How To Save A Life

Chapter Thirty

Luke set me up a place on the couch since I most likely wasn't going to be allowed in my room alone for a while. When Luke picked me up, he had the same stance as Tim. Calm and collected. The first thing he did when he saw me at the police station was give me a hug. He seemed more worried than disappointed at me.

"You want some hot chocolate or something?" Luke asked me when we both entered the house.

"It's the middle of May," I said and closed the door behind us.

He chuckled. "I'll get us two cokes."

I nodded and took a seat on the couch. A pillow and blanket took up one square of the couch. "You seem much more chill than mom and dad."

He grabbed two coke cans from the fridge and walked over to me, handing me a coke before sitting down beside me. "Trust me. I am not that chill."

"Mom and dad could practically be heard from the moon with how much they yelled at me."

He turned his body and looked at me in all seriousness. "What's been going on with you?"

I took a long sip of my coke before replying. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. You brought a gun to school today with the extent purpose to kill people. That doesn't sound like you."

I sighed and put my coke on the coffee table. "Then you obviously don't know me."

"I know enough to know that you would never have done this." He put his coke on the coffee table and got up, walking over to the bookshelf. I took a sip of my drink as I watched him grab what looked like a photo album. I put my coke down on the coffee table again when he walked back over and sat down. "I think you need to look at this." He opened up the photo album to the first page and pointed at a picture of when I was a baby. "You were about a month old here. It was your baptism."

"Why are you showing me this?"

"Just wait." He flipped to a page that was covered in photos of Luke and I when we were kids. "See how happy you were? You looked like you would never expect for this to happen to you."

"Blame high school."

He then flipped to a page towards the back. It was a more recent picture of Luke and I. It was taken on my eighteenth birthday. Luke and I were sitting on the front steps of the house. Luke sat on the top step and I sat on the step below him. He had his arms around my shoulders as I just smiled at the camera. I remember that day. My mom was the one taking the picture while my dad went out to pick up a cake that we would have after dinner. Luke and I looked like best friends. "This was only five and a half months ago," Luke said and looked me in the eyes. "Does this look like a murderer."

"Yes?"

Luke shook his head. "This looks like an eighteen-year-old boy who loves his family. And life." He looked back at the picture and examined it. "This does not look like an atheist who at the time was planning to commit mass murder."

"Well, people can hide a lot behind a smile."

He nodded. "True. But, it was the same with several school shootings committed by a student."

"You wouldn't understand."

He shrugged. "Maybe not. But, what I do know is that none of those students would've ever expected when they were kids that they would grow up to become murderers. You didn't either."

I crossed my arms. "Do we have to talk about this?"

He nodded. "Yes, we do." He paused for a moment before continuing. "So, about school-"

"I hate school," I cut in. "Those kids could all burn. Like I care."

"Were you being bullied that bad?"

I nodded and lifted my shirt above my stomach to reveal the most recent bruises and scars from the jocks. I pointed at a bruise. "They knocked me down in the hallway and started kicking me." I pointed at a scar on my side. "And, this one is from them throwing glass at me in the parking lot."

"You told mom and dad, right?"

I nodded. "They said boys will be boys. I stopped coming to them for help with bullies after that." I reached over and grabbed the remote off the coffee table and turned on the TV. Luke tried to grab the remote from me so he could turn it off but I kept moving away from him. The first thing to pop up on the television was a news report. An aerial shot of Kingston High School was on the screen. Luke kept trying to take the remote from me but I just told him to be quiet.

"Today at Kingston High School, two students reportedly brought guns to the school with the intention to kill many students and even teachers, according to the shooters acquaintances," The news reporter said as a camera flew slowly over the school. Students were standing outside the school, waiting for their parents to be allowed on the school grounds.

"I was in the hallway, walking back to class from the bathroom when I saw both shooters outside the glass doors of the east entrance. I thought nothing of it until they raised their guns and shot through the glass. At that moment, I ran into the nearest classroom," A student who I recognized from one of my classes said to the camera as she looked shaken up.

"The shooters have been identified by police as senior students, Colin Cortes and Matthew Taylor," The reporter soon said. "They are currently in police custody until this situation is solved."

The camera then zoomed around the outside of the school, showing the outside damage before moving onto the inside of the school to show the interior damage. We could see that swat teams were roaming the school with caution.

"You did all that?" Luke said and pointed at the screen, eyes wide.

"We have spoken with Kingston High School principle, Jeff Young who has said that the school will be closed until they can fix up all the damage caused by these two anger-driven teens," The reporter continued.

Luke grabbed the remote from me and turned off the TV. He gave me a stare that was emotionless. "Those students seem pretty scared."

I shrugged and started picking some dirt from under my fingernails. "Well, they shouldn't be."

"They have every right to be scared. I'd be pretty scared if a gun somehow made its way into my school."

I crossed my arms and leaned my back against the couch. "No one should be scared. We're all going to die someday anyway."

He sighed. "Maybe if I came home more this wouldn't have happened."

"It would've happened anyway."

He rubbed my shoulder. "It's all going to be okay."

No, it's not.