Room by, Aria

Run. “Where the hell is she going?” Jenna hears from the background as she continues running down the stairs. God, it never ends. Nothing… It feels like an eternity. She laughs as she opens the door to a homeless man walking to what seemed like the alley next to the apartment. He backed away from Jenna after noticing all of her eyeliner in and around her face. 103rd street was still pretty busy even though it was 2:30 in the morning, making all the loud noise harder for Jenna to cross the street.

I can’t… I can’t… focus, Jenna thinks as she runs with the walk sign turning into a stop sign. Crap, Jenna starts laughing again. What the hell did I even take? I just drank like… she thinks to herself as a truck beeps coming towards Jenna. Her pupils dilate as the light hit her eyes.

Earlier in the night in 82nd and Amsterdam, Ian desperately reads Charles Dickens’ Hard Times to fall asleep. His mom shouting at the dog and screaming at absolutely nothing allegedly gave Ian a sleeping disorder. Insomnia?

“IAN, THE DOG IS CHEWING UP THE MAIL. WHY DID YOU LEAVE IT ON THE TABLE?” Diana yelled from across the other side of the house. “I didn’t leave it on the table, you did.” Ian replied quietly but nonchalantly, knowing his mother will turn the house clockwise now. “What the hell did you just say?”

“Nothing. I said I’m sorry.” Ian yells from his room.

“No. I heard you say something.” Her voice gets deeper.

Ian sighed and locked his door as he tried to sleep again. And again.

--

Monday morning, Jenna tried opening her eyes but the lights were making it too blurry. Her mom was standing beside her hospital bed. “Jenna? Are you up? I’m here.” Her mom touches her forehead yearning to call the doctor.

“Mom, what… you weren’t supposed to be back until Monday…” Jenna tries to get up but her back refused to not put Jenna through agonizing pain.  

“It is Monday, darling. What the hell have you done to yourself? Drugs? Are you kidding?”

Oh, crap. Saturday night was elusive. Jenna remembers that she went to a party on Saturday in which she forgot her bag and her phone. Did I overdose? “It was harmless,” Jenna replied, “I just ate a couple herbal brownies and had a good time.” She knew that nonchalantly talking about this wouldn’t have changed the fact that she hurt her mom.

“Harmless?” Her mom looked down at her watch and back at Jenna. “I can’t go to a business trip to provide for YOU, I might add, while your dad is nowhere to be found, so you can eat herbal brownies and almost reach your death at 16 and a half years old? Are you joking?”

Jenna stayed quiet. She felt besieged with her mother’s questions. However, she didn’t feel much remorse. “I don’t know what to say.” Jenna shrugged.

“You’re so much like your father. He never felt sorry either.” Freaking sociopathic genes, her mother thought.

Jenna felt anger come upon her. She hated being compared to her father. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. I want to be released.” Her mother got up with a deep, melancholy sigh, “Yeah.”

--

Meanwhile, Audrey Gordon High School has the fortune to have a student who shows up late religiously. Ian Sawyer stopped with the excuses months into junior year since his mother wouldn’t change the fact that she has mood swings, which keeps him up at night, which is his reason for coming late everyday.  He came into the school year feeling good about grades and is still optimistic about getting into college. Though, he’s running a low B average.

As Ian ran late to his first morning U.S. History class, a group of girls were laughing at him. Wondering why, Ian slowed down and checked his belt, seeing it’s unbuckled, and not caring, he walked into class.

“Mr. Sawyer, you’re only 15 minutes late. Grab a worksheet.”

     Ian hit Jack in the head who oddly only comes to school just to sleep in all his classes. “Ow! What-”, Jack cleans up his drool with his sleeve. “Look who showed up.”

“Why do YOU show up, Jack?”

“Piss off. Yo, did you hear about that girl who overdosed at the party on 103rd?” Jack whispered.

“Why do you know about that party?”

“Why do you dodge every question I ask you.” Jack asked rhetorically. “Yo, listen though, she overdosed and like, almost got hit by a truck.” Tragic, Ian thought. He felt like a sociopath. He felt nothing, he never felt anything; he wasn’t even curious. He slowly stopped caring about everything and anything. Opening a textbook made his mind drift to places he’s never been and people he’s never seen. He just wonders and wonders until someone interrupts him, most likely his mom or Jack at the moment. As he looked out the window, seeming more dramatic than he wanted it to be, Jack continued talking about the girl who overdosed, someone who Ian had no intention of knowing.

