End of the Innocence Read online

  I shrugged at him. “So? I don’t care anymore. I’m just sick of this.”

  Jennifer looked over at me. “He’s right, they’ll expel you the second they find out it was you.”

  “And I don’t care,” I repeated.

  “What about college?” Robbie asked. “You think you can snag a scholarship after being expelled from school?”

  “I don’t care!” I screamed, losing my patience. They both looked at me with wide eyes, and I tried to calm down. “Don’t you see? This is more important than just me and fucking college. This is about not letting those people get away with what they did. I know I can get expelled, and I know that can cost me college. But I do not care.”

  Brad walked in with his laptop; he looked like he had been crying. I took my cues from his movements, standing near, not crowding him. Reminding him I was there. “Here,” he said, handing it to me. “Now, what’s going on?”

  I plugged it in. “Jennifer, catch him up, okay?”

  Jennifer began to explaining the plan to him while I booted up the computer. I pulled up Facebook and logged Brad out. Then I started to put Kelly’s e-mail into the login field; the second I pushed the letter K, his e-mail popped up in the box. When I clicked it, the browser automatically put his password in.

  I’d noticed this last time I was using Brad’s laptop to see what people were saying about Kelly. I could only guess he had used the laptop in the past, and it had saved his password with auto-complete. Since Brad never logged out of Facebook, he had never even noticed. I logged Kelly on and opened his messages.

  “Bingo,” I said, looking up at Jennifer. “I’m going to need that printer.”

  She went into her bedroom to grab her printer, and I looked at Robbie. “Can you handle this?” I asked him.

  He nodded and hooked up the laptop. “Why? What are you going to do?”

  I pulled out my phone. “Making sure I can get into the building before school starts.”

  Jennifer came out with her printer and hooked it up to Brad’s laptop as the phone rang in my ear. On the third ring, Sammy picked up; she sounded like she had been crying. “I didn’t know if you’d call me,” she said.

  “This isn’t your fault,” I assured her, and I meant it. Because everything was my fault. “I need a favor.”

  She sniffled a little bit. “Anything.”

  “Do you still have keys to the drama department?”

  “Yeah, why?” she asked, curious now.

  “I need you to lose them,” I told her as the first pages began to print up behind me. “Actually, I need you to lose them in front of me.”

  “What’s going on?” she asked, not sounding the least bit depressed now.

  “Come over to Jennifer’s house. I’ll explain everything.”

  She agreed and hung up. I slipped my phone into my pocket and began to think.

  “Can I talk to you alone, Kyle?” Brad asked me. I could have said he looked concerned, but he really looked scared. He walked us over to a corner away from everyone else. “Jennifer told me what you were planning. You can’t do it.”

  “I can, and I’m going to,” I said frankly. “And before we get into an argument about it, I need to do this.”

  “Because you think you let Kelly down?” he asked.

  “Because I am not going to let the same people who got away with bullying us get away with torturing Kelly.” I could see he was upset, but my mind was made up. “Brad, I need to do this. I know the risks.”

  “What if you get kicked out?” he asked, sounding as lost as I had ever heard him.

  “Then I get a job at Nancy’s and meet you for lunch every day,” I said, hugging him. “Nothing is going to get between us,” I assured him. “Nothing at all.”

  He hugged me back, and I felt him lean into me as he started to cry again. After a few minutes, he pulled himself back together. Until the next storm overwhelmed him. This time it was my turn to help Brad sit down. I kissed him and told him how much I loved him. I was done crying.

  Sammy showed up, and we explained what I was planning to do. She just smiled and handed her keys over to me. “I haven’t seen them since Christmas break,” she said.

  I took them and put them in my pocket. “You rock. Thank you.”

  “So can I help?” she asked, looking as Jennifer and Robbie went to work at their tasks. Robbie was huddled over the laptop typing while Jennifer was taking the pages the printer spat out and sorting them.

