Part 1
The Boy In The Red Shirt Part 1
By: Eli Susman
The class sat paralyzed in disbelief, frozen where they were. Everybody’s heart sank, never to be lifted up again. Terror, sadness, confusion, and even anger flowed through everyone’s body. Time stopped.
Just moments ago everything was normal. In class, students were taking notes while teachers lectured. The kids in the back of class whispered to each other and occasionally a phone would buzz. Just moments ago, everyone thought life was going as planned.
With only 20 minutes until the bell rang, James Tunney thought his school day would finish like any other day. He thought he would walk calmly and carefree out of the school gates and get in the passenger seat of his mom’s Hyundai Sonata . He thought he would go home and do his homework, just like the other 2,000 kids at his high school. That is what he thought, and that is what most everyone at the school thought; but at that moment, everything changed.
That euphoria James felt about walking out of school was gone. His heart beat faster and faster; each breath he took intensified the feeling. Sweat formed on his brow and his body grew cold. The hairs on his neck spiked up. He looked around wildly, but everything seemed to move in slow motion.
All around James, classmates jumped out of their chairs and yelled. Some frantically dialed numbers into their phones, as others had tears rushing down their faces. Mr. Whitaker, a short stubby man with a bald head, waved his arms, yelling at the class as students began to rush out of the room and into the crowded halls. He pleaded with them to stay, but it was no use. Students grabbed things from their bags and ran out of the room. Everything around James was chaos and he felt paralyzed with indecision. He couldn’t move.
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Mr. Whitaker gave up. He ran to the door and slammed it shut. James was the only student left inside. James was knocked into reality by his teacher screaming. “James! James can you hear me?”
James stared at him for a moment. He hated his teacher, but in that moment, all he could do was stare and listen.
“Yeah… I can hear you. ” James finally responded.
“James, you need to get under the desk right now and stay quiet.” He flipped the light switch off. “And silence your phone.”
James looked at his phone already in his hand and switched it to “Do Not Disturb”. He looked up and nodded. Whitaker gave a little nod back and took a deep breath. He climbed under a desk, struggling to maneuver. They hunkered down for what could be a long time.
“Biiiiing, biiiiing, biiiiing” The sound of the dismissal bell sounded, consuming the silence as it echoed through the quiet and hostile school halls. James sat cross legged under the gum covered desk, across the room from his overweight teacher. James fiddled around with his leather strapped antique watch. His grandpa had given it to him when he was young, and he always wore it.
“Now listen, I’m giving this to you, and when you turn 18 I want you to start wearing it. My grandfather wore it and gave it to me, and now I’m giving it to you,” his grandpa had said. “I want to wear it now,” James’ innocent 3rd grade voice had responded.
His grandpa gave an understanding and comforting smile,
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“Hmm. You could wear it now, but it’s gonna be big you know!” “Yeah I know, that’s okay.”
His grandpa had laughed and given him a warm hug.
James and Whitaker hadn’t spoken a word to each other. The fading sounds of yelling and
screaming was all that could be heard from the dark room. Out of nowhere, breaking the silence
Mr.Whitaker jumped up and yelled.
“Fuck this! You know what? Fuck..this!”
“Mr. Whitaker, be quiet, you’re going to attract the-” James whispered forcefully to him.
Mr. Whitaker continued while pacing back and forth across the room. He was flustered.
“I get paid as much as fucking Spongebob Squarepants yet they expect me to sit here with you! I should have run out of the class with all the other kids. It would have been better than sitting waiting to be rescued.”
James just looked at him.
“Screw this! I’m leaving!” Mr. Whitaker yelled again.
“No, Mr. Whitaker you can’t go! It isn’t safe out there.” Mr. Whitaker turned around to face James. “Oh so now you care about what I have to say?” He paused, “You spend all of class talking with your friends not listening to me. And now look at you. You’re a piece of popular kid trash left all alone. Helpless.”
James just stared at him, trying hard not to cry.
