Someone Is Grooming Your Child
But it’s not who you think
You’re eight. You’re not supposed to watch violent movies, but Eric’s parents don’t mind. Also sometimes you can’t sleep, so you watch from the darkness of the hall when your parents watch things you’re not allowed to. So as you huddle under your desk, you are able to imagine what Eric’s blood would look like if he were shot by the gunman everyone is practicing hiding from.
Mrs. Johnson wrestles a bookcase in front of the steel door, and you think about the time she sent you to the office and your dad beat the hell out of you when you got home. If someone has to get shot, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if it were Mrs. Johnson. You imagine her still body on the floor, a pool of blood spreading from her head, her eyes staring, unseeing, at the ceiling. You feel bad you wished that on her. But only a little.
You’re ten. You hide next to Mallory. She’s so beautiful.
“Quit it!” she says when you pop her bra. “Mrs. Taylor!” She doesn’t even have boobs. Why is she wearing that?
Mrs. Taylor says she can’t deal with this in the middle of an active shooter drill, but you’re going to the principal when this is over. She forgets. You laugh, thinking of the power of the imaginary man with a gun to help you get away with things. You remember how people tried to take his power after the last twenty children were gunned down, but brave politicians “refused to let it be politicized.”
The phantom gunman can go anywhere, do anything, and all Mrs. Taylor can do is cower behind a locked door with the lights off. Like you. Like Eric. Like Mallory. But not like Ryan Reynolds. He probably doesn’t wake up screaming for his mommy from dreams where a shadowy figure bursts easily through the classroom door and shoots his friends, one by one.
No, he’s a good guy with a gun. Because the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, striding through the halls with the confidence of his guns.
You’re fifteen. The drill feels like a joke, a welcome respite from transforming sine to cosine and on and on. You halfheartedly take your place out of the line-of-sight from the door. If a killer with an AR-15 shows up, that won’t save you, the adults won’t save you. Not even Mr. Fredricks. He has a gun strapped to his hip, but no body armor. A paunch balances on the belt where his handgun is strapped.
That gun won’t scare a killer with an AR-15. But it can be pretty scary when it’s pressed into your back and your arm feels ready to pop out of its socket after Brad shoved you again when no one was looking and you finally decked him.
You’re eighteen. Does a part of you hope the man at the gun store will ask what you need this for, will stop you? Even if it did, that’s not what happens. He congratulates you on turning eighteen and picking an all-American way to celebrate. He doesn’t ask where you got the money.
Taylor, Brad’s little brother, doesn’t make it all the way to standing before the impact shoves him back in his chair. His arms fly up and his hands land on the desk next to his head. It looks like he’s taking a nap, except for the blood.
You don’t remember deciding to shoot. Maybe your finger just twitched. The dark eyes snap wide open in surprise and shock. Gleaming dark hair flows in the air as the girl who reminds you of Mallory is swept off her feet by the power of your bullet.
Your eyes sweep the room, and you remember. Mrs. Johnson will be by the light switch, trying vainly to hide her students from your gun. Her hair is grayer than it was when you planned this, lying awake, your mind racing. Her anxious, horrified eyes have more wrinkles around them than you remember. The muzzle flash burns so brightly it could almost sear away the humiliation of that beating.
The blood spreads in a halo around her head. Her eyes stare sightlessly at the ceiling. You feel bad that you did this. But only a little.
