“I know,” Joan said. They were in the alcove where they always had their conversations, up on the balcony level. Only once in their meetings had someone else come upstairs, a wheezing old man, and by the time he had walked past their spot, Joan had ducked down another aisle. Besides, the man had never even looked at Richard sitting in his chair. It was possible, of course, that a librarian might have noticed the same two high school students had been in the library at the same late hour on more than one occasion. But Richard doubted it.
“So let’s just list the ways it can go wrong,” Joan said.
“He could chicken out. He could tell someone about our plan. He could kill Madison but not himself, then tell everyone I told him to do it.”
“Okay,” Joan said. “Those are all bad, but they aren’t the end of the world. It would be your word against his. All you’d have to say was that you used to talk to him about fantasies, but you never in a million years thought he was serious.”
“But I’d have a gun on me,” Richard said.
“No, you wouldn’t. You’re not going to shoot anyone, so don’t bring a gun into school. In fact, take the gun you have and hide it somewhere it won’t be found. And then you not having a gun will back up your story about not taking it seriously. I mean, they might not believe you, but they couldn’t prove anything, right?”
“No, you’re right.”
“I’m always right, Richard, when are you going to realize that about me?” There was her smile, and her hand on his leg, the intensity in her blue-gray eyes that he loved to see.
“I thought of a bigger problem. A much bigger problem.”
“What’s that?”
“What if James decides to shoot up the whole classroom and not just shoot Madison and then himself? You know he wants to do it during your class?”
“Yeah, I thought about that. I mean, I could skip that class, I suppose, but then . . .”
Joan was thinking, looking past Richard at the dark, frost-lined window behind him. “But then what?” Richard said.
“But then I’d miss it,” Joan said. Her mouth was slightly open, and Richard thought she looked tentative, or maybe even a little embarrassed, worried about what he might think. It was not an expression he was used to seeing on her face.
“I guess it would be a risk,” he said. “I could find out what James thinks about you, just to be sure.”
“No, don’t do that. Don’t ever mention my name to him. Remember that no one knows we are even aware of one another. This is what you should do. James likes rules, right? He’s a gamer like you. Just make sure that you guys have rules for what you are doing and that you can’t break them. You each kill one person and then yourself. That’s the game.”
In the end, it had actually worked just as Joan said it would. Throughout that late winter and early spring Richard and James talked about nothing else but their plan for a coordinated attack on the school. James had settled on having Richard kill Danny Eaton, mostly because Danny was one of the worst kids at the school, a nasty bully popular enough that he got away with everything, and who was currently hooking up with Ashley Finley, one of the more beautiful students, a girl who deserved a better fate than Danny Eaton. But James had also settled on Danny because Richard had art class with Danny at the same time that James had English class with Madison. It made things easier. They picked a time, exactly 1:35 p.m. on a Friday. They would both pull out their guns, shoot their prey, and then themselves. Richard kept waiting for James to show signs he didn’t want to do it, that he’d gotten cold feet, but the opposite had happened. James was acting almost manic, like a little kid on Christmas Eve, waiting for the day to arrive. On the Sunday before the week they’d planned the killings, James and Richard drove to an abandoned quarry on Cape Ann and practiced shooting at cans with their semiautomatics. It was the only time that Richard actually felt like he might want to go through with shooting Danny for real. The sensation of the gun firing, the can jumping, James’s enthusiasm, all made Richard want to experience that moment of pulling a gun out of his backpack in Ms. Bryant’s art class, the fear and surprise on the other students’ faces, him holding all their lives in his hand. But Richard had bigger plans than being a school shooter. And, most importantly, he had Joan. Now that she was back in his life, he wasn’t willing to lose her. Not yet, anyway.
On the evening before the shooting, Richard and James had met one last time, sitting in the stands of the high school’s empty football field, and going over the details, synchronizing their watches.
“Is there anyone else in that classroom you want me to ice?” James said, and Richard tried to conceal his alarm. James had never talked about going off script in the past. Before he could answer, James said, “All I’m saying is there are a lot of assholes and phonies in that room.”
Richard tried to sound calm as he said, “Let’s stick to the plan. The most important thing is the symmetry. You kill Madison Brown and then yourself at the exact same moment that I kill Danny and then myself. It won’t be sloppy or random. Everyone will spend the rest of their lives wondering about us. The kids in those classes will realize how powerless they were for that one moment. They think they’re important, now, but tomorrow they’ll find out how small they are.”
“Yeah, okay,” James said, and Richard worried he’d come across as desperate in his attempts to make sure James didn’t shoot anyone else in that room. It was Joan he was worried about, of course. If Joan wound up dead that would be worse than James getting caught alive and pointing the finger at him.
He didn’t sleep that night, his mind feverishly going over all the variables. The only thing that would relax him was Joan’s voice in his head, her laugh, her words that everything was going to be fine. We’ve done this before, her voice said, and no one suspected a thing. Together, we are invincible. Invisible and invincible.
It was a beautiful spring day that Friday, the sky a hard blue and the air balmy. The trees had just begun to blossom. Richard got up early, putting the Browning semiautomatic into his backpack, then driving to the trailhead that was a quarter mile from the high school. There was no one else in the parking lot, and Richard walked about three hundred yards down the main trail, finally spotting a medium-sized rock that was identifiable by a vein of pure white quartz. He pried one end up, revealing a network of worms and beetles in the soft damp earth, then he wiped the pistol clean and buried it slightly in the soil, putting the rock back down on top of it. He didn’t love the way the rock now looked, as though it had been disturbed, so he spent a little time rearranging the rotten leaves and vegetation so that it looked natural. Satisfied, he went back to his car, then drove and parked in the student lot at the high school.
He only saw James once that day; he was leaving the cafeteria, his large backpack slung over one shoulder. Richard thought he looked normal, or as normal as James Pursall ever looked.
At 1:35 p.m. Richard was in art class, where they were learning how to make monoprints. Richard’s body felt as though it were full of bees, his skin electric, his vision jittery. Ms. Bryant, a nervous, tattooed teacher who was not a whole lot older than her students, had looked thoughtfully at Richard’s abstract shapes. “Is it a beach?” she said.