Forty-four hours after I heard those words, I was in the backseat of my grandmother’s car, with all the belongings I could stuff into a duffel. Anything I’d left behind, I’d never see again. We were running. Running as fast as we could, and the only reason we hadn’t left sooner was because my aunt Mae had insisted Mom stand firm. Except my mother was, at that point in her life – as at any point thereafter – barely able to stand at all.
That was three years ago.
I’m skipping those three years. I have to. The aftermath of that day… Even thinking about it makes me feel like I’m back there, caught in the eye of a tornado, hanging on for dear life.
My father is long gone. He called my mother that night to say he wasn’t coming home. That whatever happened with Luka, it was her fault. Which was exactly what she needed at that moment. Sorry, but this one’s yours, babe, I’m outta here.
When the divorce went through, he married the business partner who’d been with him on all his trips. What happened with Luka just gave him an excuse to dump us for her, and I’ll never forgive him for that.
Three years.
I can break it down from there, like a prisoner tracking time on her cell wall. I keep everything about that first month confined to its place – don’t let it out, even when it pounds at the back of my head, sometimes a dull throb I can ignore, other times a gut-twisting migraine.
One nightmare month followed by six of mere hell. A period of shame and guilt, the feeling that I’d failed Luka. Or that I’d failed to stop Luka.
There’s grief, too, but I bury that even faster. You aren’t allowed to grieve for someone like Luka. It doesn’t matter if he was an amazing brother. Luka Gilchrist was a monster. Write it on the board a hundred times and don’t ever forget it.
There’s doubt and curiosity, too, which must be doused as quickly as the grief. I want to understand what happened. I want to know how my brother – my kind and thoughtful brother – joined his friends in a school shooting.
How my brother killed four kids.
Except Luka didn’t kill four kids. He didn’t kill anyone.
No, see, that’s an excuse. You aren’t allowed to make excuses for him, Skye. He participated in a horrible tragedy, and he would have killed someone, if he hadn’t been shot by police. Making excuses for him belittles what he did and belittles the value of the lives lost.
Judgment. That’s the big one. Being judged. Sister of a school shooter.
My early curiosity led me places I shouldn’t have gone, into online news articles, where I got just enough details to give me nightmares. Then into the comments sections, which was even worse as I discovered total strangers who thought I should die for my brother’s sins and said it so offhandedly, like it was the most obvious thing. Hey, I hear one of those bastards has a sister. Maybe someone should take a gun to her school. Or maybe someone should take her and —
I won’t finish that sentence. I see the words, though. Thirteen years old, reading what some troll thinks should be done to me and wondering how that would help anything.
Then came anger and resentment and feeling like maybe, just maybe, I didn’t deserve the petition that went around my new school saying I shouldn’t be allowed to attend, for the safety of others. But on the heels of that anger and resentment I would slingshot back to shame and guilt, thinking about the kids who died and how dare I whine about whispers and snubs and having DIE, BITCH written on my locker and yes, the janitor will paint that over the next time he does repair work and no, I’m sorry, Mrs. Benassi, but there are no other lockers for your granddaughter at this time.
Six months of that. Then Gran moved us, and I registered under her surname. That blessed anonymity only lasted a few months before someone found out. Then it was homeschooling and moving again and that time the new surname worked. By then two years had passed, and when kids did find out, I lost a few friends, but otherwise, compared to those first six months, it was fine.
Now, three years later, I’m going back.
Back to Riverside, where they have definitely not forgotten who I am. Back to Riverside, where I will live two miles from my old house. Back to Riverside, where I will go to school alongside kids I grew up with.
I’m returning to the only place I ever truly called home. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
My aunt Mae picks me up. It’s a tiny airport – Riverside is a city of three hundred thousand – and I scuttle through the terminal, my head down, praying I’m not recognized, and knowing that even if I succeed, I’ve only dodged one bullet.
I have to deal with this. That’s what Mae says, just like she said to my mother three years ago.
“You did nothing wrong, Skye,” Mae insisted when I asked – no, begged – for some other solution to our predicament. “Your mother should never have left Riverside. Your gran wanted to make things easier on you two, and I get that – I really do – but it didn’t help your mom.”
I’m not sure anything could have helped my mother, spiraling into depression even before the shooting, drifting from us as our father drifted from their marriage.
