I’m not sure anything could have helped my mother, spiraling into depression even before the shooting, drifting from us as our father drifted from their marriage.
Mae continued, “You’re going to come home, and you’re going to look people in the eye and lift your chin and say, ‘I’m sorry for what my brother did, but it has nothing to do with me.’”
Fine words. Strong, sensible words. But Mae was only the aunt of a school shooter, and while I’m sure she got her share of whispers and glares, I bet no one said they thought she should be sterilized so she didn’t pass on her tainted genes.
When I walk into the baggage claim, she’s there, looking as if she’s stepped off a magazine cover. Mae runs her own firm, one of those vaguely named businesses conducted in hushed offices full of very busy people. She’s never married. She’s had one live-in girlfriend, but it didn’t last long. I’m her only niece. Luka was her only nephew.
When Mae sees me, she smiles and calls, “Skye!” as she strides over and envelops me in a hug that smells of cherry blossoms. “Welcome home.”
I want to say this isn’t my home anymore, and I’m certainly not welcome here. But I’m too busy cringing as my name rings through the tiny terminal. People look over. I tell myself it means nothing. Skye is only a moderately unusual name, and I’m even less unusual-looking – straight dark-blond hair in a ponytail, average height, average build. Stick me in any high school classroom and at least two girls could pass for my sisters. It’s that kind of look.
We’re waiting for my luggage. Mae’s talking to me, and all I can hear is her appending my name to every sentence, as if she needs to remind herself who she’s talking to. Each time she says it, I swear more people look over. I tell myself I’m being paranoid. Then a college-age girl whispers to her mother, whose gaze swings on me.
I’m imagining things.
Except I’m probably not. The shooting at North Hampton hit front pages across the country. While that may have faded elsewhere, the people here will not have forgotten. They will not have forgiven.
We have my luggage, and we’re heading out and that mother’s gaze is glued to me, her face gathered in that look I know well, the one that asks what right I have to be walking around like a normal teenage girl.
“I thought we’d eat at Frenchy’s,” Mae says as we walk out. “I remember how much you guys loved that place.”
You guys. She means me and Luka. He hated Frenchy’s almost as much as Mae did. Greasy food served halfheartedly, as if by a mother who’s really tired of cooking for her ungrateful offspring. Luka never let on how much he hated it because I loved it, and that’s the kind of brother he was. The kind of person he was. Except he wasn’t, was he?
I used to have nightmares where Luka wasn’t involved in the shooting. Where they investigate again and discover it was all a mistake. Those were wonderful dreams… until I woke and remembered that wasn’t how it happened, and the recollection would twist them into nightmare.
I want to say that whatever happened that day, Luka would never have fired a gun. Not the guy who wouldn’t go hunting with our dad, couldn’t even stomach shooting lessons. I’d taken those lessons instead, so our father would leave him alone.
A guy like that couldn’t be part of a school shooting.
But if I even think this, I’m making excuses. Refusing to face reality. Downplaying Luka’s role. Disrespecting the dead.
But he is one of the dead. No one ever says that, though. The North Hampton shooting claimed the life of four kids – four real victims. My dead brother exists in another place, beyond where I can speak to him, speak for him, mourn him. He’s just gone.
“I don’t really feel like Frenchy’s,” I say as Mae waits for an answer.
Relief floods her face. “All right. Well, if you still like burgers, I know a little shop that does gourmet.”
“Can we just pick something up? I’d rather not go out.”
There’s a heartbeat of silence, and in it, I hear disappointment. I am not the girl she hoped I’d be.
Maybe I should feel a surge of inner strength at that, should be shamed into saying that the burger place sounds good, and then she’ll smile and be proud of me. But I can’t form the words.
“We’ll get takeout,” she says finally, and we continue through the sliding doors.
I’m supposed to go to school the next day. I consider skipping. But it’s not like I can avoid it forever, and my pleas for a day of rest fell on deaf ears. It’s Monday, an excellent day to start, and the school is expecting me. Chin up. Get on with it.
Mae insists I take a cab. I have it drop me off a few blocks away. As I walk, I call Gran. She had a stroke two weeks ago. Last Tuesday I was at the hospital with her late into the night, and then Mom took a turn for the worse the next morning, so I faked a sick call to school. Big mistake. Child services had been hovering ever since Gran’s first stroke. When a teacher called with her concerns, they swooped. No one cared that I could take care of myself and make up my schoolwork. Which is why I’m with Mae.
Talking to Gran isn’t a two-way conversation – the stroke affected her vocal cords – but she listens. She always listens.
“Mae’s new condo is worse than the last one,” I say. “All steel and glass, and I swear she sets the temperature at sixty. It’s like a walk-in freezer.”
Gran makes this noise that I know is a laugh.
“My bedroom is white,” I say. “White with more steel and more glass. I’m telling myself it’s good practice for when I’m an astronaut.”
I’m not really going to be an astronaut. I said that when I was five, and Gran never forgot. For years, I thought it was an actual possibility, well past the stage where most kids realize it’s like saying you want to become a rock star.
I keep the joke with Gran, though I’m not sure she realizes it’s a joke. Like Mae, Gran’s one of those “you can do anything you put your mind to” people. I used to believe that. Now, when people ask what I want to be when I grow up, I want to say that just growing up seems like an accomplishment. Not everyone gets that far.
“I see the school,” I say. “I’ll let you go and call Mom before dinner.”
I put my cell phone into my backpack. There’s no reason to keep it handy. The friends I left behind were “school pals,” and I doubt I’ll hear from them again.
Sometimes I’d see kids in the corners of school cafeterias, perfectly content with their own company, and I’d wish I could be like that. For me, my own company can be noisier than a table full of football players.
I’m walking up to the school. It is not North Hampton High. NHH had already been slated to close, so after the shooting, they shut it down early. This is Riverside Collegiate, one of the two places the NHH kids ended up. One of the two places my old classmates ended up.
I wanted to go to another school, whatever the travel time. Mae thought RivCol was best – face my fears. I understand her reasoning, but there’s a point where her encouragement starts to feel like a punishment.
I have to meet my vice-principal – Mr. Vaughn – before class. I follow a few other early birds, and right inside the doors, there’s a metal detector. My heart starts thudding, and all I can think is that there were never metal detectors at schools in Riverside before. Now there is one, and it might as well have a plaque on the side: BROUGHT TO YOU BY ISAAC WICKHAM, HARLEY STEWART AND LUKA GILCHRIST.
When I stop at the detector, a girl behind me says, “What? Never seen one of those before, Skye?”
It takes a moment to recognize her. Lana Brighton. We’d been classmates since kindergarten. Lana was the kind of girl you know well enough to invite to your birthday when your mom says you can have twelve kids and you really only count eight, maybe nine, as good friends, but you want your full allotment, so you add kids who don’t get asked that often. It’s the right thing to do. I’d invited Lana to a few of those parties, and she used to sit with us sometimes at lunch.