Meghan: less than or equal to three

I crossed my eyes to turn the pen dangling from my mouth into two pens. Slowly I let my eyes focus until the pens merged into one, then repeated the process, rapidly multiplying my pens.

I’m studying, I swear.

Groaning quietly I leaned back in my little wooden chair, hearing things pop in my hips and back. It was time for a break. Trying not to disturb the deathly quiet of the library stacks I slid my books into my backpack and stood up. Then promptly staggered and had to clutch the desk I had been working at to keep from falling down. How long had I been working? I carefully slid my bag on my shoulder and trudged to the elevators. Caffeine, my love, I’m coming for you.

I pushed the down button with the steady repetition of someone with nothing better to do and walked to the door that finally lit up. The doors slid open and I had one foot inside before my eyes processed the image of the scrawny kid screwing together metal tubes.

Oh metal tubes, how interesting, my mind (dulled from weeks of studying for finals) told me. But a second later that other, more intelligent part of my brain woke up and told me what those metal tubes were for.

“Uh…” I said stupidly as we stared at each other, “I’ll just take the next one.” I stepped slowly back from the door.

“No, wait!” He hissed, almost apologetically pointing his mostly assembled weapon in my direction. He screwed what looked to be the last piece on with shaking hands, “Get in.”

I blinked and just walked in next to him. He frantically pushed the up button and started to breathe a little bit steadier as the numbers of the elevator continued to count up. He didn’t even look my way, but as his prisoner I didn’t return the courtesy and looked him over critically. Thin as a rail, wild looking hair, glasses and bad skin; damn what a terrible cliché. Why doesn’t an athletic, gorgeous frat boy ever decide to take out the school with an automatic? The light dinged and the elevator opened to the ninth floor.

“So where next?” I asked casually.

“The stairs. We’re going to the roof.”

“You know they lock that door.” He looked at me in such a heartbroken manner that I couldn’t help adding, “I’m sure you can just shoot the handle off, right?”

“Right.” He looked relieved and we walked to the staircase. I’m pretty sure I could have made a run for it, but a twitchy kid with a gun wasn’t something I wanted to try. And if I got away he would probably follow me, the poor guy didn’t even have a plan.

We got to the locked door and I tried to duck behind him out of the way of any recoil while he shot the lock on the door. Fortunately none hit me; unfortunately none hit him either and we walked out into the sunshine. I stretched in the warm light while the twitchy homicidal boy army-crawled to the edge of the roof with his weapon. I walked over and sat down next to him, leaning against the lip of the roof.

“Do you mind if I get some homework done?” I asked, “I have finals and I really need to study.”

“Fucking finals.” He muttered. I took this as permission and pulled out my books, continuing the process of rewriting my notes for the fifth time.

“Only five times?” he sneered as he scouted the crowds of students below for a victim, “You call that studying?”

“Hey, I do fine.” I said defensively, “and you don’t see me on top of roofs aiming at innocent college students.”

“Innocent?”

“Well, as innocent as college students can be.” I amended.

“Yep, they’re innocent, and they’re going to stay that way. I’m doing them a favor.”

I snorted in disbelief, starting on my Spanish vocabulary

His jaw twitched, “What?”

“Seriously, a favor? How would you know? Have you ever died before?”

“No. But anything’s better than this.”

“Then try everything else. If this anything isn’t your perfection then try another anything.”

He stared at me for a breath, “Wow. Deep.”

“I took philosophy for a while before flunking out. Too much?”

“No, it was good.”

I smiled at the pages in my lap, “So… Did I fix you?”

The corner of his mouth dipped up in a sort-of smile, “No.”

“Damn. You may have to go to an actual therapist.”

“Ha ha.” He said sarcastically. He shifted to sit next to me, pointing the barrel of his gun to the sky. Fluffy white clouds scuttled by in terror, but I felt better about that then students. I tried to watch him while at the same time labeling a detailed drawing of the heart for my anatomy class. He fumbled with the gun, clearly not knowing how to use it. He was trying to point the barrel at himself but he was realizing that his arms were too short. I could see where this was going and tried to appear deeply absorbed in my studying.