“Are you even listening?” Jack asked.

“Yeah, man. Girl overdosed. Woopdeefuckingdoo.”

“You’re a dick, Ian.” Jack huffed and went back to sleep.

Jenna got into school around 11:25 A.M., barely making it in time for lunch. She walks into the cafeteria to have every cornered eye examining every inch of her. Jenna didn’t feel the least bit erratic. She couldn’t care less; she hasn’t got anything to lose. There were two kinds of people in that school. The people who talked to her duplicitously and the people who wanted to talk to her because they fancied her. She was fairly charismatic, when she’s not overdosing.

Then, just in that moment, something fired. Jenna dropped her bag and instinctively looked to her left and then her right. Everyone started screaming, others couldn’t cope with what just happened and froze. “EVERYBODY UNDER THE TABLES.” An aid called out, as 300 kids in the cafeteria rush to a table hysterically. Jenna then feels someone grab her arm from the back and drag her into the nearest classroom. “Stop- what the fuck man, you’re hurting me…” Jenna speaks out while being thrown on the floor with four other kids. A senior boy Jenna vaguely noticed in the hallways before reaches for his back pocket and Jenna then realizes that she’s with the guy who fired the gun; he’s the shooter.

“You’re all going to shut up and sit tight, or I’m going to blow someone’s brains out. Understood?” He waves around the gun in front of what seems like an amiable boy’s face. Jenna glaring made the shooter feel threatened so why not shove the gun up her face too. “Understood, pretty girl?”, the shooter puts his fingers in between Jenna’s thick black hair. “Piss off.” Jenna whispered in his face with contempt. It was a couple seconds before the shooter’s face drowned in wrath and backhanded Jenna on to the floor. The throbbing pain on Jenna’s cheekbone is something Jenna wasn’t going to show not today, not tomorrow; if there even is a tomorrow.

“Give me your phones. All of you; now. Drop them. QUICK.” The other four were quite hesitant so it didn’t stop the shooter to impatiently fire another bullet up on the wall. “FASTER.” One of the girls, crying, threw her phone to him and so did the other two boys. One boy didn’t, nor did Jenna. “PHONES.”

“I don’t have one.” The boy said.

“Get the hell up.”

“No.”

“What?”

“No. What are you gonna do? Shoot me?” He started to raise his arms.

“Well-“

“NO. Stop. Shit.” Jenna interrupted. “Listen. Someone’s coming.”

The shooter looks out the window breathing heavily and pulls one of the girls by her hair to get out of the door. He’s impatient and everyone can see the fear in his face. Fear filled with motive.  

     “Anyone touches a phone, and I’ll shoot this bitch.” The shooter kicked all the phones and stepped on another. He opened the door slowly, aiming his gun at the girl’s ear and pushed her out before he walked forward. Seeing that no one was there, he went back in.

     “Why are you doing this?” A blonde haired girl named Zoey cries hysterically. The shooter glares at her, his eyebrows raise up and he runs through his hair. He paces back and forth waving his gun around, frightening the four hostages.

     “Don’t… Don’t fucking talk to me. Let me think.” He said as he hears Zoey still hyperventilating.

     “Hey man, listen. We all feel this way. Okay? We all want to kill every fucking person in this shit of a school all the fucking time. Just a couple more months and you’re out… Just… just put the gun down.” The same guy, who impulsively pushed the shooter’s buttons, was empathizing with the shooter.

     “How would you know how I feel?” He shouted as he put the gun on the boy’s head.

     “Just, shut up.” Jenna begged.

     “I have a schizophrenic mother. Every god damned day I want to blow my brains out if not this fucking school just to get away from her. Not like this place is any better.” The boy stood up at this point.

     “What’s your name?” The shooter said, shaking.

     “Ian.”

Then just for a second, the shooter didn’t look evil. Not to Ian anyway. He tilted his gun towards the desks instead of the students of Audrey Gordon High and sat on the teacher’s chair. “I… I don’t know what happened… I just… no one looks at me. I haven’t had a single real friend this entire fucking time I spent at this school. Every day in the train ride to school or home and every day spent in this stupid city in this stupid school… They only talked to me when they wanted homework or to make a point; I was sick of it. I was sick of being invisible. I decided I was going to end it.” The shooter cried. He was quite chubby and wore glasses and a sweatshirt. He really didn’t look the type to shoot up a school. But then, who ever does?

