“YOU DON’T MEAN THAT,” Frankie said, staring at her. Just over an hour ago, Cas would never have dreamed that Frankie Ochoa would look at her with such intense concern. Only he was wrong, because she meant every word. She still remembered the way the gun felt in her hands.
The metal had been cool. The weight almost comforting in the promise that the gun could do what nothing else had been able to. Make it all go away.
She wanted to look away, but instead she forced herself to meet Frankie’s eyes. “I shouldn’t. I know I should feel lucky to be alive, but as much as I want to, I don’t. Not entirely.”
“Yeah,” Z said quietly. “Me too. It’s hard to feel lucky to be alive when you still might die and you’re not sure if living is any better.” Z looked over at the girl who hadn’t opened her eyes in far too long. Kaitlin was quiet. Still. “If it weren’t for Kaitlin, I might have run toward the explosion. And even then, I still thought about it.”
“So you’re a coward.” Diana looked at him as if daring him to fight. When he didn’t, she added, “Killing yourself is taking the easy way out. That’s what cowards do.”
“Anything that permanent seems like a pretty hard choice to me,” Frankie said. “That’s probably why I’ve never considered doing it.”
Of course he didn’t understand. He was talented and popular—exactly what Cas’s father wished she could be.
“Never?” Z turned to Frankie. “Not once?”
“No. Of course not.” Frankie crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t like feeling depressed. I work my way out of it.”
“Depression isn’t like root beer. It’s not as if you either like it or you don’t.” Z shook his head. “Sometimes you feel the world caving in piece by piece, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone who gives a damn that you’re slowly being crushed. You’re telling me your life is so perfect that you’ve never felt that way?”
Falling apart, piece by little piece. Yes. That was exactly how she felt. Each day another pebble chipped off—almost too insignificant to notice, until one day the rest of the rock broke away because there was nothing underneath to help it stand.
“There’s always someone around or another choice you can make,” Frankie said.
“No, there isn’t.”
Frankie turned back toward her.
“Sure, you can always turn to someone.” She swallowed hard and shook her head, wishing she hadn’t said anything but knowing she couldn’t stop now. “But that doesn’t always mean they can help. It’s hard for someone to help when they think the person standing in front of them is weak and broken and needs to have their life taken over.”
“Anyone who is thinking about committing suicide is weak, and when you tell someone you are thinking about killing yourself, you most certainly are broken,” Diana said.
“Most really broken people don’t know they are broken,” Rashid said.
Cas turned to look at the guy who had been working quietly on the floor. He was so unassuming, it was easy to forget he was there. The guy was a real hero. He’d saved Kaitlin’s life and was helping to get them out of there. By any definition, Rashid was a leader. He should be the center of attention. And yet Cas thought of Frankie as the leader, and maybe even Z, because of how they pushed themselves forward.
Rashid met Cas’s eyes with a steady gaze, “Those who are the most damaged don’t ever admit they need help. It takes strength to admit that you want something to change, and it takes even more courage and strength to try to change it.”
“But what if you’ve tried to change things and nothing is different?” Cas wrapped her good arm around herself.
“Then you try something else. Isn’t that why we’re all in this room together right now?” Rashid said. “We could have stayed where we were when the bombs went off and given up. Instead we’re still working to get out. We’re building a stretcher that we don’t know will work and making ropes that could give way beneath us. But we’re doing it anyway because fighting to live is hard. It’s supposed to be. Giving up is the easy part.”
“How do you know?” The hollowness inside Cas threated to overwhelm her. “Have you ever woken up in the morning and the idea of getting out of bed made you want to scream and never stop screaming? Have you ever had your parents pretend to reward you by taking you shopping for clothes they think will make you more popular because to them that’s going to make it all better, or had your father take you to a shrink who tells you that you want to be unhappy and that you are imagining all of your problems?”
“Maybe your shrink is right,” Diana said. “Could it be you’re making problems bigger than they are because you want people to pay attention to you. Sometimes the only way to get people to pay attention is to force them to—”
“You think I’m making problems bigger than they are?” Cas pressed a shaky hand to her stomach. “Maybe I wanted attention so bad that I let one girl slam me into a locker and then push me to the ground. Maybe I even wanted two of her friends to hold me down while she kicked me in the chest and the stomach and told the others to help her. Maybe it’s my fault I can’t remember what happened after that because she kicked me so hard, I hit the back of my head against the floor and blacked out.”
Cas remembered waking up in fear. Fear of the sadness in her mother’s eyes as she told Cas she was going to be okay and fear of the way her father screamed at anyone who would listen about how he wouldn’t take what happened to his daughter lying down. He wanted people arrested. He was going to sue, because his daughter was going to be scarred for life. People were going to pay.
Frankie walked over to her. He put his arm around her shoulder, and tears sprang to her eyes. “You lost a lot of blood, Cas,” Frankie said quietly to her. “You should sit down and rest.”
“I don’t want to sit down.” Cas shook off his arm. She didn’t want to be pathetic. She didn’t want to be the one who was so weak that people naturally assumed she needed their protection. “I’m tired of people telling me to take it easy or to let things go because I’m just creating drama to get attention.” She looked at Diana, standing not far from the window. Cas swiped at a tear and swallowed down the others burning her throat and asked, “Was it okay for a girl and her friends to hate me because I wasn’t part of their crowd and I didn’t dress like them? Or how about you tell me exactly how it was my fault that the most popular girl in school decided that I was the person anonymously posting pictures of her boyfriend and suggesting he should break up with her?”
