More Than Maybe - Erin Hahn Page 0,54

realizes who he’s singing for. But whoever this is meant for? They deserve to hear it. It’s called ‘Break for You.’”

And there’s my voice. Singing the song that night in my bedroom, when I’d thought I was alone. My voice, the one I don’t let anyone hear, and my song. The fucker recorded my song and posted it online. Not only that, but he’d named it. Without asking me.

And now she’ll hear it. She’ll hear it, and she’ll know.

Fuck.

20

VADA

LUKE

YouTube: Smashing Pumpkins “Disarm”

VADA

I hate hate HATE these things.

LUKE

Me too. I’m shite in an active-shooter drill. They told us to pick up “everyday items” to arm ourselves, and I grabbed a bin of protractors.

VADA

Well … those have sharp corners, at least?

LUKE

Only if you manage to throw them like boomerangs.

VADA

I’m in the “run for your lives” group.

VADA

I feel like this would be less traumatizing if we called it “Zombie Apocalypse Drill.”

VADA

Like, same protocol, but less staring at your classmates and wondering, “How good is your aim with an assault rifle?” followed by “Why is this real life?”

LUKE

This is madness, for sure.

VADA

YouTube: Gary Jules “Mad World”

The active-shooter drill interrupts my lunch hour. I sit with the same kids I’ve known since eighth grade. We aren’t super close or anything, but we’re that kind of comfortable where we know one another’s siblings’ names and remember that one time freshman year when you had that allergic reaction to Red Dye 40 and blew up like a balloon.

That kind of thing. I’ve been sitting with Ja’Kai, Cate, Laura, Heather, and Ahmed every day for years. It’s an automatic choice. All our last names start with C or D, and we’ve always been in the same homeroom and lunch.

All of this is to say, I barely think about it. I bring my lunch, I sit down at the same table, grimace as Cate sits on Ja’Kai’s lap the whole time, and share commiserating looks with Heather before Ahmed and Laura interrupt with some ongoing argument about quantum physics or bioelectrical engineering or plausible genetics or some other fake-sounding branch of science.

Today, everyone arrived on cue, and I had just pulled out my plastic Tupperware containing a cold slice of pizza and my copy of Les Misérables when the alarm sounded and announced the lockdown drill.

The weirdest part of these drills is the silence. Even though it’s only a drill, there’s this eerie energy vibrating over students filing out or hunkering down, depending on the scenario. It’s as if Principal Carlisle casts a Silencio curse over the student body. Or, more likely, the act of pretending you could be murdered at eighteen (or sixteen, or twelve, or seven) is innately damaging. There’s not a single one of us who’s not thinking morbid thoughts as we shuffle out the emergency exits and scatter to the woods behind our school toward our predesignated “safe place.”

The uncomfortable implication being that school is not the safe place.

I tuck my phone in my back pocket and rub my hands up and down my arms to warm up. I regret leaving my cardigan in my locker after last period. There’s still a chill in the breeze, and the leafless trees over our heads clack against each other.

“Uh-oh, Turton is pissed,” Ja’kai is saying in a hushed tone, tucking his hands deep into the pockets of his hooded sweatshirt, and I watch as a cute Lindsay Turton huffs past us, still carrying her salad. My stomach growls. “You’d think someone ran over her puppy or something.”

Laura perches on an overturned log, rolling her eyes as she picks the bean sprouts off her grab-and-go sandwich and readjusts the plastic container on her lap. “Seriously. Lindsay and Luke barely dated. They weren’t even going to the prom.”

I’ve never understood how the prom became this relationship-status identifier. Like, Achievement Unlocked, you have a prom date, so you obviously mean business. Until a month later, that is, when graduation rolls around and you decide to break up.

My eyes catch on a white-blond head bobbing through the masses, and it’s as if my perception shifts ever so slightly. Like when you tweak the toggle on a microscope and everything sharpens even if you didn’t realize it could get more defined. Except, instead of a slide of onion skins, it’s Luke I’m magnifying. He’s been let out of his hiding place. Kids are milling around, most pretending not to notice we can return, instead choosing sunshine and fresh air.

Hey, if you’re going to evacuate us under threat of imminent death, the least