Jenna and Ian made eye contact, both struck with Stockholm syndrome. They both shrugged as if they didn’t know what to do next even though they knew that this could end only one of two ways. Either they both died in that room or left the room alive with the most traumatic event to ever occur in their lives, as if their lives weren’t already traumatic enough. Zoey and the other two kids stopped crying and stayed quiet, waiting for whatever’s to come. The anticipation was getting to them all.

“I feel that way,” Zoey spoke up after a long moment of silence. “Almost every day I feel like I have nothing to live for. I don’t feel close to my parents and I feel like the world would be a better place if it was just without me.” She raised her arm so her sleeve slid down to show her dried up cuts. They all corresponded so neatly, each one directly down from the next.

“Shut the… just shut up. You’ll never understand how I feel. At least you have parents. Parents who reach out to you. My worthless parents left me; abandoned me when I was 4 years old. 4.” He went up to Zoey’s face, so close so she could feel his warm breath on her. “You will never… understand.”

A couple minutes of silence passed by. From time and time again you can hear the people outside the school trying to negotiate, trying to figure out who would shoot up such a prestigious school. The whimsical shooter didn’t look like he came here with much of a plan. His irresoluteness made the hostages feel better. He still paced back and forth, wondering if they’re worth killing in his head. His anger was fading and he didn’t want his hostages to know, so he picked up his gun again as he heard them gasp subtly.

While Zoey and the other two kids, one who happened to be Asian and the other a freshman, who were fairly quiet throughout this whole event, were thinking about everything they would do and everything they would achieve once they get out of this mess, Ian and Jenna naturally found comfort in each other’s glances here and there. They gravitated towards one another as if something, just something felt right. Something here happened for the better and they both realized it, they both convinced themselves that something good would come out of this. However, neither of them knew the other was thinking the same thing.

“What’s your name?” Jenna asked as everyone looked up.

The shooter looked at her as if her altruism hit him straight in the gut. “Ethan.”

“Listen, Ethan. Are you listening?”

Ethan nodded looking out the window to all the cop cars and blow horns still asking to negotiate.

“I overdosed last night. I’m not depressed, I’m not happy. I’m numb. But guess what? That’s what high school is. All the poets, artists, writers, football players, the freaking cast of Friends weren’t perfect in high school, alright? We all go through this. We just have to get through it and move on to get to ‘what we’re really supposed to be doing with our lives’. What are you going to get from this? Shoot us. All of us. Then what?”

Ethan shakes his head pacing back and forth. He understood but he didn’t want to understand. He already started feeling like this was a mistake. This shouldn’t have happened. I didn’t mean for this to happen. Ethan then slowly lifted the gun up. Jenna didn’t show any facial expression though her heart was about to explode, as was Ian’s. She secretly felt content. She actually felt happy for a minute. She felt something like excitement and anticipation and scared but she felt something and it was enough for her to be satisfied. Ethan then, in just less than a second, had the blood of his brain dripping in the wall next to him. The sound of the gun firing made Zoe and the other two kids scream while Ian and Jenna had their eyes wide open, then closed. Jenna dropped to the floor as Zoey and the other two kids ran outside the room.

“Get up. C’mon, we can’t be here.” Ian yelled to Jenna. She froze which led Ian to put her hand on his shoulder as they walked out the door. Turned out that Ian’s mother ran away that day when he got to school late and Jenna’s mom was off to another business trip. Everyone had someone to run to, someone who waited.

Jenna looked at Ian and chuckled.

“Well, someone unfroze.” Ian said as he walked to somewhere quieter and more isolated so they didn’t have to deal with the press.

“You know what life is?”

“A void of nothingness?”

“No. We’ve been stuck in a room with a senior boy we’ve never met in the three years we’ve been in high school with and all of our lives is going to be shaped from this experience. Life is a series of rooms, and who we get stuck with in those rooms adds up to what we are, what we become, what we do the rest of our lives.”

“Well, I don’t have any plans.” Ian smirked.

“Yeah, neither do I.” Jenna said as she looked at him with the sun gleaming on her brown eyes.