I Swear I'll Make It Up to You

I Swear I'll Make It Up to You by Mishka Shubaly Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: I Swear I'll Make It Up to You by Mishka Shubaly Read Free Book Online
Authors: Mishka Shubaly
Many of us had been ridden hard in the outside world and carried baggage from it, but under that, there was a sensitive, open humanity, an intelligent caring to Simon’s Rockers,almost every one of us. Even Zack, bitter and caustic before he even got out of bed, had a wicked sense of fun. Wayne was different.
    Wayne was one of an elitist group we called “the hardcore kids” because they listened exclusively to hardcore punk. Everyone listened to some strain of punk/noise/metal/experimental/unlistenable music, and lots of us listened to hardcore. But the hardcore kids had a deeper investment in it; hardcore music was a vehicle through which they held themselves above the rest of the student body and the rest of humanity. At meals, they sat at the same table in the corner closest to the cafeteria entrance, with Wayne at the head, facing the entrance. You could see him clocking and judging every person who walked through the door.
    Of the hardcore kids, Wayne was the darkest, the most intense, the most extreme. He was openly misogynistic, racist, and bigoted. Wayne had turned in papers arguing that African Americans, Jews, and gays were inferior, that the Holocaust had never happened, that HIV-positive people should be quarantined or executed.
    Wayne and I were on the basketball team together. He was eerily intense on the court, even just running drills. One night after practice, I had talked about shooting cans with my .22 rifle. Wayne asked me if I could get him a gun.
    â€œMaybe over winter break,” I had said, stalling.
    â€œNo,” he had said, “I need it now.”

    In my dorm room, my mind put the pieces together so fast I felt nauseous.
    â€œThose are gunshots,” I said. “It’s gotta be Wayne.”
    I’d run into him earlier that night. I always said hi to him, not because I wanted to befriend him but because I wanted him to know not everyone was intimidated by him. He never responded, not even a grunt or a nod. But that night he had.
    â€œHow’s it going?” I said as I passed him on the stairs, not expecting a response.
    â€œGood, man,” he had said with a small smile. “See you later.”
    I told my friend to stay put and ran out of my room, headed in the direction of the gunshots. I didn’t know if I could stop Wayne, but I would try. When I burst out of our hall into the atrium, one of the resident assistants was coming up the stairs. He was the all-American kid, always wearing a baseball hat and an I-dare-you grin. Tonight, for the first time, he wasn’t smiling.
    â€œMishka, get back in your room. Wayne’s got a gun.”
    I kept running toward the door.
    â€œI heard it. He’s down by the library.”
    â€œMishka! Get back in your room right fucking now. Turn the lights off, lock the door, and lay on the floor away from the windows. Right fucking now .”
    I went back to my room, turned the lights off, and locked the door. I looked out the window toward the library. I could hear screams, and I saw silhouettes of students running away from the library, students I knew. My friend grabbed my physics notebook and started writing frantically. I looked over his shoulder. He was writing out his will.
    After a while, the screams stopped. There were sirens, then cop cars and flashing lights. Then, as we watched, Wayne Lo was led down the path from upper campus toward a waiting cop car. He was handcuffed, and two cops held his arms tightly.
    I ran out into the atrium, then outside and into Dolliver, the boys’ dormitory. I didn’t know what else to do. There was blood on the stairs and blood on one of the landings, more blood than I had ever seen, a thick pool of blood, just starting to congeal at the edges.
    Students were crying and saying that people had been shot, that Galen was dead. But rumors were insane at Simon’s Rock—people just repeated shit they’d heard without a thought.
    â€œAre you

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