  “Can you take over for Jennifer?” I asked her. “I need her for something else.”

  Jennifer looked up at me curiously, but she handed the papers over to Sammy. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

  “Not even a little,” I answered truthfully.

  BRAD

  I WATCHED as Kyle talked to Jennifer in a low voice. Inside, I was dying to know what they were talking about.

  Kyle had decided to play everything close to the chest, because he didn’t want any of us to get in trouble with him. What he was planning was crazy, but I also knew I wasn’t going to be able to stop him. A few minutes later, I saw Jennifer rear back from their huddle like Kyle had said something so bad she was going to smack him. He didn’t seem shocked by her response. He kept talking to her, and her expression changed from shock to anger pretty fast.

  “Are you serious?” she asked, almost shouting.

  Kyle just nodded.

  She just stood there staring at Kyle, looking like she was hoping he would change his mind. Finally, she sighed and nodded. “Brad, I’m going to need a ride.”

  “Sure,” I said before I thought about asking why.

  “I need to go change,” she said, walking back into her room.

  “What’s going on?” I asked him, getting frustrated by all the secrets and side conversations.

  He sat me down on the couch and began to explain while Jennifer changed her clothes.

  By the time she walked out, I was as pissed as she was.

  KYLE

  IT was close to six in the evening when Brad pulled up in front of the house.

  “You sure this is it?” he asked me.

  I clutched the folder to my chest and nodded.

  “You want me to come in too?” he asked, knowing I was close to chickening out.

  Yes, very much yes.

  “No,” I said with a sigh. “I need to do this alone.”

  He put his hand on my arm and gave me a smile. “No you don’t.”

  I put a hand over his and smiled back. “Thanks. Wait for me?” He nodded, and I got out of the car.

  I knocked on the door and an older man wearing a wifebeater answered. He shook his head at me. “You’re the most normal person he’s ever had over.” He stepped back from the door and pointed to a door halfway between the entry and the kitchen. “He’s down in the basement.”

  I hadn’t even asked to come in, but he sat back down in front of the TV and ignored me completely, which I took as an invitation. I closed the door and walked over to the one that led down to the basement. For a second, I considered knocking and decided against doing it. I just opened it up and walked downstairs.

  Jeremy sat in front of a computer that was hooked up to a couple of digital turntables. He seemed lost in another mash-up and hadn’t heard me at all. I walked up behind him and tossed the folder down on the keyboard in front of him.

  Pictures of Kelly taken by the medical examiner spilled out. Jennifer had risked everything to get copies of them off her dad’s desk, but she had come through. After telling her about what Jeremy had done, it took every bit of persuasion I could pull up to convince her not to come with me.

  Surprised, Jeremy tried to jump back, but I grabbed his neck and held him in place. He ripped off the headphones and looked at me in panic. “Kyle? What the fuck?”

  I turned his face to look at the pictures again. “I wanted to show you the results of your efforts,” I said, my voice jagged with anger. “Look at them, Jeremy. This is what you wanted,
right?”

  He tried to squirm away, but he was too much in shock to resist. “I don’t know what Sammy told you, but she—”

  I pushed his face down over the pictures. “Don’t lie,” I roared. “You did this, so own it.”

  He pushed me off him, the chair he had been sitting in kicked away as he took a few steps back. “What do you want me to say? I posted it? Fine! I did, but he deserved it!”

  I pointed at the pictures. “He deserved that? He deserved the top of his head blown off because he couldn’t bear to come to school? His mother deserved to find brain matter falling from the ceiling because you thought he deserved it? Tell me, Jeremy, what does someone do to deserve this?”

  He glanced over at the pictures and looked away quickly. “I didn’t mean for him to do that!” he tried to reason. “He was an asshole! He picked on both of us! You know that!”

  “So you decided to bully him?” I asked.

  “That was payback,” he spat back.

