I reached forward and turned on the radio, trying to drown out the Death Drum in my head, but even blasting one of my mom’s old Nirvana CDs couldn’t overpower the intrusive thoughts.
I should be clear: It’s not that Iwantto die. Those aren’t the kind of thoughts I have to fight. The opposite, actually. Even on a good day, there’s this quiet anxiety, bubbling just under the surface, reminding me that with every second that passes, I inch closer to the end of my own existence. Reminding me that I have no control over when or where or how I will die.
On bad days, like every anniversary, that bubbling boils over.
Every turn I made, I imagined another vehicle speeding toward us in the wrong lane. Every bridge we crossed, I imagined collapsing and plunging the three of us to our watery graves. When we stopped at a gas station to fill the tank, I found myself repeatedly checking over my shoulder, convinced someone would approach me or the cashier inside with a weapon. And when some guy pulled up in a Chevy and slammed his car door, I nearly jumped out of my skin.
I saw deatheverywhere.
So we drove out to the middle of nowhere. Down a dirt road and back into some woods about an hour outside of Virgil County. It was a place we’d found two years ago with Eden. That first year, we’d all piled into her mom’s van and driven until we found a spot where no one would look for us. We’d been back every year since, with a few scattered visits here and there when things got too rough. Ashley had come with us a few times, too—before her daughter, Miriam, was born. Now she had a family, and Eden was off at college. It was just Miles, Denny, and me.
I drove slowly. The road is so rarely used that it’s nearly grown over, and that day, it was scattered with branches that had fallen during the last big storm. The truck bounced over thick roots until, finally, we reached our spot, deep in the trees. I knew we were in the right place because on our first trip here Miles had carved a large “6” into one of the tree trunks.
Though only five have ever been to this place.
I cut the engine and we climbed out. The air was chilly. A typical midwestern March. You could see the promise of spring beginning to bloom, but the biting breeze wasn’t quite ready to let us go. Still, we piled into the bed of the truck, sitting on the tailgate.
Denny took off Glitter’s harness. “Let me know if she goes off too far, okay?” he said as the dog started walking around in the grass, her nose pressed to the ground.
“Sure,” I said.
For a while, we didn’t say anything. Just sat there, listening to the sounds of the woods, watching the yellow dog roam through the trees, on the trail of some mystery scent. We’ve all learned how to sit in silence with one another. The quiet, at least when we are together, is safe. Even when we did start to speak, we kept our voices soft.
“Three years.” Denny let the words out with a sigh.
“Yep,” Miles said.
I was thinking about our text messages from earlier. About that missing name. I thought about it a lot. About how we should’ve been six instead of five.
About Kellie Gaynor.
I guarantee you don’t recognize her name. It hardly ever got mentioned outside of Virgil County. But she was the other girl in the bathroom with Sarah and me. I hadn’t seen her in years.
Every time I wanted to say something about her, the questions got lodged somewhere in my chest, pushed down by the weight of guilt. I wanted to ask then. To find out if Miles or Denny had heard from her. If they ever thought about her or if it was just me.
I even managed to open my mouth, to suck in a breath. It was a quiet sound, but Miles heard it. Or maybe he could just feel it. Sometimes it seems like he can sense things about me. Like he’s aware of my every move, breath, blink, and he knows what each of them means. Honestly, it’s both comforting and startling. And the way he looked at me then, like he was ready to hang on to my every word, made my heart stop for a second. His sleepy eyes made me forget what I was going to say.
Denny, who was sitting on my other side, hadn’t noticed.
“You know,” he said, readjusting the dark sunglasses he wore. “No one will remember the shooting once we graduate.”
“What?” I asked, glad to look away from Miles for a second. Though I could still feel him watching me. “Of course they will. Everyone remembers.”
“No, I mean … No one who was actually there, who remembers what happened, will be there after we’re gone. We’re the last class. The last survivors. Once we’re gone, everyone at VCHS will only know what they heard or saw on TV. It’ll just be a story to them.”
I sat there for a minute, letting this sink in. I’m not sure why, but it had never crossed my mind before. He was right, though. In a couple months, the three of us would graduate. We’d been in the freshman class when it happened and soon we’d be gone, and the only students at Virgil County High would be the ones who had heard stories, the ones told over and over in our town, on the news, at church. Students who know just as much about the massacre as …
Well, as you.
And there is so much that you—and they—don’t know. So many stories that had gotten mixed up, confused, or misrepresented. Even I didn’t know how much at the time.
“Huh,” Miles said. “I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or bad thing.”
“Me neither,” Denny agreed.
ButIknew. Because the thought of us leaving that school and our stories leaving with us, of really and truly letting those halls be filled with the twisted versions of what happened that day, it made me feel sick.
Miles put a hand on my shoulder. “Lee, you okay? You look a little … You all right?”
