It was a nightmare.
I never saw it coming, but I should have. That’s why we have eyes and a brain, to prevent crazy shit like this from happening. But no one saw it and no one tried to stop it: not the kids, not the teachers, not the parents.
It’s strange. Back in elementary and junior high, me and Gordie were really good friends, best friends even. Things started to change in high school, though, like things always do. I found new friends—guys I had things in common with—whereas Gordie and me hung out when we were younger because no one else would talk to us.
I guess that didn’t really make us best friends.
Still, I got to know him pretty well, and I never thought I would see him act like this. It happened during Math class, the course everyone hates. That was the Day of Gordie.
It was a brand new school year. I was a senior, and all sorts of good stuff was suppose to happen to me this year. I knew because everything still felt fresh and exciting, like there were big changes on the horizon.
There was no warning. No screams from the hall, no stampede of scared and crying teens. Gordie was saving it up for us.
I swear that everyone sensed Gordie coming. We could practically feel his approach, and when he stepped inside, we all stopped talking and looked at him.
He wore a smile I had never seen before—a tight, cruel, uncaring smile that was plastered across his usually gentle and easygoing face. But his eyes were what scared me the most. They were ice cold, dead, freezing everyone in their glare, stopping us like deer caught in headlights. And then he opened fire, shooting down Susie Johnson first.
Have you ever knocked over a glass and watch it roll to the edge of a table? You want to reach out and stop it, but all you can do is watch it fall. Your muscles don’t work until the glass shatters. I listened for it, but all I could hear was Gordie.
He left Susie slumped in her chair and turned on Ricky Smits. Following another rapid burst, Ricky joined Susie at the high school in the sky. In quick succession, Gordie took aim at Taylor Chan, Larry Black, Rosa Azzam and Judith Finnigan, leaving them in a heap, sprawled over desks that had been pushed together so they could play cards before class.
A small group of kids huddled in the back corner, petrified that they would be the next to go, but for some reason he passed them over.
Josie Mann wasn’t really paying much attention, too absorbed in the book she was reading. She didn’t even know Gordie was behind her until he shouted, “Boo!” and pulled the trigger. Josie’s book hit the floor with a thunk.
Josie sat in front of David Wu, a good friend of mine, and when Gordie turned those dead eyes on him, I could practically hear the piss begging to be released from his bladder so it could snake down his leg and pool on the floor. Gordie just grinned, as if he could sense the fear. Apparently, that just made it better.
After he finished off David with cruel glee, Gordie turned to me.
And when I stared into his eyes, I knew. For a brief second, I could tell what was going on in his mind and how scared and truly pathetic he was. I saw backwards with his eyes.
I saw us the summer before high school, with Gordie saying how he had lost so much weight, how much he enjoyed playing football, how he couldn’t wait for the year to start so he could try out for the school team. I saw myself nod, not really caring, not knowing how things can change during those strange days.
Then our freshman year at a new school started. Suddenly Gordie was a popular kid, the misery and torture of elementary and junior high disappearing the way his fat did over the dog days of summer, leaving me to carry the burden we had once shared. He had new friends: football jocks, the ones that had the run of the school, the nice cars, the big laughs, the hot girls, the ones that thought it was funny to push a newbie around just for kicks.
But not Gordie. He was a newbie, yeah, but he was also one of them, a surprisingly talented wide receiver that had shed the pain and taunts he endured for years with one glorious catch on the first day of tryouts.
Along with the pain and taunts, he shed me.
I never really noticed, though, because I suddenly found myself with new friends, too—guys who were into chess and Star Wars and Star Trek and computers. So we drifted apart. We weren’t best friends and we weren’t enemies, because Gordie, being the guy that he was, still tried to maintain a large web of acquaintances and said hi to me and the other geeks when he walked down the hall. He did this for years, ignoring or not noticing the frowns it attracted from some of his other friends.
Then I saw him this past summer, hanging out with his buddies—the kind of kids who liked to pick on others because it was cheap fun, easy and always available. Gordie, facing two months of, “Why do you talk to those fucking nerds? What are you, their buddy?” and “It makes us look bad.” And I watched how they slowly broke him down, along with everything he was, until he became a gunmouth just like them, vicious and cruel. Now that the school year had started, he was ready to go off.
First, Susie, who had an unfortunate case of perpetual acne: “Shit, Susie, your face reminds me of the pizza I had last night for dinner. Go see a dermatologist or something.” Gordie cackled and Susie ducked her head.
Then Ricky, who carried a few too many pounds: “Fuck, Ricky, I had one pizza. How many did you have, ten?” Ricky flushed and shrank back as Gordie passed on by.
The shock of these verbal bullets left me unable to remember what he said to Taylor, Larry, Rosa and Judith. Disbelief left me reeling as he insulted Josie and everyone with thick glasses and a love of science fiction.
No, this can’t be Gordie, I thought, this can’t be the guy who says, “What’s up?” to everyone and doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. This isn’t the guy that I snuck a cigarette with when we were thirteen, the guy that used to sleep over and watch horror movies with me. This isn’t Gordie.
But the proof presented itself beyond the shadow of a doubt when Gordie made fun of everything from David’s brains to his race, like a brutal Gestapo trooper who thirty years later would plead for forgiveness, beg for mercy, and claim he was just following orders.
All these thoughts crystallized in my mind, and with them I found the strength to call him out, even though I knew it would make no difference.
“You’re pathetic.” I whispered the words and Gordie hesitated for a second. In that moment, I thought something familiar crossed his face, but it faded quickly. This person wasn’t Gordie anymore; it was a stranger, changed by time and friends.
He blew me away.