“Hey.”

“Hmm?” I replied, nose inches from my scribbles.

“I don’t even know your name, what’s—“

“No.” I cut him off.

He looked confused, “Your name isn’t no.”

“You’re going to ask me to shoot you, the answer is no.”

“But--” I saw the weakening in his resolve, but his face hardened, “No. If you don’t shoot me I’ll shoot you.”

I stuffed my books into my pack, “Okay.”

He looked startled at my abrupt change, “But—“

I stood up and brushed gravel from the back of my legs, “Well I don’t want to die, do I? Give me the gun.”

“Oh.” He scrambled to his feet and handed over his weapon. While I looked it over he paced in front of me, rubbing his mouth and chanting, “Okay, okay, okay, okay—“

“Okay.” I said brightly, “Where do you want it.”

His face (if possible) grew whiter, “What?”

“The head, the chest, or the throat? Or we could just do it everywhere to be sure.”

He swallowed, “The head is good.”

“Okay, head.” I backed up a little and took aim, “You’re sure?”

He nodded, mouth in a firm line, “I’m sure.”

I fired.

The gun clicked and the air whooshed out of him as he collapsed on the ground. But just as suddenly he was up again.

“What happened?” he gasped, touching his head to make sure it was still there, “Am I dead?”

“No.” I looked down at the gun in my arms, “Oh, the safety was on, silly me. Let’s try this again.”

One of his eyes twitched and it looked like he was going to throw up, but he took up position again. I leveled the gun again, double checked that the safety was off, and fired.

Tears poured down his face as the sound blasted across his eardrums.

He curled into the fetal position, hugging his knees to his chest.

“If you feel that way about a test fire, how do you think you’ll like the actual thing?”

He let out a sob and covered his face with his hands, “Just hurry up.”

“Nope.”

He uncovered his face to the sounds of metal clacking, just in time to see his ammo cartridge disappear over the side of the building. I unscrewed another piece and wiped it down briskly before sending it sailing after its friend.

His eyes bulged with horror, “Y—you—“

“Don’t worry, I wiped off the fingerprints, they probably won’t know it was you. Not that you did anything.”

He was the most pitiful, hopeless thing I’d ever seen as he shook on the ground in front of me. I continued tossing pieces over as he rolled and struggled to his feet. He seemed unable to do anything but stare and gape, face turning alternating colors of red and white. When there was nothing but a long, thin barrel left I walked over to where he stood staring over the edge at the students gathering around the scraps of metal.

I tapped him gently on the head with the barrel, “You might want to run. Pretty soon someone will recognize what those metal things are and come up here.”

His hands slid around my wrists and his eyes stared into mine, blank and uncomprehending.

I smiled softly at the little broken boy, “You’ll be fine.” I gripped the metal of the gun barrel in my hands and bent the ends towards each other, molding it into a heart. Gently prying his hands from my wrists I slid the heart over his arm like a big bracelet. He blinked out of his wide eyed stare in surprise, staring at me in confusion.

I smiled and patted him on the head, “See you later.” I bent to scoop up my backpack and sling it over my shoulders.

“Wait.” He croaked, “Who are you?”

“No one.” I walked rapidly to the stairs.

He followed, clutching his metal heart and spitting out questions as fast as he could draw breathe, “What? Who? Where? How?” But when he set foot on the stairs I was gone. He took the stairs two at a time, trying to catch up but he was out of the library before he finally realized that I wasn’t there anymore. He craned his neck, wondering if he had just imagined the whole thing.

“Hey Josh!” someone called, startling him out of his thoughts.

“Ughh?” he replied intelligently

“The physics final is cancelled.”

His heart stopped in his throat, there was no way his worst final was cancelled, it had to be a joke, “No way.”

His friend nodded rapidly, “I know I thought the same thing, but Mr. Yolkavich was hit by a flying piece of metal at the library and had to go to the hospital.”

Josh winced, “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine, just a head thing or whatever. But who cares? No final!” And he ran off screaming the good news to any other classmates he could find.

Josh looked down at the bent metal in his hand.

“Thanks.”

-Meghan