“And you know what, I CAN go you. It’s because of you idiot kids that I’m stuck here, I’ll be better off out there than sitting in here waiting for nothing. I’m leaving,” he said as he headed to the door. “And I haven’t heard a thing for almost 10 minutes. I just have to get to the parking lot.” Mr. Whitaker
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continued to the door.
“Bye.” James said innocently. Mr. Whitaker didn’t even turn around, he just waved a heartless hand at him as he swung the door open.
The intense light from outside blazed into James’ eyes making him squint. Mr. Whitaker took a step outside, looking both ways down the hall. Then he slammed the door shut behind him.
Silence again. James shot up and went to lock the door. He struggled for a moment, but managed to lock it shut. Seconds later, it blared through the halls.
The gunshot.
James felt that shock in his stomach. He stopped, dropping his phone from his hand, as warm tears rushed down his face. He let out a loud yelp accidentally, and instantly realized how horrible of a mistake it was. He covered his mouth to contain his sobbing. He heard footsteps approaching his room. The footsteps came closer and closer and stopped, right at the door of the classroom. James could feel and hear every beat of his heart. The slight sound of his breathing sounded louder than anything he had heard before. He looked down, and saw the shadow of a person’s feet standing at the door. A few hour-long seconds went by. Finally the feet shuffled away, leaving James breathless. Relieved that the person had left, he dropped to the floor, rolled onto his side and began to quietly cry like a baby.
Thoughts went spiraling through his head. Thoughts of his family, about what they were going to think; his friends…what about his friends? Were they okay? Did his friends run out of their classrooms like all the kids in his class? Were they safe? James stopped himself from going down that road.
“Stop! Control yourself.” he said to himself. “Your friends are okay, they’ll be okay.” He took a much needed deep breath as he wiped the tears from his eyes, and sniffled his now clogged nose.
The room was starting to feel hot. A layer of sweat formed on his face. It was summer and the air conditioning at his school didn’t work well. He thought about what he was going to do.
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“Maybe I need to try to make it to one of my friends classes. Maybe Phil? He may be in his class.” He stopped “No. That’s too dangerous, look at what happened to Mr. Whitaker….but I could be more
careful…couldn’t I? Yes, yes I could, I could be more careful.” He paused. Then he jumped up and began rummaging around Mr. Whitaker’s desk. He found a pair of scissors and grabbed them immediately. He kept looking. He was not even sure what he was looking for. Maybe he was just looking for something that could comfort him. Something to make him feel that the decision he was about to make was a good one.
He continued looking frantically. His hands thrashed around on the desk. He slammed his fist into the desk one harsh time and stopped. The scissors fell on the floor. His eyes were bloodshot, tears and sweat were covering his face, almost indistinguishable from each other. He leaned against the wall and slid down until he was sitting on his butt.
“What is happening? Why is this happening to my school? Why is this happening to me?” James pleaded, not to anyone specific and not even to God, but more of just a plea, a plea to anyone that would hear him. He was silent for a second. Until the silence was broken. “Help.” A sensitive voice was heard through the wall.
“Hello?” James stood up, a spark of happiness and confusion went through his body, “Hello? Is somebody there?”
“Help me, please, I’m all alone.”
“Where, where are you, I’m alone too”
James put his ear against the wall. The voice was coming from the next classroom.
“ Please, the people, my classmates, are…here, but no, no they aren’t. But they physically are…I guess. I survived somehow.”
James was shocked and excited at the same time. On one hand he was concerned for his safety, but on the
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other he was glad to be talking to another person.
“You can’t stay in there.” James could now tell that this was a girl he was talking to, “I will…I will be outside your class in 2 minutes, if you hear 3 knocks on the door, it will be me.” James continued, feeling his courage building up out of nowhere.
“Okay” she replied with a soft and helpless voice.
James bent over and grabbed the scissors and walked away from the wall without thinking about what he was doing.
