Bullet

Chapter 9 - Eye Witnesses

Chapter 9
Eye Witnesses

School had been cancelled until further notice, as if this much wasn’t obvious to everyone. There was still blood that needed to be mopped up from the once shiny floors and investigations that were still occurring. No matter what any one of us did, we couldn’t seem to escape the confinements of that awful day.

It had been two days since the ‘incident’, which I had pushed myself to call it in an effort to push the memories out of my head. If I kept calling it what it was, a shooting, I just kept hearing gunshots and picturing people bleeding everywhere. Some nights, I woke up in a cold sweat, screaming at the top of my lungs and scaring my dad senseless. My hands would shake and the darkness seemed too much to look through. I wanted clarity, normality, things I could see in the distance without much effort.

I’d push myself out from underneath my now wet sheets and clamber over to the light switch at the other end of the room. When the single ceiling fan light clinked on, casting a soft glow in my once too scary room, I’d breathe a sigh of relief and slink back into my covers with the lights never seeming too bright to sleep through.

The same thing happened to me again last night, making me look like a jumbled mess when I’d managed to get out of bed this morning. Dark circles were underneath my eyes and when I first saw them in the mirror I was passing in the hallway, I paused. The faint, almost bruise-like, marks reminded me of Clay. The last time I had seen him he had a fresh bruise underneath his right eye, something that made him stand out even more underneath the fluorescent lights in school.

Not that he needed anything other than the silver pistol in his hand to stand out that day.

I tried to shake off the feeling of his eyes on mine, walking past the mirror and making a mental note to have my mom take it down for the time being. As I tip-toed down the stairs early that morning I heard the clinking of pots and pans, most likely my mother messing around to make breakfast and a pot of coffee for herself. I hadn’t seen her since the morning that I left for school that day.

When I made my way to the kitchen entryway, large and somehow seeming overpowering above me, I just stood still as I watched her. She was hastily moving throughout the kitchen and occasionally pushing tuffs of blonde hair from her sweaty face. She almost spilled the hot coffee on her pristine white hospital sneakers, cursing to herself when it singed her arm.

She grabbed the end of her green scrub shirt and dabbed at the burning pain. It wasn’t until she did this that I noticed the faint blood stains on her front, demanding to be looked at. I felt a shiver creep up my spine as to who the stains belonged to…Carter, Grayson, the girl who had been hit by a stray bullet?

“Jesus Christ,” she cursed in vein, putting her arm underneath the faucet of the sink and running cold water over it.

“Mom,” I whispered, the sound of the water running drowning out my voice. She didn’t even flinch because she hadn’t heard me. So I tried again. “Mom,” I said a bit louder this time.

She jumped in place, slamming the faucet down to stop the water. Turning in place, her sneakers squeaking against the kitchen tiles, she looked at me wide-eyed. Her face was almost pale and her eyes were drained from the life that was always in them. She just kept blinking at me, not saying a word, and kept her arm hovering over the sink.

It was the first time either one of us had seen the other since the ‘incident’ and I wasn’t sure where to start. Should she speak up first? Maybe ask me how I was doing? She was my mother after all. Or should I ask how she was doing? She was the one who was handling wounded teenagers who were shot by her own son.