He picks up the phone on his side of the window. He stares at me. I’m frozen. I can’t look away.
* * *
—
I want to die.
* * *
—
Why won’t anyone help me? Why am I alone?
I’m in the closet and the gunshots have stopped and there’s an eerie silence, a silence that’s thick and black, and I’m wrapped in a ball on the ground, my arms wrapped tight around my legs, and it’s all I can do to keep my voice inside my body, but I can’t let it out because then whatever is out there will come for me. And I have to be silent and I have to be quiet and my throat is raw from holding it all in; my entire body aches from holding it all in. And then the door slowly swings open and light pours in and it seems so wrong to see light again. I should be forced to live here in this blackness, in this silence, forever, since I stayed in here and left them all out there with that gun. All of them.
* * *
—
Jordan.
* * *
—
And then I’m screaming his name and I only stop because a face pokes into the closet and for this awful, heart-wrenching second, I think it’s him—it’s Jordan—but then I see that it’s David Ecchles, who I tutored, who asked me out on dates, who I saw in the hallways, and it takes me a second to put it together: David Ecchles is the boy with the gun and the boy with the gun is David Ecchles, and then the scream I’ve been holding in my throat rips free and it’s loud and it hurts and I’m pretty sure it slices my skin deep, so deep that I’m bleeding straight into my guts.
And then he smiles this horrible, toothy smile, and says, “Hey, May. You look pretty today,” and shuts the door again.
And I scream and I scream and I scream and I scream and I scream.
* * *
—
He’s wearing that same smile now.
A scream builds in my throat, but I can’t let it out. They’ll kick me out of here, and I’ve made it this far. I have to get what I came for. On the other side of the window, David Ecchles motions for me to pick up the phone. My hands are shaking violently in my lap, and I ball them into tight fists and finally they still enough for me to reach out and grab the phone.
“Hello, May.”
He leans forward in his seat and puts his palm against the Plexiglas between us. His eyes are glassy; the whites are yellowed from lack of sun. They look reptilian in the fluorescent light. I lurch back, almost fall off my stool.
“I didn’t think you’d come. No one ever comes to see me.”
I’m silent. My throat is dry. My brain and my body disconnect. I’m still breathing, my heart’s still beating, but I’m not really here.
“You’re my first visitor, did you know that? My parents and my sister won’t even take my calls. I think they hate me.” His voice catches. The sick feeling in my stomach expands. He doesn’t deserve to be upset. He doesn’t deserve to have feelings.
The partitions on either side of me narrow my view. He’s the only thing I can see.
I swallow. My head aches. I grip the cold phone and force my mouth open, force air down my throat.
“Ple-ease.” My voice breaks on the word. What a dumb word. What a dumb asshole I am for having said that word. To him. My body shakes. I clear my throat. “I’m here because of your letters. That’s the only reason.” I’m pitiful. Light glares from the ceiling; my armpits sweat through my shirt. My stomach lurches. “In your letters. You said you had something to tell me. About Jordan. You said he told you something, that day.”