Mae continued, “You’re going to come home, and you’re going to look people in the eye and lift your chin and say, ‘I’m sorry for what my brother did, but it has nothing to do with me.’”
Fine words. Strong, sensible words. But Mae was only the aunt of a school shooter, and while I’m sure she got her share of whispers and glares, I bet no one said they thought she should be sterilized so she didn’t pass on her tainted genes.
When I walk into the baggage claim, she’s there, looking as if she’s stepped off a magazine cover. Mae runs her own firm, one of those vaguely named businesses conducted in hushed offices full of very busy people. She’s never married. She’s had one live-in girlfriend, but it didn’t last long. I’m her only niece. Luka was her only nephew.
When Mae sees me, she smiles and calls, “Skye!” as she strides over and envelops me in a hug that smells of cherry blossoms. “Welcome home.”
I want to say this isn’t my home anymore, and I’m certainly not welcome here. But I’m too busy cringing as my name rings through the tiny terminal. People look over. I tell myself it means nothing. Skye is only a moderately unusual name, and I’m even less unusual-looking – straight dark-blond hair in a ponytail, average height, average build. Stick me in any high school classroom and at least two girls could pass for my sisters. It’s that kind of look.
We’re waiting for my luggage. Mae’s talking to me, and all I can hear is her appending my name to every sentence, as if she needs to remind herself who she’s talking to. Each time she says it, I swear more people look over. I tell myself I’m being paranoid. Then a college-age girl whispers to her mother, whose gaze swings on me.
I’m imagining things.
Except I’m probably not. The shooting at North Hampton hit front pages across the country. While that may have faded elsewhere, the people here will not have forgotten. They will not have forgiven.
We have my luggage, and we’re heading out and that mother’s gaze is glued to me, her face gathered in that look I know well, the one that asks what right I have to be walking around like a normal teenage girl.
“I thought we’d eat at Frenchy’s,” Mae says as we walk out. “I remember how much you guys loved that place.”
You guys. She means me and Luka. He hated Frenchy’s almost as much as Mae did. Greasy food served halfheartedly, as if by a mother who’s really tired of cooking for her ungrateful offspring. Luka never let on how much he hated it because I loved it, and that’s the kind of brother he was. The kind of person he was. Except he wasn’t, was he?
I used to have nightmares where Luka wasn’t involved in the shooting. Where they investigate again and discover it was all a mistake. Those were wonderful dreams… until I woke and remembered that wasn’t how it happened, and the recollection would twist them into nightmare.
I want to say that whatever happened that day, Luka would never have fired a gun. Not the guy who wouldn’t go hunting with our dad, couldn’t even stomach shooting lessons. I’d taken those lessons instead, so our father would leave him alone.
A guy like that couldn’t be part of a school shooting.
But if I even think this, I’m making excuses. Refusing to face reality. Downplaying Luka’s role. Disrespecting the dead.
But he is one of the dead. No one ever says that, though. The North Hampton shooting claimed the life of four kids – four real victims. My dead brother exists in another place, beyond where I can speak to him, speak for him, mourn him. He’s just gone.
“I don’t really feel like Frenchy’s,” I say as Mae waits for an answer.
Relief floods her face. “All right. Well, if you still like burgers, I know a little shop that does gourmet.”
“Can we just pick something up? I’d rather not go out.”
There’s a heartbeat of silence, and in it, I hear disappointment. I am not the girl she hoped I’d be.
Maybe I should feel a surge of inner strength at that, should be shamed into saying that the burger place sounds good, and then she’ll smile and be proud of me. But I can’t form the words.
“We’ll get takeout,” she says finally, and we continue through the sliding doors.
I’m supposed to go to school the next day. I consider skipping. But it’s not like I can avoid it forever, and my pleas for a day of rest fell on deaf ears. It’s Monday, an excellent day to start, and the school is expecting me. Chin up. Get on with it.
Mae insists I take a cab. I have it drop me off a few blocks away. As I walk, I call Gran. She had a stroke two weeks ago. Last Tuesday I was at the hospital with her late into the night, and then Mom took a turn for the worse the next morning, so I faked a sick call to school. Big mistake. Child services had been hovering ever since Gran’s first stroke. When a teacher called with her concerns, they swooped. No one cared that I could take care of myself and make up my schoolwork. Which is why I’m with Mae.