  “Well, congratulations,” I said to him, clenching my fists. “You sure won that one.” Jeremy blanched at my words but said nothing back. “So let me see if I got this straight. If Kelly had bullied you to the point of suicide, then he would have been the bad guy and you would have been the poor, helpless victim. But you bully him and he kills himself, and it still isn’t your fault?”

  He said nothing.

  “You were no better than him. No, you were worse, because you know what it feels like to be picked on. You know firsthand what being singled out to be tortured feels like, and you still chose to do it to someone else. He was gay, you asshole! He was gay, and you bullied him.”

  I grabbed one of the pictures and shoved it in his face. “Well, take a good look, Jeremy, because this is what you did. And you can take these pictures, tear them into shreds and light them on fire. But you will never get these images out of your mind. This is what you have to live with, Jeremy. You caused someone to kill himself. You.”

  I tossed the picture back onto his desk. “Have fun living with that.”

  I turned to walk out and stopped at the bottom of the steps. “By the way, you asked if I would have ever gone out with you if you asked. The answer is ‘No’. I don’t date bullies.”

  I heard him begin to cry as I walked out of his house. I knew exactly how he felt.

  I got into Brad’s car and cried all the way home.

  I am so sorry, Kelly.

  BRAD

  EARLY Tuesday morning Kyle, Jennifer, Sammy, and I used Sammy’s keys to get into the school. We had a lot to do, and we went about it quietly, driven to finish before the first bell rang.

  It took almost three hours to get everything done, but as we looked up and down the halls, a strange sort of grim satisfaction filled my mind. “Okay. You guys need to get out of here,” Kyle said, turning to us. “The janitor is going to unlock this hall and once he sees all this, he’s going to call every single number he knows.”

  Jennifer glanced over at me, and we both nodded. I looked over to Sammy, and she nodded as well.

  “Yeah,” I said, looking back at Kyle. “That isn’t going to happen.”

  I thought his eyes were going to bug out when he saw the three of us refusing to move. “This isn’t funny, guys,” he said, looking around in case any adult was coming. “You have to go.”

  “We knew Kelly too,” Jennifer said.

  “He was our friend too,” I added.

  “And we didn’t do anything about it,” Sammy finished.

  “So you’re stuck with us,” I told him.

  “What about baseball? What about a scholarship?” he asked me.

  “What about yours?” I replied. “If you’re willing to climb out onto that ledge, least we can do is climb out with you.”

  “Please go?” he begged us.

  Jennifer sat down in the hall, leaning on the doors. “It’s a good day to die,” she announced.

  Sammy sat down next to her. “Can’t agree more.”

  “Brad!” he pleaded at me.

  I got as close to him as I could and explained, “You were the one who went and made friends. This is the price of having them.” I hugged him, and he reluctantly hugged me back. When I didn’t let him go, he relaxed against me. I swear I could feel him pulling strength from me, although I didn’t know if I had any.

  The janitor walked up the steps, looked inside, and saw our work. He dropped his keys as he scrambled to pull his phone out of his pocket.

  We sat and waited for the sparks to fly.

  About ten minutes later, Mr. Raymond’s car screeched to a halt in the parking lot. He looked like he was about to spit fire.

  He strode toward the building as far as the doors. He looked in at us. “Stilleno, open these doors right now!” he ordered.

  Kyle shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  Mr. Raymond looked over to the janitor and told him to unlock the door. The other man turned his key in the lock and tried to pull the doors open. They didn’t move. Both of them tugged at the doors, but they refused to open. The principal looked down and saw the bike chain we had used to lock the doors from the inside.

  “Those aren’t coming down until people show up for class,” Kyle informed him. “Do me a favor, please call the cops.” He held up his phone. “Because the second you do, we call Channel Three.”

  “I am not going to let you vandalize school property…,” Mr. Raymond began to threaten us.

  “We aren’t vandalizing anything,” Kyle said, pulling one of the papers out of his jacket. He slapped it against the glass so Raymond could read it. “We are just making sure everyone knows who said what. We’re just giving their words back to them.”