“Wait.” James heard her voice again, “What is your name?” James turned around, and got closer to the wall. “My name is James Tunney.”
“Hi James, I’m Peyton.”
“Peyton, I will be there shortly, wait for me.”
“I will.”
James began walking towards the door again. Oddly, his fear was beginning to diminish. He felt intrepid and ready to protect a girl he did not know. With every step, he felt more regret that he stayed in the class rather than running out with the rest of his classmates. He stopped at the door of his classroom. “What if I died like Peyton’s classmates?” he thought. James shook his head getting that idea out of his mind.
James was standing at the door, ready to head out into the uncertainty that his school halls had become. This moment was a crossroads in his life.
James had always been the average guy at school; never a hero, never a kid anyone would expect to amount to anything. Just a typical popular boy with a lot of friends that would grow up and get a job that payed barely enough to survive. This was his moment; a moment that could either turn him into a
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hero, or possibly end everything. His heart rate picked up as he began to think about what he was going to do. “It’s now or never,” he thought as he grabbed the door handle and swung the door open into the bright light. As he took his first step out, the warm air day blew onto his sweaty body. It cooled him off. Nothing felt real. Papers on the floor, broken phones, backpacks. Mr. Whitaker.
He knew he should move quickly and go to Peyton’s room; but as he looked at his gutted school, he was taken over with fright.
He felt like everything was in third person, as if he wasn’t actually there. But the sound of movement coming from around the corner stopped all of that. He was jolted back to reality. He turned his head to the noise, but saw nothing, and realized he needed to move. He did, and he did so quickly, but quietly. He turned the corner where Peyton’s room was. He approached the door, scared of the unknown in the room. He raised his fist to the door and knocked.
The sound echoed through the hallway. The only sound that could be heard besides the quiet movement of trees in the light wind. He waited, his body shook with fear.
James remembered something, the last time he was at this classroom. It was the year before, English class…
“Ms. Friedman please! Please let me turn in my essay. I was sick yesterday! I couldn’t turn it in!”
The door went shooting open, “James, I’ve told you this five times now, no late work. Do you want me to
bring this up with the dean?”
“No, but Ms. Fried-”
“No buts. No late work.”
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The door creaked open, and James’ daydream was cut short. He was here now, in the bleak present. A girl with short blonde hair slowly stepped out of the room. She had big eyes and lips that stuck out from her face. She was short, with a stubby body and had swollen eyes red from tears, James noticed. “Are you okay?” James asked. He felt a sense of comfort just being around her.
She just stood there with tears running down her face and nodded her head.
“Okay…we have to stay quiet.” He tried his best to stay calm despite being completely overwhelmed. “Come, lets get back to my class; there aren’t any…any dead bodies.”
He gestured for her to follow him as he just barely started walking away from the door, the smell of death was emanating from the room. She was hesitant, following a boy she had never met, but she did anyhow. James looked back at her. Realizing she was scared, he smiled at her, trying to make her feel protected.
She smiled back. For a second, everything felt normal. But this feeling that both teenagers felt was quickly sucked away by the sound of feet down the hall. Peyton called to James who was a few feet ahead of her, “James.” she whispered nervously, “There is somebody down the hall.” James quickly responded, “What?”
Peyton pointed in the direction of the sound.
“Hurry. Get back into your room.” James said.
They ran back to Peyton’s classroom and softly closed the door.
The two sat in Peyton’s room. The smell was horrid. They plugged their noses, trying their best to not focus on the bloody bodies that surrounded them. All James could think about was that he was sitting in a room with a girl he didn’t know, surrounded by an army of dead bodies of kids he very well
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may have known.
He looked at the floor to his right and saw a boy.
Andrew.
They had English class together. Every day they would mess with the teacher who absolutely
hated them. Practically every other week she moved their seats to stop them from talking. That never
worked. Blood covered him from his chest to his ankles. He was dead. And just looking at him on the
floor scared James. He looked away.
