up the steps. My lungs start to burn and my heart races. At the top, the hallway forks.
Damn it, which way, where is he?!
Something tells me to hang a left. Maybe a mother’s intuition. Maybe blind, stupid luck. Either way, I listen.
There, down at the end, a growing crowd is gathering outside the boys’ bathroom. Kids and teachers. Some yelling. Some crying. All panicking.
Like I am.
“I’m his mother!” I push and shove toward the middle. “Move! Out of my way!”
I spot Alex’s legs first, splayed out limp and crooked. I see his scuffed-up Converses, the soles wrapped in duct tape, apparently some kind of fashion trend. I recognize the ratty old pair of Levi’s he wore at breakfast this morning, the ones I sewed a new patch onto last week. I can make out a colorful rolled-up comic book jutting out of the back pocket.
And then I see his right arm, outstretched on the ground. His lifeless fingers clutching a small glass pipe, its round tip charred and black.
Oh, Alex, how could you do this?
His homeroom teacher, the school nurse, and a fit youngish man I don’t recognize wearing a HHS baseball T-shirt are all hunched over his body, frantically performing CPR.
But I’m the one who’s just stopped breathing.
“No, no, no…Alex! My poor baby…”
How did this happen? How did I let it? How could I have been so blind?
My knees start to buckle. My head gets light. My vision spins. I start to lose my balance.…
“Molly, easy now, we got ya.”
I feel four sturdy hands grab me from behind: Stevie and Hank, the best big brothers a girl could ask for. As soon as I called them to say what had happened, they rushed right over to the high school. They’re my two rocks. Who I need now more than ever.
“He’s gonna be all right,” Hank whispers. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”
I know he’s just saying that—but they’re words I desperately need to hear and believe. I don’t have the strength, or the will, to respond.
I let him and Stevie hold me steady. I can’t move a muscle. Can’t take my eyes off Alex, either. He looks so thin, so weak. So young. So vulnerable. His skin pale as Xerox paper. His lips flecked with frothy spittle. His eyes like sunken glass orbs.
“Who sold him that shit?!”
Stevie spins to face the crowd, spewing white-hot rage. His voice booms across the hallway. “Who did this?! Who?!”
The crowd instantly falls silent. A retired Marine, Stevie is that damn scary. Not a sound can be heard—except for the wail of an ambulance siren.
“Somebody better talk to me! Now!”
Yet no one makes a peep. No one dares to.
But no one needs to.
Because as I watch the last drops of life drain from Alex’s body, my own life changed and dimmed forever, I realize I already know the answer.
I know who killed my son.
2 minutes, 45 seconds
The old Jeep rattles slowly down the long dusty road, like a cheetah stalking its prey. A symphony of crickets fills the hot night air. A passing train whistles off in the distance. A pale sliver of moon, the only light for miles.
Gripping the steering wheel is Stevie Rourke. His eyes gaze straight ahead. A former staff sergeant in the United States Marine Corps, he’s forty-four years old, six feet six inches tall, and 249 pounds of solid muscle. A man so loyal to his friends and family, he’d rush the gates of hell for them, and wrestle the devil himself.
Hank Rourke, trim and wiry, younger by only a few years, with a similar devotion but a far shorter fuse, is sitting shotgun—and loading shells into one, too.
“We’re less than 180 seconds out,” Stevie says.
Hank grunts in understanding.
The two brothers ride in tense silence for the rest of the brief trip. No words needed. They’ve discussed their plan and know exactly what they’re going to do.
Confront the good-for-nothing son of a bitch who killed their fifteen-year-old nephew.
Stevie and Hank both loved that boy. Loved him as if he were their own son. And Alex loved them both back. Molly’s worthless drunk of a husband had taken off when the boy was just a baby. But no one had shed any tears. Not then, not since. Molly reclaimed her maiden name for her and Alex. The whole Rourke family was already living together on their big family farm, and with no children of their own, Hank and Stevie stepped right up. The void left by one lousy father was filled by