NB: The Search (BoyxBoy)

Chapter 30: Where Do We Go From Here?

The police are gathering up students in the gym.  Everyone is afraid. 

“If anyone asks, we never left the class room,” Day says, as we meet with the other students from first period.  After he has a moment with each of them, they all seem confused, as if they all just woke up.  When the police tell them what happened, they act like someone has just told them that their nightmare was real.

“Did you do that to them?” I ask Day.

“If the truth gets out, they’re going to be in danger again too.  I just blurred their short term memory.  It’s like waking up in the middle of the night, and then falling back asleep without fully remembering what you did or said.  They’re going to be fine.”

I can’t entirely argue with Day.  At the moment, forgetting everything that’s happened doesn’t sound so bad.

There are psychologists waiting in the gym to help everyone process everything.  Today, they’re really just trying to keep everyone calm while they wait for parents to pick up their kids.  The police don’t want to let a bunch of traumatized students just walk out of the school without their legal guardians’ consent.

Trying to organize so many terrified people is a disaster.  People are all over the school.  Some people are crying.  A few are arguing with the police to be let out.

I see Maggie standing in the corner of the room, her face still pale white.  Our eyes meet, and I know I have to go to here.  I hug her tight.  I want to comfort her, but I also need to be comforted.

Everything just seems broken.  I want to find some words to say.  I want us to be back in my basement watching the Sound of Music.  I want to say something snarky to her and have her mock me back, but I can’t find the words and neither can she.

Before long, her parents are there to pick her up.  We hug one more time and then she goes, silently into the outside world.

Day sits beside me, holding me hand and trying to comfort me.  He is an old soul with all his memories intact.  He’s seen some of the greatest massacres in history.  He’s sad that people died, but he has a stoic strength to him. 

All I can do is sit there, scared that the pain inside me will hurt forever, that I’ll have to live my whole life drowning in guilt.  Then I think about other things.  I think about when my Mum will be released.  I think about Maggie and if there’s anything I can do to comfort her.  She looked like she was in so much pain.  And soon a new fear emerges.  I’m afraid that the pain will go away.  I’m afraid I’ll stop caring.  I’m afraid that I’ll turn numb.  I’m afraid that I’m going to find a way to move on like none of this ever happened.

As the gym starts to empty, Day takes my hand and leads me into one of the empty class rooms.  We sit down of the teacher’s desk in the front of the class room and he wraps his arm around me.  “What happened was terrible,” he says.  “People died, and we need to mourn them.  But we didn’t choose this fight.  We did everything we could to prevent it and everything we could to protect the victims.”

“I know,” I say, even though I can’t let myself believe it.

“No, you don’t.  But you were good today.  You were brave, true, and selfless.  There could have been a war, and that would have led to more tragedy.  We need to learn to be better.  We can’t pass our grudges down through our lifetimes.  Good and evil.  Light and dark.  Order and chaos.  It’s all just people.  That’s what we are.  And we need to keep moving forward with our lives because that’s what people do.  We live and we grow and we try to be better.”

I know he’s trying to be comforting, but everything she says sounds like empty clichés.  What he should have said is that this all happened to protect me because of what I did.

I know what I have to do now.  I have to give up the light forever.