“Hey…Peyton?”
She looked up, tears in her eyes. She quickly wiped them away before she spoke.
“Yeah?”
“Did you think this day was gonna turn out like this…..I mean, when you showed up to school, did you
think that some maniac kid would do this?”
“The simple answer…no. No I did not.”
James rubbed his hair back.
“Yeah me neither.”
Just the idea that he would be talking to this random girl baffled him. Any other day he wouldn’t have
even acknowledged her, let alone talk to her.
He looked up at her.
“I thought I was gonna go through my typical day of school and then go home and do some homework, maybe video games.” He paused, “I thought I was gonna see my family.”
He looked at her, waiting for a response, but there wasn’t one. She reminded James of himself just an hour ago, sitting in a chair, responding to nobody. He was in his own world up until now. “Hey, Peyton…Peyton.”
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She quickly looked up at him.
“Oh, sorry, I wasn’t listening. What was it you said?”
“It was nothing… I was just saying that I thought today was going to be like any other typical day for me, but it clearly was not.”
“Oh, ya, I agree.” She looked down. James looked up, tapping his feet out of habit.
Silence.
Peyton continued, “I was going to have a dinner with my family tonight. The new Italian place, on the corner of 3rd and Oak. We haven’t had dinner together in weeks, I thought tonight would end that. I guess not.”
“Hey,” James got up and started walking over to her. “You don’t have to be sad. Tomorrow night you and your parents will go and have your dinner.” He put his arm around her in order to comfort her. “I promise.”
She looked up to him with her big watery eyes and smiled. Everything seemed a little more at peace again.
Five minuted passes, and the smell of the bloody bodies was starting to get worse. “James, we can’t stay in this room much longer. I’m gonna throw up.” “I know. I know.” James said.
Suddenly, they heard them.
Sirens.
“They’re coming for us!” Peyton exclaimed.
“Come on. Let’s go!”
James and Peyton jumped up from their seats and carefully walked to the door, avoiding the bodies scattered around. Some sat in their seats, and others were sprawled out on the floor like zombies.
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James opened the door and looked side to side, then he started walking to the front of the school. He could faintly see police cars and ambulances. He checked behind him to make sure Peyton was following. She was.
He walked slowly, trying his best to keep quiet so the killer didn’t hear him. He saw a backpack on the floor, half opened with papers spilling out of it. A binder was on the floor labeled, “Honors Chemistry”. “God, I hate that class,” James thought to himself. Meanwhile, the wind had stopped, and it felt hotter than before.
They rounded the corner and immediately stopped in their tracks. Peyton let out an involuntary yelp, that echoed through the halls. They both knew immediately the shooter could here them. Chills went down James’ back despite the heat. He turned, and this was the first time James could see the shooter in the flesh. He couldn’t make out what he looked like exactly, because he was far away, but he knew that face from somewhere. He was sure of it.
The shooter glared straight at James and Peyton. This was it. Everything they had accomplished, failed, spoken, and attempted to do in their short lives could end right there, in one quick second. With one piece of metal. That is all it took, one little piece of metal that would rip open their bodies, putting an end to everything.
James was shocked. He never thought he would come face to face with the shooter.
He was just a boy.
He turned to Peyton, as she turned to him, and they instantly started running the opposite direction.
They were running, but it felt like they were stuck in mud. Peyton had tears flowing from her eyes and makeup running down her cheeks. As they started to round the corner, there was a gunshot. James
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ducked his head down in fear of the speeding bullet hitting him. It was a sound that nobody should ever have to hear, especially at school. James turned his head as he tripped around the corner. He looked back at Peyton.
He couldn’t believe what he saw. Blood poured from her stomach and drenched the cold floor. She was silent, but her eyes showed her fear. She grabbed at her bloodied stomach as she crumbled to the floor.
But it was no use. Blood poured from her, smacking the floor, leaving her motionless body lying on the ground with no life left inside.
