even he wanted to see killed.

"Not just once?" Adam insisted.

"Adam, you know Ren Kohls?"

"I do."

"Well, if you ever get around to it—"

"You want me to murder him? I'll do it. Just say the word."

"No, never mind I said a thing. That's wrong." Chris stood.

"Why? What's so wrong about it? If it is soooo terribly wrong, then why did you almost have me do it for you?"

Chris lit another smoke. He had gone through ten smokes in under an hour. "It's wrong because it's against the law. You'll get life in prison. You know what that's like? Do you have any idea? On top of that, you'll probably get lethal injection. Adam, why don't you just give this up? Pretend it never happened? Throw that Chloroform away and seal up that basement door? Leave it all behind and start over?"

"From what? Start with what? I don't have anything-"

"—you have me. I may not be your mother, and I might not be that stupid girl who broke your heart, but we're best friends."

"Are you sure? Lots of people in school like you look up to you. You spend more time with others than we used to."

“I've met some new friends, so what? I fucked up a little. Give me a break. There were sometimes when you hung out with Josh more than me. You're the smartest person I know… before you went on a killing spree, and now even. I've never told as many secrets to anybody as I have to you. We were in primary school together. You remember when we put that firecracker under Mrs. Pesson's seat in fourth grade? Or the time when you laughed so hard and threw up all over the rug, and then I got sick and threw up after you?"