Dark Night

The week

I woke up around one and found Invisible Steve curled up against my chest. I stroked his little head gently with my finger for a bit and eased away when he seemed to get a little tense. Grandpa was in the living room petting Shuri and reading when I wandered out and he'd brought home sandwiches. I was feeling listless and not really hungry, but I ate it anyway. I didn't want him to have an opportunity to bring up that incident when I'd been upset, not eating, and had the hypoglycemic incident.

I told him about the Thursday night meeting and getting the week off. "So I can use it for extra study time," I said. "John and I are going to work on calculus and English at some point."

"How's he doing?" Grandpa asked, eating a chip. "And his brother?" On behalf of younger siblings everywhere, I was glad he remembered.

"He's on crutches and irked," I said. I took a chip too. There's nothing like Lays. "Paul is more shook up, but he would have been in the gym if the weather hadn't been so nice that the coaches took them outside to play soccer." I drank some water. "I was talking to my drill team coach when one of the engineers who was examining the school came out and I got a look at the gym. It's bad," I said matter-of-factly. Grandpa's head popped up. "It seems like a lot of damage for pipe bombs," I said, thinking about it. "The floor's all messed up of course, but the bleachers are also mangled." Grandpa paled so that his freckles stood out.

"Jesus, if there'd been kids in there--" I nodded, eating more chips.

"There would be a death toll." I finished my sandwich in silence. "They brought in counselors and therapy dogs. I don't want to talk to a counselor, at least not now, but the dogs were really nice." I told him about Chuck. "And when I got back, the cats were on the bed and a nap seemed like a good idea." He smiled slightly.

"I saw," he said. "I was surprised to see Steve there."

"Me too," I said. "But apparently I'm rubbing off on him."  Grandpa laughed and then asked what my plans were.

"Sleep in, study, go to work, hang out at the park," I said. "It seems that keeping to my routine as much as possible will help me to feel normal again."

Grandpa considered that as I got up to clear the table. "You'll tell me if you want to see somebody for help, punkin?"

"If I do, I'll probably go through the resources that the school is offering," I said. "But really, we got off lightly. We had lockdown drills, and even if it was a little different than we practiced, it still worked. Nobody was killed, injuries like John's occurred during the evacuation, nobody was going classroom to classroom, hunting students with a gun. So I'm not that upset. The guy who did it is dead, so it won't happen again. I'm not happy, but I'm also not screwed up."

My grandpa looked old all of a sudden. "I wish you didn't have to live in a world where students have to worry about that kind of thing."

"I do too." But the conversation which wasn't going to go anywhere productive terminated abruptly. "Invisible Steve!" I said quietly as the little cat came into the kitchen, still timid. I didn't move, and Grandpa moved slowly as he got up to chop up some leftover chicken for the cats; once Shuri heard the refrigerator door open, she came prancing in. Both cats were enthusiastic about the treat. We went carefully into the living room, and when they were done, both of them came in. Shuri hopped up on the sofa between me and Grandpa and Steve, still not quite sure if he wanted to be visible, sat in a patch of sun and did some grooming. The sun brought out some tiger stripes, black on darker black, on his flanks. He was adorable.

After dinner, I went back to the condo, my grandpa having extracted a promise to meet him for breakfast the next morning. My parents were just getting home and they had questions for me about how my day went. I gave them the flier that Ms Lassiter gave me about the meeting, then, when they seemed sufficiently appeased, went to my room. I curled up in the corner of the bed again with my notes from sociology and my laptop and started to study. But I had my IM on and my friends immediately checked in. I felt bad that I hadn't looked at my texts, but they were understanding about it. John was on too; I hadn't seen the evening news but he had, and they were reporting that it wasn't just pipe bombs, there's been a small amount of dynamite as well. That helped to explain the damage to the gym that I'd seen. They weren't having any luck tracing the source, but it was early days still. The information they had about the bomber was coming together; early 20's white male, a drifter with no known connection to Duke's Crossing. He didn't have a criminal record. His belongings had been searched thoroughly and no note or information of any kind about why he would have done this was found.