“Peyton!” James yelled, but there was no response. Her eyes had gone dark. He looked up at the boy. The fear in James’ eyes had changed to anger. But James could do nothing. He turned back, and
slipped on blood as he rounded the corner. He looked at Peyton, knowing that she was gone. He wasn’t sure what he was running toward, but he ran anyhow.
He was devastated.
He thought he and Peyton had connected and they would take care of each other until people came to their rescue.
He barely knew the girl, but he still felt like he had just lost a huge part of his life, a part he would have liked to have connected with when this nightmare was over.
As his speed picked up, his watch, the one his grandpa gave him slid off his wrist. It smashed onto the floor. James wanted to stop to pick it up, but he did not. He kept running. He ran past his locker and his Chemistry class. His life was gone. His locker, his classes, his friends. Nothing mattered. The math tests, the essays, and the grades where all gone. James only thought of his life.
And how he was going to keep it.
He looked over his shoulder and didn’t see anyone, just emptiness. He kept on running. As he
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approached another corner, behind him, the boy came around the corner with a demonic look. James ducked around the corner just as the boy fired the gun. James started banging on doors.
“Help! Please help me! Help! He’s gonna kill me! Please! Please please! Let me in! Let me in! Don’t leave me out here!”
No response. His throat ached from yelling. His once mellow voice had turned raspy. He cried. He yelled, but still nobody responded. The school that was full of kids just hours before had become an empty void. Nobody to talk to. Nobody to listen to him. Nobody to protect him. The school was grim and James hated it now more than he ever had.
James kept running through the hall, trying to hide from the boy.
“Please…..Please.” His voice was filled with suffering and fear. The sound of it scared him. He didn’t
recognize himself.
James was scared. He continued banging on the doors of his hollow school and he began to feel more regret. Regret that he had never lived life to its fullest, never told more people that he loved them, never had a chance to spend more time with Peyton.
“Please!” He gasped for air to catch his breath…but his breath just turned into tears. He closed eyes and prayed that he would survive. He prayed to a God he had never believed in. And then he fell to his knees. “Please! Anybody… help me!” He bit his lip to contain his emotions. Tears flowed into his mouth and his jaw shook.
He yelled again, his voice barely strong enough to be heard.
“Please!”
A face appeared in the window of the door he was in front of.
James jumped up.
“Let me in, let me in, let me in!”
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The boy just shook his head. His eyes dropped down. He spoke to James, his voice quiet. But James knew what he said.
“I’m sorry.” He mouthed.
James was enraged. “Sorry isn’t good enough! Sorry isn’t going to stop me from dying-” He was cut off by the sound of footsteps approaching the corner.
“Fuck you! Fuck you! You little piece of shit. Let me in this room!” All of the anger James had ever had was being let out now. From the times when his mom would tell him, “No,” to all the reasons he used to bully other kids. Anger surged though his body.
The boy in the window disappeared into the darkness of the room. “You just killed me! You and anyone else in that room just killed me!” The shooter came around the corner.
“Fuck you!” James yelled as he ran away from the classroom. James ran and he ran with everything he had left.
He knew that at any moment, what had happened to Peyton could happen to him. He knew that this might be the end of everything he had lived through; the good and the bad. Bang.
James fell to the floor, eyes open wide in disbelief. He hit the floor. He lied there, trying to move slowly. His head was throbbing and his chest was spouting blood. He heard footsteps and looked over his shoulder. The shooter was approaching. Everything faded to darkness.
Seconds later, James’ eyes opened. He struggled to take in air. A dark, black gun was pointed at his face. Never had all of this seemed as real as it did now. The blood gushed from the hole in his chest, but it didn’t hurt. Everything was going numb. He looked up, squinting. The boy was wearing a red shirt.
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He tried to figure out the boys face and when he did, he knew.
James could do nothing but say one thing to the boy, “I’m..so..sorry….”
And then the boy in the red shirt put a bullet through James Tunney’s head.
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