We sat spread out across the bleachers because we didn’t know where else to go. The sight before us was horrid. Every time you looked, you saw something new. A trail of dark splotches dribbling off into one corner. A wide smudge across the free-throw line where someone had been dragged. Maria Mendez’s beanie cap along with a hank of her shiny black hair.
Alex had fetched a bag of ice from the cafeteria for Rocky, and he pressed it to his foot, which he kept elevated on the bench beside him. The swelling was colorful and bad—the bulge above the ankle was as big as a softball.
After a time Eve got up and walked over to the storage room. She dug a mop and bucket from the mess. Somehow the rolling bucket had stayed upright.
She wheeled it over to the edge of the basketball court. Slapped the wet mop onto the floorboards. Started scrubbing. We watched her. After a while it was clear that she was just smearing blood around.
It was no use.
But she kept on, her motions growing more and more furious.
I got off the bleachers and walked over to her. I touched her arm, and she swung away from me angrily and kept scrubbing.
Her breaths came fast and hard. She slopped the mop around so fiercely that it was like she was trying to dig through the floorboards.
I stepped around in front of her. I took her arm more gently. This time she let me. I pried the mop handle from her grip.
She sat on the floor and wept.
I sat with her and took her in my arms, and she sobbed like I’d never heard a person sob. An awful, torn-open, animal wail. She wasn’t even worrying about staying quiet.
She couldn’t.
* * *
Six cots.
We’d cleared space on the center circle of the basketball court. Our cots radiated out from the middle like the petals of a flower.
A breeze poured through the shattered casement windows. We lay there, staring up at the sports banners fluttering overhead.
I held my baling hooks crossed over my chest.
Alex twirled her hockey stick.
Patrick kept his shotgun alongside him—so still you might’ve thought he was inside a coffin waiting to be lowered into the ground.
Eve’s breathing still hitched in her chest at intervals, the aftermath of her crying jag.
JoJo hugged Bunny.
Rocky kept the bag of ice wrapped around his ankle. He plucked out a strand of his hair and then another.
We listened to the deep, endless black of night.