  Mr. Raymond read the paper and then looked down the hall.

  The paper was a printout of a message sent to Kelly over the Christmas break, with the name of the person who sent it. Raymond looked and saw papers taped on over half the lockers. He looked down at Kyle, who just smiled back at him. “Call the cops,” he said. “I dare you.”

  And that was how the entire school found out how hateful they all were.

  KYLE

  NINETY minutes later, we were all in the principal’s office, waiting for our parents to show up.

  Mr. Raymond refused to call my bluff and didn’t try to get the cops. The janitor and he tried everything short of breaking and entering themselves to get into the building, but there was no way in. People started showing up for class, and the crowd outside the door began to grow. Mr. Raymond was joined by the vice principals, who threatened us as well but also chose not to call the cops.

  When it was almost time for first period, we undid the chain and the kids came rushing into the hall.

  The adults tried to pull the notes down off the lockers, but there were just too many of them. Both people who had tortured Kelly and those who hadn’t got to read what people had said. Most people tore the paper off and crumpled it up, but it didn’t matter because they found their lockers were filled with more copies. Though most people tried to hide it, everyone knew what everyone else had said by third period.

  We were locked in an office while they tried to round up all our parents.

  “You guys should have run while you had the chance,” I told them.

  Brad looked over at me. “Hey, I didn’t want to go to class anyway. This is a vacation to me.”

  Jennifer nodded. “I promise you, that is how he feels.”

  I rolled my eyes as Sammy looked at her phone. “Well, the shit hit the fan,” she said, looking up at us. “People are posting pictures on Facebook of what people said. By the end of the day, no one will be able to deny anything.” She closed her phone and smiled at me. “You did it.”

  “I wanted to do it without you guys getting in trouble too,” I muttered.

  Brad came and sat down next to me. “Maybe we can all work at Nancy’s?” he asked, smiling.

  “How can you be so happy about this?’ I asked him, confused.

 
; He shook his head and just grinned. “We did the right thing,” he replied. “It feels pretty fucking cool.”

  I looked over at Jennifer, and she nodded, Sammy joining her.

  I rolled my eyes. “You guys are nuts.”

  “That’s my dad,” Jennifer exclaimed, looking at the office. We all got up and looked out the window in the door as our parents showed up. I saw my mom, a guy who must be Sammy’s dad, Jennifer’s dad in his sheriff’s uniform, and finally Brad’s mom.

  Brad shook his head and looked away. “Never thought I would want my dad to show up somewhere,” he muttered, sitting back down.

  I was about to say something to him, but Sammy called out, “Someone is coming!” and we all got away from the door.

  One of the office secretaries opened the door and told us, “They want you all now.”

  She led us into Mr. Raymond’s office, where our parents waited along with Mr. Adler and Mr. Davis, proving to me this was as bad as I feared. “Have a seat, kids,” Mr. Raymond told us. It just sounded to me like he was saying, “Please put this blindfold on” as they loaded their rifles.

  “Thank you all for coming,” Mr. Davis began. “We had a serious problem this morning before school started, and I am afraid we were forced to take action.”

  “Action?” my mom asked, sounding none too pleased. “I swear, this school is about one step away from wearing Klan robes.”

  Mr. Raymond looked like he was about to scream at her, but Davis cut him off. “Ms. Stilleno, that kind of talk is not helping.”

  “That kind of talk isn’t so far off,” Brad’s mom shot back.

  “This is about the Facebook messages, right?” That was Jennifer’s dad, using his police officer voice, which really didn’t open the room up for idle conversation.

  “It is, and I am afraid it was a serious violation of several school policies, not counting actual laws,” Mr. Davis explained, sounding like he was sad about everything. Mr. Davis was a rotten actor.

  “Excuse me?” Sammy’s dad asked. “What laws?”