Nothing makes sense until it does and I really know exactly what I did. It tastes like swallowing ashes and it feels worse, like I’m falling off a dark cliff into icy water.
I’m screwed. I’m so screwed. If they put up with my weirdness before, that was one thing. But this?
I freaked out in front of an entire class. I busted up two of my classmates and yeah, they were jerks, they’d pushed me around before, but I didn’t even know who they were when I lashed out. They were just there.
I can never come back to school.
Not ever.
4
GWEN
My son is injured, and I don’t know how bad it is. I barely remember the drive; everything’s a gray blur until I see the hospital. Norton General is a boxy three-story brick structure that dates back to the 1950s, at least. It’s the only thing that’s in focus for me. I pull into the parking lot for the emergency room and suddenly I’m inside without remembering the run, or even whether I closed the door and locked the SUV. I probably did. Muscle memory is smarter than I am right now. My heart is pounding like I ran all the way from Stillhouse Lake.
The nurse on duty at the desk looks up at me. I can tell from her expression that she knows just who I am: the serial killer’s ex, the stain on the good name of the town. Pursed lips, raised eyebrows, cool judgmental stare.
“Connor Proctor,” I manage to say. “I’m his mother.”
“Room four,” she says. I don’t ask how he is. I shove through the double doors and look at room numbers. In the first two there are other kids, each with family present. Room three holds a sweet little old lady who’s whimpering in pain as a nurse takes blood.
My son is in the room across the hall from her. Relief douses me like an ice bath, because he’s okay, conscious, alive. He’s half-reclined in a hospital bed and holding an ice pack to his swollen face. When he pulls it away to look at me, I wince. Both eyes and his nose are going to be vividly black and blue. One cheek is red and puffy. I force myself to slow down, calm down, and I walk over to his bedside and take his free hand. His knuckles are bruised and cut. He smells of Betadine and blood and sweat. He’s still in the clothes he wore to school, but his sweater is now a total wreck.
“Sorry,” he mumbles. He looks away but he doesn’t move his hand. I place a gentle palm on his forehead. He feels warm, but it’s the warmth of someone whose adrenaline is still running at peak volume. He’ll cool down, probably too fast. When that happens he’ll need a blanket.
“What happened?” I ask him. I feel better now. Yes, my son has been beaten up. Yes, it makes me want to rip the skin off the two boys down the hall. But he’s conscious, he’s alive, he’s talking. “I’m not angry, Connor.”
“You’re going to be.”
That sounds . . . ominous. “Your teacher said there was a fight?”
He turns and looks right at me this time. I see something awful in his swollen eyes. “Not really a fight,” he says. “It was my fault. It was just—the noise. There were gunshots, Mom. And screaming.”
I go cold. “There was a shooting at your school?”
He’s already shaking his head and wincing at the pain that must cause. “No, there wasn’t. It was . . . they played a recording of gunshots and screaming. Over the speakers. To make it more real.”
“They what?” I’m stunned. At first I’m appalled, physically flinching with revulsion that they would do that to kids. Then I get angry, so angry it eats into my bones and sets my marrow on fire. I was uncomfortable enough with the active shooter events without the mental trauma he’s describing. It’s bad enough they have to be drilled in how to react to danger, but I understand that, given the world around them. But terrifying them deliberately? Some very misguided jackass probably thought it would toughen them up. It won’t. They’re not volunteers in an army. They’re not someone like me who’s chosen to run toward danger. They’re just kids, traumatized kids trying not to live their lives in terror.
I hug my son. I hug him so fiercely. He’s trembling.
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I just—I don’t know what happened. I just couldn’t let them touch me.”
Of course he couldn’t. My son is tough, but he’s also cracked by his father’s crimes and the terror constantly stalking us. Multiple times he’s been in danger of being killed. All that trauma hasn’t made him immune; it can’t, not at his age. But it has made him violently self-protective, and that means that anyone who comes at him in those circumstances will be seen and treated as a serious threat.
Even classmates.
I can’t fix this. It’s going to take even more time and even more therapy and most definitely more patience, making him aware of exactly what’s going on inside his very complicated head. My son is hardwired by his parentage and trauma to survive. Finding ways to moderate those instincts is going to be a long, difficult process.
I just hold his hand and watch him fight tears and hate myself in an ever-increasing spiral. I should have seen this coming. He’s been acting more and more off around days when these active shooter drills—six a year, now—are scheduled. It was my job to understand, but I completely misread the signs.
I remember telling him, with so much confidence, that I knew how he felt. I didn’t. I don’t. At his age, I was a sheltered, protected little girl for whom danger was an abstract concept, and the idea of being killed nothing but fiction. I can’t really understand what this is like for him; handling it as an adult is far different from handling it at thirteen. I should have known that.
My self-loathing is interrupted by a woman’s harsh voice. “There’s that little bastard.”
I turn to look, and in the doorway there’s a rail-thin woman with frizzy, dark hair and big blue eyes that look baleful with anger. She’s pointing at my son. I stand up, instinctively shielding him.
There’s a big man beside her. He’s older, grayer, with a boxer’s flattened nose. Heavy but powerful. He lowers his head and glares at me. I glare right back, switching it between the two of them. “What do you want?” I say, though I already know.
“That little shit broke my son’s jaw!” the mom says. “They have to wire his mouth shut! Your damn kid went crazy, and my son was just trying to help. You’re going to pay for my kid’s medical, bitch!”
I want to get in her face but that isn’t going to help. And she’s right. “Okay,” I say, and wince at what paying for medical care is going to cost. “I’ll do that. But this wasn’t Connor’s fault—”
“No, it’s your fault he’s so crazy. You and his murderer father! That bad apple ain’t gone far from the tree.”
My first impulse is to attack. I’m not very much different from my son in the way I’ve fractured inside under the stress. But I’ve got more experience. I can stop myself. I keep my voice calm as I say, “It might be my fault, but it isn’t my son’s. Don’t blame him.”
“Bitch, I’ll blame whoever I want, and I’ll sue you for everything you got! Henry was just trying to get your kid to do what the teacher said!”