Talking to Gran isn’t a two-way conversation – the stroke affected her vocal cords – but she listens. She always listens.
“Mae’s new condo is worse than the last one,” I say. “All steel and glass, and I swear she sets the temperature at sixty. It’s like a walk-in freezer.”
Gran makes this noise that I know is a laugh.
“My bedroom is white,” I say. “White with more steel and more glass. I’m telling myself it’s good practice for when I’m an astronaut.”
I’m not really going to be an astronaut. I said that when I was five, and Gran never forgot. For years, I thought it was an actual possibility, well past the stage where most kids realize it’s like saying you want to become a rock star.
I keep the joke with Gran, though I’m not sure she realizes it’s a joke. Like Mae, Gran’s one of those “you can do anything you put your mind to” people. I used to believe that. Now, when people ask what I want to be when I grow up, I want to say that just growing up seems like an accomplishment. Not everyone gets that far.
“I see the school,” I say. “I’ll let you go and call Mom before dinner.”
I put my cell phone into my backpack. There’s no reason to keep it handy. The friends I left behind were “school pals,” and I doubt I’ll hear from them again.
Sometimes I’d see kids in the corners of school cafeterias, perfectly content with their own company, and I’d wish I could be like that. For me, my own company can be noisier than a table full of football players.
I’m walking up to the school. It is not North Hampton High. NHH had already been slated to close, so after the shooting, they shut it down early. This is Riverside Collegiate, one of the two places the NHH kids ended up. One of the two places my old classmates ended up.
I wanted to go to another school, whatever the travel time. Mae thought RivCol was best – face my fears. I understand her reasoning, but there’s a point where her encouragement starts to feel like a punishment.
I have to meet my vice-principal – Mr. Vaughn – before class. I follow a few other early birds, and right inside the doors, there’s a metal detector. My heart starts thudding, and all I can think is that there were never metal detectors at schools in Riverside before. Now there is one, and it might as well have a plaque on the side: BROUGHT TO YOU BY ISAAC WICKHAM, HARLEY STEWART AND LUKA GILCHRIST.
When I stop at the detector, a girl behind me says, “What? Never seen one of those before, Skye?”
It takes a moment to recognize her. Lana Brighton. We’d been classmates since kindergarten. Lana was the kind of girl you know well enough to invite to your birthday when your mom says you can have twelve kids and you really only count eight, maybe nine, as good friends, but you want your full allotment, so you add kids who don’t get asked that often. It’s the right thing to do. I’d invited Lana to a few of those parties, and she used to sit with us sometimes at lunch.
“Lana,” I say, hoping my voice isn’t shaking. “Good to see —”
“Just walk through the damned metal detector, Skye,” she says. “In fact, I think you should walk through it twice, to be sure we’re all safe.” She turns to the kids waiting. “For those who don’t know, this is Skye Gilchrist. Luka Gilchrist’s sister.”
Blood pounds in my ears and my vision clouds, and I stand there, unable to move, until Lana gives me a push, saying, “Go or get out of the way.”
I’m turning to walk through, and I catch a glimpse of a boy rounding the corner. For a split second, my brain sees Jesse and screams no, it can’t be, that Mae swore he went to Southfield.
The last time I saw Jesse was the night after the shooting. I’d been in my room, sitting on the floor, shaking so hard, unable to cry. I heard stones at my window and looked down to see Jesse below.
I still remember the relief I felt seeing him – the one person I could talk to, maybe even cry with. Then I saw his face, the anger, the rage, and I remembered what had happened, that his brother was dead and mine was to blame. One look at his face, and I shut that blind as fast as I could and curled up on the floor, and cried, finally cried.
Now, as I catch a glimpse of this boy, I think it’s Jesse. But then he’s gone, and I realize I was mistaken. This boy is tall; Jesse was an inch shorter than me. This boy has wild, curly dark hair; Jesse always kept his short and neat. Even the face isn’t right, too angular, too hard for the boy I knew. I’m left with the feeling that the only reason I even jumped to that conclusion was that the boy has brown skin and Jesse’s grandparents came from Bangladesh, and that just makes me feel worse, that I jumped to such a stereotyped conclusion.
I push through the metal detector and hurry to find the office.