Diana never looked away, and she didn’t speak. She just stood there—still as a stone, like everyone else in the room. Cas stood just as still, even though everything inside was racing.
For a second, the only sounds in the room were the muted shouting coming from the rescue workers outside, the chopping sound of a helicopter, and the siding-company commercial playing on the radio station.
“You were bullied.” Tad finally broke the silence.
“Bullied.” Bitter laughter bubbled through the tears. “God, I hate that word.”
“. . . path through the field house after a fifth device was uncovered and disarmed and removed. Officials . . . believe there is . . . another device, which is why they are . . . additional precautions to ensure . . . as . . . fire . . .”
Tad clicked off the radio. “The batteries are dying. We can turn it back on in a few minutes, once we’re ready to try out the stretcher and the ropes.”
Because then they’d need to know if it was necessary to risk their lives on a two-story drop. If there was another bomb in the building, Cas knew the answer would be yes. And then what would happen to her?
“Why don’t you like the word?” Frankie asked quietly.
“Why?” Cas blinked and looked at the guy who had helped her get this far. A high school god—someone who would never understand what it was like to look in the mirror and wish that you were completely different. “Bullied is too easy a word. My father uses that word all the time. So does my shrink.”
“I still don’t get what the problem is,” Frankie said. “It’s just a word.”
Cas winced as she shifted her injured arm and was glad for the pain, because it was better to focus on that than on the ache growing in her heart. “Have you ever been bullied?”
It was a dumb question, because he was the football captain. He was popular. If anything, he was probably the one who did the bullying.
But he surprised her by saying, “Yeah.”
“How?”
“How?”
“How were you bullied?” she asked. “What happened to you?”
Frankie shoved his hands in the pockets of his shorts and shrugged. “Usual sports stuff. Someone put mayonnaise in my helmet and spray starch in my jockstrap. That kind of thing.”
“How about you?” Cas asked, turning toward Tad. “Have you been bullied?”
“I’ve had guys bigger than me shove me in the halls and say stupid crap online to me. It’s the way things go. Everyone goes through it.”
“Has everyone been beaten up while other kids videoed what was happening and posted it online instead of going to get help?” Sweat trickled down her cheek. The memory played over and over in her head. “Has everyone had to change schools because once you went back, the same people who broke your ribs were threatening to do the same thing to anyone who was your friend so any friends you had suddenly found new places in the lunchroom to sit and new people to walk home with? Have you been beaten so badly you felt like you were going to die, only to realize how much easier life would have been if you had?”
She held her breath. Her heart pounded harder with every second that passed as she stood there—waiting. For Frankie . . . for Tad or Rashid or Diana or Z to say something.
Sympathy.
Outrage.
Comfort.
Something.
The sound of a helicopter came closer and then faded.
A siren sounded outside, then went silent.
Someone on a bullhorn shouted something that was impossible to understand.
And no one inside the room said a word as Cas waited, understanding their discomfort and hating them for it at the same time.
When it was clear that no one was going to speak, she nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
“You’re right,” Rashid said. “Bullying is an easy word, and I feel like I should say something to make it better. But I don’t know what.”
“Neither do I,” Tad said.
Cas blinked. Tears welled up, and she shook her head to ward them off. “It doesn’t matter.”
“If it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t have tried to kill yourself,” Z said. “Unless you were just saying that to get attention.”
“Leave her alone.” Frankie stepped closer to Cas.
“She doesn’t want to be left alone.” Z barked a bitter laugh. “If she did, she’d be standing in the corner like Diana over there, pretending none of us exist, instead of letting you all know that for a lot of people, life isn’t about football games and parties and making out in your basement, hoping your parents don’t come down and catch you. Life sucks, and there aren’t any words anyone can ever say that will make that better for me or Cas or the majority of people who don’t have parents who think their crap smells like roses.” Z pushed the desk next to him and strode to the window. “This all sucks.” He hung out the window and yelled, “Do you hear me? If you’re going to blow this place up, go ahead and do it now, because we’re never getting out!”
“You don’t mean that,” Rashid said, looking over at Kaitlin, who trembled in her sleep. At least Cas wanted to think she was sleeping. Kaitlin could be in a coma at this point. How would any of them know?
“Don’t I?” Z looked over his shoulder. “Life is crap, and no one in this building ever gave one damn what was happening in my life until my mother was dead. Who cares about the guy who looks like a screwup and cuts summer school because his mother might die any day and he didn’t want her to die alone? Nah. Just send the mother who the school was told died a letter telling her that her son is going to have to repeat junior year because he didn’t finish precalc. Is it any wonder I came to this place to let Mr. Casey know how much I appreciated his concern for my well-being? Kaitlin thought if I just talked to him, he’d understand how bad things were, but I know words don’t do squat.”
“He’s right,” Cas said, stepping toward Z. “Words don’t make anything better. They’re just the first step, and most people don’t bother to follow through with the others. Words are easy.”
“Yes.” Tad nodded. He pushed up the sleeves of his dirty tux shirt, looked at Frankie, and said, “Yeah. They are.”