And then we both stare at each other. Sawyer says it first. “Maybe we have things wrong.”
My heart clutches. “Or maybe it’s imminent.”
“Shit.”
“But it can’t be. There are hardly any students on campus. It’s spring break.”
“Yes, but they’ve got to come back sometime before classes start Monday.”
“You mean, like, today and tomorrow? But who would be using those buildings?”
Sawyer puts the kittens back into their cage and goes to the next cage, pulling a single gray kitten out and handing it to me. He reaches in for another one—a blue tortie, according to the label on the door—and cradles it. “I don’t know. But colleges aren’t like high schools, are they? I mean, they might have meetings. . . .” He strokes the kitten’s back and it mews and tries to bite his thumb. Sawyer readjusts the kitten and gazes down at it, then back at me. “Can you try a search to find out? I’ve got my laptop with me, but I’m scheduled here until two today.”
“Sure. There’s got to be Wi-Fi around here somewhere.”
“Meet me back here at two?”
I nod. We put the kittens back in their cage and he whispers, “I’m scared.”
My spine tingles, and not in a good way. “Me too,” I whisper back.
I return at two with no information on any classes meeting this weekend but with a lot more info about U of C and a possible clue to the actual motivation of the shooters. “I think we need to go back to the campus,” I say. “Like, now. There has to be a clue. Something.”
“What’s Trey doing today, working?”
“He and Rowan are at that food truck festival.” Sawyer washes his hands at the sink and says good-bye
to the other volunteers and employees. We walk out. “I have to work tonight,” he says. And then he frowns and shakes his head. “No I don’t.” He pulls out his phone.
He dials and waits. “I’m taking the weekend off,” he says in a dull voice, a voice I’ve never heard.
“Yeah, well, if you make me come in, I’m telling everybody who asks how I got this black eye.”
He listens for a second, and then, with no emotion, says, “Fire me, then. I really don’t care.” He hangs up. “Jesus,” he says as we reach the bus stop, his face gray and dead. “I can’t deal with this. I really can’t.”
“I know.”
“I mean it, Jules.” He rakes his fingers through his hair and cusses under his breath. “My family is a mess. The visions and the gunshots are killing me. I don’t have anything . . . left. . . . Shit.” He jams his fingers into the corners of his eyes and lets out a shuddering breath, and he turns toward me. I wrap my arms around him, feel his shoulders tremble.
He can’t stop. “I mean, what the hell are we supposed to do? We’re teenagers. We have no weapons or magical powers here. What are we going to do, Jules? Can you tell me, please? Because we’re going to fucking get our heads blown off.”
“No, we’re not. And today is the day we figure it out. Right now. You and me. And we’re not going home until we know what’s happening.”
He sniffs and clears his throat, like he doesn’t want me to see his emotion. But I understand tears, especially about this. Hell, I wish all guys could just cry and not have it be such a big stupid deal. Shed a tear. Be a man. Whatever. But I guess when you live in a house where your father and grandfather beat the crap out of you, maybe you have a different mind-set on that topic.
We get on the bus, trying to figure out where to pick up the transfer that will take us to U of C, and then I open Sawyer’s laptop and click on one of the tabs of the web pages I left open. I show Sawyer the history of the school and its beginnings, involving John D. Rockefeller, Marshall Field, and—what I think is the most interesting fact that I didn’t know before—the American Baptist Education Society.
I point out the highlights. “So it’s this private college with that big Rockefeller chapel we saw, started by Baptists, yet totally secular from the beginning, I think. The dorms have coed floors, and there’s a strong LGBT community.”
Sawyer looks puzzled. “I’m not getting why any of this matters to the shooting.”
“Rowan said something off the cuff the other day—she wondered what the motivation of the shooter might be. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And if you think about what happened here this week with the graffiti and what the workers told you about a protest over equal rights, and the defaced stop sign that Trey found, it’s pretty obvious that somebody’s upset with this school or some of the organizations in it, and it has something to do with equality. Since the slur “fag” was used, I’m guessing that it’s gay rights that are being protested.”
“Okaaay . . . but . . .”
“Hang on,” I say, looking up, realizing it’s time to transfer.
We change buses and keep reading. Sawyer sets his phone up to be a Wi-Fi hot spot so I can get online on his computer and he can search for more news on his phone, but it’s no use for him. His screen is just a medium for the vision. He leans back and closes his eyes. “I don’t know how many more piles of dead bodies I can see before I lose it completely, Jules,” he says. “What are we doing wrong?”
I pull up the Wikipedia page for U of C. Normally I don’t trust Wikipedia, but this page has a bunch of great photographs, so I browse through them. I locate several of the buildings we saw on the main quadrangle and study them. There’s a ton of great detail about the insides of the buildings too—stuff I never expected to find. “Hey,” I say, looking over. But Sawyer’s eyes are closed, his head nodding against the window. Sleeping. Thank dog. I have a feeling he’s going to need it. I go back to scouring headlines.