Taking Aim

This story contains content that includes issues of mental health, suicide, and physical violence.

You pull your black hoody closer tighter around your face as you turn your bike down your tree-lined street toward home. The streetlights are on and making you a stretched black shadow on the deserted block as you pass through their coned light on the bumpy pavement. The red-brick rambler at the end is yours. The house is dark, and the shades are drawn. No one will be home for another three hours or so. Your mom is staying late tonight to set up the fall displays at the store and your dad stopped coming straight home from work about two years ago not long after you had that “trouble” at school when you broke into the computer system to change Zander’s grade. You don’t ask your dad where he has been, and he doesn’t ask you where you have been and that is just the way he wants it. You don’t really talk to him at all anymore, there is nothing to say. You are his biggest disappointment from your hair to your grades, from your friends to the way you dress, and he has written you out of his life with a brick wall of silence. Mom will always try to ask you how your day was as she’s prepping dinner but the last thing you are going to tell her is about what really happens. She doesn’t know that you got caught sluffing school for the fifth time last week because you were able to delete the text on her phone when she left it on the counter after work. She is notoriously awful at checking her texts. Besides, you can no longer stomach the disappointment in her eyes. Worst yet, the disappointment isn’t in you but in herself because clearly, she went wrong somewhere and she’s cataloguing all the times she raised her voice or missed a band performance or didn’t ask you who you were spending time with after school.

This time alone has been important for your plans. It is all coming together the way you’ve always talked about. You just left Zander’s house. You have set a date and it’s now only 48 hours away. April 16^th. Two weeks before graduation. You are going to get revenge on all of them. There’s something freeing about knowing you only have two days to live.

You pull the garage door opener from the front pocket of your backpack and hit the right button to lift the door. The garage is empty of her CRV and his Mazda CX5. You resist the urge to throw the bike off to the side because your dad will give you his backhand again and remind you to take care of your things. You lean it against the wall near the front of the garage, put the door down and dig in your pack for your house key. You immediately go to the kitchen and pour yourself a gigantic bowl of cereal to get you to dinner. Mom is always complaining that you are almost out of milk, but you are starving. Hardly any of the school lunch is edible and you were making notes with Zander about how many students were in the cafeteria for first lunch. You were working on drawing the floor plan of the school and the best place to come in the building. Second lunch is when the most people are in the cafeteria, and it is just one corridor from the front entrance of the school.  

You take the cereal with you down to your room, spilling some milk on the stairs as you go. Your room is at the end of the hall past mom’s sewing room that she hasn’t used since she stopped sewing clothes for you in kindergarten about the time, she took the job downtown. You throw your backpack on the bed and pull out the box that is smashed between the legs of your study desk. You pull the lid off the box and set aside the black trench coat that is on the top.

You pull the notebook from your backpack and add two new names to the list. One is a nickname – Mr. Jockstrap the phys ed teacher. Today was the worst. He was the worst. And now he’s going to pay for calling you out in front of Stacia, making you run laps because you refuse to play volleyball, and saying shit about your skinny legs. And Chris Lancaster. Sonofabitch thinks he runs that school. You wouldn’t mind taking out a few of the football players but if you get Chris, that will be enough.

You hear the slam of the front door. Dammit. They are early. You throw the coat back in the box over the sawed off shot gun and shove the box back under the desk.

You listen for signs of who it is. There are footsteps into the kitchen. A slam of the fridge door and sound of a beer can opening. It’d dad. He won’t come looking for you. Predictably he will lumber into the tv room and hole up there all night long with the sound on too loud. It will rattle your window. You open your notebook and continue with the list of things you need this weekend. You’ve got a lot to do before Monday morning.

You draw a picture of what you will wear. Trenchcoat. Cargo pants. Boots.

Practice holding Tec 9.

Buy bullets.

Buy shells.

Practice gearing up.

You hardly sleep on Sunday night even though everything is ready. Zander’s been texting you since 4 a.m. He clearly isn’t sleeping either. He is ready to go now. You can picture him pacing in his room just itching to pull the trigger on everyone who has ever pissed him off. Which is just about everyone in your claustrophobic town. He calls himself the original NBK. He’s always runs hotter than you. Did he talk you into this or was it your idea?

There’s light sliding in under the black drape over your window where the ends have curled between the pins on each corner. You’ve never had a moment’s doubt until now. It is a flash across your mind. You draw in breath and hold it in your chest until it aches. You don’t want to live anymore in this world where you’ve only lived half-assed. Not good enough looking to get the girls. Not good enough for your dad to even look at anymore. Waste of space. Waste of breath. Leaving your mark on the world on your way out. Finding a way to always be remembered. Making history. What will happen to your Mom? You can’t think about that now.

The box is no longer under your desk but in the trunk of your car. You have checked off everything on your list.  

You have to leave like it is any old Monday. Your mom has on her worried face because instead of wolfing down breakfast, you don’t even touch the plate. She has never understood you. But she has tried. You don’t regret what you are about to do to them, but you regret what you will do to her. She’s the only victim. The rest deserve this.

At 11:31, you enter the cafeteria in your trench coat. The Tec 9 in your hand. It is time.