Page 67 of We Thought We Were Invincible
The woman walked further into the room.
“It's okay,” she said, scanning us. “It's all over now.”
I scrambled to my feet, moving out from behind the far lockers.
“We have to take them out through the gym,” the man said.
She gave a sad nod of her head, knowing that was the only exit from this part of the school.
I looked around at the others in the room. I wasn't likely to ever forget their faces or the sound of their cries. We were together when our worlds came tumbling down.
A part of the gym was sectioned off with bright yellow tape. It was hard to miss. My eyes caught two things on the ground shrouded in white sheets.
“You don't want to see that.” The SWAT woman put herself between me and the sight of what happened there.
Leaving the gym behind felt like breathing fresh air for the first time in my life. I looked back over my shoulder as Jamie took my hand. We were the last to leave the building, but we were far from the only ones there. Cameras flashed as soon as we stepped outside. The missing nine as they'd come to call us. They'd gotten a count over an hour ago, and couldn't account for us.
You never think it's going to happen to you. The terror. The helplessness. It's on the news; in TV shows. Not in your own small town. You're safe. We thought we could fly high, enjoying our last year of high school before starting on the next adventure.
We were no longer safe. That'd been torn away with the speed of a bullet.
I looked through the crowd that had gathered outside the school. Students greeted their families with tears. Police officers talked to the media. An ambulance stood by. It was a different kind of chaos than what we'd experienced in that school, but chaos all the same.
The flashing lights made me jump. The crowd made it hard to breathe.
And then it all disappeared because standing there searching frantically was my brother, my twin.
I let out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cry. “Colby.”
He turned, his face transforming from panic to relief as he sprinted toward me. Jamie released me so I could throw my arms around my brother. He lifted me off my feet and we cried together.
“Come on.” He put me down. “Aunt Kat is over here.”
Kat was sitting next to Noah who was having his face tended to.
“Noah,” I gasped. “What happened?”
Kat turned at the sound of my voice, staring at me as if I'd disappear in a moment. She pulled me into a hug that was just as bruising as Colby's, then did the same to Jamie. “You two had us scared.”
“What happened to Noah?” I asked again.
“He tackled Matthew Franklin.”
“Wait,” I said. “What?”
“Cal.” Colby put his arm around me. “He was the shooter.”
I looked up into his face, for the first time noticing the redness around his eyes. Those weren't tears of relief at seeing me.
“What aren't you telling me?”
No one answered for a long moment. Noah finally cleared his throat. “Matthew took his own life, but not before he shot Morgan Cook.”
“Morgan's dead?” I choked, collapsing into Jamie's chest.
“No.”
I jerked my head up.
