Let’s just blow past the last thing I wrote for a minute. And while we’re at it, I see no reason to devote any time to my family vacation (we went to Hawaii) or my Christmas gifts (they got me the deep fryer I wanted). I got Maya a life vest and swimming lessons. She handwrote all of her grandmother’s Filipino recipes and gave them to me in a leather-bound book. Yes, of course I missed her while I was gone.
But none of that matters, because while I was gone, twenty kids and six adults were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
Around the world, this happens fairly regularly. People drop like flies by the thousands, and usually no one cares. No one here cares, anyway. Before you make that face, take a minute to acknowledge that I am right. Because, honestly, who cares about a bunch of dead people you don’t know? Nobody. Unless they’re kids. Then we care, because that sucks.
Mom and Paul didn’t tell me about the secret meeting they’d had with the school after it happened. I wouldn’t have even known about it if I hadn’t been looking at my mom’s phone.
In this case, the school knew someone they could be afraid of. They knew someone they could blame if the danger were present. The head of the school board (Ian’s dad) planned the meeting quickly after the shooting, because he needed to make sure no one else had to be notified, for legal reasons. And it was hard to do with Christmas only a few days away. Other parents wouldn’t want their kids going to school with someone like me. Someone with the potential to lose control. Most people wouldn’t even bother to research my condition or ask about my medication. They’d go straight to panic. I can’t say I blame them.
Even though it happened on the other side of the country, I immediately knew what it would mean for me.
He was one of us.
And an honors student. He even went to Catholic school for a little while.
Eerily enough, we even have the same first name. Adam.
Even if all those things weren’t true, there was no way the school would not want to talk with my mom and Paul. I knew they’d want to have a board meeting, perhaps a public inquisition to keep things Catholic.
They objected to the secrecy. They wanted someone to protest the fact that Paul had made it abundantly clear that no one at school was to know about my condition. Because then if an “incident” occurred, there would undoubtedly be the parent who screamed bloody murder because they had not been told that their child was attending school with a ticking time bomb.
Me.
This conflicts with the church’s actual teachings, though, which is highly inconvenient for them. The Bible teaches tolerance. I doubt that Jesus would have encouraged people to “out” me as a schizo. Does Let him who is without sin be the first to cast a stone ring any bells for anyone?
They don’t know much about the shooter yet. He could have planned the whole thing for months, gotten other people involved, notified the police ahead of time to bargain for something he wanted. But none of that seemed to be the case. They’re just speculating on the why. Which to me doesn’t actually mean shit.
The facts are that a twenty-year-old man shot his mother and then walked into an elementary school and opened fire on children and teachers. Just destroyed them for no reason, as if they were in the way of something.
The discussion about guns is happening again, but nobody seems too concerned about changing any laws.
Nothing changes the fact that those kids are dead, forever.
My mom is a pretty sensible person and might’ve been crying a little bit about the gruesome deaths, but mostly she was crying about me. She watched the coverage on the news, and I just knew. Because this guy had mental problems and who knows what kind of demons whispering in his ear. She was afraid for me.
There might be a witch hunt of every person with a mental illness. It would be easy to make the homeless schizophrenic community disappear. No one would notice they were gone. And then the people who talk to themselves. The poor bastards who are bipolar. Everyone with severe behavioral problems. That is Mom’s nightmare. That someday someone will come for me and she won’t be able to stop them.
When I got back to school after Christmas break, we all talked about it. The first mass was dedicated to the victims and their families. A little, terrified-looking second grader who could barely see over the lectern read the Prayers of the Faithful. She spoke in a tiny voice and said, “For the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting and their families. Lord, hear our prayer.”
When she was done speaking, there was this terrible emptiness. She was probably the same age as the kids who’d died, and I felt this overwhelming sadness that must have shown on my face, because Maya touched my hand.
Of course we had to talk about it when we got back to class. We’d have to openly discuss every detail of the event so we’d know what to do if anything like that happened here. There’s no way the nuns would let us escape a long, drawn-out safety discussion accompanied by a prayer for the victims, because why not? We pray for every other stupid thing. I can’t imagine why praying for the dead would be any less ridiculous. It was maybe half a second after the prayer that the class started talking about the shooter.
“What was wrong with him?” someone asked.
“They’re not sure. Mental problems, they think.” Sister Catherine’s eyes did the tiniest of double takes in my direction as she said it, but she turned away quickly. Rebecca was sitting on Sister Catherine’s desk at the front of the room, looking furious. If she’d been real, she would’ve thrown something at her. Then again, if she’d been real, I wouldn’t be crazy.
That was when I heard it.
“Why didn’t the fucker just kill himself if he was so miserable?”
I didn’t see who’d said it, but I heard it. It was in a stage whisper, but Sister Catherine’s head snapped up as she hissed “Who said that?” in a deadly voice. Her mouth stretched into a thin line as she glared out at the class.
No one moved. No one said a word. The phrase just hung in the air above us.
Why didn’t the fucker just kill himself?
And for a second, I was angry because whoever had said it has no idea what it’s like to lose control. They don’t know what it’s like to be haunted by your own mind. They don’t understand the mad desire to make the voices stop even if it means doing what they tell you to. But I had to stop myself because I realized my reaction was in sympathy of the killer, and I didn’t want it to be.
When the bell rang, Sister Catherine caught my attention and waved me over to her desk as quietly as possible. She waited until the class had cleared out before she spoke.
“They didn’t mean you, Adam,” she said quickly. Most of the time I can forget that the teachers know my secret, so it was odd having this discussion.
“They did,” I said. “They just don’t know they meant me.”
She shook her head. “There is no justification for anyone to take their own life. That power belongs to God alone.”